A recipe for in between the big holidays + more merriments

And tidings of so so so many sprinkles — and joy!

Hello! Hello!

The end is nigh. Then again, so is the beginning. Another year. Lots of high spots. Lots of lows, too — some inevitable, but still hard. New friends made. Good friends gone (why can’t the good people live forever). Cookies galore. Even more cakes. And another year that we’re together. I have a lot to be thankful for. And I am.

Tell me when you get tired of hearing me thank you for being here. Just know that I won’t stop. You mean too much to me.

Sprinkles and a Slew of Good Suggestions

Last week, Michael and I drove into NYC to decorate holiday cookies with VV, our 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter, and her 11 classmates. I’ve made cookies before and I decorated cookies with Joshua when he was little and with VV and her big sister Gemma, 4, on weekends. In fact, Gemma and I made cookies for her school’s bake sale just a little while ago. But I’ve never had to figure out a decorating session for 24 little hands. I knew that Joshua, Linling and Michael would be there as well as VV’s three amazing teachers — meaning we had 7 grownups for 12 kids — still I was nervous. I wanted to get it just right even though I knew that “just right” might be as easy as just showing up, and that with children that young, the only thing that’s a given is the unpredictability of it all. But I did a smart thing: I asked for advice from my friends on Instagram and Facebook and boy did they have great suggestions. Take a look here and here.

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A post shared by @doriegreenspan

There were terrific ideas for containing the mess and/or for leaning into it, for adjusting my expectations, for frosting the cookies, for getting the decorations from their containers to the cookies (shakers, spoons, fingers) and for packing the cookies so that the kids could get them home safely. And there was lots of encouragement. In the end, we brought pounds and pounds of ready-to-decorate cut-out cookies made from Do-Almost-Anything Vanilla Cookie Dough (I made 90 cookies and then panicked when a friend said the right number should have been 200!), craft sticks (stirrers? spreaders?), paper plates, little cups (I think they were called condiment containers), big tubs of store-bought frosting (I decided not to make my own frosting and chose Wilton-brand — white, red, green, blue and pink) and enough sprinkles to cover the Empire State Building. And, as I’d been told, the sprinkles were the most important thing. Thank goodness I had so many! And that list that I made for myself, the one that outlined how I’d hand out the cookies and divvy up the frosting and arrange the finished cookies to set? Fuhgettaboutit! Nothing went to plan, and everything was wonderful!

I need to remember this. Just the way I should have remembered what I learned when Gemma and I were in the kitchen early on: It doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. A lesson to hold onto in this season of general muchness and explosive expectations.

And Speaking of Perfect …

…This recipe isn’t and it’s not meant to be

I figure by this time you’ve either got your holiday fixings fixed, or you’ve figured out Plan B, C or D, so I’m not going to suggest a recipe for the big nights. However, there are lots of nights after that — breakfasts, brunches and lunches, too — and I’m thinking about those. Thinking about what’s easy and delicious and fun. What can be pulled together without a fuss, but still feel festive. I’m thinking about a Dutch Baby, sometimes called a German Pancake. Always called a surprise, never called well-behaved.

A Dutch Baby is a cross between a pancake (minus the leavening) and a clafoutis or thick crepe. But where its cousins are flat and easily corralled into shape, a Dutch Baby is a drama queen with a mind of her own. She starts off simple — and simply enough — just some beaten eggs with flour and seasoning. But when you pour the batter over bubbling butter in a searing hot skillet and then slide the whole kit-and-caboodle into the oven, it’s anyone’s guess what you’ll get. You’re guaranteed extravagant peaks and daring dips and undulating mounds, crispy edges and creamy innards. You’re guaranteed wonder and delight. But you’re also guaranteed that whatever you get, it’ll be a one-off: There’s no such thing as identical twins when it comes to Dutch Babies.

I’ve got a basic recipe for a basic Dutch Baby for you. After that, you’re on your own to let your imagination fly. Make it sweet. Make it salty. Just make it. Chez us? We pretend the Dutch Baby is a New York bagel and add smoked salmon, onions, tomatoes and the works. Look at “Playing Around” in the recipe for more ideas. And if you make a baby or three, let me know.

It’s Fry Time

With Christmas and Hanukkah arriving together and Kwanza just a day later, there’s a lot of feasting to do. And, if you’re celebrating the eight days of Hanukkah, then you’ll most likely be frying. Potato pancakes and jelly donuts are among the most popular fried foods for the holiday, but in the spirit of mixing it up, I like to fry potato crackers, made with instant potato flakes. The recipe grew out of a challenge from Amanda Hesser many years ago — she wanted me to come up with a recipe in the spirit of potato chips — and this is what I created. It’s fun and, most important, it’s delicious. Here’s the recipe.

Having Nothing To Do With Food, But Still Delicious

With the winter solstice behind us and still-short days ahead, it’s a good time to just bundle up and read. Earlier this year, I made a list of all of your suggestions for “Books That Are Bigger Than Us” (here’s the post that inspired it), and I also gathered a long list of terrific cookbooks. Now I’ve got two suggestions for novels of the mystery kind. I’m guessing that the two authors I’m suggesting won’t be new to many of you, but if I can introduce even one of you to the pleasures of these books, I’ll be delighted.

I know that oodles of you are devoted to the author Louise Penny — I am too — and so you may already know about the latest in her Chief Inspector Gamache series, The Grey Wolf. But did you know that there’ll be another Gamache book in 2025? The Black Wolf publishes October 28, 2025.

Shop these delicious mysteries at Bookshop.org

Michael and I have Lori of RJ Julia Booksellers to thank for putting Richard Osman’s THURSDAY MURDER CLUB series in our hands. We gobbled up the quartet and are now waiting to find out when the film version (done with Steven Spielberg) will be released.

Here’s hoping that your holidays will be filled with love. Cakes, cookies and hugs would be good, too.

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📚 You can find more recipes in my latest book Baking with Dorie.