17 Holiday Party Favorites | Homemade Eggnog, Panettone, Christmas Roast & More!

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with cheese twist christmas tree that's right tis the season when we have to make delicious holiday snacks whether it's to feed visiting guests or one of those parties where everyone has to bring a thing and i think this beautiful easier than it looks pull apart christmas tree is the thing you should bring i mean you can't keep showing up with just a bottle of wine which reminds me this goes great with a bottle of wine so maybe bring both and the first thing we'll need to get started is some frozen puff pastry which for us home cooks never comes in a perfect square piece all right it's usually folded together somehow and looks like this with a bunch of annoying seams and there are many things i miss about the professional kitchen all right the free food the free booze the free love but one of the things i miss most is being able to work with perfect sheet pan sized pieces of puff pastry but no matter how it comes once we unwrap it we'll go ahead and flour it lightly on both sides and then attempt to roll it into a square about an eighth of an inch thick and then what we'll do once we've completed the rolling and the squaring is take a knife or a pizza wheel and cut from the bottom corner or about an inch above the bottom corner all the way up to the center point of the top and we'll do that on both sides to form a triangle which conveniently is about the same shape as a christmas tree and then once those cuts have been made we will transfer this piece onto a silpat lined baking sheet and we will pop that in the fridge until we need it at which point we're going to take those two pieces of dough we just cut off and we're going to place those together overlapping them by about a half inch or so and we'll push and press those together to form a second triangle roughly the same size as the first and then once we have that formed we'll take a rolling pin to sort of flatten this out a little bit and also just screw up the shape of the top but not really as you'll see this is going to look great no matter how perfect or imperfect these pieces are and that's it we will carefully transfer that piece onto a lined sheet pan and we'll transfer that into the fridge until we need it and then we'll go ahead and grab that first piece on the silpat and place that directly on the counter since the pan is going to get in the way what we need to do next and that would be to take our pizza cutter and trim off about an inch and a half from the bottom and then we'll cut a piece off that piece to make the trunk which we will simply create by sticking that underneath and with the excess you could if you want make a star but i didn't okay i didn't want to show off and also i couldn't find my star cutter but anyway once our tree has been trunked we'll go ahead and spread over our pesto sauce except we will leave about a quarter inch of dough exposed around the outside around the outside around the outside and by the way the pesto is technically optional and you can just make this with cheese or you could use other sauces like tomato based sauces or pepper bay sauces okay so this part's up to you i mean you are after all the me of making this tree but i really do like the look and flavor the pesto brings and then once that's been sauced we'll go ahead and grate over a generous amount of cheese which in my case is going to be some parmigiano-reggiano but of course any other grateable cheese you like will work oh and speaking of the holidays and cheese if you're stuck for what to give someone as a gift a big old hunk of imported parmesan cheese is always an excellent idea you can get a really nice large piece for about 25 so keep that in mind if you get stuck but anyway regardless of what cheese you end up using we'll go ahead and place over that second triangle of pastry and we'll do our best to stretch and pull and position it so it covers the first one getting those edges lined up as evenly as we can and if you have some extra dough like i did at the top you can just yank that off or even better grab the pizza wheel and trim it off and since we're going to cut and twist these two layers together we don't really have to get a perfect seal on the edges but i do like to press them together a little bit as well as sort of lightly press and pat that top layer pastry down into the cheese and as i was finishing that step up i realized i had some extra dough at the bottom that was hanging too far over and covering up my trunk so i decided to trim some of that off which for some reason i attempted to do with the pizza wheel instead of a pair of scissors which would have worked way better but all's well that ends well and for the next step the pizza wheel is the perfect tool and that's because what we'll do is make cuts from the bottom to the top about every three quarters of an inch or so cutting almost but not quite all the way to the center all right we want to leave about a quarter to a half inch uncut in the middle so this all stays together and as we move up the tree and it gets kind of narrow it's probably easier to start your cut in the center and move outward and we'll go ahead and do that on both sides making sure we line up those cuts the best we can and then what we'll do once all those cuts have been made we will simply take each section and twist it up like this like maybe three or four times or whatever looks good to you and as far as the direction for twisting i think we should twist up towards the top of the tree since branches and leaves always grow up towards the sun or am i overthinking this and it really doesn't matter all right there's really no way to know oh and if you're wondering if it would be easier to do two at once well it seems like it would be but it's not really i actually think it's probably faster to go one at a time and use both hands until maybe we get near the top where we're only going to be able to twist it like once anyway and when we get to the very very top we probably can't twist it at all which is why when i got to the top i just basically started mangling it into some kind of irregular shape mirroring the random imperfections of nature and once we're happy with our twisting and our mangling we will take a little bit of extra pesto and spread some on that exposed dough in the center of the tree as well as any other spots we feel needed and as you work on this keep a couple things in mind almost everything we do with dough or pastry looks amazing once it's cooked and also besides that there is no such thing as a perfect tree so what i'm trying to say is that as you make this please relax and at this point we can go ahead and transfer that back onto our sheet pan and we will finish this up with one more generous gradient of cheese and of course if you want to get really creative here you could punch out some circles of red pepper to make ornaments or maybe some anchovy tinsel all right so as usual feel free to make yours look way better than mine and that's it this is now ready to transfer into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so or until our puff pastry is fully cooked and very well browned and hopefully looking like this and please listen carefully the only way to screw this up is to undercook it and culinarily speaking there's absolutely nothing worse than undercooked puff pastry it is pure evil so basically we want to bake this as brown as possible so do not take this out of the oven until you're sure it's done and then before serving i do like to let this cool for about 15 minutes which we should do on a rack so we have some air circulation underneath which will help prevent the dreaded soggy bottom and that's it after letting that cool down a little bit we can transfer that onto some attractive surface or platter possibly next to some spicy tomato sauce to use as a dip and that my friends was one bent trunk away from being perfect so if you'll excuse me i'm gonna fix that right now and that's it i think you know the rest we'll go ahead and pull off pieces and enjoy and forget how gorgeous and adorable this is and that it looks like a christmas tree this is just a delicious thing to eat okay crispy buttery flaky puff pastry wrapped around cheese and pesto is an absolutely stellar combination whether we serve this with a dip or not although i have to say some type of dip is very nice and because i'm home alone i get to double and maybe even triple dip and i'm not sure which part of the tree is more awesome those bigger fatter bottom pieces that have a little more cheese and sauce in them or the branches at the top which don't have quite as much stuff because that section was thinner it cooked up extra crispy and crusty and that cheese is caramelized magnificently but happily we don't have to pick we can just eat some of both but anyway that's it what i'm calling cheese twist christmas tree even though that's kind of hard to say especially after a couple eggnogs but it is not hard to eat it really is a proven crowd pleaser not to mention highly versatile you could use this exact same technique with different fillings and different cheeses and different garnishes and yes of course you can also do sweet versions so this really is something you can have a lot of fun with but whether you experiment or not or make it exactly as shown i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy how to make and serve a holiday cheese board that's right tis the season when we attempt to entertain impressively while using a minimum amount of effort and whether it's for family coming over for a holiday feast or just a bunch of buddies coming over to watch the game few things work as well for entertaining than an array of delicious cheeses and while very simple to put together there are some tips and tricks you should know so i thought i would share my thought process behind putting one of these boards together and first and foremost that starts with our selection of cheese so let's go ahead and begin with my first choice which is a gorgeous soft french goat cheese that's made wrapped in chestnut leaves which goes by the name of i'm going to need the caption for this one oh boy goes by the name of lay moth ass sir fuile just kidding i've been practicing it's actually closer to le motif but anyway i like to start off my cheese boards with something soft and earthy and creamy and what i'll do for presentation's sake is go ahead and slice this in half to reveal that gorgeous white center and yes we're definitely going to serve it with those chestnut leaves intact for that extra little holiday touch and we'll go ahead and place that in first position on our board because i always eat from left to right and by the way feel free to use a glass plate or platter but because people are going to be slicing off pieces of this i think the wood works so much better it just sounds and feels a lot nicer but anyway let's move on to our second selection spain's famous manchego which is a sheep's milk cheese and manchego has a very distinctive waxy rind that features indentations made by the grass woven baskets this is aged in and while it's probably a good idea to trim that off i do like to leave it on at least one side so people can see it and then besides that i'm also going to cut this one in half not to reveal anything but just to make it a little more accessible when people are slicing and we will go ahead and place that on our board in second position since that in my opinion is our second most intense cheese which brings us to our third and final selection the world famous english stilton which is made from the milk of cows and as you can see this is a blue cheese featuring all kinds of moldy veins and since this wedge is exposed on all the other sides we can leave this one side with a darker rind attached but what i will do is take a knife and even up this front edge for appearance sake and also i really wanted to taste and we'll go ahead and transfer that onto our board and for me three cheeses is the perfect number all right four is too many it may confuse your guess and two is just a couple cheeses so i do suggest going with three varieties and for me the whole key to a successful cheese board is diversity okay not only do we have cheese made from three different milks but we have three cheeses that look completely different and feature different flavors and levels of intensity as well as three different distinctive textures and for me it's that variety that makes for a great cheese board and then above and beyond selection philosophy the most important tip of all here is to let these cheeses sit out at room temp for at least an hour before you serve them right there's a very old saying that i made up this week and that's cold cheeses are not bold cheeses so make sure you place these on your board at least an hour before your guests arrive and then what we'll do while we're waiting is get our garnishes together and this time i'm going to be going with some fresh grapes as well as some dried plums also sold under the far less sexy name of prunes and then we'll do some seasonal fruit in the form of persimmons which are very delicious not to mention gorgeous just be sure you're using the fuyu variety since this is the non-astringent variety you can eat raw and then besides that i'm also going to go with some candied pecans which will pair perfectly with our sharp spicy stilton and then last but not least i'm also going to do some embryo which is a pace made out of quince which is basically a really large almost inedible giant mutant apple but when it's cooked down to make this paste it takes on this amazing fruity floral flavor and it is the classic accompaniment to manchego so i'm gonna go ahead and slice some of that up at which point we go ahead and arrange our garnishes on the board next to whatever cheese we think they pair best with and while anything goes with anything here next to the stilton i'm gonna go with grapes and the candy nuts walnuts are actually more classic choice but the pecans work perfectly also and then we'll go ahead and lay out some of our sliced membrio next to our manchego and of course these are just my suggested pairings as there are so many different things you could go with instead i mean you are after all the jesus of your jesus and you're the one that gets to decide how best to savior these i mean savor these which reminds me i'm going with sort of a sweet and nutty holiday dessertish type profile but if you want to go with something more savory you could do things like olives or marinated vegetables or pickles mustard fruit stuff like that so those decisions are up to you and half the fun of doing a cheese board but anyway i went ahead and finished up with my dried prunes and freshly sliced persimmons and if you can't find those don't stress just go with some apples or pears and then once our garnishes are set that's it we can go ahead and grab a few appropriate cheese knives with which to serve this with and for distilling we'll go with some kind of spreading knife since it's kind of soft and sticky but for the manchego we'll go with something that can slice and stab and those holes you see are to reduce friction or maybe it's supposed to look like swiss cheese maybe both and then for our goat cheese we'll go with a combination of a knife good for spreading slicing and stabbing and then besides our utensils the only other thing we're going to need would be some bread crackers and or crisps and since i have three cheeses i'm going to go with three selections i have some sliced baguette for my stilton some very neutral almost flavorless water crackers for my manchego and also some rustic rye crisps that i think are going to be perfect with my goat cheese and finally assuming our cheese has warmed up for at least an hour we can start enjoying this professionally designed thoughtfully composed cheese board so i'm going to go ahead and start off with my softest and mildness offering which would be our french chestnut leaf wrap goat cheese which as i mentioned should pair perfectly with this rye crisp since it has a mild but sort of earthy flavor and that really was an incredible bite especially since we let that cheese warm up and all those flavors were able to develop so do not rush your cheese board and i went ahead and chased that with a slice of persimmon and what about the prunes no comment and then i'll follow that up with a slice of manchego that if you haven't had before you should taste on its own to appreciate its beautiful slightly sweet slightly tangy nutty flavor and for me this is sort of right in the middle of the intensity scale between the mild goat cheese and the spicy stilton and then i'll enjoy some honor cracker although way too little that's why i'm only going to bite half and we'll put another piece on this other half along with a classic garnish of membrillo and the reason i want a neutral cracker is that combination is so insanely delicious i don't want anything getting in the way and i know you just said you could garnish with anything you want but seriously if you do the manchego get them embryo and then i'll go ahead and finish up with my third and most intense selection the very pungent and spicy stilton which i'm gonna serve on baguette and for me those three bites in that order really highlight what a cheese board should be and because our stilton is so strongly flavored that's why refreshing our palate with a sweet nut and a juicy tangy grape is the perfect way to go and that will reset our palette and we can start all over again or switch it up and go in reverse order but anyway that's it my approach to constructing and serving a cheese board okay i don't want you to focus so much on the specific cheeses i used but more so why i made the selections all right i wanted three different milks three different textures three different flavors three different appearances and so forth and don't forget the people at the cheese shops love to help you put these