__ Days of Baking

So I made another batch of eggnog, those oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (they turned out really good. nestle tollhouse's recipe is great.), and this morning, I made the generic marshmallow fluff's recipe for "Fantasy Fudge."

It wasn't as simple as the peanut butter fudge I made earlier, and it wasn't as smooth as I'd prefer (a bit of the ol' crystallization took place), though the end result is still sweet and chocolaty. One thing that seemed to work, though I was anxious to see how it'd turn out, was that I only had 7 squares of semi-sweet chocolate to 5 squares of unsweetened instead of all semi-sweet. It's not too bad and maybe has more of a semi-dark thing going on. I think part of my texture issue might stem from inexact methods. The sauce pan I melted my sugar, evaporated milk, and butter in before adding the chocolate and fluff was too short to hold my glass candy thermometer, which made it difficult to just bring it to 234 degrees, so I had to go with the 4 minute rolling boil method instead. There could have been some sterilization issues that might have let to crystallization but I'm not trying to make truffles or ganache.

On the agenda next is a bread pudding with mission figs soaked in honey. It has worked the past two christmases, so I'm optimistic. My only dilemma this time is whether it is worth it to try and de-seed the figs.

My other plan for tomorrow is to watch Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the theatre, and maybe The Spirit depending on how I'm feeling.

Many complain about Christ being left out of Christmas, but I'm wondering what we've done with the Mass of the event.

In other news, I now have my favorite Ella Fitzgerald album again, Pure Ella from Verve. I got a used copy at Homer's, and it is just as good as I remember it.