I am happy to report--not that you probably care--that I have a full and varied Christmas playlist on Pandora this year so I am not struggling with that like I did a couple of years ago. Neither are we recovering from or preparing for surgery this year. Thank goodness!!
As I was getting ready to do some decorating, I looked at my living room and realized that I would have to completely rethink my decorating because we redid the entertainment center. The old entertainment center had always been our focal point of decorations where I displayed my multiple Nativity sets.
Why do I have many sets, you ask? It's a psychological response to the house fire we had that destroyed the treasured Nativity set that Captain gave me the Christmas before we got married. That set was THE ONE and then it was gone, so I have to have more. I have a simple Holy Family, a porcelain set, a wax set, and a paper maiche type set that my friend Skippy gave us to replace the one that burned in the fire.
This all made me think of the Nativity set of Mom's from my childhood. I"m not entirely certain about it's origin but I think Dad bought it for her their first Christmas. At any rate, it was the set that we put out every year when I was a kid. We used real straw from the hay barn in our stable. There was the Holy family, a shepherd with a couple of sheep, the kings and their camel, a cow, and a donkey. The angel had a hanger on her back that went onto a hook at the peak of the stable so it looked like she was hovering there.
Eventually the camel's hump got broken off, the cow's ear--and then her entire head--got broken off, and the donkey got broke in half so the ass had no ass. :) Even with all the wounded and casualties, I don't think Mom ever considered replacing it. Even when Dad passed away and she decorated by herself, she still put it out. Even when she stopped decorating at all, she hung onto it. I know this because we found it when we cleaned out her condo.
The other Nativity set I remember from my youth is the life-size wooden figures that our youth group at the Potsdam Church cut out and painted one weekend when I was in high school. Those wooden figures were put up along the road in front of the Potsdam Church for a lot of years after my peers and I were long gone. I always got warm fuzzies when I would drive by and see them.
Back to this year's decorating theme. I also now am the proud and thrilled owner of an oil painting of the Holy family. It is a 20x30 painting, so it takes up quite a bit of wall space. I'm having a hard time finding the right place for it. Part of the problem is that I try to use existing nails/hooks and none of them were pounded in with this painting in mind. Gammy will help me figure it out; she is the best at wall decor ever!
The other thing that I do at this time of year that I don't do at most other times of the year is baking. I will whip out the occasional batch of molasses cookies for Captain, but usually I reserve my baking energy for Christmas.
Coincidentally, this holiday season I spent a lot of time binge watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix. Side note: their talents makes my pride in a rice krispie treat look pathetic.
But I digress.
Watching this show apparently gave me delusions of grandeur (how hard can it be, right?) so that I went rogue on the Brogan tried-and-true recipe for mint brownies. I got this recipe from Gammy when Captain and I got married, and I have made them every year.
The recipe calls for the brownie batter to be baked in a jelly roll pan and then cooled, then frosted with green mint-flavored frosting, and then covered in a chocolate ganache (I learned that on the GBBS).
I could certainly jazz that up, right? Sure! So my bright idea was that instead of a jelly roll pan, I would use cupcake papers. Bloody brilliant, as the Brits say.
My first dilemma is that I have one cupcake tin with only six slots in it. Putting that in and out of the oven 8 times would make me nuts. Then I remembered a kitchen hack I saw on Facebook to use canning jar rims as a holder for the cupcake papers. So I ended up using the jelly roll pan anyway, but for a completely different purpose.
I used my cookie scoop to fill the cupcake papers so that each one would be uniform size (because Paul Hollywood demands this) which actually went as planned. When I taste tested one, however, I realized my second dilemma was that I had used twice the amount of granulated sugar as the recipe called for. Ooops. At least I hadn't used salt instead of sugar, which I have seen happen on the GBBS.
Anyhoo, while the brownies were cooling, I mixed up the frosting which is just powdered sugar, a little milk, a splash of mint, and some green food coloring. My third and fourth dilemmas occurred at this step. I realized that I was out of green food coloring, so I winged it with blue and yellow, ending up with a sickly blue-green frosting. Then, just as I was pouring the mint extract into the 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon...I sneezed. Anyone who knows me knows this to be a violent physical reaction so they will not be surprised that instead of 1/2 teaspoon of mint in the frosting, there is more like 3 teaspoons of mint. Does Scope mouthwash mean anything to anybody?! Uff da! Nonetheless, I had to work with what I had, just as they do on the GBBS, so I went with it. I piped the minty frosting on each brownie and spread it around with the back of a spoon.
After that layer had cooled and set up, I melted the chocolate chips and butter for my chocolate ganache, which I then spooned onto each brownie. That step actually went according to recipe and plan.
End result: Paul Hollywood would be horrified and never shake my hand over these, but they are edible. Plus now I know that the whole concept works if I just follow the directions precisely.
Whether it's the music, the lights, the decorations, or the holiday treats...or hey, all of the above...that bring you joy, here's wishing you a very Merry Christmas from the Brogans!
Images used:
https://typeset-beta.imgix.net/uploads/image/2017/12/11/8e71abd6-cbf6-4922-8091-2610954f6d98-screen-shot-2017-12-07-at-120634-am.png
https://inspire.i.lithium.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/6602i4B4F2439186E879E/image-size/large?v=1.0&px=999
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/entertainment/christmas-memes-459662
http://gortoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/a-charlie-brown-christmas.jpg