things together so take advantage of their expertise but regardless of what you use i really do hope you try to put your own cheese board together soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy pinecone cheese ball that's right tis the season of having to bring food to holiday parties and this thing has it all it's relatively inexpensive it's fast and easy to make and if other people brought regular cheese balls to the same party you'll make them feel completely inferior which really you know captures the holiday spirit but anyway let me show you how to put this together it's as easy as it is visually impressive so first up you can make a cheese ball without some kind of cheese spread and for this i'm going to show you one of my favorites a very simple herb and garlic spread starting with a cream cheese the most popular and spreadable of all party cheeses and to that i'm going to add a little bit of goat cheese maybe like four parts regular cream cheese to one part goat cheese and that's gonna add a little bit of extra flavor a little bit of extra tang and then to that i'm gonna add a little bit of garlic you could definitely go roasted garlic here which of course is going to be sweeter and more mild we're also going to want to season this up with some freshly ground black pepper a pinch of salt and then we're going to make it rain cayenne and then if we're going to call this a garlic and herb spread we need some herbs and i'm doing a trio of chopped herbs italian parsley tarragon and thyme and pretty much anything's gonna work here except ironically rosemary even though we're gonna garnish with rosemary because it looks like pine needles rosemary is a very very strong resinous herb that generally doesn't work as well in spreads like this it's just so easy for it to overpower everything else but anyway we're gonna need a whole bunch of fresh herb and then all we need to do is take a spoon or spatula or in my case a spoonula and give this a very thorough mixing and of course this is going to be a lot easier if your cheese is sort of room temperature so give yourself a couple minutes and mix this extra extra thoroughly because if you don't someone's going to get a portion that has a lot of garlic someone will get a portion that doesn't have any and then they will argue later about whether it was too garlicky or not garlicky enough and who needs that kind of drama at a holiday party okay so mix it well and once we do have that all combined and we've tasted it for seasoning we'll go ahead and transfer a nice lump of that onto our serving platter and begin the shaping process and you can just do this with a butter knife because i'm a fancy boy i'm going to use this little cheese spreader and you don't exactly have to have the skills of michelangelo here as long as it's kind of wider at one end it kind of tapers down to a point at the other that's fine keep in mind you're going to cover this with almond so it really doesn't have to be perfect so i shaped and smoothed mine out to the general shape of a pine cone and by the way if you're thinking man that's so perfect how did you get it so nice i cheated i used some pvps performance enhancing props but anyway you're going to work your cheese spread into some kind of cone shape and at that point we're ready to apply the almonds and you're going to want to start at the pointy end and work back to the bigger end and any variety of whole almonds going to work here i'm actually using something called sprouted almonds which tend to be a little flatter and pointier which i think look really good here and there's really not a lot that can go wrong here as long as you've got the pointy end sticking out and you're covering that cheese spread you're doing a good job and don't worry if it doesn't look awesome right away when it first starts it's gonna look like something out of jurassic park i'm no paleontologist but i believe that's a cheesosaurus but as you'll see just keep sticking them in and when you get to this point you can make your rows a little neater of course if you want to double your productivity you can use both hands but be careful do not pull a muscle and we'll simply continue until we reach the back and if you have to use a couple broken pieces to fill in the gaps go ahead and then once our cheese spread has been completely covered with almonds it's basically done except of course we have to garnish with some rosemary to simulate pine needles so we'll throw some rosemary sprigs on there and that holiday inspired pine cone cheese ball is done check it out i mean nothing's so realistic you're going to have to tell people it's okay to eat and even if this didn't taste great it would still be a huge hit just because of its appearance but it does taste great so let me go in here for a taste which is going to be a little bit of a challenge because i want to taste this but i also want to be able to bring it to a party later so i'm basically going to dig some out taste it and then put this back together and yes as predicted that was delicious herby garlicky creamy with like i said just that little hint of tanginess from the goat cheese just a beautiful cheese bread so let me go ahead and put this back together and if you're thinking ooh you touch those almonds yeah i know i touched every one of those elements so we'll put that back together and there we go the perfect crime so anyway if you were stuck wondering what the heck am i going to bring to that holiday party this is what you're going to bring so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] panatoni that's right i'm very excited to show you my very first attempt ever at making panettone and i'll admit to being a little bit intimidated because from what i read this is supposed to be one of the hardest breads in the world to make in fact one article compared it to climbing mount everest which sounds a little dramatic i mean i don't think there's dozens of people that die each year making this bread or at least not suddenly but anyway as you'll see this came out really well so this is either easier than people say or i had a good amount of beginner's luck but either way let's go ahead and get started by starting the starter which we're going to need to make the day before and we'll do that by mixing some flour and water together to which we're going to add some of our already made sourdough starter and we'll go ahead and stir that together and i hope you have some of that in your fridge but if you don't in the blog post i'm going to tell you how to make it without it and what we'll do once that's mixed is go ahead and cover it and just leave it out at room temp overnight and not only is this mixture going to add some volume and flavor to our dough it's also believe it or not going to help the finish loaf stay fresher longer and then once that's set we should move on to the other thing we should do the day before and that would be to soak some chopped up dried fruit and some type of liquor okay i'm using white rum and as far as my fruit selection i went with pineapple cherry and golden raisin but there are so many other things you could use so feel free to investigate other options you are after all the james comey of your panettone but anyway we'll go ahead and mix that up the night before and let that fruit absorb the booze stirring occasionally and then once those two things are set the next day we can actually move on to making the dough which we'll begin by dissolving a package of yeast and some very warm but not too hot water and as usual we'll let that sit for about 10 minutes before adding the following ingredients all right to that we're going to add a couple eggs as well as some white sugar we'll also toss in a spoon of pure vanilla extract as well as some freshly grated orange and lemon zest and then for whatever reason i decided to take a whisk and give this a mix before adding our starter and flour you probably don't have to but it's too late now and once i had done that i went ahead and grabbed my starter from the day before which looked beautifully bubbly and smelled amazing and what we'll do is give that a stir and dump it into our mixing bowl and like i said if you don't have some sourdough starter don't worry i'll tell you in the blog post how to make a cheater version but anyway we'll go ahead and dump that in at which point we'll go ahead and finish this off by adding our flour and i'm just using all-purpose here although some recipes do call for bread flour at this point we'll grab our dough hook and start kneading this in our stand mixer although as soon as i lowered that hook in i realized i forgot the salt so i stopped and added it because you never ever want to forget the salt and then what we're going to do is let this knead for a long time like for 10 minutes or so until we've achieved a very very smooth a very very elastic dough and early on if you need to stop it and scrape down the sides go ahead but like i said we'll let this need for about 10 minutes until we've created something that looks like this all right like i said very smooth and very elastic and if we pull that dough with our spatula it should sort of snap back into place and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and add our room temperature butter okay ice cold is not going to work here make sure it's room temp and we're going to need that for another five minutes or so or until that butter is completely mixed in and we've created once again a very smooth very elastic somewhat shiny dough and once again you might have to turn off the machine a couple times and scrape down the sides until it all starts to come together so this is what mine looked like about five minutes later so yes we are talking about a very very soft somewhat sticky dough here which is probably one of the reasons people say this is a hard bread to make all right generally people are scared of really soft dose but don't be you'll be fine but anyway let me go ahead and transfer that onto my work surface so you can get a better look and then what i did using some slightly damp fingers as well as the help of my bench scraper to sort of wrestle and fold that a few times into some sort of dough ball shape and by the way one way you can tell if you've developed enough gluten is that you can stretch it so thin you can see light through it without it tearing which they call the windowpane test because you're supposed to stretch it out between two fingers in front of a window but i'm not going to because i can tell just by pinching instruction like this and then what i did is transfer that back into my bowl that i didn't even bother cleaning out i usually do but i didn't feel like it and then what we'll do is cover that and let it rise until doubled which is going to take a while okay these rich does rise pretty slowly so mine actually took about three hours which was totally worth the wait if for no other reason just the feeling you get when you punch it down man that feels good and what we'll want to do at this point is transfer that back onto our table and then once deflated again using some damn fingers in our bench scraper we will fold that back into some kind of ballast shape because what we're going to need to do is transfer this into a plastic bag and refrigerate it overnight oh yeah we're talking about a three-day bread here all right so if you want this bread today you have to start it two days ago but anyway trust me it'll be worth the wait so i went ahead and transferred that into a plastic bag and popped it in the fridge overnight and by the way we're not just doing this stuff to make you wait for nothing right this overnight fermentation in the fridge really does improve the flavor and probably texture so i did pop mine in the fridge overnight and then pulled it out the next morning at which point it looked like this and what we'll do is go ahead and remove the bag i just rip it open i know some of you would wash this and reuse it but i don't swing that way and then what we'll do is go ahead and press this out into some sort of square rectangle shape and because the dough is nice and cold and that butter is stiffened up it's a little easier to work with and then once i get it to about this flatness i'll sprinkle it with a little bit of flour and then roll it out a little thinner with my rolling pin and the whole reason we're doing this is so we can scatter over our boozy dried fruit and then roll this up and theoretically that way all our fruit will be evenly distributed so i went ahead and applied my dried fruit to the surface which by now had absorbed all that rum but i ended up not using it all because as i was doing this i was thinking man this is like way too much fruit so i actually only ended up using about three quarters of it which as you'll see in the final shots probably wasn't the best idea i probably should have used it all but anyway once that was spread out like i said we'll go ahead and roll the dough up nice and tight and please accept my apologies for the blurriness so that's one of the reasons i've never won an oscar so let's fast forward and then once that's been rolled up i went ahead and rolled both ends up towards the middle attempting somehow to get it back into some kind of round shape and if at all possible try to end up with a good amount of dough on the top okay so i sort of worked that around until like i said i ended up with some kind of smooth dough over the top and then once that's been accomplished what we need to do is transfer this into a paper panettone mold which come in this shape the shorter wider one as well as a tall skinny version and yes of course in the blog post i'm going to tell you where to find those and then what we'll need to do is cover this and let it rise until it's at least 2 3 of the way up the sides which because we're starting with cold dough is going to take like three or four hours but don't go by time go until it looks like this and by the way a few hours in i took off the plastic because it was touching the top it was kind of sticking and i got scared you can see the market left right there but anyway the point is let your dough proof in this mold until it looks like this at which point we will carefully brush the surface with an egg wash which is one egg beaten with a splash of water and then once that's been applied to the entire surface we will take a razor or a sharp knife and cut across into the top about a quarter to a half inch down which is not just done to make this look really cool although that's a big part of it we actually need to do that so it rises properly and we achieve that beautiful signature dome shape so we'll go ahead and slice the top just like that and then our last official act before this goes in the oven is to place a small piece of butter right in the middle which is probably more traditional than practical since i doubt that's going to make much of a difference but do it anyway and that's it we are finally ready to bake so we will go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 40 to 45 minutes or until it looks like this which would be beautifully browned and spectacularly gorgeous i mean look at that that was so beautiful i didn't even really care how this tasted and then if you're thinking hey this is probably ready to eat right now well unfortunately you could not be more wrong we actually need to let this cool for two hours upside down oh yeah you heard me which is why i'm gonna poke in two skewers on either side and then flip this over onto a panettone cooling hole which i had cut into my table but if you don't happen to have access to a panettone cooling hole you can just flip this over on top of a dutch oven or a stockpot something like that and by cooling this upside down there's not going to be any collapsing and it's going to help us retain a beautiful light texture so take that gravity and then after somehow waiting for a couple hours for this to fully cool we will go ahead and pull out those skewers and finally be able to cut in and see how we did so i went ahead and sliced out a wedge and like i said this looks so magnificent i really didn't care how it tasted but i'm very happy to report for a first attempt it tasted really good which didn't really surprise me what did surprise me was how amazing the texture was for her first attempt okay it was rich and buttery but it was just impossibly light and airy the only major surprise was where the heck did all that fruit go i thought i had way too much and ended up thinking i didn't have enough but anyway besides that i was extremely happy and went ahead and cut another piece so i could try some with butter which is even a better way to enjoy this and for whatever reason i found this shape to be more enjoyable than the wedge so i'm going to suggest you cut yours in half and then down into slices and while this bread was great plain and even better spread with butter i'm going to show you a third and what i consider ultimate way to enjoy this and that would be lightly toasted with butter okay that really is the ultimate way to enjoy this bread preferably with a nice hot cup of coffee but anyway that's it my first attempt at panatone yes it took three days and many hours but as far as actual work involved there really wasn't that much and like i said i was really happy with how this came out although next time i'm going to add all the fruit and maybe make a few tweaks which you'll read about on the blog post but bottom line this was not even close to as hard as people made it out to be so for that reason and many others i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] potato pancakes one of my favorite potato preparations is something i just don't make often enough super easy to make take two pounds actually i had two and a quarter two pounds of russet potatoes peel them and then grate them with a cheese grater into a bowl of very cold water and i'm also going to grate in half an onion into the same bowl and by the way you've never cried until you've grated onion it's a good cry all right once that's