Planning the Holiday Baking Extravaganza

I am WAY late this year! Usually I sit down at the end of September, first week in October at the latest, and figure out what I'll be putting on my trays for Christmas. However, I didn't get around to it until this past weekend, so now I'm scrambling a little bit. The advantage to figuring it out so early is you can catch some killer sales on things that will keep like flour and sugar. Not that there aren't still sales to be had, but I'm used to having much more time to plan.

As you know, I started this blog (and its accompanying Facebook page) because I wanted to help people eat healthier while not sacrificing taste. But there's another side to my kitchen, and it's why I chose to call it my "Mostly" Healthy Kitchen. Because when it comes to baked goods, all healthy bets are off. Don't even try to find anything that won't break your diet, because it's not here.

The tray on the left above contains Lemon Delights, 4 Ingredient Nutella Cookies, Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Cookies, Cherry Pie Filling Bread, Soft Molasses Spice Cookies, and Cream Cheese Walnut Cookies. The tray on the right contains Grandma Brown's Gingerbread, Walnut Buttermilk Bread, and Nutella Brownies. All recipes with the exception of the Cherry and Walnut breads can be found in my Desserts album on Facebook (the breads are in the Bread, Muffins and Biscuits album).

There are some things I make every year, and three of them appear on this tray. One is my Soft Molasses Spice Cookies, another is Cream Cheese Walnut Cookies, and the third is Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Cookies (recipes for all of those can be found in the Desserts album on Facebook). This tray also contains Coconut Cashew Drop Cookies, Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies, Pecan Snowballs, and Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies.

The other thing I always make is my great-grandma's gingerbread (Grandma Brown's Gingerbread, also found in the Desserts album). I actually started making this as gifts for my family about 15 years ago, when I ran across her handwritten recipe in the back of a drawer in my kitchen.

This is my Cherry Pie Filling Bread. I'm highlighting it because it's nothing short of amazing, and I get asked to make it every year. No holiday tray would be complete without some Cherry Pie Filling Bread, or its cousin, Blueberry Pie Filling Bread.

With the exception of the gingerbread, which gets given away on plates with some kind of holiday decoration as you see above, everything appears on trays. I give trays to my regular taxi drivers and my bartender (yes, I have a bartender I love that much, so what?), and I always have one held in reserve in case someone shows up at my house with an unexpected gift and I need to reciprocate.

My trays are never the same, and they always include at least one new recipe. On the one above, there are Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies, Coconut Cashew Drop Cookies, the aforementioned Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Cookies, the Cherry Pie Filling Bread, and a variation of the bread made with blueberry pie filling and almonds rather than cherry pie filling and pecans. (All recipes have been posted on my Facebook page.)

This tray has Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies, Cream Cheese Walnut Cookies, Soft Molasses Spice Cookies, and Pecan Snowballs. (Again, all recipes can be found in the Desserts album.)

I have also occasionally made truffles (these are Oreo Truffles, and again the recipe can be found in the Desserts album). I'm making some more this year, in fact. Those only go to special people, though, because truffles are quite frankly a huge pain in the behind. And a huge mess. Really tasty, but they usually eat up a half-day of my time all on their own, and I already usually spend two solid 10-hour days baking every year.

Why am I showing you all this? Because I want to make you gain weight simply by looking at your computer screen, of course! I also want to share some of my favourite cookies with you. But mostly I want to inspire you to start figuring out what you're planning to make if you haven't already, because now is the time to hit major big sales at the grocery store. A great deal of the things you'll need for baking can be bought well ahead: flour, sugar, butter, shortening, chocolate, spices, etc. all have a pretty long shelf life.

The earlier you figure out what you'll need for baking, the earlier you can start watching for sales. Not only does buying things ahead of time save you money because things are on sale, it eliminates the huge hit to your budget that shopping for all your ingredients when you're ready to start baking can take. And even if something you need doesn't go on sale by the time you need it, you're really not out anything since you were going to spend the money anyway.

Figuring out how much you need of anything can be a challenge, can't it? I mean, yeah, you can go through your recipes and determine that you're going to need (as I do this year), 22 cups of flour, 9 cups of sugar, and three dozen eggs, but only the eggs are a helpful amount. How the heck many pounds of flour makes 22 cups?

Let me help you with that:

All-purpose Flour: 3 1/2 cups per pound
Whole Wheat Flour: 3 1/2 cups per pound
White (granulated) Sugar: 2.4 cups per pound
Brown Sugar: 2 1/3 cups per pound
Powdered (confectioners', icing) Sugar: 3 3/4 cups per pound
Pecans: 4 cups per pound
Cashews: 3 cups per pound
Walnuts: 4 cups per pound
Almonds: 3 cups per pound

That said...always buy more than you think you need. I'm not saying to buy an extra 10-pound bag or anything, but in my case with the 22 cups of flour, that comes to about 7 pounds of flour. Thus I have purchased 10 pounds, because while the above numbers are pretty close, they're not exact. It only takes one time of running short on something while you're in the middle of mixing to teach you it doesn't hurt to have a little extra.

While you're figuring out what you need, don't leave out the things you always have in the cupboard! Vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, vegetable oil, spices... all those things add up quickly depending on what you're making, so make sure you include them on your list. Mine usually takes up an entire page in my notebook, but then I go a little crazy with my baking.

Once you've bought everything on sale ahead of time that you can, then buying the last-minute stuff isn't as painful. Obviously if you need things like milk you're going to have to pick it up closer to when you're baking so it doesn't spoil, and equally obviously everything you need isn't going to end up going on sale. But now is the time to figure out what you'll need so you can start bargain shopping. Your wallet will thank you.

Now comes the part that's really important: Planning. Look at things like whether or not dough has to be frozen or refrigerated before baking, what temperature the oven needs to be, whether your baking sheets cannot be greased, or need to be greased (or need parchment paper), and if things need to cool in/on pans or on racks. All of those things have a huge impact on how much you can actually accomplish in a day's baking.

I spread mine out over two days, typically. The first day I mix all the dough that has to be refrigerated first, to get it out of the way. From there, what I make depends on oven temperature...I always start with the lowest temperature first to prevent burning. Then I plan how much standing I want to do...I try to never make more than two kinds of cookies back-to-back without making some bread or brownies in between, because that gives me an hour or so where nothing can be done while the oven is in use. I use that down time to reward myself with a cup of tea, put my feet up, and catch up on Facebook.

Another thing I do to keep things straight and ensure I never have a repeat of the year I completely forgot to add the brown sugar to a batch of cookies is to organize my ingredients. On my left are things I have not yet added to the dough. Once I add them, the containers get moved to my right. Then, before I put anything on a baking sheet to go in the oven, all ingredients get put away, or at least on a different counter. That way, when I move on to the next thing I'm making, I start over with a clean countertop...and again put all ingredients I have not yet used on my left. It helps me to not make mistakes.

One thing I will never be without again is Pam for baking. I know there are people who don't like using cooking spray, but I have to tell you...I've compared greasing and flouring and lining with paper and all of that, and unless I'm making something that requires my baking sheets to be lined with parchment paper, I use Pam for baking. And not whatever off brand is cheaper, either. This is one of those few times when I insist on a national brand.

Hopefully you've found some useful information here, and can use it to your advantage. We're all different people, of course, but I'd like to think that some of my experience can help you avoid the trial by error.