A new year begins

We celebrated New Year’s Day with the traditional caramel pecan rolls followed by napping through the Rose Parade. I’m not sure why I’m still napping. It was perfectly reasonable to sleep most of the morning when I stayed up until midnight on New Years’ Eve, but this year I was in bed by 9:00.

New Year's morning breakfast

And here we are. The holidays are over, and we have to turn our full attention to surviving the rest of winter. It didn’t seem so bad for the last couple of days. The sky was blue and the temperatures above freezing. It was 52°F Saturday. I went for a walk without coat, hat, or gloves. Today is still warm, but I can hear the wind howling and the rain beating on the windows. It makes me want to sit here under my electric lap blanket in my jammies and bathrobe all day.

As much as I enjoyed entertaining and making food for friends and family, I’m ready to resume my usual routine, which is why I will get out of my chair and onto my exercise bike after I’m done with this post. I have been overeating since December 17, when my brother and sister-in-law came for Christmas Observed. With each event, there were leftovers that had to be eaten or frozen. It was such a responsibility! Ham, lasagna, roast chicken, more ham…. I froze most of the Christmas cookies, defrosting enough for a few days at a time. I have said it before, but it bears repeating—I don’t know why people go on and on about sugar cookies. No chocolate, no inclusions—what is there to recommend them? I ate a few toward the end, after all the good ones were gone. Finally, the last cookie was eaten on Friday, after three solid weeks of nothing but cookies for dessert.

Saturday I used up the last leftovers from Christmas, which was the buttercream frosting from cookie baking day. I recently learned from Alton Brown that, by definition, frosting stays soft while icing hardens up. Thus buttercream frosting vs. royal icing. Some people (including Alton Brown) prefer royal icing on their sugar cookies, which in my opinion gives them even less to get excited about. It is made of egg whites and confectioner sugar. Ick. The only advantage to royal icing is that it hardens, which makes the cookies easier to pack. Even though my cookies are messier and require wax paper between the layers, I prefer the buttercream frosting. Keyword: butter.

I made a chocolate cake to use up the frosting. It was a dilemma. There was not enough of either the chocolate or the vanilla frosting for the whole cake, but too much of each for half the cake. My solution was to pile it on. It turned out fine. Terry summed it up: “Chocolate cake is really good! I’d forgotten how good it is.”

Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting

Yes. Yes, it is.