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Advent Week 4: The End of Stollen Time

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Our rooms were bugged, our phones were tapped, and our lawyer’s rooms were broken into and their files stolen. We finally had to hire armed guards with pistols to be able to maintain our records. It was hard to believe we weren’t in Russia.

— Jimmy Hoffa, Hoffa: The Real Story (1975)

While browsing for reading material related to stolen items, I ran across this excerpt. I’m adding the above book to my To Be Read list just because of that excerpt.

In retrospect, stealing documents seems very much a thing of a certain time – like the Pentagon Papers (1969-1971) and the attempted photocopying of DNC documents at the Watergate hotel (1972).

When were the Teamsters’ lawyers’ files stolen? Was it during the Kennedy admin during the prosecution of Hoffa, or the Nixon administration? I don’t recall much about organized labor history during that period having been just a kid at the time. When it came to news I was more preoccupied with the Vietnam war, civil rights, and space exploration. I feel now like I missed something important that shaped the psyche of Donald Trump and his cohort.

Donald’s father Fred Trump was eight years older than Jimmy Hoffa. Roger Stone, who is six years younger than Donald, cut his ratfucking teeth on Nixon’s campaign. It’s not far fetched to imagine Trump’s brain molded by the means, methods, and events used when he was in his twenties.

Should we have been surprised that Trump continued to use the same means and methods throughout his career like stealing classified documents when we’d long heard about his eavesdropping via phone systems in his condo and resort developments?

Perhaps the problem has been the reaction to his use of DARVO, chronically accusing the targets of his animus of that which he has done. Too much time and energy has been spent trying to defend against his accusations instead of taking those accusations as an indicator of Trump’s misdeeds. In other words,

Trump loudly claimed the election was stolen = Trump was stealing it.

Trump loudly claimed documents were his = Trump had stolen them.

Unfortunately the media isn’t conditioned to assume the reverse; instead the media parrots the false claims, amplifying them to the detriment of the ones most harmed by Trump’s theft/attempted theft.

The media still hasn’t digested the fact one of its own — Fox News — engaged in defamatory false news as part of Trump’s DARVO-driven model. If Fox News is reporting something about Trump as straight news, shouldn’t the rest of the media ratchet up their skepticism? Isn’t the dispersion of falsehoods news itself deserving coverage when it can shape an entire government, and not merely ignored because Fox is the competition?

Has common sense in journalism been stolen along with classified documents?

How should we the media consuming public address this as we head into another presidential election year? We have only days before the season begins in earnest.

~ ~ ~

I was reminded this week of Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong..

Guess who was exposed to COVID on December 21, four days before Christmas? Two days before a family gathering?

Before I could attempt another batch of stollen?

I’ve tested negative so far but I had to wear a mask during the gathering with family. Climate change was a blessing; it was warm enough for me to eat my dinner outside on the deck while the family ate indoors.

Perhaps I’ll be fortunate and not actually develop COVID. I got the latest vaccine the week before Thanksgiving and I’ve continued to wear an N95 mask whenever I’m out in shared public spaces.

But a friend I saw on Thursday had likewise been masked up as they traveled on Sunday December 17 and still got COVID.

More of you travelers need to wear masks, that’s all there is to it. One person alone in an airport the size of O’Hare can’t fend off the virus when everyone else refuses to take any precautions.

Anyhow, a test first thing tomorrow morning will dictate what happens the rest of Christmas Day. A visit with a family member who is alone and afflicted with cancer hinges on this test.

If Murphy wants to press the point about shit happening, tomorrow morning here will be the time and place.

Perhaps I didn’t need to go looking for material about things stolen. The holiday has been stolen from many of us thanks to the ongoing pandemic too many people want to pretend ended.

~ ~ ~

And now to things stollen.

This was not a raging success. It was close, but not quite. Somehow I missed the perfect time to add the alcohol-imbued dried fruits to the dough and they ended up drifting toward the outside of the loaf. Next time I’ll roll the dough out, sprinkle it with the fruits, roll up the dough as I would for cinnamon rolls, and let the fruit form a swirl. The technique was fine in the previous mango-pineapple version.

I also did a boo-boo and failed to remove the loaves when they reached 180F-185F degrees internal temperature, not 190F. My new digital thermometer might also be a little touchy and read a bit lower than the actual temp. Whatever the case, these loaves weren’t quite as moist as I would have liked.

Not a winner of the stollen election, but this entrant will make an excellent French toast on Christmas morning just hours from now. The mixture of cranberries, figs, apricots, and apples with the cardamom-scented bread will be tasty – no advance experimentation necessary to know.

