2018 Wine Club Christmas

Christmas season is in full swing and our dance cards have been packed with parties and get-togethers. I again had the chance to host Wine Club Christmas last week and we had a lovely time! Here are some snapshots from the night, along with some recipe links to the delicious treats we ate.

I set the table with a red striped runner and these very, very cute scalloped-edge napkins from Target. Wherever I go, red, white and blue always seem to pop up.

I love any excuse to bust out all the blue and white china I've collected over the past few years, and show off my handmade mug collection. Using storebought puff pastry, I made two types of breadsticks (both delicious!) based on this Martha Stewart recipe. It was so easy peasy! One batch was parmesan and cayenne pepper, while the other was Everything seasoned.

I welcomed our guests with some good old-fashioned Glogg (that has to be one of the most fun words to say out loud) — wine mulled with spices and served warm.

I did some prep but Sean did the heavy lifting, so here's a great shot of me wearing my mom's apron while Sean does all the work.

My favorite Pinterest-sourced idea: a Christmas tree veggie tray! I used a cookie cutter to trim slices of cheddar into stars and then laid some pretzel sticks to form a trunk.

I also served my very first hard-but-worth-it sugar cookies with royal icing (these deserve a whole separate post). I used this Tasty recipe for the cookies and bought royal icing mix, just to make the whole process a little easier for a newbie. I may have lost my mind and made custom icing colors matched to my gift wrapping scheme because...well, I'm a little bit extra.

I completely forgot to take a picture of the piece de resistance, so here's an old screengrab from an Insta Story: Sean's extra delicious Bucatini Amatriciana with crispy prosciutto. He's made it twice now and it is a bonafide HIT and everyone in Wine Club loved it.

And as if all that wasn't enough, I also tested my baking skill and made this hot cocoa cheesecake, which required a water bath that — of course — seeped a little bit in at the bottom and maybe made my crust too soft. You can't win 'em all, but the cheesecake itself (topped with a layer of ganache) was perfect.

It was a wonderful night of fellowship with my best gals to close out our NINTH year. Obviously we have to make 2019 a truly baller year befitting our decade of monthly get-togethers!

The Neverending Holiday Break of 2017-18

My friends, I've been to my office twice since Dec. 21. Between my work's generous and lengthy holiday break and a bonafide blizzard, I barely remember what it's like to wear clothes that aren't pajamas! Not complaining, mind you, but just marveling at the craziness of it. Here are some snapshots from the past few weeks.

For Christmas, I enjoyed time in my hometown with my dear friends at our 18th holiday gathering in a row!! LudaChristmas is a cherished tradition and I look forward to it all year. 

The single greatest picture Sarah and I have ever taken, brought to you by vampy lips and strategic fake eyelashes. I used this really great NYX Lip Suede in Cherry Skies, a deep wine color.

We spent Christmas Eve at my dad's house (regretfully I barely took any pics!) and Christmas at my mom's, where she straight up freaked out over the Mother Ginger Nutcracker ornament I gave her. This is the level of excitement I want from everyone when I get them a gift this random. LOL.

We killed at least 40 minutes playing with Christmas Snapchat filters. What was life like before Snapchat filters?

We'd barely returned home before I hopped in the car and trekked back north to spend a fun day museum-hopping and complaining about the cold in D.C. with my beloved college friend Mark. We popped into the Hirshhorn Museum and poked through the Ai WeiWei exhibition, but my actual favorite thing we saw was Arthur Jafa's video piece, "Love is the Message, the Message is Death." We also wandered around the National Portrait Gallery and saw some stirring silhouettes by Kara Walker.

I spent the next morning poking around IKEA (reveal of what I got later this week!) and then bounced around the house practicing my hand-lettering and watching The Crown, and then obsessively Wikipediaing everything I saw in The Crown.

Then, no sooner did I return to work than we got a bonafide blizzard, dropping 11 inches that haven't really melted yet!

