First Post of the Day
Often I spend a lot of time in the kitchen on Christmas Eve day. This year was no exception despite having fewer people joining us for Christmas dinner. I started with the cherry pies.
Like he did for Thanksgiving, Kyle offered to help and joined me in the kitchen. While he made the filling, I worked on the pie dough.
Pie dough is difficult to make - it is finicky and you cannot handle it too much. A few years ago I experimented with several store bought brands of premade crusts, but none of them were as good as a homemade crust. (Shout out to Danielle Feldman for making my apron!)
You only get one chance with pie dough - you never, ever re-roll it after it's been rolled once already. It will be tough and not flaky. Better to throw it out and start over than to re-roll.
You never double a pie dough recipe, either. It doesn't work well, although I don't know why it does not. So, making two pies means I had to make and roll out two batches of dough.
We got the cherry pies assembled and slid them into the oven to bake, and then I started on the Christmas Jello. I'm not a big Jello eater, but I do like Christmas Jello.
It's a pretty dish with red and green layers that sandwich a marshmallow, whipped cream layer. I'll put the recipe at the end for any who might like to try it. If you can, put it in a clear glass dish so the layers can be seen!
A few days earlier I had made sugar cookie dough and then cut it into shapes for decorating.
All that was left to do was to decorate them, a tradition going back to my childhood Christmas Eves.
I'm a slap on the frosting, add some sprinkles, and eat it kind of cookie decorator.
Others in my family are not.
Lisa even has a set of six little tweezers to use to add decorations to the cookies!
She brought a tub, a TUB! of sprinkles and sugars and dragees for us to use.
Almost too pretty to eat!
After we finished our cookie decorating project, we followed another long time family tradition and had pizza and watched some holiday movies. (We added in ribs this year, too.)
Molly was really intrigued by the blended scents of the pizza and ribs on my plate!
The first movie we watched stems back to my kids' earliest years - Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.
Then we watched White Christmas and I read Twas the Night Before Christmas aloud. (We save the Christmas story in Luke for Christmas morning.)
Kyle is working on a project of preserving important family memories, and so he recorded me reading it. Then, he interviewed me about the book and my memories with it. (The video above.)
Then it was time for bed. Lisa, Nash, and Mama slept over which was extra fun and gave us even more family time together.
Tammo and Nashie wanted to do their own sleepover together. Not much room for any humans left in that bed, is there? LOL
Another blog post is coming - stay 'tooned!
Christmas Jello Recipe
1 pkg each of cherry, lime, and lemon Jello (I use sugar free)
1 bag mini marshmallows
1 tub Cool Whip or 1 pint whipping cream that has been whipped to a firm stage
First Layer: make lime Jello according to package directions, pour into glass dish, cover, and put in fridge to set. When it is firm, begin next layer.
Second Layer: make lemon Jello according to package directions. Leave in bowl, cover, and put into fridge. Check every 20 minutes or so to see if it has begun to set up. When is is thickening but not yet set, cover the lime layer with marshmallows. Then gently fold the tub of Cool Whip into the partially set lemon Jello. Spread that mixture evenly over the marshmallows being sure to push the Cool Whip layer all the way to the sides of the dish. Cover, and put back into fridge. Let set.
Third Layer: When the second layer is firm (wait an hour if you are not sure), make up the cherry Jello. Let cool 15 - 20 minutes and then pour over the second layer, cover, and refrigerate. Eat when set.