~ ~ ~

Here we are, the advent season has now ended in Eastern and Central time zones; only a handful of hours separate all of us from the Christmas holiday.

We’ve already passed through the darkest night this past week – damn it, I just realized I was exposed to COVID on the winter solstice, how dark indeed. But days are now longer already, the dark of night shorter by minutes as each date passes.

What fruit-laden baked good won the stollen election in your opinion as we counted down the remaining days of the season? What did you bake or eat which made the holidays brighter for you and yours? Share in this open thread below.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, hope your holiday season is restful and restorative.

Advent Week 3: Ordinary Riches Can Be Stollen

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

“You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you.” ― Oscar Wilde

I’m behind schedule with my holiday baking. This month has been awful, the waiting for decisions and events draining, time broken with disruptions. Even the December sky reflects the void where things haven’t arrived or occurred as they should.

I don’t write this asking for sympathy because we are all human and travel the same road, follow the arrow of time in the same direction, moving toward greater entropy. Yet the waiting this season is painted with stress and tinged with dread because family members are ill. At least one is and has been in a mortal battle — this holiday is likely their last Christmas.

All of us in our lives have and will face this same limnal space where the edges aren’t defined, the end isn’t clear and the beginning beyond it even less so. I can almost feel wings brushing by as the end coalesces; it feels familiar, like the dark night in deep labor not knowing exactly what will come and wanting an end, expectation shaping whatever is ahead of birth.

I should be baking even now, flinging a cloud of flour around the kitchen in the absence of flurries this El Niño winter. But I’m dragging my feet because we don’t know where the holiday will be spent. Why spend the effort to make baked goods when there’s no scheduled feast at which to serve them?

Bake I must, though. One of the baked goods will be shipped across the country tomorrow. It constitutes a long-distance communion with family.

The other baked good is a practice piece because I’m trying out a new recipe. If it’s good I will make it again next weekend for the holiday to share with yet more family, whenever we learn where and when we will gather.

This is the deep end of Advent. The darkest night of the year is four days ahead, a mere 100 hours until the winter solstice.

Prepare your candles and bonfires to light the way.

~ ~ ~

Following is the stollen in progress. I’ve pulled a no-knead recipe to try since I don’t know how much time I’ll have to bake later in the week. A no-knead recipe also offers the convenience of scale. I can start several loaves so long as I have enough roomy bowls, unlike my other bread recipes for which I use my bread machine.

No-Knead Stollen

Ingredients:

3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
4 eggs
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsalted butter melted
1/2 cup dried cranberries or cherries
1/2 cup raisins – your choice golden sultanas or dark
1/2 cup candied citron
1/4 cup orange juice or rum

1/4 cup butter melted
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Instructions:

Night before baking: In a small glass bowl add dried fruit, and candied citron with orange juice or rum. Cover and let stand to absorb fluid.

In a large bowl add flour, salt, cardamom. Stir together and set aside.

In a separate bowl mix eggs, water, vanilla, and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in yeast and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes; it should be slightly foamy.

Whisk into the wet ingredients the melted butter until smooth.

Incorporate wet mixture into dry mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon/rubber spatula/dough whisk until ingredients pull together and no dry flour remains. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or lid; let stand for 1 hour; dough should be puffy.

Drain any excess liquid from dried fruit and citron. Uncover dough and add fruit and citron, lifting edges of dough over the fruit and pushing the fruit into the dough; repeat until fruit has been evenly incorporated into the dough.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly-greased or well-floured surface. If two smaller loaves desired, divide in half, and shape each portion into an oval. Otherwise shape into one large oval for one loaf.

Place on a parchment- or silicon baking mat-lined baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel in a warm place and let rise for about an hour; dough will have roughly doubled when ready to bake.

Bake in a preheated 350F degree oven for 35-40 minutes for two loaves, 40-45 minutes for single large loaf. Check internal temperature using an instant-read thermometer; bread is done at 190F degrees, crust will be golden brown.

Brush still hot loaf/loaves with melted butter. Allow to cool slightly, then dust with powdered sugar to finish. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

I’ve not made this before, can’t make any claims about the results at this point. But I will share the results as an update here once completed.

Welcome to the limnal space of Advent, where we wait the unknown with expectations of stollen riches.

~ ~ ~

Giving myself over to Advent this past week, I went digging in the Christmas decorations where our family’s advent wreaths of seasons past have been stored. Lo — there were several advent observation booklets stored with the wreaths and candles.

