RECIPE: Easy King Cake (Laissez les bons temps rouler!)

King Cake, a pastry common to the Cajun culture with origins in 12th century France to celebrate the coming of the Three Magi to see the Infant Jesus, is a fantastically fun way to celebrate from Epiphany through Mardi Gras. King Cakes tend to be big, and messy and gaudy. They're frosted with gold, green and purple icing (I make a simple buttercream) and of course, each color is significant. The gold stands for kingly power, which I assume is the power of the newborn king who was also the living God; the purple stands for justice and the green stands for faith. That's nice, isn't it? It is until you actually see the King Cake -- the icing is generally glopped on and it runs down the inside and the outside of the cake in a haphazard manner. When I say inside and outside, I mean that the King Cake is made of braided cinnamon bread dough baked in a bundt or tube pan. The idea is that the cake is baked in a circular shape to signify the eternal nature of God and the continuity of Christian faith. Thrifty and more self-controlled people use an easy powdered sugar-and-water glaze, but to my mind, there's nothing like about a pound of colorful buttercream frosting flowing all over over the place to make you want to par-tay.

Some people decorate the cakes with colored sugars on top of the icing, adding little colored candies. Some people wind strands of Mardi Gras beads around the outside edge of the cake. I've also seen cakes with little flags -- Lousiana, French and papal -- stuck on top. Basically, what you're going for is not a Mies van der Rohe-of-the-patisserie kind of look, all simple and clean lines and constructed with minimalism in mind. No, you're going for a party-shop explosion of a cake, the more decorated the better.

But it's what's inside the King Cake that makes it truly special. See that little package of plastic babies I'm holding in the photo above? I got those at Balloons, Etc. in the baby shower aisle for about two dollars. For an authentic King Cake, you take one of those babies (representing the Baby Jesus) and stick it in the cake after it's finished baking. Then you slop all that colored buttercream over everything to help disguise the baby's whereabouts -- because the three kings had to search for the Holy Family on their travels, right? -- and decorate accordingly. NOW you have yourself a King Cake.

If the people who are going to be eating the King Cake are not hip to the fact that there's going to be a plastic baby in there somewhere, you might want to warn them. I'm thinking that chomping down on a plastic baby might not be such a happy way to celebrate the Magi and the visit they paid to the babe in the manger with their rich gifts.

The person who gets the baby gets a little prize of some sort and the honor of being the one to bring the King Cake to the next year's Epiphany or Mardi Gras party (or any party in between those two dates.) The little prize could be religious in nature, like a rosary or a little bottle of holy water or some holy cards. Or it could be some candy, preferably something in gold wrappers, like Rolo candies. If the finder of the plastic baby requires the winner to show her boobs before she can claim her prize, YOU ARE AT THE WRONG KIND OF PARTY AND PROBABLY MAKING THE BABY JESUS CRY.

EASY KING CAKE

Ingredients
3 cans of refrigerated cinnamon roll dough, like Pillsbury or similar

1 cup of butter, softened
approximately 8 cups confectioner's sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup half-and-half

purple, green and yellow food coloring (I prefer Wilton's gel icing colors, which produce a deep, rich color)

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. On a clean working surface, unwrap the containers of cinnamon roll dough. Unroll three strands of dough and pinch them together at the top, then braid them into a nice, long braid. If you have daughters and spent their childhood years braiding their hair, this will be a very easy task for you. Repeat with the rest of the cinnamon roll dough; it will come out evenly.

Place the braids into a Bundt or tube-style cake pan that has been well-misted with cooking spray. As you add each braid, pinch it onto the one you put in before so that there's a cohesive mass inside your cake pan. Place the cake pan in the preheated oven and cover with a strip of aluminum foil to prevent over-browning. Bake for twenty minutes. At the end of twenty minutes, remove the foil and continue baking for another fifteen minutes or so.