It's certainly lovely, and I am obsessed with how bright our house becomes with the beautiful sunlight bouncing off the snow. But yes, I am ready to actually get back to life — especially the gym, because as you can see, I've been eating whatever I want for three weeks:

A chronicle of delicious things we've made and consumed in the past two weeks, clockwise:

1. Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies: I used boxed brownie mix, but followed Deb's instructions for the peanut butter portion here on Smitten Kitchen. 
2. Chicken Tortilla Soup: I made a big batch right before the storm came and this yielded about 4 servings. 
3. Cinnamon Roll Apple Pie: Sean sent me this silly Facebook video recipe as a request for New Year's Eve and I guess because I really do love him, I watched the video approximately 20 times and figured it out. Only one tricky thing I noticed: I had to double the amount of puff pastry to have enough rolls for my pie plate. 
4. Plated's Steak with Smoked Paprika Compound Butter and Roasted Winter Root Vegetables: Holy moly this was scrumptious. We're still loving our Plated subscription, one of the luxuries I'd be loathe to give up because it gives us so many good ideas, is relatively healthy-ish and taught my husband how to cook! I love it. 

How are you spending your winter break? I'm hoping to create a lot more art worth sharing, catch up on Oscar movies and get back to exercising. 

Holiday Entertaining 2017

When I was growing up, my Nana had family friends who always entertained at Christmas with a dressy party completed with passed hors d'oeuvres. People didn't really entertain much where I grew up, so this was basically the height of glamour to me. I vowed to someday do the same, and I've spent the better part of my adulthood so far gathering the tools and skills to do it. Finally — finally! — this year was my year: I had the chance to do some real holiday entertaining!

The only catch: it was twice in one week. We had ordered a new dining room light that turned out to be dysfunctional. I was behind on Christmas shopping and gift wrapping. The house was a holy mess. My practice runs at making a cranberry curd tart for Thanksgiving failed not once, but twice — could I do it now? And in the course of one week, I was going to host Wine Club and an early Christmas dinner with the in-laws. Can she do it????

Yes she can!!

I volunteered to host holiday Wine Club as an excuse to set the prettiest table I could muster, with my grandmother's crystal wine glasses, my mismatched blue-and-white china, my antique pistachio-colored linen napkins and my porcelain twig candlesticks.

I even put out my handmade mug collection (also mismatched) for mulled wine! You can tell I'd basically been training for this like it was the Olympics.

For my friends, I whipped up Julia Turshen's fantastic roasted scallion and chive dip (it's like french onion dip with a deeper, smoky flavor) from her Small Victories cookbook and had Sean artfully arrange a plate of Trader Joe's holiday Joe Joe's. I also served a spinach salad with pear slices, pomegranate seeds and gorgonzola cheese, and put together a charcuterie plate.

I spotted mini wheels of brie at Trader Joe's and had a vision: mini baked brie! It was so easy and would be great for any dinner party. I just thawed a sheet of puff pastry, smeared squares with pepper jelly, topped with the wheel of brie in the center and plopped down a slice of green apple before wrapping it up to become a delicious package of molten cheese. After brushing with an egg wash, I baked the mini brie en croute for about 10 minutes at 350 until the puff pastry was brown and flaky.

We finished our meal with the piece de resistance: mini shepherd's pies using Alton Brown's recipe.

Party hack: You can make this two days in advance and it will taste perfect! I made a big batch on Monday night, spooned some filling into ramekins and piped storebought deli mashed potatoes on top on Tuesday night using a pastry bag with a star tip. On Wednesday, I baked them for about 15-ish minutes at 350-400 degrees and topped with chives. To get nicely browned peaks, I turned on the broiler for a few minutes. The hardest part of the whole thing was piping mashed potatoes!

On Saturday, our Kennedy fam came down to do an early Christmas celebration. While dinner cooked, we set out for a walk to see the lights in the neighborhood — airplane bottles in tow! Gotta get some warmth where you can. 

When we got back, I set out a selection of cheeses, including this cheddar cheese ball topped with pomegranates. May I recommend my favorite party cracker options? These are my go-to's: 34 Degrees wafer crackers and Trader Joe's Rosemary and Raisin crackers.

For the main course, I served Julia Turshen's brisket with apricots, which cooked low and slow in the oven for four hours to deliver perfectly tender and juicy brisket. We paired with roasted carrots and fingerling potatoes drizzled with Mike's Hot Honey and it was all delicious. The brisket leftovers even made for great tacos!