done i'm going to add some more water fill it up a little more and these are just going to sit in the cold water for about 20 30 minutes you don't need to rinse it just let them sit there in the meantime take a couple eggs some flour black pepper a little pinch of cayenne salt of course and we're going to whisk that up until very smooth and then set that aside when our potatoes are ready drain them rinse them put them in a colander and squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze all the water must be squeezed out so i squeeze it a fistful at a time and then i press it again with some paper towel and make sure all the water is out of your potatoes it's the only way to screw this up is to have wet potatoes once the potatoes are as dry as humanly possible add them to a bowl mix in your egg mixture with a spatula and that is a potato pancake mixture ready to fry it's an incredibly easy recipe i told you i'm going to cover that while i make these because you don't want any air to get to the potatoes if possible because they do oxidize this is not something you could store put away and you know it's going to be good the next day so you're going to want to make this stuff fresh all right now to fry these we're going to use a heavy duty skillet with a good amount of oil they say a quarter inch oil i don't know if you quite need that much on the bottom but you need enough oil to come up the side at least halfway up the pancake if you want a nice crispy cake this one i'm just doing a little test to taste for salt we're going to heat the pan on medium high and when it's hot add your pancake mixture flatten it out this one's a little smaller than the ones you're going to see but again i'm just tasting for sneezing i'm going to taste this oh man so good and it did need a little more seasoning so what you want to do is you want to put your oil in the pan heat it to medium high when it starts to shimmer add your potatoes flatten them down a little bit they don't have to be round who says they have to be round if i've said it once i've said it a thousand times the kitchen is no place for a perfectionist i flatten them down to about a half inch cook them for about like i said five minutes per side you want to see the edges get really crispy and crunchy before you turn them five minutes on the other side and when i flip them normally i'll turn it down to medium because this is raw potato you got to give it time to cook through if you keep going on high heat or medium high the whole way sometimes towards the end the edges start getting a little too brown and the middle isn't quite tender enough and there you go i top mine with smoked salmon sour cream and dill very classic combination you can do these with applesauce and sour cream another even more classic combination or just plain next to some eggs and bacon anyway go to the site the ingredients for the filling are quite important so go check those out and as always enjoy rosemary and honey pull apart dinner rolls that's right when those fancy holiday meals roll around you can't just put any kind of roll on the table you have to make something special and these are kind of special and if you thought these were too complicated or hard to make we'll think again these are actually quite simple to make and here's how you do it so we're going to start by putting one package of dry active yeast in the bowl of our stand mixer and then we're going to pour over a quarter cup of very warm but not too hot water all right as you know if it's too hot it will kill the yeast so just give that a stir and we're just going to let that sit there for about 10-15 minutes and what will happen is it will start getting foamy and thick and you know that the yeast is alive and it's all good in the microorganism hood okay so we're gonna set that aside we're gonna go over to the stove where i'm gonna have you over low heat melt some butter in some milk so put the heat on low and just let it sit there until the butter almost melts just like that and then just turn it off all right we just want that tepid just barely warm again if it's too hot you're going to kill the yeast so just set that aside we're going to go back over to the mixing bowl and we're going to look to see if the yeast is alive and mine is see how it's kind of thick and foamy and bubbly that means the yeast is living so to that we're going to add some honey it's going to give the rolls a little bit of sweetness i usually put about a tablespoon if you want a little sweeter you could put two tablespoons we're also going to throw in some salt and some finely minced rosemary all right not a ton rosemary is very strong so be careful not to overdo it and then we're going to dump in our flour but not all of it like 75 of it and why not all of it because i'll explain in a minute and then finally dump in your warm milk butter mixture we're going to throw that on the mixer with a dough hook because we're making dough we're going to give that a mix and it's going to be way too sticky to form a dough but that's good because what we want to do is just gradually add flour until it just pulls away from the sides so after that initial mixing you can see it's super sticky and way too wet i'm gonna dump in flour about a quarter cup at a time i'll let it turn for a minute i'll scrape down the side and i'll keep doing that until this happens until the dough has absorbed enough flour where it just barely pulls away from the sides it's still very soft it's still very sticky but there is enough flour in there that this will pull together into a dough ball once that happens you're going to let that knead for about six minutes until you have a very elastic and again soft slightly sticky dough all right when you pull it out of the bowl it should be slightly tacky but not enough where it's going to stick to your fingers if it does add a little more flour and knead it more but that's perfect right there i'm going to douse that with some olive oil a good amount i'm going to make sure it's totally coated we're gonna cover that with foil and put it in a warm spot for about an hour and a half to two hours until it doubles in size and you'll know because it'll be like twice as big all right so that's looking good for me that was about an hour and 40 minutes we're gonna dump that onto our cutting board now you'll notice i don't have any flour down because that dough still has a good amount of oil on it so it's really not that sticky if you're scared you can rub a little bit olive oil on your board in your hands and what we're going to do is we're going to form that into a rectangle but only to help us portion these dinner rolls if you want you can just start pulling off pieces and making the balls but i find it easier to make a rectangle then i'll cut it in equal sized strips and if i cut each strip into the same number of pieces i know each of my rolls will be basically the same size alright so nothing too complicated it just helps you portion and of course at this point i will note you can make these any size you want as long as they're the same size so they bake the same and then once your dough is portioned you're simply going to take each piece and form it into a small ball and how you want to do this you want to fold the four corners up underneath itself so you're keeping a nice smooth surface and you're pulling and pinching that dough towards the bottom so the seams will be underneath and the top will be a perfectly smooth sphere and just as a side note sometimes when i'm doing this balling i will also do a little bit of shot calling but that's only if i have time all right once those are all balled up we're gonna carefully place those on a lined baking sheet we want nice neat rows and columns and you'll notice they're almost but not quite touching and this is very critical if you want the pull apart effect all right if you put them too far away you're just gonna have little rolls not the same deal all right you want to call these pull apart rolls you better have something to pull apart so we want to get them very close but not quite touching you can see right there that's kind of the perfect distance all right once those are on the pan we're going to take an egg wash which in my case was just a beaten egg with about a teaspoon of milk i'm going to paint that over the top it's going to give them a beautiful color and then last but not least we're going to take some coarse sea salt and just sprinkle a few crystals on each roll again we're doing this to up the fancy quotient because this is a special occasion roll and then once those have the salt the last step before baking is called the proofing which means we got to let these rise for about 20 30 minutes i just put mine in the oven the oven's off of course so i put them in the oven for about a half hour after which they look like this so i don't know if they're going to double in size but they're going to be significantly larger i'm going to take those out i'm going to leave them on top of the stove while we preheat our oven to 375 when the oven is preheated put those in the center and bake them for 20 minutes until beautifully browned they're gonna look like this which i think looks spectacular you can see the egg wash gave them that gorgeous color that salt really does give them an extra special look by the way if you want to use sesame seeds or poppy seeds you could put that on instead of the salt and of course you can serve these warm but don't serve them hot but i'm going to pull one off here hot so i could burn my finger but anyway let me crack this open so you can see the gorgeous inside just a very classic white light dinner roll i don't have any food to eat these with so i'm just going to put a little piece of butter on there oh yeah just pure unadulterated deliciousness and it has that gorgeous aroma of rosemary that subtle sweetness from the honey just a very very excellent dinner roll and how many people would really know the difference that you made these from scratch and didn't buy a package of frozen rolls who cares that's not the point we don't make these to impress other people we make these to impress ourselves and of course other people anyway as you saw there's really not a lot of work involved in these so i really hope you give them a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] lasagna that's right i'm finally making lasagna it's been requested so many times and because it's such a popular italian-american holiday tradition i thought this would be the perfect time to do it so for me there are two keys to a great lasagna a fantastic meat sauce and a great cheese filling so first things first so for the meat sauce i'm gonna take some italian sausage and ground beef we're gonna put that over medium heat and while it's browning we're gonna break it up into as small a pieces as possible while that's browning i'm gonna take some mushrooms and give them a really rough chop okay don't worry about them all being the same size those are gonna break down in the sauce anyway so i'm gonna add those to my brownie meat all right go ahead and stir those in i'm also going to add some salt some black pepper and some red chili flakes okay so at this point i want you to turn the heat to medium high and cook it until the meat's browned and any liquid that came out of the mushrooms has evaporated so you see this the meats brown in the bottom of the pan is pretty much dry and at that point we're going to add our prepared marinara sauce am i using homemade well i'm not at liberty to say but you can use just about anything here homemade jarred sauce as long as it's good quality not a problem all right you saw me had a splash of water there if you're using jarred sauce make sure you rinse the jars with water and then we're going to bring that to a simmer turn it down to low and simmer for hours how long exactly i don't know it should simmer until the meat is extremely extremely tender all right i did mine about two hours you want to make sure you add a little more water along the way if it's getting too thick and once it's done and you're happy with the texture turn it off taste for salt and pepper and set it aside all right so that's half the battle our beautiful meat sauce is ready on to the cheese filling which is simply a couple beaten eggs some ricotta cheese and not that skim milk stuff the real whole milk variety for this recipe you just need the highest quality cheeses possible will people know i don't care i will know and you will know so after that we're going to add our reggiano parmesan and fresh mozzarella now you notice how it's diced and not grated you shouldn't be able to grate good soft fresh mozzarella in fact there's an old saying if you can use a grater you should be a hater alright so use that nice fresh soft mozzarella they have it in stores now use it we're also going to add some salt and pepper and cayenne and then last but not least some fresh italian parsley and give that a good mix so like i said earlier if you have a great meat sauce and a really great cheese filling you are going to have a fantastic lasagna there's no way not to so before we can assemble this of course we have to boil one box one pound lasagna noodles all right make sure you're using salted water now this is the only time ever except for maybe pasta salad where i'm going to tell you when the pasta is cooked drain it rinse it and keep it in cold water all right so you see that here my noodles are ready and it's time for final assembly and yes in case you're wondering i have tried using the raw noodles not boiling them first i don't like that method all right let's talk about the pan this is not something that goes in your wimpy little 9 by 13 casserole dish this needs a lasagna pan 10 by 15 by like three inches deep is perfect all right so get yourself a nice lasagna pan now assembly is super easy if you can do some simple math divide your sauce into four parts your noodles into three parts and your cheese into two parts so one fourth of the sauce goes down on top of that one third of the noodles all right i had 18 noodles so i use six okay so once the first third of the noodles are down the base of our lasagna is done and we're ready for the first half of the cheese mixture right so divide that perfectly in half spread that cheese mixture out onto the noodles and then top with another portion of the meat sauce all right so once that's spread nice and even we are going to take the second third of our noodles place those over and as long as it's covered you're good don't worry about what it looks like don't worry if you got a couple broken ones it's all good when it bakes so the second layer of noodles are down the last of the cheese mixture gets spread on there i don't know about you but i'm getting kind of excited on top of the cheese just like our last layer goes the meat sauce at this point we're going to give it a little shake to settle it and yes the old tapatapa and to finish this beauty off the last of the noodles go over the top you can see the end there i just pieced together some of the smaller broken pieces doesn't matter relax once this cooks it all looks fantastic all right over that goes the last fourth of the meat sauce spread that over make sure all the noodles are covered i'm going to dot that with more fresh mozzarella we're going to finish with some more grated parmesan cheese cover it loosely with foil i don't want the foil touching the cheese but i do want it covered i'm going to put it on a sheet pan in case i have any spillover i'm going to put that in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes at that point take off the foil continue cooking for about another 30 35 minutes until it's done and when it's done it will be golden brown it will be bubbling and it will be hot all the way through what a gorgeous gorgeous lasagna if i do say so myself and i know you can't wait to tear into this but let it sit for at least 20 minutes it's just going to be too hot to enjoy unless you do all right but after that all bets are off cut it into nice squares you'll get like 12 decent portions out of this or like nine huge ones you can see all those beautiful layers that super meaty sauce with the sausage and the beef and the mushrooms adding a little bit of extra something the beautiful cheeses so so delicious so whether you're serving this for your italian american christmas dinner or just any time i hope you give this recipe a try so go to the site all the ingredients are there for the sauce for the filling for the whole thing and as always enjoy [Music] tortiere that's right the culinary school i attended was very close to the canadian border and sometimes we would cross that border in search of two things neither of which was this amazing meat pie okay it was actually beer and a very specific type of dance performance but nevertheless i did enjoy tortilla on numerous occasions and since it is a very traditional french canadian holiday dish i thought the timing was perfect to show you how to put one of these together and to get started with that we're going to need some kind of pie dough which i'm going to go through very quickly since we've done this in like half a dozen videos so in a food processor i have some all-purpose flour which i'm going to combine with a spoon of salt and two sticks of butter that i've cut up and placed in the freezer so that it's very very cold and very hard and what i'm going to do is blitz that on and off for about a half a minute or so or until our butter's been reduced to the size of peas give or take and once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and drizzle in some nice cold fresh water that we spiked with a little bit of white vinegar and then we'll go ahead and pulse that on and off until our mixture basically resembles very coarse bread crumbs okay we don't want to do this until it comes together in a dough ball that's too far and by the way this is in real time so it's not going to take long and if this mixture contains enough moisture you should be able to press