[Make your buttercream icing while the cake is baking]

Warning: This is one of those recipes where you're going to have to rely on your sense of smell to know when the cake is finished baking. And also, depending on the size of your Bundt or tube pan, the dough may rise up over the top, necessitating an evening-up kind of maneuver once the finished cake has cooled. That's because our familiarity with cinnamon rolls generally extends to them being baked separately on a cookie sheet, whereas now they're all squashed together in those braids, so being able to smell "doneness" would be a great thing. If the dough gets too brown in spite of your best efforts, comfort yourself with the thought that it's all going to be covered up with a ton of icing, so no one will be the wiser.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about fifteen minutes on a wire rack. Carefully invert the cake pan over a cake plate. There are chances that the cake will be lumpy and bumpy instead of smooth and taking on the scalloped shape of the Bundt pan, if you're using one. That's okay. This is a King Cake and we're not looking for wedding confectionery perfection. While the cake is still cooling, take one of your plastic babies and stick it somewhere in that inner circle where it can't be seen.

The buttercream icing is so easy to make. The most important thing is to make sure that your butter is SOFT but not overly melted. If your butter is too stiff, there will be ugly little lumps in the icing. If it is too melty, you won't have a good texture for spreading and you'll wind up with bare patches on the cake's shoulders and huge puddles of gooey frosting on your cake plate. So stir those ingredients together, adding the confectioner's sugar little by little so that you don't cause whiteout conditions in your kitchen. Divide the completed frosting into three bowls, add a small drop of each food coloring to each bowl. Stir and add more to make the color more vivid, if you'd like; you simply cannot be gaudy enough with a King Cake. You may not need ALL the icing, it's hard to tell. Wait until the cake is well cooled and start glopping it on there. You be the judge. You can also use cream cheese icing, by the way, but it is so enormously rich on the already-rich cinnamon bread that I think it's just a little too much of a good thing.

If you have them, you can sprinkle gold, purple and green colored sugars on the cake. Be-dazzle the cake with little silver dragees or M&M's in the appropriate colors. GO WILD. Do not show your boobs to anyone who comes into the kitchen. That will make you a bad, bad cook, even if your cake tastes delicious.

RECIPE: Samuel Adams's Boston Lager Turkey

I made this turkey yesterday as a last hoorah for the holiday season and it turned out really, really well, I felt. There were compliments bandied about the table and that's a good sign. Because you know what isn't? People pushing bits of turkey around on their plates and when you ask them how they think it tastes, they say, "You know that dinner you make? The one with the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches? How's about we have that sometime again soon?"

Anyway, this turkey was served with all the trimmings and I roasted it just in the pan because there were so many irritable complaints about the turkey-in-the-bag I made at Thanksgiving. I thought that method just ROCKED, but everyone in my family hated it: they said it made the turkey TOO MOIST, if you can imagine that.

So here, for your discernment, is Samuel Adams Boston Lager turkey: just moist enough, flavorful, lots of good broth for the gravy and a pleasurable time around the table for all. Well, except for Mr. Tom, I guess.

By the way, here is the Killian's Irish Turkey from last year's holiday season, if you'd like to compare the recipes.

SAMUEL ADAMS BOSTON LAGER TURKEY

Ingredients
1 turkey, thawed, approximately 12-18 pounds
1 large sweet apple, such as Honeycrisp, or 2 or 3 smaller apples, washed and quartered
1 large Vidalia onion, outer skin peeled off, onion quartered
2 celery stalks, each cut in half
2 large carrots, scraped, each cut in half
1 pound butter
2 small cans chicken broth
1 bottle Samuel Adams Boston Lager
salt/pepper/paprika

Directions
Pre-heat oven according to package directions (mine said 325 degrees). Unwrap turkey and remove giblets; rinse in cool water. Salt inner cavity and place in roasting pan, breast side up. Stuff cavity with 2 sticks of butter, half the apple, onion, celery and carrots. Strew the rest of the apple and vegetables in the roasting pan. Softening the remaining two sticks of butter and rub the turkey's skin with a bit of the butter as if you're massaging it. Salt and pepper the outside of the turkey generously; add a bit of paprika if you'd like.

