I thought you were buying the batteries!

The fall is a blessing to someone who writes a blog about food. After Labor Day, food-related holidays pop up, fast and furious, like wooden ducks at a carnival sharp shooter’s booth.

With Thanksgiving having just passed, we are at my unofficial halfway point of this shooting match, and the beginning of the holiday season. December always brings to mind George Jetson walking his dog Astro on the treadmill. There is so much to do, there are so many people to see, places to go, and yes, good food to eat, that by the time New Year’s Eve has ended we are like poor Mr. Jetson yelling, “Jane! Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!”

I love the holiday season, but I know my Kitchen Aid mixer will be marking off each December day on the calendar in anticipation of a well-earned January rest.

Even my usually sedate calendar is frothing with obligations. Among other things, I’m scheduled to bake cookies for a couple of parties (and, of course, for Santa,) and I have promised to bake a “Buche de Noel” (the holiday Yule log cake) for a Christmas party.

So why is it that my mind has already skipped ahead to Christmas morning breakfast? Does the anticipation of all the activity on my docket make me think I need to start off with a good breakfast?

Could be. But it makes me realize that every December volumes are written about holiday cookies, cocktail party finger foods, and jokes about how to prop open your garage door with Aunt Dottie’s fruitcake. Yet Christmas morn gets nary a word: are people merely grabbing fists-full of Cheerios and gulps of coffee between bouts of gift wrap decimation? I hope not, because breakfast is my favorite meal.

So in recognition of the fact that most people have other things beside breakfast on their minds in the early hours of December 25, I’m here to lobby on behalf of a proper holiday breakfast.

Even if you’ve spent Christmas Eve in a frenzy of gift wrapping and bicycle assembling I’m here to tell you that a special holiday breakfast is no sweat. If it is just the two of you then your motivation should be even more apparent: breakfast can be intoxicatingly romantic.

The concept is to use a bit of pre-planning and light advance work to make a home-made breakfast appear on the table with a fleet-footed magic that is not unlike Donner, Dasher, and Blitzen. Kids won’t notice, but your house full of adult guests will be suitably impressed, and perhaps even envious. They’ll wonder if you made a special deal with Santa to bring breakfast along with all the other sleigh-borne goodies.

When I think of a proper breakfast, my mind’s eye sees toasty waffles with a puffy interior, and a stack of fluffy pancakes to keep them company. But if there’s such a thing as a “mind’s nose” then that’s what Christmas morning breakfast should tickle: the smell of really good coffee brewing, maple syrup warming, and something good cooking. If you have any chance of getting the kids away from their new Wii (with the Water Sport Resort module—are you listening Santa?) and over to the breakfast table, this is it.

So (you ponder) what’s the problem here? Stock the freezer, and then Christmas morning fire up the toaster, you say? No sir (or ma’am): no frozen waffles for this blogging breakfast maven. The prepackaged mixes seem like the breakfast version of mystery meat to me, so I’ll pass on those as well. Who knows what some of that stuff is, and anyway, you often still have to use your own oil, eggs, and milk, so what’s the point?

The dirty little secret is that there’s no magic here. Simply make the pancake batter the night before. Are you worried that you’ll feel chained to the pancake griddle when you should be firing up that new digital HD Camcorder (hello? Santa?) to capture your loved ones laying waste to several tons of wrapping paper and ribbon? Don’t worry, because we’ll let your oven do all the work.

The waffles are only slightly more labor intensive, but for a good reason: these are yeast waffles. For my money, if you haven’t eaten yeast waffles you haven’t eaten waffles. Period. (It occurs to me that I may have crossed some kind of foodie line here. I mean, when you get snobby about waffles there’s no going back…but what can I say? They are airy, tangy, and crunchy. They’re really good.)

The pancake is based on the Dutch Baby or Dutch Skillet Pancake recipe that’s been around for years, which is a not too distant relative of popover or Yorkshire pudding batter. The recipe is very simple, and the result is actually somewhat lighter than regular pancakes. Here is where I’ve added the vanilla and cinnamon to scent the air and help you call everyone to the table.

Christmas Eve, when not a creature is stirring you can whisk together a very few basic ingredients, and stash them in the fridge. In the morning, pour the batter in a preheated skillet and then just pop it in a hot oven. Fifteen minutes later a puffy brown pancake appears, no elves required. Slice into wedges like you would a pizza, and it is ready for whatever you want to throw on top. Even though there are sautéed apples in the pancake my topping of choice is even more sautéed apples and a snowy dusting of confectioner’s sugar. Eggs? Fine. Bacon? Go for it.

The waffle batter is slightly more challenging in that the addition of yeast requires a bit of planning. But the good news is that the yeast-infused batter will also be sleeping in the refrigerator while Santa does his work. Christmas morning someone will need to be on waffle iron duty, but truth be told, cooking waffles in a waffle iron isn’t much harder than reheating frozen ones in a toaster: once they’re working you can walk away for a few minutes.

(Obviously both of these recipes are perfect year ‘round for any special breakfast, and the waffles are also incredible with fried chicken.)

