As it appeared in the January 1976 Madonna House Restoration newspaper

by Catherine Doherty

We are still so filled with the holy days of December that our minds cannot think of any other cooking but that of the past season.

So, if you are a recipe saver, here are a few for your next December-January file.

Epiphany Fruit Bread

Ingredients for setting yeast batter:
1 ½ cups milk
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 packages active dry yeast
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup melted butter

Ingredients for remainder:
1 cup seedless raisins
½ cup currants
1 – 8oz. jar diced candied mixed fruit
4 cups all purpose flour

Scald milk and stir in sugar and slat. When cook, add yeast which has been set and mix. Add all other ingredients in first part of recipe and beat until smooth. Then add the remaining ingredients one at a time and knead the dough lightly on floured surface. Let rise. In about two hours punch dough down, and divide into three parts. Shape each part into a crown – representing the crowns of the Wise Men, and in each part put one penny. (The member of the family who gets the penny must say a prayer for the others for the balance of the week.) After the bread is shaped, let it rise again, and bake in moderate oven (350 degree F) for 30-40minutes. They may be iced with confectioners sugar icing, if desired.

Vanocka – Braided Christmas Bread
From Czechoslavakia

1 ½ cups milk
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground mace
2 packages active dry yeast
3 cups flour
2 eggs slightly beaten

Remaining ingredients:
5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup butter
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
1 cup seedless raisins
½ cup chopped blanched almonds
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons water

Set the yeast in warm water and a little sugar. Add the other ingredients listed in the first section. Sift the 5 cups flour in a bowl and cut in butter. Then stir down the yeast mixture and add lemon rind, raisins and almonds. Add yeast mixture to flour-butter mixture and beat well. Knead dough and let rise for about 2 hours. Then, divide the dough in half and divide one half into 3 equal portions.

Roll these into ropes 20 inches long. Let rest 15 minutes. Then braid very loosely. Seal ends; place on greased baking sheet. Next, divide remaining dough into 5 equal portions. Roll each into a slim rope 15 inches long. Loosely braid 3 ropes and place on top of larger braid; fasten with toothpicks.

Twist remaining 2 ropes and place on top of smaller braid; fasten with toothpicks. Cover and let rise for about 20 minutes. Beat egg yolks with tiny bit of water and brush on top. Bake in 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes.

Delicious! Just try it!

Speculatius – St. Nicholas Spice Cookies
From Holland

1 c butter
1c lard
2c brown sugar
½ c sour cream
½ t baking soda
4t cinnamon
½ t nutmeg
½ t cloves
4 ½ c flour
½ c chopped nuts (optional)

Cream butter, lard and sugar – by hand with rubber spatula or with electric mixer. In separate bowl, combine spices, baking soda and flour.

Add sour cream to creamed mixture, alternately with dry mixture. Stir in the nuts. Knead dough into rolls. Wrap in wax paper and chill overnight. Roll dough very thin and cut into shape of good St. Nicholas himself. Bake 375 for 10 minutes, or until not quite golden.

On small slips of paper we write a message from the Bible for every member of the family and insert it in the right arm of St. Nicholas. We cook this slip of paper with the cookie. We decorate the cookie to look like St. Nicholas himself and write each person’s name on the cookie with frosting.

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As it appeared in the December 1975 Madonna House Restoration newspaper

by Catherine Doherty

Perhaps you might be interested in a few of the foreign recipes for Christmas cakes or other foods that bring us closer to our neighbors – wherever they may be.

Turta – Walnut layered strudel
From Romania

12 cups flour
6 egg yolks
4 tablespoon vegetable oil
About 2 ½ cups lukewarm water
About 2 cups flour for rolling dough
3 cups coarsely chopped walnuts
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup (1/2 lb) butter, melted
½ cup honey

Put flour in large mixing bowl; make a well in center; put in it egg yolks and oil. With a fork beat eggs and oil, gradually working in the flour, adding lukewarm water gradually to make a soft dough. Knead dough until it is very light; then place it on lightly floured board, cover with a bowl and let stand in warm place for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix walnuts and sugar.

Cover large table with a clean cloth; sprinkle entire surface with flour. Cut dough into six pieces; knead into balls; keep covered with bowl.