Pour about 1/3 of the beer and half a can of chicken broth on the turkey. Allow to roast for forty minutes; scoop up some of the remaining butter with a spoon or a knife and glide over turkey's skin; add a splash more beer and chicken broth. Continue doing this until the turkey's skin is a nice, deep golden-brown color; cover turkey with a little tent of aluminum foil so that the skin won't burn. Continue buttering and basting at forty minute intervals until turkey is done. Use a meat thermometer to figure out when that is because every turkey and every oven is different and there's just no sense in poisoning your family members with underdone meat.

Carefully lift roasting pan out of oven. Remove apples and vegetables. Decant the broth into a saucepan. Allow roasted turkey to rest for about twenty minutes before carving. Easy-peasy.

RECIPE: Shelley's Cranberry Relish and Katie's Cranberry-Orange Sauce

First of all, let me just say that if I ever attempted to make my family even taste either of these recipes, they would fall to the ground clutching their throats and writhing around, wailing that I was trying to maliciously POISON THEM: death by cranberry.

Second of all, let me tell you that some people -- people with educated palates and discerning taste -- really love cranberries in many forms, including juice from Ocean Spray and that layered cranberry-lime Christmas Jell-O concoction (the one with the pineapple in the lime layer and the some-other-fruit-I-can't-remember in the cranberry layer, divided by a cream cheese layer which is just so colorful and festive) your elderly aunt makes and craisins on our chef salads. We also love cranberry sauce and cranberry relish and we're glad, you hear? GLAD that you don't like cranberry relish or cranberry sauce because that way THERE'S MORE FOR US SO HA HA HAHAHA!!!

*ahem*

Anyway, both of these recipes are easy and delicious, one from me and one from my friend Katie W., who is half of my Ka(yte)ie pair of chums. I'm serving cranberries in some form or other for today's Sunday dinner, the last spread of the holiday season.

Shelley's Cranberry Relish (pictured above)

Ingredients
2 cans whole berry cranberry sauce
1/2 cup boiling water
1 large navel orange*
1 large apple (I like sweet apples for this recipe, such as Honeycrisp)*
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions
Empty the two cans of cranberry sauce into a large mixing bowl. Add the half-cup of boiling water and stir to allow the cranberry sauce to dissolve, using a spoon to chop up the larger bits.

While the cranberry sauce is dissolving, peel and chop the navel orange, grating one teaspoon of the zest into the cranberry sauce. Finely chop the orange and add it to the cranberry sauce. Wash the apple and dice; add to the cranberry-orange mixture. Add spices and stir thoroughly.
Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours to allow flavors to blend.

Serve in a pretty dish and place on your beautifully set holiday table where it will look lovely throughout the meal because no one in your family will touch it except for you. Sulkily remove from table at the end of the meal and return to fridge; eat in your own over the next few days, congratulating yourself on the delicious and nutritious value of all the fruity goodness.

*Substitute two smaller fruits for one large

Katie's Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Ingredients
1/2 cup of water

1 1/2 cups of sugar

4 cups cranberries

1 orange, peeled, seeded, chopped

2 tablespoons freshly grated orange peel

Directions

Place water and sugar in a saucepan. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil, and add the cranberries. Boil, stirring, just long enough for the berries to pop, but not to cook them very much. Cool. Add chopped oranges and grated rind. Taste for sweetness; add more sugar if desired. Chill thoroughly. Yield: about 5 cups

Oh, so delicious: THE Thanksgiving Dressing Recipe

Since Thanksgiving is next week, I thought I'd post my SUPER SECRET DRESSING RECIPE, so please do not tell a single soul about this, okay? It will be our little holiday secret, but if you'd like to pop over to my friend Amy's blog, Fourth Frog, you could give her a whispered thanks for sharing her granny-in-law's secret dressing recipe with me.

Here's the story about my Thanksgiving dressing: My grandmother and great-grandmother made the best turkey dressing, EVER. They tore up fresh bread and allowed it to get stale. They stirred in eggs. They liberally poured the turkey broth. THEY MELTED ONE HUNDRED POUNDS OF BUTTER. They seasoned and tasted and spooned it into baking dishes, because my family never eats in-the-bird stuffing. It was moist and steamy in the middle, brown on the top and crispy around the edges, so delicious it made grown men cry. With thankfulness.