some together and it should hold together like this all right let me give you a better look at that okay can you see that that's perfect and then what we'll do once that's happened is go ahead and transfer this onto our work surface and basically press it together into a lump of dough and the reason this works so much better is if you wait for the dough ball to come together in the food processor it can get overworked so this way we're accomplishing the same thing without over mixing and by avoiding that we're hopefully going to end up with a very tender and very flaky crust and then once all that's been pressed together we'll go ahead and wrap that in plastic and pop it in the fridge for at least one hour or until we're ready to use it alright as far as workability goes cold pie dough is always much much easier than warm pie dough so we'll pop that in the fridge and move on to our urban spice blend so into this bowl we're going to combine some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper some dried sage some dried thyme some cinnamon some ground ginger some freshly grated nutmeg some allspice some dry mustard and some ground clove and then last but not least everybody's favorite a little bit of cayenne which i don't think they add in quebec but that's okay we're allowed to we are after all the mayor of our tortilla and then once we have that together we can go ahead and start cooking which we'll begin by adding some diced onions to some butter over medium heat along with a pinch of salt and we'll go ahead and cook those stirring and we usually just do this until the onions soften and turn translucent but not this time we're actually going to cook these over medium until they turn to a nice golden brown okay so we're going to get a little more color on them than usual and then while our onions are cooking simultaneously we're also going to boil a peeled quartered potato in some salted water until very tender and as usual we'll be testing for doneness by giving it the old polka poka with a knife but once tender instead of draining this we'll actually use a strainer to scoop these potatoes out into a bowl because we need to reserve this cooking liquid repeat do not throw away the potato water and you'll see why momentarily and then what we'll do while our potatoes are hot is mash them up and then simply reserve those until needed which is going to be in about 45 minutes to an hour and at this point we'll go back and check our onions which like i said we want to cook to a beautiful golden brown so those are looking just about right and at this point we can go ahead and add some crushed garlic as well as some finely diced celery and our already prepped holiday spice blend and we'll go ahead and stir that in and cook this for about one minute right that's just gonna wake up the spices and infuse that butter with all these wonderful flavors and then once that's set we can go ahead and add whatever meat we're using which for me is equal parts ground pork and ground beef okay veal is also a very popular choice and then remember when i told you to save that potato water that's because we're going to add a couple ladles of it here and i'm not measuring exactly but that's probably about three quarters of a cup and then what we're going to want to do is take a completely normally sized wooden spoon and sort of mix and mash this all together and what that potato water is going to do is help us turn this into a paste all right we do not want chunks of meat here right we want something that has a very fine texture so we'll go ahead and work that over with our spoon and so like i said we've achieved a paste like texture and then all we're going to do is let this cook on medium stirring occasionally for about 45 minutes or so or until our meat is nice and tender and most of the liquid is evaporated and by the way as this cooks if you want to spoon off some of that fat that pools at the top feel free i did a little bit but we do need some of that to keep this nice and moist and succulent so you be the judge but anyway like i said we're going to cook that for about 45 minutes or so until our meat gets nice and tender and extremely paste-like and as i said most of that liquid gets evaporated right we don't want the mixture to get super dry it should stay relatively moist and juicy but if we drag our spoon across the bottom that space should not fill in quickly with liquid and if it does just raise your heat up a little bit and cook it a little more and conversely if it dries out too quick just go ahead and add another splash of your potato water and then what we'll do once we think our mixtures cook long enough is go ahead and add and stir in our potato which along with that natural sticky goodness from the meat is what's going to hold our pie together so we'll go ahead and stir that in until combined at which point we're going to turn off our heat and let this cool down to room temp or at least that's what my french canadian friends insist on i'm not sure what happens if you make the pie with this mixture still hot and if you want to take a chance go for it but i'm going to go ahead and let mine cool and once it does we are ready to fill our crust which is our next and almost last step so on a flower surface i'm going to go ahead and roll out half our dough to make the bottom crust and i say half but it's really closer to like 55 or 60 percent of it since for a deep dish pie we do need a little more dough for the bottom than the top but anyway i'm going to go ahead and roll that out to about an eighth of an inch thick and then we will roll that up on our pin to make it easier to transfer into our dish and we'll go ahead and make sure that's nicely settled in and we have plenty of dough here so don't stretch it out across the bottom right you always want to sort of adjust it down from the sides and then once that's set we'll go ahead and roll out the rest of the dough for the top and once the top crust is done we're going to have to make some sort of vents which you can just do by making some slashes with a knife but i'm actually going to take one of these decorative star shape cutters and press out a nice festive looking hole from the center and that will allow steam to escape so our pie doesn't explode and then once that's set we can go ahead and transfer in our filling making sure to pack it down pretty good as well as smooth out the top and then once our filling is in before we put the top crust on we'll want to go around and paint the edge with some egg wash which is just one large egg beaten with a tablespoon of water and we'll go ahead and apply that all the way around before placing our dough on top hopefully centering our vent if we made one and if you didn't like i said you could just make some slashes with your knife and then what we'll do once we've gone around pressing that together is trim off the excess dough which instead of doing across the top edge of the dish which we sometimes do i'm actually going to angle the knife and go around the bottom rim of the dish so that i have plenty of dough to crimp together all right for this pie i want a nice big thick crust to pair with all that nice big thick meat and then once that's trim we'll go ahead and crimp the edge which as you can see is done simply by pressing one finger in between two fingers going all the way around which is not only the easiest way to crimp it also in my opinion makes one of the best looking edges and then we'll finish this up egg washing it all over including and especially our crimping and that's it once our pie has been egg washed it's ready to transfer into the center of a 375 degree oven for about an hour or until beautifully browned and hopefully looking very close to something like this oh yeah that is one handsome looking tortilla and i'd love to tell you we could eat it right now but it is highly recommended you let this cool down all right the consensus is the room temps the best or maybe just slightly slightly warm but for whatever reason this is rarely served piping hot probably because it's harder to taste and may actually crumble apart so we really should let this cool down but i was losing light not to mention starving so i took my chances cutting a slice while was still pretty warm and i'm happy to report it actually worked out pretty well and after just a few seconds of pushing things back in place i ended up with a pretty nice looking slice and i know what you're thinking there's no way the first one came out that good you probably cut three or four and used the nicest one well check it out take that skeptics but anyway the point is let it cool the texture will set up a lot better and while some folks like to serve this with beef gravy or believe it or not ketchup i feel that if properly made you really don't need anything that filling is just so meaty and savory and beautifully scented with all those warm holiday spices just extremely flavorful and satisfying of course having said that i never remember turning down gravy so i guess if someone offered i would try it but this is perfectly scrumptious as is and not to brag but that crust came out absolutely perfect which reminds me to remind you make sure you bake this long enough until it's nicely browned okay we really do need that bottom cross to turn golden and this one certainly did but anyway that's it my take on tortiere i really did enjoy everything about this as well as the memories it brought back of my trips to montreal during culinary school and i know i still have to do a poutine video but anyway in the meantime whether it's for a holiday celebration or not i really do hope you give this amazing meat pie a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] honey glazed ham that's right twas the week before christmas and all through the web people were asking hey how do you do the ham glaze that looks awesome tastes awesome and caramelizes to a crispy crackling finish well that's what i'm about to show you and it's way easier than you think and by the way i'm just doing a half ham here but this amazing technique will work no matter what size or style your ham so let's go ahead and get started by setting up our roasting pan so yes you're gonna need a roasting pan big enough to fit your ham preferably comes with a rack and what we're gonna do here is toss in a couple holes star nice and a bunch of whole cloves and i know traditionally the cloves are stuck in the ham but is there anything worse to bite into than a whole clove actually you know what don't answer that but the point is i hate to bite into cloves so with this method we're actually going to flavor the ham from underneath because what we're going to do is pour in some water and not only is that water going to make for a beautifully moist roasting environment but thanks to our spices it's also going to flavor the meat plus you know what else that water does it makes cleanup a breeze sorry i'm just practicing for when i get kicked off youtube and i have to do infomercials on late night basic cable but anyway we're going to put in about an inch of water and then we'll put our rack in and place our ham on top of that and if the outside of your ham is kind of wet and or slimy go ahead and pat it dry with some paper towels and then it's time for a very easy yet critical step we have to score the ham with a knife and all that means is taking something sharp and make cuts all over this about a half inch apart about a quarter inch deep and of course we want to score it across we want to score it up and down but it really doesn't matter as long as you slash that surface all over that's going to help the flavor of our glaze permeate the meat and typically hams like this don't come with a lot of fat but don't worry like i said just cut down about a quarter inch into whatever you have and once that's done we're going to go ahead and place that in the center of a 325 degree oven for 20 minutes all right so we're just going to give this a little head start while we make our glaze which is ridiculously simple so in a mixing bowl we're going to take a whole bunch of brown sugar ironically one of the secrets to a great honey glaze is not to use too much honey so we're gonna use mostly brown sugar but of course we're also gonna add some honey okay so we got our brown sugar and our honey for our sweet now for our tangy we're gonna go with some dijon mustard and a splash of rice vinegar and then of course we're going to season this up with some cayenne pepper and a whole bunch of freshly ground black pepper and then last but not least a few dashes of worcestershire sauce and no salt by the way oh the ham has plenty of salt and then we'll simply take a whisk and give this a mix which is not going to be easy this is a very thick pasty glaze one of the keys here is keeping this very very thick okay so i give it a little mix if it seems too thick which it did we'll add just another little splash of rice vinegar and give it another mix and we'll do that until we have something that looks like this so we're just adding enough rice vinegar to make this brushable what you can see right here is actually stick my pastry brush in so that right there is the consistency you should be shooting for do not go any thinner than that okay so our glaze is set and we'll head back over to the stove where by now our ham is cooked to 325 for 20 minutes and we will pull it out and we will begin the glazing process we'll take our glaze and we will brush it all over and this is only the first application so we don't have to go on really thick here and fair warning because this is such a thick heavy glaze you may tear off some of your little squares of fat from the surface don't worry just kind of coax them back into place and hopefully they'll just stick back right where they came from so we'll go around and we'll glaze that ham and then we'll put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes and we're going to continue doing this every 20 minutes until our ham is ready and i didn't say cooked ham's already cooked so we're not going by that we're going to simply continue roasting at 325 glazing every 20 minutes for about approximately 18 minutes per pound until we have an internal temperature of 130 and that's for the type of ham i'm using depending on which ham you're using you may want to go a little higher but as usual i'll give all that extra info on the blog but bottom line every 20 minutes you're gonna pull this out you're gonna give it another glazing and you're gonna continue doing that until you've reached your desired internal temp now one extra little thing you can do here when you get down to what you think is the final glaze i like to drip a little bit of that water from underneath on top which is of course flavored with that star nice and clove and that's going to kind of mingle with that glaze and kind of run in between the cracks and crevices so i'm not exactly sure how much effect that has but it feels right but anyway this was my last glaze i popped it in for another 20 minutes or so and at that point my ham was at the perfect internal temp of 130 and not to mention looked incredibly awesome but wait there's more we still need to achieve that classic caramelized crispy coating and if you want you could turn your oven up to like 500 and do it in there but i prefer this method the old blowtorch it's so much faster so much better plus it's way more fun so i'm going to go over that surface with the torch not too much we don't want to burn it we just want that sugar to bubble if your sugar bubbles that means it's going to be crisp when it cools so that's what i did here over the entire surface and that really is the trick here to get that amazing magazine cover quality crust and once we've brew laid our glaze we'll go ahead and transfer that onto our serving platter and what's a special occasion better than a bed of kale so i'm going to set my ham down on top of that and then of course because this is for a special holiday dinner i'm going to garnish with some little apples i believe those are called lady apples or in french i believe it's la petite whatever the word for apple is and you know when it comes to food styling and play presentations i'm no martha stewart i'm not even rod stewart but it is the holiday so you want to try to make it look nice so we'll place those around and that honey glazed ham is done and looking pretty spectacular if i do say so and i know you're thinking sure it looks great i'm sure it tastes great but did that glaze really caramelize to a crispy crackling finish well check this out i think i made my point and then of course let me slice into this for a little taste and as you'll read about on the blog i'm using an uncured country style ham which looks paller and has a much lower water content than your typical supermarket ham so if it looks a little different that's the reason plus of course my bad camera angles and lighting but just because something doesn't look wet doesn't mean it's dry these style of hams even though they have a much lower water content still have a beautiful tender rich malt feel and just incredible ham flavor of course the drawback is they're way more expensive but anyway like i said we'll talk about that on the blog and that crispy glaze not only has an amazing texture but that flavor really permeates that meat just incredible so if your ham came with that disgusting little packet of goo that you're supposed to spread over when you bake it throw that away throw it right in the garbage and do this instead all right so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] for peppercorn roast beef that's right we're gonna use the four horsemen of the peppercorn apocalypse for this very special holiday-inspired roast recipe and speaking of revelations we're going to use a cut of beef the tri-tip that many of you have grilled during the summer but maybe you've never considered using in a recipe like this which is a shame because it works so perfectly and first up we're going to prep the a a4 mentioned peppercorns