Before Thanksgiving, I was enraptured by the idea of the New York Times' cranberry curd tart and attempted twice to make it for parties and failed miserably both times. I just could not get the timing right enough for every step to lead to the desired outcome. I finally gave up on that recipe and stumbled onto this one, which I'm happy to report worked beautifully.

The cranberry curd tart has just enough sour with its sweetness and a gorgeous velvety pink color. I took the easy way out and used a storebought crust because I didn't want to make a beautiful crust just to ruin the filling again. I topped with piped vanilla icing stars and sparkling sugar, just like a dusting of snow.

I was feeling very rusty after basically ceding all cooking duties to Sean this past year, so having a few victories in a row has me feeling like I got my sea legs back. I'm one Great British Baking Show marathon away from attempting a Swiss roll!

Holiday Wine Club Recap

Wine Club finished out 2015 in classic fashion, starting with our annual Holiday party, hosted by Erica.

 Her house looked so perfect, I said Lauren looked like a Christmas ad!

In addition to prime rib, green beans and a mashed potato bar, Erica set out this adorable cheese tree...er, tray...and it was so picture-perfect.

She also made and decorated brownies and rice krispie treats, which I seriously couldn't stop shoveling into my gullet. 

With a fire raging on the television, we started our annual Wine Club white elephant. We bring only fabulous gifts we all would want, so this year, the gifts up for grabs included movie tickets, scarves, earrings, ornaments, a card game and more.

Ashleigh takes the first present (which happened to be mine).

Our holiday party always features a line-up of sparkling wines. By some Christmas miracle, none of us were hungover messes the next day!

We met up again at my house on Dec. 30 to have our annual holiday movie PJ party. This year, we watched none other than....

The Holiday!

 Since the characters in the movie switch houses in California and England, I figured we'd have cuisine inspired by the two locations. Bad blogger I am, I completely forgot to document my process at all. That must mean I actually finally know what I'm doing!

I served up a California tex-mex taco ring made with cheddar-topped crescent rolls filled with chicken, pico de gallo, crumbling queso and sour cream, guacamole and salsa on the side. For dessert, I made British-inspired Earl Grey mini bundt cakes, covered in a limoncello glaze and sparkling sugar.

 But, if I do say so myself, the piece de resistance is my popcorn, made in my beloved Whirly Pop stovetop cooker. I made two variations: sea salt honey butter...

...and Rosemary Garlic. I'm proud to say both bowls were literally licked clean.

This marked our sixth year of Wine Club holiday festivities and I can say with certainty, it is the best thing in my adult life.

Sparkling Wine Gelee

I have this terrible affliction where I can never do anything the easy way. When cooking with wine came up as a proposed theme, I thought, a-ha! Time to make wine gelee! How hard could it be, right?

Truthfully, I don't think it's hard, but for some reason I was not completely successful. I personally think the recipe calls for too much sugar and maybe not enough gelatin, but you can be the judge.

First, I mixed raspberries with a 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.

In another bowl, I combined 1/2 cup of Prosecco and added 3 1/2 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin. The directions said to "sprinkle," and I don't know if I could accurately call what I did "sprinkling." I'm thinking this might be where the trouble began. I let it sit for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I brought 1 cup of sparkling wine, 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons of sugar to a boil and then stirred it until it dissolved.

The directions then said to pour the boiled mixture into a pitcher and add the remaining sparkling wine, the raspberries and remaining tablespoon of lemon juice. Frankly, I'm not totally sure it needed that much more wine, because my gelee had a very hard time hardening to anything close to a wobble.

I then poured the fancy Jello into wide glasses and a mini bundt pan and refrigerated overnight.

And it was totally still wet and mushy the next morning...not even close to a jiggler. The situation was only worse when I brought the pan to Wine Club...the little bit of hardening had melted back into Jello liquid.

Luckily, Erica had a stroke of genius and put the pan in the freezer, creating a frozen gelee that was quite tasty and kept its form. Ta-da! An edible dessert.

So, it was a disaster that worked out, but I'm open to suggestions on where it might have gone wrong.