Then both of them passed on, God rest their sweet souls, and in the way of families, we found out that the recipe for Thanksgiving dressing had gone on with them, along with the molasses cookie recipe we all loved so much. Dorie Greenspan solved the cookie dilemma a couple of years ago in Baking: From My Home to Yours, but the dressing recipe fell to me to sort out, whether by alchemy or kitchen wizardry or some other nefarious means. For quite a few years running, I met with success with reasonable facsimiles. But then I hit some kind of Dressing Wall and for four Thanksgivings in a row, I failed so miserably to come up a winning recipe, I practically had people vomiting into the shrubbery outside of Pat and Angie's house, where my family gathers to eat the holiday meal.

One year, I used a Martha Stewart recipe from her website and borrible exceeding were the results. Please note that I followed that recipe to the letter, so the problem was not with me. It was with the sixteen ribs of celery and two pounds of onions called for, which created a slimy mess that even the dogs refused to eat. No kidding.

Then there was the year when I decided that the dressing would be better if I baked it in the oven and then put it in the slow-cooker to keep warm. Bad mistake. Huge. All the edge-crispyness and brown-toppishness disappeared and the whole gorgeous pan of dressing dissolved into a brown mush which probably would have tasted okay, except that it looked like poop so no one would eat it. Including the dogs, who eat their own vomit.

There was nothing but sadness in my heart about my Thanksgiving dressing, especially since family members were beginning to flinch and gather in small groups, whispering furtively, as they saw me coming through the front door of Pat and Angie's house bearing a casserole dish. Then Amy came to my rescue and I used her granny-in-law's recipe last year with a few minor tweaks and my entire family surprised me by taking that first hesitant bite and then looking up at me with shining faces. "That's really GOOD!" they said, and for the first time in years, I took home an empty casserole dish. Score!

So just in case any of you readers have seemingly insurmountable problems with dressing (the Thanksgiving kind, not the mixing-stripes-with-plaids-and-polka dots kind), use these recipes. Your family will be amazed and astounded and you don't have to tell them the big secret, which is three words long: STOVE TOP STUFFING.

CORNBREAD DRESSING

Ingredients:

1 pound sage sausage, browned and chopped into small pieces

4 boxes Stove-Top Stuffing Cornbread mix

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, diced

1 medium onion, diced

4 eggs, beaten

approximately 5 cups of chicken or turkey broth/stock

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. In a large mixing bowl, empty the four packets of Stove-Top Stuffing and set aside. In a small bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed. Melt the two sticks of butter in a small saucepan; simmer the celery and onion until both are translucent. Combine all ingredients with the contents of the STS packets in the large mixing bowl: about four cups of the broth, the eggs, the butter/celery/onion. Stir thoroughly to combine. Add more broth if mixture seems dry (it should be a bit wet; not VERY wet, but slightly wet.)

Empty the stuffing into the prepared casserole dish; cover with foil shiny side down and bake for thirty-five minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes or until the top is slightly brown and crispy. Serve hot with slices of turkey and enough gravy to fill a bathtub.

CRANBERRY-WALNUT DRESSING

Ingredients:

4 boxes of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, minced

1 medium onion, minced

1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 cup dried cranberries

approximately five cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. Empty the packets of Stove Top Stuffing into a large mixing bowl and add the cranberries and walnuts; set aside. Beat the eggs in a small bowl, set aside. Melt the butter in a small saucepan; add the sage, celery and onion and cook until translucent. Combine all ingredients in the large mixing bowl: stuffing packets/cranberries/walnuts, eggs, butter mixture. Add broth, stirring thoroughly to combine. The dressing should be a bit wet.

Turn out into buttered casserole dish, cover with foil (shiny side down) and bake in oven for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes, or until the top is browned and crispy at the edges. Serve with great fanfare, because this is a truly lovely, delicious and festive-looking holiday dish.

