Holiday Baking à la HOMO

Last year I did nothing for the holidays.  No baking, no tree, nothing.  I'm not really Christian, although I was baptized Lutheran, I just don't practice or really believe in the whole Jesus thing. But that's a LOOONNGGG story.

This year I have decided to bake some holiday goodies, but this time I will do it over the course of a few days, rather that all at one shot.   And I am baking at night in order to take advantage of the lower hydro rates.

Here's what I have done so far:

On Monday I baked some ice box cookies, and some chocolate ice box cookies and I cooked the meat and veggie part for my tortierres (meat pies).

This year I decided not to chop baking gums by hand.  It is just tedious work.  I used pre-chopped fruit Glace.  Wonderful stuff.  It contains cherry, orange peel, lemon zest, and pineapple, and it comes in red, green, yellow and orange colours (very festive and pretty).  I think I paid $3.00 for a 250g container.  Well worth the price, and no cutting with scissors!

 On Tuesday I used the Tenderflake pie shells and the pre-made pie dough (what a surprise to find!) and the tortierre filling and baked my pies.

I have given up on making dough from scratch.  I can make excellent dough, but it's just not worth the effort.  The pre-made pie shells and dough are almost (extremely close) as good as my dough.  For the price and effort, it's just waaay easier to purchase the pre-made stuff.

Tonight I will use the remaining pie dough and prepare the sugar filling for my tarte-au-sucre (sugar pie).


That's it.  That's all.  Isn't that enough?

This year I have slightly changed all of my recipes...AGAIN!  What can I say I like to experiment.  So far, they've all turned out for the better.

I haven't sampled anything yet.  All of my baking has gone straight (no pun intended) into the basement freezer.  Yay ME!!!!