On the Seventh Day of Christmas...

While it may be after the calendar day, the Christmas Spirit is still a strong presence in the Confoy household - as are the Christmas spirits, if you get my drift.  We still have one side of the family to celebrate with this weekend, and our tree is still up, decorated, and encircled with Santa's bounty.  Speaking of which, I got a camera!  Finally, the days of impatiently waiting for my brother to come home from school with his camera are over!  And its a beaut.  Actually, its the exact same one my brother has, but its shiny and new and pretty and way better than his silly ol' one.  So, from now on, my food-photography should be better...or at least improving.

In my black rice pudding post, I mentioned that my Dad's Christmas cakes are one of favorite foods of the holidays...actually, his cake might be my favorite part of the holiday.  Made with mincemeat (the meatless kind), molasses, and a ton of spices, it's literally Christmas in a bite (well, not literally, but "figuratively Christmas in a bite" doesn't quite sound as nice).  Especially when its swimming in honey whiskey...did you see what I did there?

Craig's Christmas Cake
½ cup sugar
½ cup Crisco
1 egg
1 cup molasses
3 cups of flour
1 jar mincemeat (meatless version)
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water
honey whiskey (or brandy or rum)

+ Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.  Lightly grease two loaf pans.
+ In a large bowl, mix sugar, Crisco, and egg.  Add the molasses and stir well.  
+ Next add the flour and salt.  Stir until just combined.  
+ Add the boiling water.  Then add the spices and mincemeat, stirring well after each addition.
+ Pour the batter into the loaf pans, then bake an hour or until a toothpick comes out cleanly.
+ Let the cakes cool, then begin soaking the cakes.  Slowly pour the liquor over the cakes, focusing on the edges where the cake has pulled away from the pan.  Allow the sit until all the liquid has been absorbed.  Repeat the process until the cake is thoroughly soaked through - you can do this over the course of a few days, if you want it really moist and boozy, which I highly suggest.

On the Sixth Day of Christmas...

Last night marked the return of my little brother and his lady-friend from their first semester of college.  The prodigal son's homecoming was celebrated with some bubbly, baked brie with jam, red wine, eggnog and whiskey, and our tree falling over.  Twice.  Thankfully it hasn't been lit or decorated yet, and by that time we were all pleasantly warmed by the evening's libations and it was more hilarious than upsetting.  After up-righting the tree, we stumbled off to bed and passed out immediately.  I had the morning off (an oddity and a blessing), so I took my time getting out of bed, made a big pot of Winter Blend coffee, and decided to whip of a welcome-home-Christmassy-breakfast-in-bed-special for the kids: eggnog soaked cranberry bread french toast with a fresh cranberry syrup.

French toast seemed to be one of those foods that embodies childhood and warmth and home.  I used a sliced cranberry bread, eggnog in place of milk for the batter, and cranberry syrup to imbue the dish with the holiday spirit.  Not to mention that I think the eggnog fulfills the "geese a'laying" quota nicely.

I woke the kids up with a spread of the french toast, coffee, and OJ set up on my brother's desk, then went out to run some errands.  My brother sent me a text that read, "So.  Effing.  Good."  One of the very few times that my cooking has gotten his stamp of approval.  So I think this dish was a ridiculously delicious, hands-down success.

Homemade Cranberry Syrup
1 cup fresh cranberries
2 tbs honey
½ cup water

+ Cook cranberries and honey in a covered pot over medium-high heat.  Once the berries begin popping, uncover and stir.  Recover and allow to cook until all the berries have burst.  Turn heat to low, stir, and cook until the berries have thickened to a jam-consistency.
+ Add the water, bring the heat back up, and cook uncovered until desired syrupy texture is reached.

Eggnog French Toast
1 cup non-dairy eggnog
3 eggs
pinch of salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cardamom
1 tsp nutmeg
8 slices bread
¼ cup powdered sugar

+ Preheat skillet to medium-high heat.
+ In a medium sized, flat-bottomed or shallow bowl, whisk together eggnog, eggs, salt and spices.
+ Immerse the slices of bread, one at a time, into the egg mixture.  Using a fork to flip, make sure the bread is thoroughly soaked, but not mushy.  
+ Pull the bread out of the mixture, letting any excess egg drip off, and then place on the skillet.  Cook for about 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.
+ To serve, lightly butter each slice, dust with powdered sugar, and then drizzle cranberry syrup ontop.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

I'm pretty sure you've all guessed what today's recipe is.  I mean, "five golden rings"?  I couldn't help myself, could I?

