Home
Living
B
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Bakers share their favorite
Sweet Holiday Recipes
Heat oven to 350.
Mix the syrup and eggs together. Pour
in sugar and once that is mixed well, add
melted butter and drop in vanilla. Stir
really well with a rubber spatula or whisk.
Stir pecans in lightly so they do not break.
Bake for one hour, but do not open
the oven while it is baking to prevent
cracking. Must cool to room temperature
(at least two hours) before it is cut. Chill in
refrigerator, if needed.
and other desserts at her Powell
bakery Sweet Tooth Cottage, Bis-
sonnette still relishes in making
these annually for her family.
(She already made a big batch for
Thanksgiving morning.)
Plus, the scones are easy, with
a pretty cut-and-dry recipe, she
said.”You want your butter to be
really cold when you blend it in —
that’s where the flakiness comes
in,” she said. “And it doesn’t have
to be chocolate chips. You can use
nuts, cranberries or whatever you
like.”
Her children, however, were
always partial to the chocolate
chip versions.
Another nice feature of this
recipe is the dough can be made
ahead of time and refrigerated so
it’s a great breakfast item to take
on vacation or while traveling this
busy season.
Bissonnette doesn’t sell the
scones — nor coffee cake or other
yeasty favorites — in her bakery;
those are reserved for family and
friends.
“The scones are really only
kind of good out of the oven,” she
added.
The time in her own kitchen
away from the bakery gives her
extra quality time with her chil-
dren, too.
“I’ll still spend the holidays
baking at home, making anything
and everything,” Bissonnette
said. “It just reminds me of when
my kids were little and I’d have
them at the counter with mixers
dumping everything in. Even
though my kids are older, we’ll
still do that.”
Powell baker’s children
still ask for chocolate chip
scones every Christmas
CHOCOLATE CHIP
SCONES
By ALLISON WARD
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The
month and a half between the
beginning of Thanksgiving
week and New Year’s Day rep-
resents the busiest time of year for
Columbus-area bakeries.
Debbie Smith and her two
daughters make more than 2,000
of their beloved springerle cookies
at the Original Goodie Shop in
Upper Arlington, not to mention
many other sweet treats.
Because of her busy hours at
her bakery, Sweet Tooth Cottage
in Powell, Sue Bissonnette never
gets to properly celebrate her hus-
band’s birthday on Dec. 12.
“That’s the busiest week of the
year,” Bissonnette said. “It gears
up around Halloween and doesn’t
stop.”
Still, these bakers delight in
their work that brings so many
people joy during the holiday
season, whether it’s customers
or family and friends. Yes, these
busy bakers still find time and
energy to make the favorite rec-
ipes of their spouses and children.
“Baking — I really think, it’s
about togetherness, no matter who
you’re baking with, whether that’s
girlfriends or family,” Bisson-
nette said. “You create this love
in the air with fun and laughs and
drinks.”
This year, The Dispatch asked
four local bakers to share their
favorite holiday dessert recipes,
no matter if it’s baked in the shop
or at home.
Barbara J. Perenic/The Columbus Dispatch-TNS
Jenny Voll at her bakery Golden Delight in Gahanna, Ohio.
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1½ cups (6 ounces) coarsely
chopped pecans
1 (9-inch) unbaked OR frozen
deep-dish pie crust
Adam Cairns/The Columbus Dispatch-TNS
Husband’s love of pecan pie
leads to quest for perfect
recipe
Pecan pie always seemed like a
rudimentary dessert to Juana Wil-
liams, one she didn’t feel the need
to make often.
That was, until she got tired of
her husband Vance “ranting and
raving” about the ones he got at
another bakery during the hol-
idays. (Pecan pie is his favorite
sweet.)
As a lifelong baker, Williams
knew she could do better.
Admittedly, she started too
fancy with her efforts and failed
epically, she said.
“But that only fueled me to
make the perfect pecan pie,” said
Williams, who opened J’s Sweet
Treats and Wedding Cakes in
2016, first as a pop-up shop and
then leaving a corporate job to
run two brick-and-mortar bak-
eries (one on the South Side
and one on Polaris Parkway). “I
wasn’t going to be defeated and
watch him go to another business
Springerle cookies from the Original Goodie Shop in Upper Arlington, Ohio, sit
alongside the rolling pin used for the floral relief design.
to get one.”
It only took her a few more
tries to get her recipe just right.
In her trials and errors, she
learned that even though the
ingredient list is short and they
simply need to be added in the
correct order, there are a few tips
to follow.