we got your standard black we're also going to use some white peppercorns and some green peppercorns which yes are a little shriveled but don't be concerned i think that's normal and then last but not least the most festive of all peppercorns the pink peppercorn check it out that is pretty christmassy but anyway i'm going to take roughly equal parts of all four peppercorns and we're going to want to give those a very coarse grind i just threw them in one of these hand turned pepper grinders using the coarsest setting possible and in just a short 45 minutes later i had like three tablespoons so yeah that took a while i should probably have used my spice grinder but you know what my wrists have been looking a little chunky so it's good to get a workout in and then we'll just set that aside while we prep our tri-tip roast and there it is the beef tri-tip and you can see there at the top at the bigger end it kind of forms a triangle hence the name tri-tip roast and these usually run about two and a half pounds so very nice size for a dinner party and mine came trimmed and yours probably will too but if it didn't you want to trim it up pretty well you want to take off any silver skin or if there's a thin layer of the white fat on there you can leave that that's fine and then before we coat this bad boy we're going to go ahead and make a little bit of a garlic paste which is simply a few cloves of garlic in the mortar with a pinch of salt to which i added a little splash of olive oil which was a total rookie mistake everybody knows you smash the garlic and the salt first then you add the oil it still works it just takes like an annoying five minutes longer but anyway smash that into a paste and then we're going to go ahead and paint it on our tri-tip and we're going to do this to both sides we're going to paint the garlic on then we're going to very thoroughly coat it with kosher salt don't be shy that's a big hunk of meat and then after you salt it we're going to go ahead and press on those peppercorns and we're going to cover the entire surface or at least i am and yes it's going to be very peppery but it is called peppercorn beef after all and once that side's covered i'm going to flip it over and do the exact same thing garlic paste salt peppercorns and after both those flatter sides are covered we're going to go ahead and get any exposed area so bottom line when you're done that entire tri-tip will be covered in garlic paste generously salted and pressed with those cracked peppercorns so that's looking great right there and then i'm gonna do one optional step just so this recipe takes an entire extra day i'm gonna throw this on a little rack so it sits up off the pan and i'm gonna refrigerate that uncovered in my empty spare refrigerator in the garage that i'm sure everybody has and i'm just gonna leave that to sit and kind of dry overnight so it's not really dry aging but kind of the same idea it's going to dry out a little bit a little bit of water is going to evaporate it's going to concentrate the flavors a little bit and it's really going to give that peppercorn crust a chance to adhere and permeate the meat with flavor and then the next day i took it out it'll look like that pretty much look the same it gets a little darker but don't be alarmed and then before we pop that in the oven i like to let it sit out on the table for one hour to warm up a little bit never a bad idea with a large piece of meat you're gonna roast and then when we are ready to cook we're gonna take a large skillet big enough to fit that piece of meat i'm gonna melt a couple tablespoons of butter but we're not going to sear this we're going to turn it off as soon as it melts we're going to toss our beef in i'm going to coat one side with the butter i'm going to turn it over coat the other side and then that's pretty much ready for the oven except i am going to give it a little more salt on top like i said it's a big piece of meat and you're going to have to try super hard to over salt it unfortunately for home cooks usually the opposite is the case and they under salt and then they wonder why it's bland so anyway a little more salt and then we're going to go ahead and pop that into a very well preheated 450 degree oven for 15 minutes so we're going to start this off very hot and then after 50 minutes we're going to pull it out we're going to turn our oven down to 200 we'll go ahead and flip over the roast and then we'll pop that back in and we'll continue roasting at that low temperature for i don't know about 15-20 minutes more or until it looks like this and the internal temperature for me at least is 130. that's what i'm recommending you cook it how you want you are the boss of your angle shape roast but i went to 130 at that point we're going to transfer that onto a plate to rest and i want you to tent that but very loosely with foil and just let it sit there resting for at least at least 15 minutes which is the perfect amount of time to finish the pan sauce so we're not going to pour off any of that fat you should have about a tablespoon or two in there we're going to put that on medium heat we're going to sprinkle in about a tablespoon of flour we're going to cook that stirring with our whisk for about two minutes just to take the raj off that flower and at that point we're going to whisk in three cups of some very very delicious beef reveal stock although you know what i use neither i used oxtail stock which i use is kind of a cheater demi-glaze which i'm going to show you but anyway i went ahead and whisked in my oxtail stock and then we're going to finish this with standard food wishes pan sauce procedure oh you know how we do we simply reduce this until it's the consistency we want so turn your heat up to medium high bring it up to a simmer and while we're waiting for that to boil we can go ahead and season it up a little bit now i'm thinking you're not going to need any black pepper but you may need some salt and even though i totally didn't need it i added some cayenne because that's what i do and then like i said we're simply going to reduce this down until it's the texture we want and when it's getting close i'm going to add the final ingredients which is just a small splash of balsamic vinegar it's going to help with that beautiful gorgeous brown color it's also going to add a little bit of acidity and sweetness to the sauce and by the way don't let this fool you i turn the heat down just so i can film it you can just keep your simmering and then last but not least make sure you pour off any accumulated juices from your resting tri-tip plate you cannot waste that that would be a crime all right so i stirred in my juices and i kept cooking until it was perfect and what did that look like for me here you go check it out that is one super super sexy sauce look at that shine i could actually comb my hair in that pan if you know i had hair so anyway our sauce is set we're going to turn that off and it's time to carve the beef we're going to start on a small end and cut across the grain now for appearances i probably should have started on the larger rarer end but that's okay even this meat that's almost well done at the end was still amazingly juicy and flavorful and of course as you cut towards that larger end the meat's gonna get pinker and less cooked and by the way crazy people the juices aren't blood come on read a book but anyway we're going to slice that up we're going to plate that up warm plates of course and then we're going to spoon over that pan sauce and that my friends was a spectacular roast beef and i think you can see from this shot that meat is so tender and so juicy and so what do the kids say these days amazeballs that you simply have to give it a try the tri-tip a very popular cut during the summer for grilling yet very seldom used in the winter for holiday roast and i'm not sure why it works so beautifully so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy easy baked beef brisket that's right not only is this apple and onion smothered beef brisket delicious and easy it's also very fast although when it comes to brisket very fast is a relative term and this still takes like four hours but above and beyond cooking this in like half the usual amount of time the great thing about this method is it actually produces a brisket that is tender and still moist right there's a lot of things i'll wait eight to ten hours for but dry beef is not one of them so with that let's go ahead and get started by seasoning up our briskets which i'm going to do very generously on both sides with a mixture of kosher salt freshly ground black pepper and a little cayenne and by the way the three pound piece of beef brisket you're looking at is actually only half of a whole brisket with this half being the flatter leaner side and if you're buying brisket in your average supermarket this is almost always the piece you're going to get but having said that if you do use the other half or even a whole brisket this technique will still work nicely and generally these things are sold fairly well trimmed but just in case yours wasn't you'll want to trim it down so there's no more than about a quarter inch layer of fat but anyway like i said we will season that very generously at which point we could go ahead and start the recipe but what i highly recommend is popping this in the fridge overnight to let those seasonings really sink in and to aid in that effort what i like to do is roll up a couple pieces of foil to create sort of a makeshift rack for the plate and what that'll do is raise that brisket up off the surface and allow some airflow underneath as well as make a space for any moisture drawn out by the salt to drip down so that is optional but it only takes a second and i think it does help but either way we'll go ahead and pop that in the fridge uncovered for about 8 to 12 hours and then once that's set we can move on to the only other thing we have to prep and that would be our onion and apple mixture which will eventually turn into our gravy and we'll start that by sauteing some onions and butter over medium heat along with a nice big pinch of salt and of course if you are making this for passover using that butter would not be kosher so if that matters you can go with some vegetable oil or better yet some schmaltz also known as chicken fat but anyway what we're going to do is cook that stirring on medium heat until those onions soften up and turn translucent and if you wanted you could cook these until they were nicely browned and caramelized but i'm not going to because i'm adding apple juice to this which is kind of sweet so i'm going to keep these a little bit on the savory side and like i said just cook them until they turn soft and translucent of course having said that you go ahead and do them as long as you want i mean you are after all the leonard cohen of how far these onions should be going and your sauce will have a little deeper color if you go longer but as i mentioned cooking them just to this point i think will pair better with the apple juice and by the way in the business this is referred to as sweating the onions and then what we'll do once we think these have cooked long enough is go ahead and toss in some sliced garlic as well as a little touch of freshly and finely chopped rosemary and then we'll finish up with one cup of apple juice and we'll go ahead and stir all that together as well as raise our heat to high because before we use this we want to reduce these liquids by about half oh and please relax if you're not a great judge of what half of something is because if you didn't reduce this at all it would still work or if you reduced all the liquid it would still work so just relax and let it boil for a couple minutes until you think maybe sort of half of the liquid is gone at which point we will turn off the heat because that is now ready to use and that's it once our onion mixture's set we can go ahead and pull our beef out of the fridge and because our meat was salted and uncovered it's going to look a little darker and the surface will look kind of leathery but don't worry it's supposed to look like that and then what we'll do to get this ready for the oven is transfer half of our apple onion mixture into a baking dish and as you can see i do like to place a sheet pan underneath which i think makes this easier to move around and will catch drips not to mention possibly providing some heat diffusion although i'm not sure if that last one has any effect but anyway we'll go ahead and place our meat on top fat side up and then we'll transfer the rest of our mixture over the top oh and if possible try to choose a pan or baking dish that's just a little bigger than the brisket itself although anything oven safe will work and then once that's set we'll go ahead and wrap that very tightly in foil at which point it is ready to transfer into the center of a 325 degree oven but only for an hour and a half right this fast method for cooking brisket requires two temperatures so we're going to start at 325 but after an hour and a half we're going to turn it down to 250 and we'll continue at 250 for about 2 hours and 15 minutes or until our brisket looks like this well not this but like this and if everything's gone according to plan our beef should be fork tender which mine was in fact mine might have gone about 15 minutes longer than i needed which reminds me to tell you it's probably not a bad idea to check yours after two hours at 250. but anyway once our meat is tender we'll go ahead and scrape those onions off the top into our cooking liquid and we will carefully transfer that meat to a plate and we'll use that foil we just pulled off to keep it warm well we go ahead and finish our amazing apple onion gravy and to do that all we need to do is pour it into some kind of container because we are going to have a significant amount of rendered fat and by pouring it into something like this we can easily skim that off the top at which point if we want it's ready to use in this form which is very delicious it would not look bad at all but if we want to quickly and easily turn this into a gravy all we need to do is blend it for a few seconds and by the way if you fill yours to the top like i did be sure to pulse it on and off for just like a second at a time because if you turn it on and leave it on this is what's going to happen so that was unfortunate but these things will happen and i simply cleaned it up and kept blending as if nothing had even happened and by simply blending those cooking liquids we've produced quite a gorgeous sauce that tastes even better than it looks and of course you'll give it a taste for seasoning but i bet it's very close and that's it once our apple and onion gravy is ready we can go ahead and slice our meat which you always want to do across the grain which for me are going this way so i'll have to slice across that way but i'm going to turn this around because i have my eye on this beautiful succulent looking end and i will slice them off so i can go in for a taste and even though we used a relatively short cooking time this meat was beautifully tender and more importantly still very moist all right if you really know what you're doing those low and slow methods can work out and produce something similar to this but it can be a little trickier plus if it's about the same why are we waiting six extra hours that is a good question another good question is why am i eating this on a cutting board and not next to a mashed potato pancake and carrot salad with my meat being sauced with that amazing apple and onion gravy that we may want to garnish with some finely snip chives and yes that is kind of a big pile of beef but one taste and you'll understand why i needed that much and above and beyond the moist tender meat this method produces that subtle earthy sweetness from our onion and apple mixture has really permeated that brisket and somehow makes things taste even beefier and in case you're wondering as delicious as that gravy is on the beef it also worked amazingly well on my mashed potato pancake which i'm pretty sure we have a video for but if we don't i will take care of that at some point in fact as great as the beef and sauce was i have to admit to being sort of distracted by that pancake although to balance things i was not at all distracted by the carrot salad but anyway that's it what i'm calling easy baked beef brisket even though it's technically braised but that aside this method is much faster and produces results just as good if not better than the classic low and slow method plus once we're done cooking we're able to produce one of the easiest and most delicious gravies ever so whether you plan on leaving out the butter and making this for passover or maybe you plan on making this for that friend of yours who's very proud of their beef brisket which takes like 12 hours and you've never had the heart to tell them it's a little bit dry or you're just in the mood for moist tender beef briskets but don't want to spend all day waiting for it to cook either way i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] moroccan spiced pork roast that's right serving a gorgeous fancy-looking holiday roast does not have to be complicated time-consuming or expensive and hopefully this incredibly delicious and very easy moroccan spice pork loin will prove exactly that okay this thing is fast easy and believe it or not affordable but despite all that when you bring this to the table it looks like a million dollars and your guests will be thinking thank god we're not having prime rib or beef wellington so with that let's go ahead and get started and the first thing we're going to need to do is butterfly a pork loin roast which usually these days comes pretty much fully trimmed and please note one edge is going to be a little bigger and a little rounder whereas the opposite edge will be a little thinner and a little more ragged and it's that side where we want to start our cut and what we'll do using a sharp thin knife