Now, some of you might think, "Wow, way to phone on in, Claudia."  And to that I say, you try coming up with 12 original and innovative recipes in 25 days.  Speaking of which, since Christmas is technically 5 days away and I still have, oh, 7 more recipes, I think I'm going to extend my deadline until New Years.  But its not a cop out!  Part of the reason is that half of my holiday parties are the week after Christmas, and I want to be able to feature some recipes I use for them on the blog.  The other part of the reason is that I don't like rushing through the holidays, I prefer to drag them out for as long as physically possible - last year we had our tree up until February.  And hey, you get to enjoy Christmas and yummy food even longer now! Isn't that exciting?  I know, you can't handle your own happiness.  It might even scare you a little.  It's okay, accept your feelings, and express them appropriately.  Go ahead, do a happy dance.  I won't judge.

...finished your happy dance?  Good.  I used Not Without Salt's oven-fried onion ring recipe.  While a little on the messy side to assemble, they are otherwise super simple, healthier since they bake in a few tablespoons of oil, and are coated in crushed potato chips - yeah I said it, potato chip covered onion rings.  It's just crazy enough to be insanely delicious.  I used black pepper and salt potato chips and served them with a homemade curried honey mustard (curry strikes again!), which along with the cayenne pepper in the batter gave these little guys a surprising kick.

Curried Honey Mustard
2 tbs spicy mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tsp Vindaloo curry powder
1 tsp red curry powder

+ Combine ingredients in a small bowl.  Mix well.  Adjust amount of each ingredient based on taste.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, four colly birds.  That's right - colly birds.  Apparently the version we know featuring "calling birds" is just a horrible bastardization of the original, which isn't really that hard to believe seeing as we live in America and just about all aspects of our culture are distorted, corrupted, twisted hollow shells of what they once were...but I digress.

This revelation was my muse for this recipe.  A colly bird is an English nickname for a blackbird; "colly" being an Old English word meaning "soot" or "coal".  My mind immediately started reeling off all of black foods I could think of...which ended up only being one: blackberries.  I then got the internet to reel off all the black foods it could think of, which ended up being quite a few more, many of which I had never heard of.  One of these was black rice.  My first thought was to do a blackened tofu over black rice with a black bean sauce.  I liked it, I really did, but it didn't feel like a holiday dish to me.  Nothing about it felt special or new or, well, like Christmas.  So, I scrapped the tofu-rice dish.  I started to think of all the foods that embody Christmas for me: the top three dishes being mincemeat cake, waffles and potato soup (both of which may or may not be making an appearance next week), and rice pudding.  Now, I wouldn't consider myself a big rice pudding fan, outside the occasional whipped cream-topped sundae-glass full eaten in a grimy diner booth with a cup of coffee in the middle of the night, of course.  However, every Christmas Day, I partake in the Confoy-Osenlund family tradition of eating rice pudding together with hopes that your bowl will contain the sole almond in the whole batch.  If you get the almond, you are the King/Queen of Christmas and you are forced to wear one of those paper Christmas-cracker crowns.  Its all terribly exciting, and usually results in some fairly embarrassing photos.

So, in honor of the original lyrics and Confoy-Osenlunds, I bring you a black rice pudding topped with blackberries macerated in port and black pepper.

I followed theKitchn's recipe for black rice pudding, minus the coconut.  Also, I highly suggest letting it sit in the fridge over night - it gets thick and creamy and absolutely wonderful.

Port and Black Pepper Macerated Blackberries
½ pint fresh blackberries
1 cup port
1 tbs honey
2 tsp fresh crushed black pepper

+ Place blackberries in a glass measuring cup.  In a small pot, cook port, honey, and 1 tsp of black pepper over medium-high heat.  Once it begins to boil, cook for a moment or two, then pour the hot port over the berries.  Allow to sit and stew for at least 30 minutes - the longer they sit, the more the berries will break down, and the port will infuse in the berries.  
+ After the berries have been sitting, pour the liquid back into the pot.  Add the last tsp of the black pepper. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer.  Cook until the port has reduced into a thick syrup.
+ To serve, top the black rice pudding with a few blackberries, then drizzle a little of the port-black pepper syrup over the top.