Lovelihood

This, dear friends, is an alfajor. It is rich and sweet beyond belief, tenaciously gripping the inside of your mouth, while your fingers are left heavy with the smell and feel of butter that won't quite wash off. It is not for the faint of heart, or dairy intolerant. And, quite frankly, it's a pain in the ass to make. Which is why these alfajores are always last on my list of holiday consumables to make, requiring the relative low-maintenance of biscotti to whet my baking appetite.

In past years, what made these confections so painful was the fact that, while they required pretty much a day's worth of labor, the yield was disparagingly low, making for a scant handful (if you had the hands of a Smurf) of giftable units. And then there's the inherent danger. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise; the only right way to make dulce de leche is to drop a can of sweetened condensed milk into a full pot of boiling water, and for four long hours sweat bullets knowing that one day, while attempting this feat, you will forget what you are doing and neglect to keep the water level above the can, resulting in an impossible mess on the ceiling of the kitchen in your rented house. 

Last year, I decided to pass entirely on the endeavor. My parents — one an Argentine, the other the wife of one — cried foul, and so this year I was back in the kitchen for another round with the alfajores. 

The difference this year is that I now have a husband who has brought back for me some Parisian macarons. When Mr. New Media suggested that he might be conferring in The City of Light without me (the cost and reality of me transatlantically schlepping two ungratefully whiny little ones summarily ruling out such possibility of me simply tagging along), I was a tad resentful. But then I turned to the macarons, whose images had been making the rounds through seemingly every blog I frequent. And I sent him to Paris, by himself, with orders to bring me some. 

The thing is, all those images, like this and this and this, offered no context, just pretty, macro-tastic shots of cookies stacked in teetering towers. And, because of their shapely resemblance to hamburgers, I just assumed they were, well, bigger. But when the husband brought back slick embossed boxes lined with neat little rows of macarons in every pastel shade imaginable, I was surprised to see that they were the size of a thumbprint. The French evidently know a thing or two about food. Each one of those thumbprints popped perfectly into my mouth, no need for uncouth chomps that would send wasted crumbs dribbling from my chin.

So this year saw the advent of the mini-alfajor. They're easier to make. When the only thing holding your cookie together is butter, the smaller the surface area, the better. I'm able to pile on more of the golden stuff. And small = precious, so a few go a long way. Assign each alfajorlet its own little wrapper, line them up in a nice tin, and you've got yourself something highly giftable.

That big, chocolate-covered thing is a commercially produced Alfajor, sent from my parents who just returned from their Argentine vacation. It was this same variety that served as my introduction to the cookie nearly two decades ago. Its similarities to mine or the ones you'd find in a cookbook are minimal, but it has its own delicious merits nonetheless. This Havanna one is more like the best Moon Pie you've ever had. Cakey and tongue-coatingly sweet. And rich as hell. Quite the treat, especially since I only get it when someone visits from Argentina. But now that they're on my brain, I'm thinking I have to find a local source…

When I was nine, my mom took me to a holiday fair at the church by my grandmother's house. It had all your basic carnival stuff — games and crafty bits and doilies for sale. What I remember, though, is sitting down at a table where some guy was walking a bunch of kids through the steps to make an origami crane. I was no newcomer to paper-folding, but I was impatient. And being antsy and getting ahead of myself, I probably fouled up a couple of crucial steps. And I probably ended up with something other than the crisp, lily-white masterpiece that could be hung from a tree. And I definitely remember being scolded by the guy, and how he reported back to my mother at the end of my time there that I was very bad at following directions. Evidently, all it takes to steamroll the patience of some well-meaning churchy type is a kid who can't fold on cue. 

I'm still quite bitter.

But he was kind of right. Oh sure, I can read directions and understand them and even see the validity in them. I'd just like to think that I can simply intuit the proper course of action. I get ahead of myself and I just want to do what feels right. Alas, my instincts, like my sense of direction, often prove faulty, and before I know it I'm written off as that kid who can't get her act together enough to fold a freakin' bird. 

And so here we come to bread in a jar. I've always wanted to try this. I mean, come on. It's the marriage of the two great loves of my life — sweets and containers. I HAD to try this. But when the recipe warned explicitly NOT to fill the jars more than stated, I looked at the amount of batter remaining and I snorted. How much could it rise? The answer, of course, is high enough to prevent closure of the jars. So, lesson learned. But what a mighty delicious lesson it was. 

In past years, after the liqueur making, I drained the cranberries from the liquid and toss it out with the yard waste. This year, continuing the trend of reducing and reusing, I decided to put it to good use. That's damn good fruit there, all candy-sweet from its time spent in sugar and alcohol, nature's preservative. And, my, are they perfect in these breads. We're dutifully working our way through that first directionally-challenged, but still rather palatable, batch, and have found that a half-pint worth of sticky-sweet cranberry bread is quite suitable for any snacking environment. In the meantime, I whipped up another batch with the last of the cranberries and, filling the jars just so, achieved the little ping of the canning lids, indicating that the breads were properly sealed away, and that my latent direction-following skills haven't atrophied.

The other fruity by-product of the liqueurs this year was the dried apricot mash that I'd, for a few months, been salivating over, figuring out some good application for it. When we finally strained that liqueur and got our first taste of the macerated apricots, we decided two things: (1) it was too good not to share, and (2) there was nothing we could do with it that would showcase its awesomeness other than just putting it in a jar and sending it out. So that's what we did. I attached little spoons (they'd been gifted to me a year ago and had been sitting untested in a drawer ever since) to the jars. Because a cute little jar just begs for a cute little spoon.

I'd love to bake some of this up in a round of brie. Or serve it cold on a water cracker with prosciutto. Or spoon it directly into my mouth from the jar. Or spread it on a bagel with some salami and Muenster. Now, that's a good way to start the day.