is slice right into the center keeping our blade parallel to the cutting board and we want to slice in but not all the way through okay we want to stop about an inch from the other side so we can open this like a book and this is not a game of speed so take your time and then once we're able to open that up we can use some smaller cuts to do a little fine tuning so this hopefully lays out nice and flat and then what we'll do once that's been accomplished is season this very generously with five teaspoons of kosher salt right inside and out and by the way as usual if you're using fine salt you'll only need about half this amount oh and i should mention if you're scared or don't have a thin sharp knife and you don't think you can cut it this way you can actually still do this recipe just seasoning on the outside i mean you are after all the crazy town of whether this butterflying goes down but being able to season this inside and out is a huge advantage but anyway we'll go ahead and season that very generously inside and out at which point we'll transfer that onto a plate and believe it or not let it sit out at room temp for 30 to 45 minutes which i'm sure is going to make a few of you nervous but that's fine while we don't want to be scared being a little bit nervous can be fun and please believe me when i tell you nothing bad is going to happen here having said that if you want to do this in the fridge for two or three hours that's fine too and then what we'll do while we're giving our pork wood is basically a quick dry brine is go ahead and whip up our moroccan spice paste which will contain some ground cumin some coriander some ground ginger some freshly ground black pepper some smoked paprika some cayenne of course some cinnamon some ground cloves and last but not least some allspice and then what we'll do to turn this into a paste is squeeze in about three tablespoons of honey and then we can take a spoon and give this a mix and as you start mixing this it might look a little too thick and dry but don't worry just keep stirring and in about a minute you should end up with something that looks like this and if it doesn't just add another squeeze of honey and then once that's set we'll go back to our butterflied pork which to recap has been sitting out for 30 to 45 minutes and we'll go ahead and open that up and we'll proceed to spread over about half our spice mixture which by the way is going to be a lot easier to do if you pat the meat dry right that saltine is going to create a bit of moisture which is going to make this harder to spread on so probably not a bad idea here to pat that dry with a paper towel although as you can see once i got started it wasn't too bad and like i said we'll spread about half that inside and then the rest on the exterior bottom and top and by top i mean the fattier side if you have one okay this was fairly well trimmed but if you do have one side that has a little more fat than the other have that side up and that's it once our pork's been moroccan spiced we'll go ahead and take some pieces of kitchen twine and tie this up every few inches and a big tip here when you start make sure you twist that through three or four times before you cinch it up and that will create some friction and keep that tie cinched until you finish the knot and then once completed i like to trim off the excess and we will go ahead and do that three or four times every about an inch and a half or so and besides holding our pork together and helping it roast a little more evenly once this is cooked and those are removed the marks it leaves are going to help give this that classic holiday roast look and then once that's bound we'll go ahead and transfer that into some kind of baking dish or roasting pan into which we've drizzled a couple tablespoons of olive oil and then if we're including them which you should we will go ahead and surround this with whatever vegetables we're going to serve it with which in my case are some little potatoes some chunks of carrot some red onions and a couple nice long green anaheim chilies that i split in half and we'll go ahead and arrange those around our meat and yes in case you're wondering i did toss those with some olive oil and salt first and that's it once our baking dish has been potatoed and vegetabled i'm gonna go ahead and clean off any excess oil or drippings mostly so i don't drop this on the weight of the stove and once that's been wiped this is now ready to transfer into the center of a 350 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes or until the internal temp in the thickest part reads 140 to 145 and once it's reached that point it should look very similar to this which looks pretty good but hang on it gets much much better because what we'll do at this point is grab some tongs and we'll give that meat a turn or two in those beautiful pan drippings at which point we will transfer that onto a plate cover it loosely with foil and we will let it sit and rest like that for 15 minutes before we slice it and what i usually like to do while i'm waiting for that is go ahead and toss our potatoes and veggies in those drippings which by the way just smell insanely delicious and then what i'll do once those are all nicely coated is crank my oven up to like 425 and toss those back in for a little extra roasting while our meat's resting and of course if you think they're already perfect don't bother but generally this kind of stuff always could use a little extra caramelization so i did pop those back in for about 10 minutes and that's it once we're ready to serve we'll go ahead and remove our strings and of course any of those accumulated juices will get added back into our pan drippings and then once unstrung we'll go ahead and platter our pork and we will surround that with our roast vegetables and of course we're also going to shine up the top with a few spoons of our drippings to create what i think is just an absolutely gorgeous presentation and as i mentioned earlier those marks the strings left really i think help give this that classic holiday roast look okay just the way it creates those subtle shadows to me really makes this look more appealing and provocative which is why in the business we refer to that as culinary cleavage but anyway we'll go ahead and spoon over some of those drippings and that's it our moroccan spice pork roast is ready to slice and serve and if you followed the instructions and let it sit out salted at room temp as directed and also pulled this out when it was between 140 and 145 internal temp you're going to be enjoying some of the juiciest most flavorful pork you've ever had and keep in mind this was an outside slice and it was still practically dripping with moisture and as awesome as the texture was the flavor on this thing is equally fantastic okay all those beautifully aromatic and warming spices really work so well with a pork roast which is why by the way a lot of these same spices are used when we cure and glaze hams so i really can't even explain how much i was enjoying these slices i mean we hit the trifecta here of looks great feels great tastes great and i would have been very happy just continuing to slice and eat this off the platter but i decided to stop and plate up a few slices which of course we're always going to want to top with some of those amazingly flavorful pan drippings plus if you want and i almost always do i like to garnish this also with a little bit of garlic and mint yogurt sauce which not surprisingly you make by adding mint and garlic to yogurt and as insanely great as this is with just the drippings a little bit of that cool garlicky herbaceous yogurt really elevates this pork even further oh and i should mention this recipe is adapted from a method that usually uses legolam which would also be absolutely perfect used here but whether you end up using pork or lamb this really will be tremendous and proves you don't have to spend a lot of time effort and money to serve an incredibly delicious and super fancy looking holiday or special occasion roast which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] eggnog that's right have you ever been eating a bowl of custard and thought to yourself this is good but i wish i had more nutmeg and also i'd like to be able to drink it well good news this iconic christmas beverage might be just the thing and i know i did do some recent anti-eggnog tweets but i was mostly down on the store-bought kind that tends to be way too thick and too sweet and not to mention doesn't contain any whiskey so i thought i'd go ahead and show you how to make the real stuff which is completely different than the stuff in the carton it's actually quite delicious and this is how you make it so the first thing we're going to need here is a whole bunch of freshly grated nutmeg and usually because we're just using a pinch we'll just grate a little bit into the sauce or whatever we're using it in and that's it but in this case because we need so much more and we have to measure out like three quarters of a teaspoon that's going to be too hard to determine just by grading it in so that's why we're going to simply grate it onto a plate and that way we're going to be able to get a little more accurate of a measurement so we'll go ahead and we'll grate our nutmeg and set that aside until we need it at which point we can move on to operation separate four eggs so for our nog we're going to need four egg whites and four egg yolks and the last time we did this i used the through the hand method but several viewers pointed out that the oils on your hands could affect the whipping of the egg whites which i guess is technically true although that's never happened to me no matter what method i use the egg whites seem to work fine but anyway i did use the shell to shell method nonetheless and one quick thing i wanted to mention it's always okay to get a little egg white in your egg yolk but you never want any yolk in your white because that fat's gonna prevent them from whipping up okay but anyway we're gonna separate four eggs and then start doing stuff to them and the first thing we're gonna do is add some sugar to the yolks and take a whisk and mix that for about a minute or until the mixture kind of lightens up and gets a little creamy and looks like this at which point we can go ahead and add our dairy in two forms we're going to do a couple cups of milk as well as a cup of heavy cream and we'll go ahead and give that a stir and then what we'll do is we'll take this mixture over to the stove and place that down on medium heat and cook it whisking very often until it reaches a temperature of between 170 and 180 degrees which to a bare fingertip is going to feel very hot and almost too hot to touch so that is how some people tell but that is obviously very unscientific so my preferred method of course is to use a thermometer thereby taking all the guesswork out of it and sometimes when we're cooking similar mixtures we can kind of watch to see when it thickens up as an indicator for when it's done but because we only have four egg yolks here and that's a lot of liquid the viscosity is really not going to change too much here okay so we really do want to check with the thermometer so like i said we're going to keep that on medium heat stirring quite often until we hit our target temperature which i said is about 170 180 at which point we can quickly and carefully remove that from the heats and while the mixture is still piping hot we can stir in our freshly grated nutmeg and then once that's set we can add another key ingredient which some crazy people consider optional but i don't and that would be the whiskey so i'm gonna add two splashes of some nice bourbon some people do go with rum but i prefer the whiskey but of course that's up to you you are kermit the frog of your christmas eggnog and speaking of being green don't drink too much of this an eggnog hangover is not recommended so we'll go ahead and we'll stir in a little bit of booze at which point we need to cool this down and refrigerate it until very very cold and to speed up that process i like to cool mine in an ice water bath except i don't waste any ice we need to save that for the cocktails so if you use a nice big bowl and lots of cold fresh water just give it a stir once in a while and that's going to cool down very quickly you'll see and by the way i wanted to mention a lot of the cool kids are doing non-cooked versions of eggnog and there's actually no heat involved everything's done by whisking and emulsifying the ingredients together but while you can get a similar texture i really think the cooked version tastes better but as usual with these kind of theories there's no way to prove them and then what we're going to do when our mixture cools down to room temp is transfer this into some kind of container and i like to use this glass pitcher which is not only going to allow me to chill this but there's also going to be enough room in here to mix in my egg whites and serve right from the same container so we'll transfer in our now cooled custard mixture and we will pop that in the fridge for a couple hours or until thoroughly chilled at which point we can move into final production which starts with our meringue so we will take our four reserved egg whites and start to beat those with a whisk just until we get some very very soft peaks forming something similar to what you see right here and once it reaches this stage what we'll do is we'll sprinkle in one tablespoon of sugar and continue whisking until we have stiffer peaks okay we don't want to go too far but we do want to whip it until it's at least this stage so that those egg whites will hold a peak like that or sometimes i refer to this as the shaving cream stage because that's pretty much what it looks like or at least back in the day when there was shaving cream but anyway once our egg whites are whipped up we can go ahead and stir them into our now very very ice-cold custard base just whisk it right in don't worry about anything like folding we're not doing a souffle here just mix it all together and believe it or not our eggnog is done and yes if your custard base was super ice cold you could enjoy this now but really i think it's best if you put it back in the fridge and chill it thoroughly again and while a lot of that frothiness will dissipate as it sits and chills in the fridge i think the taste and texture of this is better if you do chill it thoroughly again but either way when you're ready to serve we will transfer that into some appropriate copper mug and what's going to happen is you pour that in this thin but gorgeous layer of meringue is going to form on the top which should give us that classic eggnog look speaking of which it is mandatory we will finish this with a little extra gradient of fresh nutmeg and our eggnog is officially ready to serve and by the way i know that looks like a nice leather placemat but it's not it's not real leather it's actually naugahyde oh yeah some of these just write themselves but anyway that's it your classic homemade christmas eggnog if you've never had the real stuff imagine a luxuriously textured bourbon spiked custard being sipped through a thin layer of nutmeg scented meringue i know that does sound delicious and it is and i really should have shown this earlier before i poured the first one but you must whisk this every time you pour and that goes for re-pours like this as well as whisking it very thoroughly before you pour that first one and that way you're always incorporating those whipped egg whites back into the mixture which really does give it that beautiful smooth but not too thick texture okay and hey if you're going to top it off you might as well really top it off and yes that will be the most popular question after this is posted do i have to put the booze can you do it without the bourbon well of course you can but you shouldn't not only does that bourbon add an important flavor element but at the christmas party it's gonna make everybody's story seem a little more interesting so there is that to consider but anyway that's it how to make homemade eggnog whether you're gonna make it for the christmas party or just the next time you feel like drinking dessert i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy hot buttered rum that's right i am trying to do a voice over after drinking two hot butter drums whereas people that have had three of them call them hot ruddered bums but anyway i'm sure i'll be fine at least i feel fine like really fine and while eggnog gets a lot more press for me hot buttered rum is the ultimate festive holiday drink alright so rich so delicious so satisfying and super easy to make so with that let's go ahead and get started with what they call the hot butter rum batter which is not going to begin with hot butter but rather nice and soft room temperature butter to which we will add one half cup of severely packed dark brown sugar plus a little touch of real pure vanilla extract followed by an array of all our favorite holiday spices which of course means cinnamon as well as some ground ginger and we'll also want some freshly and finely grated nutmeg and when i say finely grated i mean don't press down too hard on the grater okay we don't want big chunks we're also going to put in just a little touch of cardamom as well as an equally small pinch of ground cloves and then last but not least assuming we're using unsalted butter which we are and ideally a really high quality one we'll also need a small pinch of salt and that's it we'll go ahead and take a spatula and we'll mix mash and smear this into a very smooth paste and by the way since all this is going to get melted by boiling water achieving a smooth texture is not a big deal but making sure all those spices are incorporated evenly is so please take your time and give this a very thorough and thoughtful spatulation and that's it once our batter is mixed it's ready to use and if we're going to use it right away in this soft form which i am we'll