Now that my furnace has been suitably stoked with a hearty breakfast—or the thought of one—I’m ready to plug in my happy little pre-lit tree (it spins!) and get moving on my holiday fun.

And Santa, if you’re reading this, I’ve been extra nice and I’m serious about that Wii.

Click here for my Dutch Apple Pancake recipe, and here for my Yeast Waffle recipe.

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Pumpkin Apple Praline Cake

No, I am not calendar-challenged; this Friday marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year holiday, which starts with Rosh Hashanah, and ends the following week with Yom Kippur. 

On the lunar-based Jewish calendar this year will be 5770, and yes, I agree, time flies: seems like it was just 5760.

Here’s the “Emily Post”: Yes, by all means wish your Jewish friends a Happy New Year, but do not say, “Happy Yom Kippur.” Yom Kippur is all about fasting to atone for your sins, and mourning those we’ve lost. Stick with, “Happy New Year” and you’re covered.

In spite of the fact that the holiday includes a day of fasting, as with any big holiday there is also a big meal. My baby niece (that’s what I call her in spite of the fact that she is a college graduate) is the event planner. I have been tasked with providing desserts. Baby Niece (or “BN” as she will heretofore be known) assigned me this task as much for my skills in the kitchen as for the fact that we are simpatico when it comes to our choice of which desserts should be served on any given holiday.

The tradition of desserts on this holiday is not a particularly rich one. Traditional Jewish New Year desserts include apples dipped in honey (a symbolic gesture of hope for a sweet new year,) Honey Cake, Sponge Cake, and Taiglach, which could be wonderful, but ends up being soup nuts coated with “honey” (I use that term loosely), and tossed with chopped almonds and a few confused-looking maraschino cherries. This is usually sold in a disposable aluminum pie tin.

Maraschino cherries in a disposable pie tin. Tempting. If you’re a smelter with a sweet tooth.

Jewish food is basically a reflection of the various places we have lived; for some this means a largely Eastern European influence, and for others a largely North African and Southern European influence.

As I am several generations removed from the Eastern European experience, I think it is time to reflect (and celebrate) the rich traditions of the place where I grew up.

Welcome to “Extreme Makeover: Jewish New Year Desserts” edition.

The sponge cake is the first to be shown the door. The role has been recast with Lemon Yogurt cake, a simple recipe from Ina Garten, a/k/a the Barefoot Contessa, which has a fizzy lemon intensity that belies its humble name. (My family and I do not observe kosher laws, so we can have a cake made with yogurt, a dairy product, in the same meal as meat.)

I have a few ideas for the Taiglach, but they’ll need some work in the lab before I can use them, so I’m moving on, for now, to the honey cake, which is joining its sponge cake buddy in blessed retirement.  Perhaps they’ll drop us a note now and then.

BN and my mom have been tempted of late by pumpkin which I think fits the harvest celebration aspect of the New Year beautifully.  But flabby, over spiced pumpkin loaf recipes abound, and frankly, with the homey simplicity of the Lemon Yogurt cake something equally rustic, but slightly more stylish is needed. There’s also the fact that I learned my lesson about over spicing pumpkin several Thanksgivings ago when my mom, between shovelfuls of my Pumpkin Pie paused long enough only to breathe and say, “Delicious! But I can’t taste the pumpkin.”

So, a light hand with the spice. The earthy intensity would come from the use of brown sugar and maple syrup which would sweeten the cake, and reflect my New England background. A few wisps of orange zest would supercharge the pumpkin flavor. With a nod towards the apples and honey tradition, there would need to be apples in the cake, but more fun I thought, if the apples could be sliced and end up on top of the cake. The goal is like the lovechild of a cake and a clafouti.

Then I had second thoughts.  It sounded good, but the lily needed a bit of gilding: the cake still seemed a bit plain, and I like things to have a bit of crunch, which, unless I was clumsy with an eggshell, is not something for which cake is usually known.

Hmmm…my mind lingered for a moment on the almonds and honey in the Taiglach. What if the honey and almonds could somehow be a source of crunch on the cake? This is frequently done using crushed praline, which is simply sugar cooked with nuts, then allowed to harden, and crushed into a powder. Why not do the same thing with honey and almonds?

The story, I’m happy to report, has a happy ending. A trial run revealed the need for a few adjustments: a bit less orange zest here, a slightly greener apple there, and the use of cake flour instead of all purpose flour to dry the crumb a bit. But all in all, a wonderful makeover for that tired old honey cake.

The cake, once cooled, was first dusted with confectioner’s sugar, then with the honey praline. The apples were cooked on the bottom of the pan so they would be on top when the cake was turned out of the pan. Combined with the confectioner’s sugar they formed a thin, almost “jammy” layer. The pumpkin cake retained the buttery brightness of the pumpkin and orange zest, but revealed the smoky sweetness of the maple syrup. The praline was the best surprise of all, starting and ending each bite with a toasty, honeyed crackle that said, “Happy New Year!”

And the good news is that the cake is perfect for any occasion during fall and autumn, from a gathering as big as Thanksgiving, to one as intimate as coffee with a chum.

Click here for my recipe, and “L’shana Tova!”