“The key is it make it with
high-quality pecans,” Williams
said. “Sometimes I’d run to the
store and get some no-name
pecans, but the taste of the pie —
the nuttiness — is not as good if
you aren’t getting quality pecans.”
Williams, who runs the two
bakeries with her two adult
daughters, said she’s partial to the
pecans from www.nuts.com and
Sam’s Club’s variety that comes
in a green bag.
She also said she prefers to
use light corn syrup, and adds
that ingredients should be room
temperature when mixing, and
the oven should never be opened
while the treat is baking.
Now, the pie is a mainstay in
her bakery during the holidays —
and because it’s much easier to
make than other pies on the menu,
such as the labor-intensive sweet
potato pie, she wonders why she
hasn’t been making it all these
years.
“Ironically, people drive from
all over for it,” Williams said.
“I had a guy come in here from
Georgia and he’d never had a
pecan pie from me before. He said
it was the best one he’s ever had.”
And now her husband agrees.
CLASSIC PECAN
PIE
Makes 8 servings
1 cup Karo Light Syrup
3 eggs, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
If all of Sue Bissonnette’s adult
children are in the same house,
she knows she’s baking chocolate
chip scones.
And typically, that happens
frequently during the holidays.
She’s not sure really when or
why she started making them,
and the recipe, she said, is cob-
bled from a few she’s read over
the years.
“I probably made them one
time and they kept asking for
them,” Bissonnette said of her
three children ages 20 to 24.
“When they were young, they
liked to cut them. I used a pizza
slicer to cut them into the pie
shape. Then, they brushed the egg
wash or milk over the top. They
were great at those tasks.”
Never mind that this time of
year, she’s also making hundreds
of dozens of iced sugar cookies,
plus cakes, cheesecake bars
Makes 8 to 10 large scones
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup granulated white sugar
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
½ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 to ¾ cup cold buttermilk
1 teaspoon Madagascar vanilla
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Line a baking sheet with parchment
paper.
In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar,
baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut
the butter into this mixture with a pastry
cutter or two knives. The mixture will look
like coarse crumbs. Stir in chocolate chips.
Add the buttermilk and vanilla. Mix
until the dough just comes together. Add
more buttermilk or flour if needed to
make a soft dough.
See, Bakers/Page B3
The Christmas flower
WENDY
SCHMIDT
BETWEEN THE ROWS
Tampa Bay Times, File
Poinsettias are a popular plant for the Christmas season.
Poinsettias are one of the most univer-
sally recognized symbols of Christmas.
Long revered as “flores de noche buena”
(flowers of the holy night), poinsettias
have honored Christmas for many years in
Mexico where they are native.
The Aztecs called the flower cuetlaxo-
chitl. The milky white sap (latex) was used
to control fevers and the red leaves (bracts)
were used to make a reddish dye.
Egyptians use poinsettias to decorate
trees for winter solstice.
In the 17th century, cuetlaxochitl began
its journey into Christmas traditions. Fran-
ciscan monks started using the plant in
Nativity processions.
In the 1820s, Joel R. Poinsett was
appointed the first U.S. minister to Mexico.
He was sent by President John Quincy
Adams to Taxo, Mexico.
In its native land, poinsettia (Euphorbia
pulcherrima) is an outdoor shrub growing 10
feet high.
After Joel Poinsettia brought cuttings
back to the United States, Robert Buist
began to propagate it. He was the first to
cultivate and sell the plant to the public
under the botanical name E. Pulcerrima. It
wasn’t until about 1836 that the plant began
to be called poinsettia, after the Mexican
ambassador.
Six weeks prior to Christmas more than
70 million poinsettias are sold for sales of at
least $250 million. Dec. 12 is National Poin-
settia Day.
The Ecke ranch (Paul Ecke Sr.) developed
the first poinsettia potted plants as we see
today. 80% of the plants bought and sold in
the USA come from Ecke ranch.
People usually don’t try to keep poinsettia
from year to year as it takes special treat-
ment to cause the bracts to turn color. They
must be kept in the dark for the majority of
each day. The true bloom is the tiny flowers
(calathia) in the center of the red leaves.
Try to keep your poinsettia on the
cool side. Don’t sit it on top of the TV, for
instance. Poke holes in the foil or remove it
so your poinsettia has good drainage. Keep
it damp, not wet, but don’t forget to give it a
drink when it needs it.
Merry Christmas!