Catch-All of Christmas Commotion

It's after 10 pm on Christmas Eve, and Winston-Salem's downtown is a quiet place. Because of the intended early start tomorrow, this is a bed-written blog post with high hopes that slumber will soon be here.

So, let's catch up on some of the things that seem to roll around when it's a holiday, with some time off and the freedom from schedules that was earned by the hard work of the fall travel season.

White Wine Coffee Cake. I was much overdue in getting around to whipping up this smashing little dessert. It is a much-improved version of rum cake, methinks, at least as I compare the recipes for the two. At the moment, the sweet little lady that was in my mother's church group in Buies Creek, from whom we got the recipe, probably never had alcohol in the house...except for making this gem. When I first started teaching at Wake Forest, I made it rather often and gave out the recipe to quite a few folks (some of whom tell me they have now been obligated for years to make several of them to meet the demands of insistent family members).

Pictured on the right is the one I made a couple of days ago. But while friends and family who've gotten the recipe are apparently having great success making this cake, I keep having glitches, like the top sticking to the bottom of the pan or it breaking apart. I had my biggest fiasco yet when I removed this cooling cake from the tube pan this time:


Perhaps the cussing I did obliged it to get itself in shape so that it did not look that much worse for wear and posed nicely in the picture at top.

Imitation Orange Julius. Another fun holiday diversion, on the heels of the orangeades I made earlier this week: I did decide after all to try my hand at making Orange Juliuses. Only to realize that there's a reason I wasn't a regular customer of the Orange Julius at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, when I was growing up. Just not my thing. But it's purty:





Late-Night After Party. Last night, after a coalition of us decided to do a bit of bar-hopping in downtown Winston to celebrate Christmas Eve Eve, the Roediger House was the scene of an impromptu after-party which went on until darned close to 5 am. Glad I still had some southwestern dip on hand, as well as the white wine coffee cake.






Unfortunately, there was a casualty of the evening, right at the start: an errant elbow caused this Christmas cookie in a frame to take a tumble, and it did not survive the trip. This was darned unfortunate, especially because this item had been a terrific house-warming gift from good friend Monie Lawrence, one of the 7th grade parents when I taught middle school in Raleigh.


Sausage Balls. Here's another essential tradition for the Christmas holidays: a handful of sausage balls in the morning to tide one over until it gets to be time to reheat the excellent leftovers from the Christmas turkey feast (see yesterday's blog post).


Christmas Eve Emergency Call. Finally, there was a bit of excitement this Christmas Eve, with two police squad cars barreling down Spring Street and a fire truck parking itself in front of the house with its lights a-going. Not sure what was happening the next block down but it didn't seem to require that the fire fighters do anything. So they sat and gave the house a bit of light decorating on this chilly holiday eve.