Christmas Kitchen Katastrophies

Yes, last word above is misspelled but on purpose. It sort of stands for all those great-sounding Christmas recipes that turned into an absolute catastrophe in my kitchen.

I love Christmas. I love old-fashioned Christmas goodies of all kinds, such as candy and cookies. And no, I do not include fruit cake on my list. I tried it years ago and that particular holiday goody is now on the catastrophe list. Colorful houses could, perhaps, have been built with my poor attempt at mini-fruit cakes.

But I’m always on the lookout for new additions to my holiday goody list. The list already includes a cheese ball that must be whipped up at least twice, and sometimes more, every Christmas. The cheese ball is courtesy of everybody’s favorite grandma, Emma Ball of Sallisaw, who some of you may know. Then there’s the seasoned crackers and cereals my kids won’t let me forget, and a fantasy fudge that I’ll never forget, even though a pound of that fudge puts at least one more pound on the lower portions of my body, and I’m not saying where.

But I’m always on the lookout for more Christmas recipes with which I can stun my family and friends. Unfortunately, my friends will never let me forget the catastrophe of the strawberry chiffon pie, which resulted in large quantities of gummed-up strawberry gel that had to be chewed and chewed and chewed, and which was really hard to swallow. I later conquered that recipe, but didn’t share it with those friends. I do wish I had taken photos of their faces as they tried to down that first pie, cause those photos would have been priceless, meaning used for blackmail every time they told the story and laughed about my chewy strawberry chiffon pie.

This year the new recipes included rice cereal crispy treats, in strawberry flavor (Yes, I love strawberry!) and oat cereal chocolate wreaths, concocted using tiny little chocolate pieces made just for melting. I’m not using the brand names of the cereals, because you all know who they are any way and they might not like the way those recipes turned out. However, that strawberry treat recipe is going on the Christmas recipe list cause they are awesome.  Can’t say the same for the oat cereal wreaths, but it wasn’t their fault. It was that chocolate for melting that caused the problem.

I’ve never used that chocolate that is only for melting before, and wasn’t sure how to handle it. I’m sure there’s a fabulous way to melt that chocolate and most candy makers know how. I’m not one of them. Nevertheless, I proceeded undaunted, but with the suspicion that easy melting chocolate might be more challenging than I at first supposed. The recipe seemed easy, and photos of the finished product were gorgeous. The oat cereal was to be mixed with the melted chocolate, spooned into a wreath shape, and decorated with red and green M&Ms. It took me an hour to separate those green and red candies from the others in the bag. But that was ok. The rest of the process would go fast, the recipe promised. I had no idea how fast. Seems once you melt the chocolate, and mix it with the cereal, the race is on and you better be an Olympic sprinter! As soon as the chocolate got mixed with the cereal, it started to set up. I mean immediately. Never mind that me, the cook, had to shape the mixture into something that looked like a Christmas wreath, or that the recipe had to stay soft until the green and red candies were put in a proper position. I was nowhere near the decorating process yet, and that oat cereal was hardening so quickly because of the chocolate that I was flinging the cereal at the cookie sheet as fast as possible, and at the same time trying to shape the concoction into in a wreath. Sweat gathered on my brow. Chocolate gathered then clumped on my hands. Chocolate-coated oat cereal went flying all over the kitchen. My little wreaths didn’t look like wreaths at all. More like gigantic mounds of hay bales my horses had stomped into the mud. I gave up. With half the recipe hardened up in the mixing bowl. And it wouldn’t budge. No wreaths there. Realizing these little wreaths were not going to make it into my Christmas goody bags, I just ate the stuff I scraped out of my bowl with a serrated grapefruit spoon. You know, it tasted pretty good. I ate the whole thing.

So no. I am not throwing this recipe away. I am challenged, a la strawberry chiffon pie, and I will win. It’s either that or eat a whole lot of oat cereal, cause I bought boxes and boxes of the stuff.