OYSTER DRESSING (ew)

Ingredients:

1 box of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

1 egg

1/2 stick butter

1 small rib of celery, minced

1/2 medium onion, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/2 pint fresh oysters, minced, liquid strained and reserved in a small bowl

approximately 1 or 2 cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Only if you have to, preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a small casserole plate (mine is about a six-inch diameter dish); set aside. If you're absolutely certain that you must, empty the STS packet into a medium mixing bowl. Reluctantly beat the egg and add to STS mixture. In firm denial of your nameless fear, melt the butter and add the pepper, celery and onion; cook until vegetables are translucent. With a sense of impending doom, add to STS mixture in bowl. Cringing in dread, add minced oysters and the strained liquid; stir. Add more chicken or turkey broth as needed until the stuffing is slightly wet.

Fighting back nausea, cover casserole dish with foil, shiny side down, and bake in the oven for twenty minutes; remove foil and bake for another twenty-five minutes, until stuffing is golden on top and slightly crispy around the edges. Serve hot with love for your relatives who actually eat that stuff. Sit slumped in a chair with a medicinal glass of brandy. Weep.

RECIPE: Killian's Irish Turkey

Okay, I couldn't take a picture of my Christmas ham because there didn't seem to be anything particularly photo-licious about a ham stuffed in a slow-cooker. But would you just feast your eyes on this beauty? I pulled him out of the oven about five minutes ago -- I can see him from where I'm sitting -- and I'm telling you, that turkey smells so good, I can hardly wait for dinner tonight.

To the left in the photo are the ingredients I used for roasting the bird: one quart of chicken broth (not quite all of it is gone) for basting, two bottles of Killian's Irish Red, three sticks of butter and some salt and pepper.

I decided to use the Killian's because of an unusual roasting method Pat was telling me about: he makes the best turkey, like, EVER and he uses butter, salt, pepper and a can of Coke or Dr. Pepper or something like that. I decided to use the lager because it is made of God's own sweet barley and frankly, I'm not sure what soft drinks are made of. Besides, I thought it would be a nice experiment. If I throw some red wine in my ragù, why not some beer in the turkey? The worst that could happen, I thought, would be a really rich, smooth broth. Bummer.

Here's what I did. It couldn't have been easier:

1. I preheated the oven to 325 degrees and sprayed the inside of that big, disposable roasting pan with non-stick cooking spray

2. Unwrapped Mr. Butterball and rinsed him well with warm water, making sure to remove those mysterious packages in the neck and body cavities, which is what I didn't do the first time I roasted a turkey. Imagine my embarrassment when my mother-in-law, who was doing the carving, said, "You're supposed to take these out. Dear." Some people make gravy with the contents of those packages, but I throw them STRAIGHT IN THE TRASH.

3. Plunked the turkey breast side up in the roasting pan. Two sticks of soft butter in the body cavity, one stick of soft butter rubbed all over the outside of the turkey, which would have been a rather pleasant massage, I imagine, if he'd been alive and all.

4. One bottle of Killian's poured into the body cavity, one bottle reserved on the counter for basting. Chicken broth, ditto.

5. My turkey was 13 pounds and Butterball's instruction sheet recommended some configuration that ended up with my turkey needing to cook for three hours or so. So! Turkey into the oven at 11:30.

6. Basted that baby with a great deal of loving care and attention, just like a Julia chicken. Every half hour on the dot. Killian's and broth poured over the top.

7. Made a little foil tent and crimped it to the roasting pan at 2:00 and continued the roasting until 3:00.

8. Removed foil tent (being very careful not to be burned by the steam) at 3:00 and left in oven an additional twenty minutes to make the skin a nice, toasty golden brown.

9. Retrieved from oven at 3:20 and allowed to stand undisturbed for fifteen minutes, at which point the girls and I did a taste test. Delicious!

I carved the turkey later in the day and we had it for dinner last night, along with some rich gravy I made from the pan juices. It was a complete success and so simple. Obviously, with a good-sized turkey and the stock and lager and all, the most difficult part was taking the turkey in and out of the oven. (For basting, I just pulled the oven rack out a little bit, but I took the whole kit and kaboodle out when I made the foil tent.) Just make sure you have hot pads that have no thin places in them, you know what I'm saying?