go ahead and take a spoon and scoop out about two tablespoons of this stuff although like everything else in this drink that's going to be to taste but i do think we want a nice generous spoon like this and we'll go ahead and transfer that into some kind of heat proof festive holiday mug preferably one with a poinsettia design but in a pinch holly will work and then to our hot butter rum batter we'll go ahead and add a little bit of heavy cream which is optional but i think mandatory and then of course we're going to need to add some rum which for me is going to be three tablespoons of dark rum and obviously if you'd prefer to use white ram go ahead that's up to you i mean you are after all the peter gunn of your hot buttered rum but anyway if you're not sure go ahead and investigate and try a few different kinds and see which one you like but put me down as a dark rum guy and that's it once that's set we'll go ahead and fill this about halfway up with boiling water and we'll give it a stir with our spoon until that batter is completely dissolved at which point we'll top it off with the rest for a total boiling water amount of about three quarters of a cup to one cup again depending on your taste and that's it we'll give it one final stir before garnishing with either a sprinkle of cinnamon or a little extra gradient of nutmeg which is what i prefer and again use a very light touch we don't want chunks and that's it our hot buttered rum is ready to enjoy except i didn't i took like 100 pictures and if you end up doing that as soon as you finish your instagram you'll probably want to give it one more stir before you start sipping speaking of which let me go ahead and grab this and start doing exactly that so cheers to you and that my friends is probably my favorite hot drink of all time holiday or otherwise okay it is nice and rich but not too rich as well as this version i like is not too sweet alright some formulas call for a ridiculous amount of sugar but rum already has a nice sweet flavor so i don't think we need a ton in the batter and i think the real genius of this drink is the incredible texture and mouth feel you get as you sip that hot sweet spicy mixture through that layer of butter on the top and above and beyond that it also acts as a layer of insulation and actually helps keep the drink warm so we got that going for us which is nice and please be careful it does not taste like there's an ounce and a half a hard liquor in here but there is but anyway that's one hot buttered rum down and that's how we do them if we're using the batter fresh but if you make the batter ahead of time which is a great idea what we'll do is transfer it onto a piece of plastic wrap and then we'll sort of shape it into a tube if possible something close to like a stick of butter size and then once we have that smoothed out to a nice uniform shape what we'll do is simply transfer that into the fridge or freezer until we're ready to use it at which point we'll pull it out and slice off portions like this and again the exact amount's going to be up to you okay i'd say between one and a half and two tablespoons is just about perfect but anyway you decide and that's it we'll take a slice of that and pop it in our mug and then repeat all the earlier steps oh and fun fact ram is america's oldest liquor and this drink actually dates back to colonial times and what you're going to do with that info i have no idea but anyway i just thought you should know oh and regarding the cream some recipes actually call for using melted vanilla ice cream which i think is kind of crazy because why are we wasting good ice cream since melted ice cream is really nothing more than sweet and cream with a little bit of vanilla in it plus it might have artificial ingredients and stabilizers so to me it just makes a lot more sense to go with the cream but anyway i went ahead and mixed this one up exactly like the first except in addition to the nutmeg garnish i also decided to garnish with this amazing log and pine cones that michelle found along with the obligatory holiday point setup plans and no i don't usually do a lot of food styling and basically this is why oh and the reason i'm only showing you part of the plant is because we're still working on the kitchen and i'm working on some open shelving which is all taped up and i didn't think it looked good as you can see from this quick peek but anyway i tried and yes once everything's fixed up we're gonna do a nice reveal but anyway that's it how i like to do hot buttered rum we're officially calling it a festive holiday drink but really if we're being honest this is a lot closer to a liquid dessert and as much as i enjoyed that first one for whatever reason the second one seemed even more pleasurable but no matter how many you drink responsibly of course i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] chocolate yule log that's right i don't think i'm going out on a limb when i say many home cooks would not attempt something like this because they assume it involves many components lots of steps and super advanced culinary skills to make while i'm very happy to tell you that only two out of those three things are true because while this does require a little bit of time and effort the techniques involved in making this bush noel are actually quite simple especially if you have a video that shows you how to do them so with that let's go ahead and get started with our filling and by filling i mean very simple buttercream frosting before that we're going to combine some powdered sugar with a little bit of butter as well as a touch of cocoa powder which is high quality and unsweetened by the way then we'll also add a pinch of salt as well as a splash of coffee liqueur and or extract and what we'll do is take that over to our mixer and whip it up until it's very light and fluffy and if your butter's nice and soft this is going to happen very quickly and easily but if it's still kind of firm and cold like mine it's not it's going to stick in the middle of the whisk and really do nothing and you'll have to stop and work it with your spatula and do that a few times until it starts to soften up which i won't make you watch but either way we're gonna whip that on high speed until like i said it's very very light and fluffy and hopefully looks a little something like this and while we could certainly use this as is i'm gonna go ahead and transfer this into a bowl and add one more ingredient a nice big spoon of mascarpone cheese which is a wonderfully rich italian style of cream cheese and we'll go ahead and use our spatula to mix that in and that's gonna add a really nice little bit of tanginess in the background as well as sort of lighten this up a little and by the way you know your frosting is pretty decadent when you're lightening it up with mascarpone but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that in and then simply set that aside until we need it at which point we'll move on to one more thing we need to do ahead of time and that would be to line a baking sheet with some parchment paper and brush it generously with melted butter and i didn't show it but a little tip put a little butter on the pan before you put the paper down which will sort of hold it in place while you brush it and then once our pan is prepped we can move on to this very simple chocolate sponge cake recipe which we will start by combining our dry ingredients which includes cocoa powder some salt and just a little bit of all-purpose flour and what we'll do is go ahead and take a whisk and give that a good mix even though technically we really should sift this okay and the reason is sometimes you get little clumps or lumps of cocoa that you really want to have broken up before you add it to the wet stuff and while whisking this together for a minute generally does break those up i would say sifting does do a better job but either way once that's been accomplished we can move on to our wet ingredients which are exactly five large eggs that are room temperature very important you do not use cold eggs for this and then to the eggs we'll add a little touch of sugar and what we're going to do here is whip these on high speed for a few minutes until they turn very very pale very thick and very fluffy which is why if possible you really do want to use an electric mixer for this i mean sure you can do it by hand but it's going to take a long time and a lot of effort although the good news is you'll probably burn more calories than the average serving of cake but either way we're going to whip those eggs in sugar until they get really thick and fluffy and look exactly like this alright you see that do not stop before it looks like this and then what we'll do at this point is add our dry ingredients in two additions okay we'll transfer in about half in this first edition we're just going to mix for a few seconds right not on high speed on one of your lower settings just until it starts to mix in oh and if you're going to forget to put in your vanilla extract this would be the point you would forget to do that so yes i should have added that here and i'll mention that in the blog post but anyway as i was saying we're going to mix that first half in for a few seconds and even though it's not totally mixed in we're going to stop and add the rest and then we'll start that on low for a few seconds before turning it up to a higher speed for a few more seconds at which point we're gonna stop and it's still not all mixed in but again that's not a problem because we're gonna finish this by hand okay just pull off that whisk and give that a few stirs manually and then give it a check and it was close but i decided to give it a few more stirs and this way we can make sure we're incorporating everything around the edges and along the bottom without knocking out too much of that foaminess which could possibly happen if we mix this all the way with the machine and then once that's set we'll go ahead and transfer that onto our baking sheet and we'll use a spatula to spread that out as even as we can and please note i'm not going all the way out to the edges and you can if you want it's not really a problem but i actually prefer to leave a little space on either end and while those edges will be a little thinner once it bakes i think that works out in our favor later on but bottom line we'll go ahead and transfer our batter on and spread it out at which point we have to give this thing the whole tabitappa because while we do want all the millions and millions of little bubbles in there we want to knock out the few hundred big bubbles so we'll go ahead and bang that on the table a few times before we transfer into the center of a 400 degree oven for just 8 to 10 minutes or until it looks like what you're going to see in a few seconds and while that's baking we're going to have just enough time to take a clean kitchen towel and cover it with a nice dusting of powdered sugar and you don't have to do the whole thing just an area slightly bigger than a sheet pan and you're going to see why in just a minute and we'll go ahead and pull out our cake which after about eight to ten minutes should look like this and what we'll want to do is let this cool down for a couple minutes while we do a few things one would be to go around with a knife making sure it's not stuck to the pan and if it is just cut it loose and the other would be to dust the top of this with a little bit of powdered sugar and what the powdered sugar is doing on the cake and the towel is preventing this very sticky sponge from sticking and by the way you can if you want to use cocoa but that's more expensive than powdered sugar so i'm going with this and once that's set we'll go ahead and give this one last check with a spatula to make sure it's not sticking anywhere because the next step is to flop this over onto our towel which is my preferred method right some people like to cover with a towel and then flip it over but as long as you have this lined up and you do it quick it's going to be fine and then we'll remove the pan and carefully peel off our parchment paper and hopefully none of it sticks even though almost always a little bit does but that's fine because you get to scrape that off with your fingernail and eat it and get a little sneak preview and then before we roll this up in our towel we want to give it one more dusting of powdered sugar because i can't stress enough how much this stuff loves to stick to anything plastic metal wood even a towel so we'll go ahead and dust that again and then very carefully very gently roll this up and because this is such a delicate sponge we don't want to be pressing down as we do this okay so use a very light touch and we'll go ahead and roll that all the way and then all we're going to do is let this cool down rolled up like this for 15 minutes and by doing this the sponge is going to have the memory of this roll so that when we unroll it and spread our filling on we can roll it back up without it cracking so this is a very key step and as you can see some of the sugar actually stuck to the towel but none of the cake did so mission accomplished and at this point we can go ahead and transfer on our filling and spread it out evenly and to make that a little easier what we like to do is dollop our filling here and there so that it's equally distributed before we start spreading it around okay versus dumping it all in one spot and then trying to spread it all out evenly and by the way i thought i was being really judicious with the buttercream here but as it turned out i put on a lot more than i realized as you'll see in the final shots which is great if you're one of these frosting people but i'm more of a cake guy anyway the point is you spread out as much as you want i mean you are after all the me of this edible tree so we will leave this cake defrosting ratio up to you and then once we have that all spread out we can go ahead and carefully start to roll this up and the first few inches are the hardest and if you need to use the towel to kind of help you along go ahead but once you get it started you should be fine and because our sponge has that quote unquote memory of being rolled you shouldn't really have a problem with it cracking and just like the first time you rolled it don't press down too hard okay use a nice light touch and once we're happy with how that's rolled and shaped we'll go ahead and dust the top with a little more sugar because why not and then once that's dusted we'll go ahead and wrap it in plastic and please accept my apologies for speeding this up which i hate to do but i didn't have enough interesting things to say to fill up the time but anyway we're going to go ahead and wrap that in plastic and i'm doing two layers even though i'm only showing one and once wrapped we're going to transfer that into the fridge for a few hours or until it's completely chilled before we apply our bark so we'll go ahead and pop that in the fridge and while it's in there i'm going to go ahead and make my chocolate ganache which is nothing more than dark chocolate chips with hot boiling cream poured over it and we'll let that sit like that for about a minute before stirring it together and as usual with chocolate ganache it looks terrible but then you keep stirring and eventually it looks awesome and as that cools it's going to thicken up as you can see right here with a little bit i had left over from a different batch and to me that makes one of the great chocolate frostings of all time and as you're about to see makes a very beautiful bark and then assuming our chocolate u-log is completely chilled we'll go ahead and pull that out and unwrap it and we'll cut a little piece off the end officially to kind of clean it up but unofficially because i wanted to taste it and it was amazing and by the way i didn't like what that serrated edge was doing so i switched to a straight edge knife and what we want to do is make an angled cut about three inches or so from the end because what's going to happen once we transfer the main log to a parchment-lined sheet pan is that we're going to apply a little bit of buttercream to that cup piece and sort of stick or press that onto the side to make it look like there's another branch coming off our log and while this steps optional i think it really does make for a much more impressive presentation and then once that was said i took the rest of my leftover ganache and used that to cover where that branch attached and as far as working with the ganache you can let it get really stiff like this and as long as it's still spreadable it's fine but as you can see as i continue covering this with the fresh ganache i find this looser runnier stuff a little easier to work with all right as long as it's not too runny okay we don't want this running all over our pan but either way we're going to go ahead and apply a nice layer of our ganache over the entire log all right all the way down to the bottom but of course we will leave the front side uncovered so we can see our beautiful swirl and people can see that our log is roughly five to six years old and just by spreading the ganache over like this you're going to get a fairly bark-like appearance but for our final bark details what we want to do is pop this in the fridge for about 15 or 20 minutes until that stuff firms up a little bit and then using the tip of the knife we can really give this thing the texture of actual bark okay just drag that tip through all over and since real bark is kind of rough and irregular there's really no way to screw this up but personally i think the rougher and more irregular the better and yes this is exactly as fun as it looks which is super fun and then once we have those final details done what we have to do again is chill this thoroughly before serving so we'll pop that back into the fridge until we're ready to serve at which point we'll transfer that onto some kind of attractive serving platter or a gorgeous piece of marble and proceed to dust atop a little