What a coincidence that December 15th one year included a blurb about fruit cake:

Fruitcake seems to be related to the English “plum pudding” which was served on festive occasions. (There was a “plum cake” too which, unlike plum pudding, was not steamed.)

“Plum” was used as a generic word for dried fruit which, along with nuts, became the primary ingredients for fruitcake.

Since Christmas came at a time of year when fresh fruit was not available, cakes with dried fruit became more and more associated with this feast.

Fruitcake is nutritional, and keeps for a long time. Over the course of time, this has given it a number of uses. For example, fruitcake was useful for nourishment to carry on long journeys.

In some places, the top layer of the wedding cake was fruitcake. The other layers were served to the guests, but the top layer was saved for the bridal couple so that they could save it and enjoy it on their anniversaries.

This family will have a traveling fruitcake this year. Possibly two, depending on what happens over this last full week of Advent. Seriously hope the these stollen fruitcakes aren’t lingering around next holiday, though.

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread. What fruited cakes have you run across this past week? Have you baked? Don’t forget this is a stollen election — be prepared to throw your vote at a fruitcake.

Advent Week 2: Prepare Ye The Way for The Stollen Ahead

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I had to clean out the fridge this week. The last remnants from Thanksgiving needed to go – a lone sweet potato, a butternut squash, another equally lonely potato had rattled around in the vegetable drawer long enough.

I also had some dried apples I needed to knock off.

All had to go before I lay in the next batch of pre-holiday groceries.

What you’re looking at is my first candidate for the stollen election – a dog’s breakfast stollen, made with a dough using sweet potato, squash, and potato with a mango-pineapple-apple filling.

It’s pretty good if I do say so myself. The dough is a little lighter in color because of the amount of potato but still a pale yellow-orange. I think I should have chopped the fruits smaller to get better distribution, but there probably would have been voids because of the steam from the fruit as they baked and settled.

If I had to throw an election for an orange-tinted lump, it’d be this one and not Mar-a-Lago’s chief resident golf and tax cheat.

~ ~ ~

I love making this dough, have probably made it every holiday for more than a decade. It’s consistently moist and fun to work with. I’ve made it often enough that I’ve learned how to play with it a bit and use it as I did for batting vegetable drawer clean up.

Here’s the recipe if you want to try the dough – it’s actually one used for rolls:

Squash or Pumpkin Cloverleaf Rolls
Makes 16 cloverleaf rolls

Ingredients:

1 cup squash or pumpkin puree

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup butter, melted

4-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
grated zest of 1 orange (optional)

2-1/4 teaspoons SAF yeast or 2-3/4 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Instructions:

If using fresh squash/pumpkin, prepare and cool to room temperature or slightly warmer.

Place all the ingredients in the pan according to the order in the bread machine manufacturer’s instructions.

Program for the Dough cycle; press Start. (This recipe is NOT suitable for use with the Delay Timer.)

Grease 16 standard muffin cups (one full pan plus 4 cups in a second pan). When the machine beeps at the end of the cycle, immediately remove the dough and place on a lightly floured work surface; divide into 4 equal portions.

Divide each of those pieces into 4 equal portions. Divide each of the 16 portions into 3 portions and form these into small balls about the size of a walnut. You want them all about the same size; this is important or else the rolls will look funny after baking.

Arrange 3 balls of dough touching each other in each of the muffin cups. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise unil doubled in bulk, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375F degrees.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown. Immediately remove the rolls from the pan. Let cool on racks or serve warm.

Original source:
Squash or Pumpkin Cloverleaf Rolls, p. 356-357, The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook, by Beth Hensperger — my copy is getting tatty, now littered with tape flags. It’s one of my favorite cookbooks. Best, most reliable dough recipes, great for baseline doughs for experimentation. I cannot recommend this cookbook enough, have bought many to give as gifts over the years.

Recommendation:
Use butternut squash for best results, or comparable firm, dry-fleshed squash. In my experience, acorn squash puree has been moister, has more variable sugar content, and surprisingly less color in the finished dough.

I’ve tried using commercial canned pumpkin in same recipe; it is definitely not as good as freshly cooked squash, or even as good as frozen home cooked squash. The dough is tougher and not as sweet using canned. A large can of pumpkin is about 3.5 cups of puree, or 3+ batches of rolls — that’s a lot of so-so rolls. Use fresh whenever possible.

Bread flour does not seem to work as well as all-purpose flour, at least not when humidity is high. Use whatever you have, but watch the dough and add more flour/water as necessary. When well kneaded the dough is not quite as moist and soft as a sweet dough but more so than a bread dough.

