Bad Home Cooking

Lemon Christmas cookies from the sunny country

I'm loathe to report that here in Southern California it's about 75 degrees and sunny. Which sounds great if you're anywhere else in the world, but when you live here, you tend to pine for weather.

Still, it's Christmas, and despite my best attempts to ignore it completely, the joy of the day seeps into even me and I find myself reveling in community and friendship. That and the compulsion to bake.

So in the spirit of Christmas, dosed as it is with warmth and sunshine in this region, I offer you a recipe for delicious glazed lemon cookies. So good they will make even the most sullen teen stop short and exclaim in the positive. I thank Lynn for passing them on (Just take the bag, she told me the other day. I've got another two dozen for my family. And said bag was soon gone after the kids got a taste of them.)

Cool and sweet, with a refreshing citrus glaze, these cookies embody the Southern California Christmas spirit. Make them and enjoy!

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Real Simple Magazine:

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cups granulated sugar
2 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract<
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup confectioner's sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more in necessary
1 tsp grated lemon zest

With a mixer, beat the butter and granulated sugar until fluffy. Add the egg yolks, vanilla and salt and beat to combine. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just incorporated.

Divide the dough in half and shape into logs, about 1 1/4 inch in diameter. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the logs into  3/8 inch thick pieces (however big that's supposed to be. Not too thin, not too think. You're on your own here.) and space them 1 1/2 inches apart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake until slightly golden - 16-20 minutes. Let cool on the bakins sheets for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

In a small bowl, whisk together the confectioner's sugar, lemon juice and zest until it forms a thick but pourable glaze (which is why you might need that extra lemon juice). Dip the top of each cookie into the glaze and let set, about 15 minutes.

Somehow keep the kids out of the kitchen until you're ready to lose the cookies. Enjoy these with tea or coffee.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Thank you for reading and laughing along at/with me at Bad Home Cooking!

Mad Housewife and other fine wines

Yes. I have bought bottles of wine purely on the strength of the label. Are you listening marketers? I'm highly susceptible to an appealing graphic or a well-turned name.

Standing in the wine cellar at Greenblatt's earlier this year, I spied a $15 bottle of BITCH. I was overcome by the NEED to purchase this wine, which I'd never heard of much less tasted, for my friend Debbie, who both loves wine and is indeed a bitch. As I suspected, she loved it. Perhaps not so much for its taste as for the spirit in which it was given.

And there's the rub with wine marketing: a clever label or name will win a customer once. But if the wine inside proves to be swill, there will be no repeat customers.

Fortunately, there are a lot of wines with party names out there that I have yet to try. Here are a few that most pique my interest.

Used Automobile Parts sounds like a wine I could get into -- gritty and hard -- with undertones of the working class. Except that at $50 a bottle, nobody in my tax-bracket can afford it. Guess those wine snobs have a sense of humor sometimes.

The guy who created Vin de Merde (shit wine) definitely had a sense of humor. The winemaker in the Languedoc region of France, created it to prove a point - that his region's wines aren't medal-winners, but they aren't that bad, either. His first production sold out. He doubled the price of his next batch, and that sold out too.

No doubt the guys who make my personal favorite, Two-Buck Chuck (or Charles Shaw, sold at Trader Joe's nationwide for $1.99) were watching Vin de Merde's success.

There's the successful line of Fat Bastard wines.

Here's another one I am compelled to love, and would buy merely on principle: Big Ass shiraz.

Mad Housewife is a wine whose name I can get behind, even though I don't qualify to be called at least one of those descriptors (guess which one?) And I just love her subhead: What's domestic bliss without a little wine? Yes! Excellent question! One I can raise my glass to!

OK. I open this up. What's your favorite wine label?