bit of cocoa as well as a little powdered sugar to make it look even more like an old log that has a little bit of frost and while your guests will be very very impressed if you serve it just like this if you wanted to you could also add some gingerbread dirt as well as some meringue mushrooms which are super easy to make and maybe i'll show you how to do those for a final touch maybe we'll add a few rosemary sprigs here and there to complete the scene and that's it our chocolate u-log is done and it totally looks like we knew what we were doing i mean if this doesn't impress your friends and family i'm sorry but your friends and family are too hard to impress but just looking amazing is not enough this also should taste incredible so i went ahead and cut a slice to try it out and i played that up next to some meringue mushrooms which are never not adorable and despite it having a little too much buttercream for my taste it really was fantastic right that almost flourless chocolate sponge is just sweet enough and still very moist and paired perfectly with that very simple mocha buttercream so above and beyond his show-stopping appearance i really did enjoy the taste and texture of this as well oh and i should mention before this gets rolled up you can actually soak the sponge with a little bit of liqueur or liquor just like i'm doing here with some kahlua so if you did want to adult this up you can brush or drizzle that onto the sponge itself or just add some on when you slice it and serve it like this so just a little bonus tip for how to help achieve those rosy santa clause like cheeks but anyway i'll finish the rest of this slice off later right now i have to take a little mushroom break make that a mushrooms break but anyway that's it my method for making the classic holiday bush to noelle like i said in the intro not really that hard to make although it does take a fair amount of time and effort but when you're done it looks like it takes a lot of time and effort which really is the point of a special holiday dessert so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] the queen's christmas pudding that's right i'm not sure when or even if i'll be asked to make christmas pudding for the queen but if that happens this is the one i'm gonna make her since it really is spectacular oh and if you're wondering why they call this a pudding and not a cake well that's because our british friends call every dessert a pudding except pudding which they call custard but in any event let's go ahead and get started by chopping up some dried fruit which for me will include some pitted medjool dates as well as some turkish apricots and a little tip here to help prevent the fruit from sticking to the knife if we take a little bit of vegetable oil on our finger and rub it on both sides of the knife like this and be careful don't cut yourself that's going to help our blade from getting all gummed up all right it's still going to stick a little bit but not quite as much and yes you can use a food processor if you want but for me the texture's not going to be as good because while some of the pieces will be chopped nicely a lot of them will get pureed into a sticky paste which is not really what i want or i assume the queen wants but either way we'll go ahead and chop that up fairly small until we have something that looks like this at which point we'll go ahead and transfer that into a nice big mixing bowl and proceed to add the rest of our dried fruit which for me will include some currants which are basically like little tiny raisins and then i'm also going to add some actual raisins which are basically just like extra large currants and then i'm also going to do a whole bunch of dried cranberries which i'm not a huge fan of normally but that tartness is very important in this and then we'll definitely also do some candied ginger which i chopped up nice and small and that's it once our bowl has been fully fruited we'll go ahead and pour in two or three tablespoons of your favorite whiskey okay i'm using a nice bourbon here but even a bad bourbon would be good and then what we'll do is give that a quick mix and then we'll let it sit for a few minutes while we go ahead and zest and juice one large orange or a clementine or a couple tangerines and we'll go ahead and add that zest and juice and stir that in as well and then in a lot of christmas pudding recipes they want us to wrap this up and let it sit like overnight so that fruit absorbs the liquor and moisture from the orange but that is not how i pudding and i'll explain why later but what we are gonna do is pour in a whole bunch of melted butter and then we'll take our spatula and give this a stir until everything's evenly coated and yes in the classic recipe the fat used here would be suet but i was fresh out and i assume you don't have any sitting around but that's fine as you'll see the butter works beautifully and what we'll do once that's been mixed in is stop and add one beaten egg a splash of heavy cream as well as some buttermilk and then we'll take our spatula and give all this a stir and if you can't find buttermilk no problem you can just use regular milk but i do like that little bit of extra tanginess the buttermilk gives you so if you do use milk maybe squeeze in half a lemon to compensate but anyway once that's mixed up we'll go ahead and add the rest of our ingredients which would be a little bit of salt some chopped pecans or the festive nut of your choice some dry breadcrumbs and then last but not least we will add some all-purpose flour and that's it we'll simply take a spatula and give this a mix until we formed a very thick very sticky batter oh by the way traditionally fresh bread crumbs are used but i think using dries a lot easier and as long as our pudding has enough moisture in it which ours does it is not going to be a problem and i think you actually get a better texture and that's it once our batter is mixed we will transfer into a very very well buttered bowl right the size and shape are up to you we just need to be able to get it in and out of the pot we're going to steam it in and what we'll do is transfer that in and press it down and then we'll smooth out the top at which point we'll place over a circle of parchment paper and to make that simply fold it up like you're doing a paper airplane although it's really more like a paper rocket and then simply cut it about the same length as the radius no not the diameter the radius and that's it we'll just open it up and press it down and that's going to protect the top of our pudding from what i'm not sure but that's just how it's done and then once that's been parchment paper we're going to stretch over two pieces of plastic wrap right there's one and there's two and then we'll place this on top of a third piece that's nice and long and we will bring those ends up and over to really hold everything nice and securely and by the way in case you're wondering and i'm pretty sure nobody is but in the business we call that cater wrapped and then after the plastic we will place over two pieces of foil right there's one and there's two and then just to hedge our bets we'll go ahead and tie a string around this nice and tight which means we have to wind that end in at least three or four times so that we have enough friction so it doesn't loosen as we finish the knot oh and i should mention some people make like a handle on this with the string so that they can pull it out of their steaming pot but i've never liked that idea and i always thought it was a better idea to just find a big enough pot and that's it we'll trim off the excess and if we wanted we could start steaming this pudding right now but since it takes four hours i prefer to pop it in the fridge overnight and then cook it the next day which gives our dried fruit time to hydrate and that's why earlier i didn't need to let my fruit soak with that liquor and the orange juice so i did pop mine in the fridge overnight and then the next morning i was ready to steam in this dutch oven and i like to place some rosemary sprigs at the bottom so that our glass bowl is not touching the bottom and you can do the same thing with chopsticks but then you don't get the aromatherapy and your kitchen will not smell as good unless of course you have scented chopsticks which would be super weird but anyway we would carefully place our pudding over the top and then we'll fill this pot about halfway up with water and if you're wondering why i don't want that bowl touching the bottom of the pot i'm really not exactly sure it just bothers me somehow and i feel like it's better if there's some water circulating underneath and then what we'll do once that's filled up about halfway is turn our heat on to high and we will cover that tightly and we'll wait for that to start to boil and once it does we're getting lots of lovely steam we'll go ahead and lower our heat to medium and we will steam this covered for believe it or not four hours and during that time there's absolutely nothing to do except check once in a while to see if you have to add more water or that's going to depend on how tight your lid is so go ahead and take a peek every hour or so just to be safe and that's it after steaming for four hours our pudding should be cooked oh and don't worry all that stuff you see is just from the rosemary which as i mentioned made my kitchen smell amazing take that scented candles and then what we'll do is grab a couple towels and we'll very very very carefully lift this out and then what we're hoping to see after we snip off the string and take off the foil is some very tightly stretched concave plastic wrap no not convex concave which means our seal is tight and no water or steam got into our pudding and then as far as the dismount goes we will place a plate over the top and then very carefully turn this over to reveal the stunning beauty that is a properly steamed christmas pudding but wait it gets better since what we'll do next is paint this all over with some maple syrup which is what i use okay in england they use golden syrup since they don't have any trees left okay they cut them all down to make ships and cricket bats but either will work so you decide i mean you are after all the meg and markle of how to make the surface sparkle but with this flavor profile i actually think the maple syrup works out better and then for a final touch the top is usually garnished with holly which i don't have but i do have a bush that grows out front that sort of looks like holly although i'm not sure exactly what it is and i'm assuming it's highly poisonous so after taking the pictures i'm going to pull it off and that's it i'm going to take a knife and cut a slice since we really do want to serve this warm and by the way if the slice doesn't come out perfect and the first one never does this stuff is nice and moist and sticky so just grab what crumbled off and just place it right back in and bob's your uncle we have a perfect looking slice and then since i had it sitting right there i went ahead and applied a little more syrup before finishing this with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream even though a heavy cream or a creme glaze would be more traditional but you know what happens when you freeze creme on glaze it turns into ice cream so by using ice cream you get both but anyway let me grab a fork and dig in and i'll start with those crumbly pieces in the front and that my friends is one ancient and amazing dessert okay what i love about this recipe which i've adapted from a jamie oliver recipe is that it doesn't contain any sugar and all the sweetness is coming from the dried fruit and to be honest i really don't like dried fruit but in this format steamed with all those other ingredients including the booze and the citrus and the nuts it really does become something very special and delicious especially when it's paired with the ice cream or as we'll call it after it melts creme on glaze oh besides not adding any sugar you'll probably notice we didn't add any other spices all right no cinnamon no mace no allspice no nutmeg which is another trick i borrowed from my good friend who i've never met jamie oliver i mean add a pinch or two of whatever you want but i really don't think it needs it i think it is absolutely perfect as is so if anyone has the queen's number please leave it in a comment below the video and i'll shoot her a text and i'll see if she'll let me come over and make this for her whether it's on christmas or some other holiday like i don't know 4th of july hey no hard feelings but no matter when this is served or what the occasion is it really does go down a treat which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy gingerbread cake with lemon glaze that's right i'm going to show you this classic holiday treat and when you taste it you'll be like there's no way something this simple could come out this delicious but it does first thing we're going to want to put our dry ingredients together which is regular white all-purpose flour some salt some baking soda not powder soda some ground ginger of course a little chinese five spice optional secret ingredient and of course i spilled too much in i only wanted a little bit so i pulled some off the top try not to screw up to begin with but if you do you can just remove some no worries all right and last but not least some ground cinnamon and that's going to get stirred with a whisk so all those dry ingredients are combined evenly alrighty at that point we're going to add some white sugar and molasses so dark so mysterious so slow all right come on hurry up and drip all right after the molasses we're gonna put some vegetable oil and an egg one beaten egg and we're gonna take our whisk and we're gonna stir that together and like most of my dessert recipes it doesn't look good when you're mixing it but don't worry that's completely normal everything's going to be fine you'll see all right at this point we're going to add some boiling water so during this time while we were mixing the other ingredients i had a tea kettle on the stove simmering away we're going to dump in half a cup of boiling water right on top of the batter it's going to totally steam up your lens unless you know you're not filming this and you're going to simply stir in that boiling water until it is a smooth shiny batter and some of you right now are thinking didn't that cook your egg you had little pieces of scrambled egg in there didn't you no i didn't all right it's not going to do anything just pour it in stir together and when it looks like that you're ready to fill your baking dish all right so i have a nine inch square baking dish it might be eight inch but it's probably nine inch i didn't measure i've greased it and i've lightly floured it so use a spatula scrape every last bit of batter into that dish and then oh you know what's coming next the old tapatapa all right we're not just doing it for fun here we want to tap that and we want to tap that good because you'll see all these little bubbles will come to the top and pop and that's why we do the old tapatapa all right we're going to bake that in the middle of a preheated 350 degree oven for 35 minutes and while that's happening we are going to make our ultra simple lemon glaze so we're going to take powdered sugar some lemon zest just the beautiful yellow part of the lemon do not grate down to the white part then we're going to add lemon juice and one of my favorite sites in the kitchen is powdered sugar melting or dissolving if you're like a scientist into some liquid i could wash that all day now i put this on very low flame and i just stir it until the sugar dissolves and it's warm to the touch not hot just warm in fact you could probably skip this step and just mix it and not even put it over heat but i've always done it over a small flame just to warm it through so that's what i do it only takes a minute when the sugar is dissolved and it's warm to the touch turn it off and reserve until needed all right our glaze is done it's been 35 minutes i pull out my gingerbread and how do i know it's done because a bamboo skewer comes out clean by the way is that a gorgeous brown color or what i wish i had some pants that color people would be like hey cool brown pants and i'd be like uh they're not brown they're gingerbread all right last step here while the cake is still hot you're gonna pour over your lemon glaze right from the pan just drizzle it over the top as evenly as you can then take your spatula and just help it along if there's any dry spots just push some of the glaze over of course we want to spread this as evenly as possible but don't worry too much as this sits it will all absorb into that warm cake and it will be perfect trust me once this has cooled completely that means all the way and it's not hot anymore you can slice it and serve it up all right you could do a little whipped cream if you want you could do a little scoop of ice cream really up to you there's no bad way to eat this cake and it's funny a lot of your classic holiday desserts are actually super easy like this one so even if you're not a big baker dessert maker you can certainly pull this one off anyway there you go gingerbread cake i'm gonna take a bite so so delicious not too sweet just spicy enough just such a beautiful aroma so anyway i hope you give this classic holiday treat a try whether it's for christmas or just any time you want a delicious dessert so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more information as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 671,493

Keywords: holiday recipes, holiday party ideas, christmas party ideas, Hanukkah, latkes, brisket, Christmas, eggnog recipe, hot buttered rum recipe, christmas pudding recipe, best christmas recipes, easy christmas recipes, easy hannukah recipes, easy holiday recipes, holiday food, holiday dinner, christmas food, christmas dinner

Id: L4d9rcYGuqE

Length: 133min 26sec (8006 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022