Substitutions:
I’ve tried this same recipe using mashed sweet potatoes, and a combination of mashed Russet potatoes with pumpkin. Whatever you use should measure 1 cup, a direct replacement for the squash. Sweet potatoes and the potato/pumpkin combo work much better than canned pumpkin — the yeast likes whatever is closest to fresh, least processed.

Do plan to adjust water or flour content during kneading depending on the moisture in potatoes/squash. Dough should be softer and stickier than bread dough once the right amount of water/flour have been added.

Notes:
I’ve also used this for cinnamon rolls as well as cloverleaf-shaped, Parker House-shaped rolls and hamburger buns. I use about 3-4 tablespoons cinnamon to 1/2 cup each brown and white sugar — this is enough for about 2 batches of dough. Divide dough in half, roll out to approx. 11” x 17”, brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with the cinnamon mixture (add more or less to your taste). Roll up, pinching along edges to seal, then slice into 12-16 pieces total, depending on how big you like your rolls. I put mine in greased muffin tins, allow to rise over tins (about 20-25 min), then bake 15-25 min depending on how big the rolls are. I prefer not to glaze mine, only brushing the tops with a bit of melted butter while still warm.

Mixing Dough By Hand (without bread machine):
Prepared squash/pumpkin puree should be at room to bathwater temp.

Scald milk (bring just to a boil and remove from heat immediately.) Stir in sugar, salt, squash/pumpkin puree, and butter. Set aside and allow to cool to lukewarm.

In a large bowl mix warm water and yeast. Stir until dissolved. Stir in lukewarm milk mixture, beaten eggs, and half the flour. Mix until smooth.

Add remaining flour gradually, mixing as you go. You may need a bit more or less than the total 4-1/2 cups called for in the recipe, depending on the humidity and water content in squash and butter. Your dough should be elastic and slightly stiff but not dry (sweet doughs are typically a bit more moist and sticky.)

Turn dough out onto a floured board and knead until smooth and very elastic. This usually takes 8-10 minutes.

Butter the inside of a large mixing bowl. Put dough in bowl and turn dough over a couple of times to coat it all with the butter.

Cover bowl and place in a warm place so it can rise. It will take about 1 hour to double in bulk.

At that time turn out onto a lightly floured board to shape; dough should deflate somewhat when dumped out before shaping.

Follow remainder of recipe as instructed for bread machine (Step 4 onward).

~ ~ ~

Fruit filling
I completely swagged the fruit filling. I can’t tell you how to duplicate exactly what I did except in general terms. These are roughly the amounts I used for each ingredient:

2 cups chopped dried apples
½ cup chopped dried pineapple
½ cup chopped dried mango
2 cups orange juice (I needed to use up the OJ, too. LOL Apple juice may work just as well.)
½ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons melted butter
Cinnamon-sugar mix for cinnamon rolls

I mixed all the fruit, juice, brown sugar, and spices in a covered heat-safe bowl, then placed it on a trivet inside my Instant Pot over 2 cups of water. I cooked the fruit for 20 minutes on high pressure, let it depressurize naturally, and then let the fruit mixture cool to room temperature.

I stirred in the cornstarch when the fruit was cool; if the cooked fruit is too juicy, drain off some of the juice before adding the cornstarch.

After rolling the dough out into two equal rectangles about 9” x 12” – wide enough for a 2-lb. bread pan – I brushed the dough squares with the melted butter, topped that with the fruit mixture using ½ on each of the dough squares, then sprinkled cinnamon-sugar mix over all before rolling the dough and pinching it closed along the length.
After putting a piece of parchment paper in each baking pan, I plopped the rolled up dough into their respective pans, covered them with a piece of plastic and a tea towel before putting in a warm place to rise.

Turned on the oven to 375F degrees at this point; not long after my oven has fully pre-heated the dough will have doubled in size and risen above the top of the loaf pans. In the bottom of my oven I place a heavy oven-proof shallow metal pan and pour in 2 cups of water to provide steam during baking.

Removing the plastic and towels, I put the pans into the oven and set the timer for 40 minutes. The dough will be golden at 40 minutes but not likely done. I use a digital thermometer with a probe for use in the oven at this point, setting the alarm for 190F degrees.

Breads are done at 195F but since foods continue to cook even after removed from heat, I remove the bread/rolls at 190F and let them finish the last five degrees on the counter.

~ ~ ~

There you have it, my first candidate for the stollen election.

What about you? What bread/cake containing fruit did you make/buy/consume this week? Tell us in comments.

This is an open thread.

