Holiday sweets help

[~reneew]

Every Christmas season I bake bake bake. I love the variety of cookies when people come over. The last couple of years I've been trying to use my best buddy... the freezer. During the last month or more before the season, when ever I bake cookies, I make extra and freeze some. Then when company comes over, I thaw some of each and it looks like I've been baking forever. If you freeze right away after they cool in an airtight bag or bags, they still taste fresh. I impressed everyone last year and I did no extra baking of sweets at all... O.K. maybe I made my famous carmels.... but I did give most of those away as gifts.

Another use for the ol' freezer... when someone gives you a special treat on an N day, run quick to the freezer and pop it in. If you have a family like mine with 4 kids who can sniff out even a treat a mile away, hide it in there until and S day. Shhhhhh, I have a stash like you wouldn't believe in there. Once it's frozen, it kinda looses it's pull on me. But I know it's safe and secure.

Any other ideas for deserts and sweets? I need all the help I can get with avoiding sweets.

[wosnes]

Any other ideas for deserts and sweets? I need all the help I can get.

I'm sorry -- I don't understand what kind of help you want.

[kccc]

This is not going to help you.... but your post has the potential to help ME, and I want to know more!

How do you freeze your baked goods? I usually make a couple of batches of different things, but we just eat them and then don't have any for Christmas. I'd like to bake about the same amount, but space it out better. Just throw them in a ziplock and put them in the freezer? More wrapping? Anything NOT freeze well?

(I usually freeze cookie dough, but I do it raw and bake them as I want them... so it's a little different.)

[noni]

Renee...I make alot of fudge for gifts and for ourselves later on. I make choc nut, plain choc, peanut butter, choc peanut butter, vanilla, and experiment on other flavors. People love them. The best and easiest recipe to me is on the back of the Kraft marshmellow creme jar. The extra fudge goes in the freezer. I'll leave it in the disposable pan and place them in a heavy duty plastic bag for food (the kind that comes with a basket of fruit). It keeps well.

Also Renee... When you say you freeze the cookies, do you put them in the freezer bags while they are still warm or do you cool them on a rack first?

KCCC... for cookies and bars, I place them in the now emptied cereal bags, fold over and tape. Easy to mark on them, too. My daughter did an experiment on cookies to see what kept them the freshest: a cereal bag, a cookie tin or a ziplock. The cereal bag and ziplock tied for first place. (We do things like that sometimes )

[~reneew]

Wosnes...Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'd like us to help each other with avoiding sweets this time of year. Any tricks or ideas to help with munching on sweets all month.

KCCC... I usually double the batches of cookies and put some in a freezer ziploc and then put that one in another one. If it's just a couple of weeks before, I just do one bag. With frosted cookies, I let them dry a bit and put them in a container with wax paper between the rows. They stay fresh. I try to avoid pies because I'd eat one, probably. I think most sweets freeze well. I know pumpkin pie freezes well, though they say that it won't. All that happens is the middle seperates from the crust a bit, but a bit of coolwhip and they'll never know.

Noni... I let them cool before I freeze them. And I do those fun experements too. I did the stains (grease, grass, wine, coolaid etc.) on a light colored cloth to test different stain streatments. I tried all kinds including a homeade recipe from a home ec. teacher. The best by far was the spray and wash stain stick.

[Dandelion]

My freezer is well stocked with baked goods . I keep a stock of shallow, rectangular, pyrex glass dishes with plastic lids for storing food. When I bake something, we usually have it for a day or two, then I'll put the rest in a container in the freezer.

When I make cookies, I bake a sheet or two, then scoop the rest of the dough into little balls and freeze them in a large mason jar separated by waxed paper rounds.

I use the glass dishes for a couple of reasons. For health reasons, I try to keep plastic and aluminum away from my food. For environmental reasons I prefer to avoid single use items - and plastic in general.

[~reneew]

For environmental reasons I prefer to avoid single use items...

Yea for you! Me too. Those water bottles everyone has were the dumbest thing ever made!

[kccc]

For environmental reasons I prefer to avoid single use items...

Yea for you! Me too. Those water bottles everyone has were the dumbest thing ever made!

At least as many soda bottles of the same kind of plastic get used, and I always wonder why no one complains about them. Yes, water bottles are bad for the environment - no argument there! - but they don't deserve ALL the plastics-blame. Somehow, they've become the scapegoat.

I don't use them at home, and try to reuse them when I'm out...but I've been so many places where I couldn't GET water to drink until they came around that I remain grateful that they make drinkable water readily available.

Avoiding single-use items in general is a good goal though, and I am working toward it. Dandelion, what kind of glass do you use to freeze in?

[Too solid flesh]

Not sweets, but holiday food... I recently read somebody saying that over the holidays she would crack any nuts she ate herself, which limits consumption.

[~reneew]

Water comes out of my faucet... pop does not. We have reusable water bottles and I try to plan ahead and always have fresh with us. We rarely drink pop, but when we do, I buy the big 2 liter bottles to limit the plastic or can use, or use my soda fountain which uses none. Just some ideas.

[kccc]

Water comes out of my faucet... pop does not. We have reusable water bottles and I try to plan ahead and always have fresh with us. We rarely drink pop, but when we do, I buy the big 2 liter bottles to limit the plastic or can use, or use my soda fountain which uses none. Just some ideas.

Those are good ideas, and I do pretty much the same at home. (Can work on the reusable bottles a bit more - thanks for the reminder!)

Where I see the difference is traveling - so many times I need to get something to drink and my only choices are from vending machines and convenience stores. At that point, I'm grateful for water in bottles. Yes, it's pretty much tap water and I'm paying a ridiculous price for it, but it's better than not being able to get water at all, which used to be a real problem for me.

I do think the "individual serving size bottles" - of both water and soda - are an environmental hazard, and wish other options for both were readily available. I just see the two as being morally equivalent in terms of "evil"... I'm not arguing that they aren't evil!

On another topic, ~reneew, want to thank you again for the December challenge, which really pushed me to clarify my intention for this month. That was a big help.

==
On the original holiday sweets topic, another thought... each year, I ask each member of my family what baked items are particularly important to them, and focus my baking around those requests. (My mom had her own list of "what HAD to be baked," and would then complain when no one ate a particular item... ) That way, I can cut down the overall quanitity without anyone really minding very much. (Actually, we do that for all holiday traditions... toward the beginning of the season, in one of our "family meetings," we look at what we did last year and decide what we do and don't want to do this year. So, we've dropped Breakfast with Santa, because the little guy has gotten too big, and added a Christmas concert with friends. Making Keep/Chuck/Change/Create choices in advance helps us just be a little less crazed during the holidays.)

[Too solid flesh]

On the original holiday sweets topic, another thought... each year, I ask each member of my family what baked items are particularly important to them, and focus my baking around those requests. (My mom had her own list of "what HAD to be baked," and would then complain when no one ate a particular item... ) That way, I can cut down the overall quanitity without anyone really minding very much. (Actually, we do that for all holiday traditions... toward the beginning of the season, in one of our "family meetings," we look at what we did last year and decide what we do and don't want to do this year. So, we've dropped Breakfast with Santa, because the little guy has gotten too big, and added a Christmas concert with friends. Making Keep/Chuck/Change/Create choices in advance helps us just be a little less crazed during the holidays.)

That's an excellent idea, and one which I'll try to adopt in future. Thank you.