Roll dough pieces, one at a time, to the size of a man’s handkerchief, lifting and turning frequently to make sure dough does not stick; brush top lightly with a little oil. Flour hands, both palms and backs; carefully stretch the dough from the underside, starting at the center of dough, until it is tissue thin, being careful not to make holes.

Trim edges of dough; cut into 9” squares; place these, one on top of the other, on greased jelly roll pan; brush each layer (including top) with melted butter and sprinkle with nut-sugar mixture.

Bake in moderate (350 degree F) oven, 15 minutes; pour honey over top, bake 45 to 50 minutes more. If top browns too fast, cover with brown paper or aluminum foil. Cut into squares to serve.

The beautiful and symbolic part of this recipe is that the thin coats of rolled dough represent the swaddling clothes of the Christ Child.

Buche de Noel – Christmas Log
From France

5 egg yolks
¼ cup cake flour
2 tablespoon cocoa
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup confectioners sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon almond extract
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Coffee cream filling
Chocolate cream frosting
Candied green pineapple rings or angelica for decoration

Line a greased jelly roll pan with waxed paper

Beat egg yolks until think and pale.

Stift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, sugar and cinnamon; add to egg yolks; beat well.

Stir in almond extract and gently fold in beaten egg whites until batter is well blended.

Spread batter evenly in prepared jelly roll pan and bake in moderate (350 degree F) oven for 12 to 15 minutes, or until pointed knife when inserted comes out clean.

Quickly turn the cake out on damp towel sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Trim edges, roll cake in towel in jelly roll fashion, cool; reserve cut edges.

When cake has cooked and is ready to fill, unroll and spread evenly with Coffee Cream Filling, and roll again. Slice off end of cake diagonally.

Roll out reserved cut cake edges into shape of knots; fasten and secure with tooth picks on surface of roll to simulate rings where branches were cut off.

Spread Chocolate Cream Frosting over roll with spatula. Run tines of fork through frosting to make a rough surface in imitation of bark. Decorate with candied green pineapple, cut into leaves.

Coffee Cream Filling:
½ cup butter
¾ cup sifted confectioners sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon dry instant coffee
1 tablespoon hot water

Cream butter until soft; add sugar gradually and cream until smooth. Beat in egg yolks, coffee and water; beat until easy to spread.

Chocolate Cream Frosting:
¾ cup butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 egg yolks
2 – 2oz. squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 tablespoons cocoa

Cream butter until soft; add sugar gradually, and cream until smooth. Beat in egg yolks, melted chocolate and cocoa; beat until easy to spread.

This Christmas Log is not only festive for your Yuletide board, but Delicious! Your family will love it!

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As it appeared in the December 1974 Madonna House Restoration newspaper

by Catherine Doherty

How much we miss in fun, taste, adventure, and economy in bypassing yeast-raised dough and all the wondrous things one can make with it!

For some unearthly reason the modern housewife considers yeast dough, and all that goes with it, first a mystery, secondly a chore. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is less a chore than many elaborate dishes, and there is no mystery attached to it nowadays, because of the new fast-raising yeasts and the perfectly timed electrical or gas ranges. In fact it is very simple to dazzle the family with many new variations on an old theme, and to bring into the modern home that good homey nostalgic smell of newly baked yeast dough, which sharpens appetites even before one sees the finished product itself!

Take a yeast-dough meat pie with rich gravy. Make it, say, for a family of four.

Two fast raising yeast envelopes (Fleishman is best)
½ cup of lukewarm water
2 teaspoons of granulated sugar

First stir sugar in lukewarm water until sugar is well dissolved. Then add yeast. Add by sprinkling. Don’t mix. Let stand ten minutes. In the meantime, heat 2 ¾ cups of milk (or water) to scalding temperature. Add ½ cup of granulated sugar, 1/3 cup of shortening or any other fat you prefer (or have on hand) and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

Mix yeast mixture with second mixture and work into this combined liquid 4 cups of sifted ordinary white flour. Beat well until dough is elastic and smooth. Add about 2 to 3 cups more of white sifted flour. Put on board and knead until flour is well mixed and dough soft and elastic again. It takes only a few minutes really.