RECIPE: Christmas Ham with Cherry Glaze

I wish I'd taken a picture of the ham I made for Christmas dinner yesterday, but I'll be the first to admit that it isn't really a picture-perfect presentation. I mean, I'm sure you could lift it out of the slow-cooker and put it on a platter surrounded by greens and kumquats and ripe cherries, but when all is said and done, you may as well just hide in the kitchen and furtively get some slices of ham onto that platter and forget your dreams of making a big show. To that end, here is a picture of someone else's ham.

This Christmas ham is one of the easiest recipes I've ever made. Since you use your slow-cooker, this method leaves your oven free for other festive components like dinner rolls and green bean casserole. Basically, all you have to do is plunk the ham into the slow-cooker, turn the slow cooker on low, stir up the glaze, pour it on and leave it to itself for about four hours, and presto! You look like a culinary genius and your family will say things like, "This is the best ham I've ever eaten."

INGREDIENTS:

1 large slow-cooker
1 pre-cooked, spiral-sliced smoked ham (9 pounds is the biggest ham that will fit in my slow-cooker, and I advise you to check out what your slow-cooker will hold well before you're down to the wire on a holiday when all the stores are closed)
cherry glaze for the ham (recipe follows)
1 1/2 - 2 cups of chicken broth
4 tablespoons of butter (reserve for later)


Spray the inside of your slow-cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Unwrap the ham carefully and place it, largest surface up, in your cooker. A nine pound ham completely fills my slow-cooker, leaving ju-u-ust enough room to put the lid on. Just barely enough. Please note that this goes against the wisdom of all slow-cooker manufacturers, who generally recommend leaving a space of about two inches between the top of your food and the bottom of your lid. If going against the manufacturer's recommendations bothers you, then put your ham in a roasting pan and warm it in your oven according to the packaging directions. If you're okay with assuming the burden of heating your ham in this manner, carry on.

Pour in the chicken broth; set slow-cooker's heat control to Low. Allow the cooker to warm up while you make the glaze.

CHERRY GLAZE FOR HAM

I found this highly-rated ham glaze at one of my favorite internet sites, Allrecipes.com. It is really a fabulous site and has a lot of nice features, like a personalized recipe box. This particular recipe currently has nineteen reviews and a five star rating, which was good enough for me.

3 tablespoons water
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 (12 ounce) jar cherry preserves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

The instructions couldn't be simpler: Spray a small saucepan with non-stick spray. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring frequently over a medium heat. Reduce heat and allow to simmer for two minutes.

When you've finished the glaze, pour it over the ham and chicken broth in the slow-cooker, cut up the four tablespoons of butter and put them on top of the ham. Put the lid on the cooker -- my lid is always right up against the ham. Heat the ham on the Low setting for three and a half hours, turning it up to the High setting for the last half hour of cooking.

Remember, slow-cooker temps do vary. My current slow-cooker, which is about two years old, gets much hotter than my old one did. If you have a close relationship with your own slow-cooker, you'll know if this will be enough time. Because remember -- you are just heating this ham, not cooking it. Just, you know, keep your eye on it. The amount of time I stated was enough to thoroughly heat the ham into a moist and steamy yumminess and yours should turn out similarly.

Couldn't be easier and got me lots of compliments from my family, the same people who bitterly threatened a dining room anarchist movement if I served them chili once more before February.

RECIPE: Thanksgiving dressings - Cornbread & Sausage, Cranberry-Walnut and Oyster (ew)

I literally cannot believe that I made dressing this good that was so simple. And cheaty. And a total secret, so shush before everyone finds out. We can't ALL have rock-star reputations for making good dressing at Thanksgiving, so keep this on the down low.

My delicious, steamy-in-the-middle, crispy-on-the-top-and-edges dressing yesterday had one basic secret ingredient.

Are you ready for it?

