Earlier today I asked on Facebook about your greatest holiday baking challenge.
And in typical fashion with Facebook’s fancy algorithm, the post was shown to 1.5% of you lovely folks who follow me over there.
That’s not a typo. My post, asking you for your greatest holiday baking challenges, was shown to one and a half percent of you.
But I’m not just here to complain about Facebook, I’m here to offer my help.
So dish, sweet readers. Tell me below in the comments what stymies you about holiday baking. Unload your cookie exchange woes, your family fruitcake nightmares. I want to hear…and I want to help!
Here’s how this works: you leave a comment below telling me what you need help with when it comes to holiday baking. I’ll respond with a tip, a suggestion, a recipe from me or a trusted friend. It’s like the Butterball Turkey Hotline, only with me answering the phone. And we can’t talk turkey because I don’t know how to cook a turkey. But baking, I’ve got that one down. 😉
Now it’s your turn. Comments below please. I’m excited to read your challenges and help you with them!
1. How do you know how many folks see a post?
2. pie crusts. I follow the directions, Giada, Julia, Ramsey. So much of this, so much of that, put in frig for so many minutes before rolling out and I learned that too much water makes for a tuff crust. I seem to have luck with adding more butter as far as giving the dough a better workable consistency but I still have problems with rolling out the crust as it’s so crumbly.
1. On Facebook, with a “fan” or “business” page, there is a box on each post that shows how many people have seen the post. Digging further into the “insights,” one can see how many likes and how many click-thrus. Very discouraging numbers. Seeing numbers on a website/blog is another story.
2. Pie crusts. Oh, how I LOVE making pie crust. When crust is too crumbly, I add more liquid. Interesting that water is making your crust tough. I often think of tough crust as being overworked (rolled out more than once.) Besides not being able to eat gluten, I have found another benefit of gluten-free crust making: the crust can be rolled out more than once without developing the toughness that happens from over working a dough with gluten in it. For me, the secret to good pie crust is COLD water, COLD butter and mixing with a pastry blender just until the chunks of butter are about pea sized. I also use a combination of shortening and butter.
Merging healthy and tasty – all my extended family is more into the traditional high fat high carb meals so if I want to share something that meets my needs it has to be both tasty and healthy!
Oh, this is a good one, Toni! I am constantly working to merge healthy and tasty. For me, that means I choose healthy fat (I don’t fear fat, it’s important for my health, so I choose fats like avocado, pumpkin, coconut, grapeseed and olive oil). As for carbs, sort of the same thing. I choose whole grains where possible and happily consume carbs in fruits and veggies. All of that said, I also allow myself a holiday indulgence. One meal at Thanksgiving and one at Christmas isn’t going to destroy a year of commitment to healthy eating. It’s all of those other holiday shindigs that pop up that really challenge me!
If you took a couple of dishes to share with your extended family, do you think they would be willing to try them?