Then put into greased dish and let rise until double its original size. Keep it in a warm place in your kitchen, away from drafts. Usually it will rise enough in an hour. Then take half of your dough. Flour table or bread board well and roll dough out with rolling pin. At first it will sort of stretch, and you may think you are not getting anywhere. Jest press harder on the rolling pin and make of the dough a nice square – big enough to fit into the baking pan you want for the occasion (you know your family’s appetites!) and enough to cover over. For what you have in mind is a meat pie, remember.

O.K. So you rolled your dough over. It is a nice good square of orderly shape. Now you take the meat. Best for this is leftovers of beef that have been ground through a machine, with two raw onions and then seasoned to taste with salt and pepper. (I add just a pinch of paprika and sage.)

Now you lay out this meat mixture on half of your square of rolled out dough. Then cover it with the other half, and pinch sides all around nicely. Put into greased baking dish and smear the top with some melted butter. Put into oven and bake at 300 degrees for one hour. Serve piping hot with the following gravy:

Four finely chopped onions, browned
1 can of celery soup
Salt, pepper, sage and paprika to taste

If this gravy is a wee bit too thick for you, add water.

Some dough may have remained. Make buns with it. Usually though, everyone asks for a second helping. That meat pie is good cold too, for school lunches.

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No I’m not a huge country music fan, but when I heard that Shania Twain defended poutine as “Canadian comfort food” in response to Martha Stewart calling it “junk food,” the girl went up a notch or two in my book. Shania was a guest chef on Martha’s daytime talk show when this happened just a couple weeks ago. Of course, I had to grab the recipe… we love poutine!!!

Except Martha’s website had to give it a floo-floo fancy name – Oven fries with Mushroom gravy. Goodness, no wonder I don’t watch that show. Go over and see if you like the recipe. Couple of things I noted…

1. I’ve never ever made my own fries when making poutine. But it’s a good idea if ya have the time.
2. Where’s the cheese curds??!! Folks, be sure to add lots of cheese curds on top of the fries, then the gravy. In substitution for curds, we often settle for mozzarella. Poor us. lol

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From my mom’s youngest sister and definitely a Christmas Eve family tradition

For about a shoebox full:

1 ½ c peanut butter
1 c butter/margarine
2c powdered sugar
24 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
¼ box paraffin wax

For about 200:

1 – 500 g jar peanut butter
1 ½ lb. butter/margarine
6 c powdered sugar
72 oz chocolate
1/2 box paraffin wax

Mix and chill 1st three ingredients in refrigerator about two hours until firm. Roll into balls. (If they get too sticky and hard to roll, put remaining batter back in the fridge for half an hour then try again.) Melt chocolate and wax in a double boiler and whisk until smooth. Using a toothpick, pick up each buckeye and dip it in the chocolate, then place on a baking sheet covered in waxed paper. Put entire sheet into freezer. Once frozen, place in cheery Christmas tins or Ziploc bags or whatever you like until Christmas.

Notes:
Use the first proportions if this is your first time, but go for the 200 if you’re a chocolate lover. You won’t regret it. After that first batch, I made the tripled batch a permanent addition to this recipe.

The only tricky part about this recipe is the chocolate – if it’s too hot when you start the dipping process, it will just run off the buckeye and someone will get short changed. Just give it a minute or two to cool, then try again. I set the buckeye and toothpick combo down together and use a new toothpick for the new one until I’ve done about ten, then I start taking the first out and re-using them. That way the chocolate has cooled a bit to allow me to get the toothpick out cleanly. But when you’re doing 200 buckeyes, your chocolate can also get too cold and gloppy and un-dippable. Lightly heat it again until it’s back to the consistency you like.

Oh, and I’ve been told that around holiday time some stores have baking chocolate with wax already in it, though I can’t find it up here. Just be sure to what you are buying. If your chocolate has wax, don’t add more. But if it doesn’t, the little bit of wax added in holds the chocolate on nicely.

We usually have a bit of chocolate leftover, so be prepared. Really, that’s the fun part – we break out the raisins and/or unsalted peanuts and pretzels. The kids can help with this and get a treat out of it, not to mention Mecandes eats the only raisins he’ll touch all year. Funny how chocolate makes anything delectable.

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