Stove-Top Stuffing. That's the secret ingredient. It comes in a box and is made by Kraft Foods and if I could get my arms around their corporate headquarters? I would so be hugging them all right now. Because after three years -- three long, purgatorial years of producing one vomit-inducing pan of dressing after another at the family Thanksgiving dinner -- I have finally found a winning recipe that won compliments from everyone.

And let me tell you: the leftovers? Even better than yesterday. No more tearing up loaves of bread and baking them dry and not having a bowl big enough to keep from slopping eggy, brothy bits of wet bread onto the kitchen floor; no, it was a simple enterprise from first to last. So without further ado, the dressing, with many thanks to my friend Amy, whose granny-in-law cracked the dressing code and paved the way for all busy holiday cooks to have a little more time and a little less stress.

CORNBREAD DRESSING

Ingredients:

1 pound sage sausage, browned and chopped into small pieces

4 boxes Stove-Top Stuffing Cornbread mix

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, diced

1 medium onion, diced

4 eggs, beaten

approximately 5 cups of chicken or turkey broth/stock

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. In a large mixing bowl, empty the four packets of Stove-Top Stuffing and set aside. In a small bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed. Melt the two sticks of butter in a small saucepan; simmer the celery and onion until both are translucent. Combine all ingredients with the contents of the STS packets in the large mixing bowl: about four cups of the broth, the eggs, the butter/celery/onion. Stir thoroughly to combine. Add more broth if mixture seems dry (it should be a bit wet; not VERY wet, but slightly wet.)

Empty the stuffing into the prepared casserole dish; cover with foil shiny side down and bake for thirty-five minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes or until the top is slightly brown and crispy. Serve hot with slices of turkey and enough gravy to fill a bathtub.

CRANBERRY-WALNUT DRESSING

Ingredients:

4 boxes of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, minced

1 medium onion, minced

1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 cup dried cranberries

approximately five cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. Empty the packets of Stove Top Stuffing into a large mixing bowl and add the cranberries and walnuts; set aside. Beat the eggs in a small bowl, set aside. Melt the butter in a small saucepan; add the sage, celery and onion and cook until translucent. Combine all ingredients in the large mixing bowl: stuffing packets/cranberries/walnuts, eggs, butter mixture. Add broth, stirring thoroughly to combine. The dressing should be a bit wet.

Turn out into buttered casserole dish, cover with foil (shiny side down) and bake in oven for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes, or until the top is browned and crispy at the edges. Serve with great fanfare, because this is a truly lovely, delicious and festive-looking holiday dish.

OYSTER DRESSING (ew)

Ingredients:

1 box of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

1 egg

1/2 stick butter

1 small rib of celery, minced

1/2 medium onion, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/2 pint fresh oysters, minced, liquid strained and reserved in a small bowl

approximately 1 or 2 cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Only if you have to, preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a small casserole plate (mine is about a six-inch diameter dish); set aside. If you're absolutely certain that you must, empty the STS packet into a medium mixing bowl. Reluctantly beat the egg and add to STS mixture. In firm denial of your nameless fear, melt the butter and add the pepper, celery and onion; cook until vegetables are translucent. With a sense of impending doom, add to STS mixture in bowl. Cringing in dread, add minced oysters and the strained liquid; stir. Add more chicken or turkey broth as needed until the stuffing is slightly wet.

Fighting back nausea, cover casserole dish with foil, shiny side down, and bake in the oven for twenty minutes; remove foil and bake for another twenty-five minutes, until stuffing is golden on top and slightly crispy around the edges. Serve hot with love for your relatives who actually eat that stuff. Sit slumped in a chair with a medicinal glass of brandy. Weep.

RECIPE: (Naughty) Glazed Carrots

I don't think it's a big secret here in the midwestern or southern states that Cracker Barrel has the best ever glazed carrots. They are, like, delicious. Decadently delicious. Honestly, you never knew that a humble carrot could taste so good.

Here at our house, where we are constantly occupied with the circumference of our hips and the clearness of our complexions and the state of our blood sugar, we do not often indulge in glazed carrots. Frankly, carrots are pretty good all on their own with just a smidge of butter and some sea salt, and who needs all those extra calories?

But I offer you the Coke Float Corollary, which follows thusly: Coke is good all on its own. Fizzy. Icy cold. All thirst-quenchy, sweet and sparkly. So having a Coke? That's a good thing. But if you plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream in that Coke -- and please do not bore me with your ice milk and your artificially sweetened "ice cream" because I will simply laugh in derision -- and you have something extra-special. Something that you should not drink all the time unless you want to be, well, the size of me. And trust me on this: you don't. Shut up.

So that brings us back to where we started, with the glazed carrots that have now not only have had butter, sugar and salt applied to them, but also the Coke Float Corollary, which has no discernable taste, unlike an an actual coke float, which is, like, mmmmmmmm.

*ahem*

Anyway, here's the recipe I found at Mama's Southern Cooking which we feel has the true Cracker Barrel flavor. For some reason, glazed carrots seem so right at this time of year and around the holidays, which is why we had them for dinner tonight.

2 pounds of fresh baby carrots

1/2 cup of butter

1/3 cup of sugar, or 1/2 cup of honey

1/2 teaspoon of salt

In a small pot add the carrots and cover with water. Bring to a boil reduce heat, cover and simmer over medium heat for about 10 minutes (OR steam them in the microwave for approximately 10 minutes.)

In a saucepan, melt the butter and the sugar. Add the carrots and salt. Saute over medium-low heat until carrots are fork tender. This could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending upon the size of your baby carrots. Serve and enjoy for your harvest season or Yuletide cheer.

RECIPE: Overnight French Toast

I am always looking for new and delicious recipes to try for Christmas Eve morning and Easter morning: I keep trying to find something that will equal my mom's Christmas Breakfast Casserole ("Served every Christmas morning since 1982!"), something that will become a tradition.

For the past few years, I've been trying things like frittatas and cinnamon rolls, but nothing has clicked, either because of difficulty of preparation, taste, or the number of noses turned skywards at the table. I personally love the taste of a good cinnamon roll, but making them is just awful. Even with the bread machine to make the dough for me, I still hate all that endless fiddling around with butter and cinnamon and rolling them up and then re-rolling them because they look funny and then being tempted to hurl wads of buttery, cinnamon'ed dough at the walls because the dumb things stick to my hands.

Then there was the gorgeous frittata I lovingly prepared, complete with potatoes and sausage and red and green peppers (very Christmas-y) and pulled out of the oven to serve, only to find that it was completely raw in the middle. I have Issues With Eggs and the sight of a runny chicken embryo on my plate can make all the blood in my head evacuate to my feet in a split second.

So anyway, I found this recipe for Overnight French Toast online -- if it's a keeper, I'm going to give it a better name. It is made with easy-to-own ingredients that are common to every pantry and fridge; none of this "take the skin of one Moroccan blood orange and half a cup of truffle, minced fine, from near Aix-in-Provence" stuff for me. It sounds like it will be good, plus it underscores my personal belief about breakfast, which is that it is the Most Important Meal of the Day, Especially When it Includes Fried Bread.

I'll update this post later with a note on how it tastes.

UPDATE: We had this recipe for breakfast this morning with little smoked sausages on the side and I'm happy to announce that it is a keeper! The only modification I want to make is to the bread -- I used our regular oat-bran sandwich bread, but it is too flimsy to stand up to an entire night's worth of soaking in the fridge. This recipe requires something more substantial, slice a little thicker. I'm thinking that French bread would work, but that Italian sweet bread from the Marsh and Kroger bakeries around here would be really, really good. I have changed the recipe below to reflect this modification.

Overnight French Toast

6 eggs
1 cup milk
4 T. sugar (I used brown sugar instead of white)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp vanilla
12 slices of bread, sliced thick -- French, sourdough, Italian sweet bread, whatever you prefer (do not use sliced sandwich bread; it is too flimsy and will tear when you lift it out of the baking pan)

In a medium bowl, whisk together all ingredients except bread. Pour mixture over bread slices on a baking sheet; refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, melt a lump of butter on a griddle; slowly fry bread slices over a moderate heat until golden brown.

Serve on hot plates with syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar.