Holiday Cooking and Baking

Today is the day to start some holiday baking! On the agenda: gingerbread men to decorate with the girls, a batch of regular truffles, and maybe a couple of other things. I don't quite have my traditions nailed down yet. What are yours?

I also need to prepare for Christmas Eve dinner, but I can't quite think about that yet. Uh oh!

Truffles

Well, it took 4 batches, but I got somewhere with the vegan truffles. Great taste -- dark chocolate dusted with cocoa powder, bathed in orange blossom water, rolled in cocoa again and topped with luster dust and a couple of grains of fleur de sel. Weird texture, though -- I couldn't quite get them to set up enough -- even with arrowroot. Maybe not enough? I'll make the real deal next week for my mom, so it will be interesting to check out the differences in texture. Then maybe back to the drawing (cooking) board.

Truffles

Well, I started a little project today. As I've mentioned before, I love to renovate recipes. I am making homemade truffles this year (simple ones, I should say), and I want to make some animal product-free ones for my friend Lori. Lori is a terrific baker -- I secretly think she doesn't sleep because she is also mom of two, and an avid runner and yogi. I have seen her easily draw herself into some pretty awesome poses. Anyway, I digress. Lori has a dairy allergy and a vegan lifestyle to accommodate it, so I don't want her to be left out of the holiday truffle fun. The first task was to make a vegan substitute for heavy cream, which I did tonight, using silken tofu, soy milk and arrowroot. It actually was pretty rich and silky after I brought it up to a simmer! I combined it with some vegan chocolate, coarse sea salt and vanilla -- I'm just not sure of the quantities I used. It is setting up overnight, so tomorrow we'll see if we can take it to the next step or if we're starting over...