Every year, we have a Christmas pot luck in our newsroom. It is inevitably a chance to get stuffed with too many salty appetizer-like entrees and overly-sweet sweets at the ridiculously early dinner hour of 5 p.m., but it’s always fun, and I look forward to it every year.
A bigger challenge is determining what to bring. I usually don’t want to add another sweet to the already heavy dessert table, but this year I just didn’t have much inspiration in the savory dept. (Having to keep my contribution at the office all day also played into the decision.)
I was reading the holiday issue of Southern Living and came across a recipe for praline bundt cake that seemed perfect. B. and I bought a bundt cake pan with some of our Williams-Sonoma gift card, and I have been gently ridiculed ever since the purchase for suggesting we buy something we’d never use. The cake pan sat, still in its box, atop our refrigerator for weeks, mocking me.
Then the pot luck came along.
If this cake tastes anywhere near as good as the batter, it’s going to be hard to keep from loading my plate with gigantic pieces of it and not trying anyone else’s dishes.
The batter has cream cheese, butter and sour cream, along with lots of sugar and some vanilla, and it was so silky and melty, I licked both beaters on my own.
The pan worked beautifully, and I was relieved when I flipped it and the cake popped right out, especially since I refused to buy the vegetable shortening the package recommended for greasing it. Butter seemed to work just fine, and the finish is nonstick, anyway.
I also think I did a pretty good job of kitchen management today. I had to wait for the cake to cook before I could make the icing and pour it over it. That provided the perfect opportunity to make what has become our Sunday night tradition…pizza using the thin dough from 101 Cookbooks.
Then there was the icing, which is basically just making praline and then sticking pecans in it after you pour it over the cake. I ingested a good bit of this in the process, too.
Overall, it was a rewarding day in the kitchen. I think for gifts this year I am going to be making roll-and-cut cookies, in both regular sugar cookie flavor and chocolate. L. and I hit the streets of Alexandria yesterday and I picked up some cute snowflake cookie cutters at the Crate & Barrel outlet. Stay tuned!