Advent Week 1: Got Yer Stollen Election Right Here, Bub

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

We’re already deep into the holiday season, barreling toward the winter solstice and the darkest part of the night for the northern hemisphere.

Some of us observed Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights which began on November 12.

Some of us observed Thanksgiving a week ago this past Thursday – and before that, in Canada on Monday, October 9.

Ahead of us lies Hanukkah beginning this coming Thursday, December 7, the last candle to be lighted on December 15.

Christmas falls on Monday, December 25 with the winter solstice before it on December 21.

Boxing Day on the 26th coincides with the beginning of Kwanzaa, the end of which coincides with New Year’s Day – seven days, seven candles marking the principles of Kwanzaa in between.

Busy, busy, busy between now and the end of the year setting things alight to stave off the darkness.

This year’s Christian observation of Advent – the four Sundays marking the time until Christmas – will be very short since Christmas is observed the Monday immediately following the last Sunday of Advent. As a child my Catholic family observed Advent with calendars marking down the days and a candle-decked wreath lit each night at dinner as one of us kids would recite an Advent prayer.

A short advent like this meant my youngest sibling would get the full benefit of the shortest week. They’d only have to recite their prayer once whereas the other three siblings would have to do the entire week at dinner each night, lighting a respective number of candles on the wreath counting down the weeks.

I disliked being first as the oldest child because it meant the first candle lit would be the shortest by Christmas. If only life was as simple as that, if my only annoyance was a stubby guttering candle.

If I’d known more then about all the holidays during which candles and lamps were lighted, I would have committed to bonfires from the end of October to New Year’s Day.

~ ~ ~

Speaking of burnt offerings, I’m going to turn up the heat.

I’m sick and tired, utterly fed up with that orange-tinted fiberglass-haired scofflaw’s continued Big Lie about the 2020 election.

It’s been more than three years since Donald Trump lost the popular vote and weeks shy of three years since he and his conspirators whipped up an insurrection to obstruct the House’s electoral vote count.

And yet he just won’t stop cramming his Big Lie in every too-willing journalistic orifice he can reach. As recently as this past Tuesday by way of his feckless lawyers on a fishing expedition he demanded materials from active criminal investigations to support his Big Lie.

Less than three weeks ago Trump’s Big Lie bullshit was amplified by that hack House Speaker Mike Johnson who tossed his Christian beliefs aside to kneel and kiss the ring of his GOP grift master:

Asked about Trump’s efforts to challenge his loss in 2020 — including recent reporting in which his former allies said Trump planned to refuse to leave his office — Johnson was unwavering.

“It can’t be about personalities, it’s got to be about policies and principles,” Johnson said, arguing that Trump’s were superior to Biden’s.

Asked again about Trump’s frequent, false claims that the election was stolen through widespread fraud, Johnson said, “I take him at his word, I do believe that he believes that.”

Pressed on Trump’s well-documented airing of lies and misleading statements, Johnson said, “There are a lot of people in Washington who say things that are not accurate all the time.”

But he maintained that Trump’s views about the 2020 election results are “deep in his heart.”

“He just felt like he was cheated in that election,” Johnson said, “and I think that’s a core conviction of his.”

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works in a democracy. Johnson is wholly unqualified to represent his constituents because he thinks the outcome of voting is voided by a single man’s “policies and principles” – which in Trump’s case are jokes because he has no principles or policies except propping up his ego and assets.

If it’s the season to bring light to darkness and make the season bright, let’s torch his Big Lie.

~ ~ ~

To that end we’re going to have a stollen election this Advent season – a start on Festivus for the Rest of Us who reject the Big Lie and enjoy baked goods.

Your challenge should you choose to accept it:

– Find a baked holiday bread or cake which must include dried or candied fruit in the dough/batter. By find I mean locate a recipe;

– Share the recipe you want to see made, or are going to make in this month’s Advent posts;

– Find a baked holiday bread or cake containing dried or candied fruit which you have bought in the past or are going to buy this year to enjoy at home or share as a gift with friends;

– Share details about the source or the baker from whom you’ve purchased this baked treat;

– Tell us about any background behind this baked good whether you’ve made it, are going to make it, are going to buy it, have bought it in the past.

Links to photos and recipes are greatly appreciated though you should note that links may take time to clear moderation.

The last weekend of Advent we’ll revisit these panettone, babka, fruit cake, panetón, christopsomo, pan de natale – whatever your cultural heritage calls it – we’ll vote on one which sounds the most delicious and appealing.

Let’s light a candle and let the stollen election begin!

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread.