On Strike for Christmas

by Sheila Roberts

  Tiffany’s Frosted Christmas Brownies

  2 sticks butter (salted)

  4 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate

  4 eggs

  2¼ cups sugar

  1 teaspoon peppermint extract

  1 cup flour

  1 (12-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips

  Frosting:

  2 cups powdered sugar

  3 tablespoons softened butter (salted)

  2 tablespoons milk

  Green or red food coloring

  Crushed peppermint candy (about ¾ cup, or however much or little you want)

  1. Melt butter and chocolate over low heat. Cool. Beat eggs with a mixer for a couple of minutes, slowly adding sugar. Add peppermint extract and flour and stir until just combined. Add chocolate chips and chocolate-butter mixture.

  2. Pour into greased 9- × 13-inch pan. Bake at 350° F. for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool.

  3. For the frosting, combine the sugar, butter, milk, and a drop or two of food coloring. Spread over the brownies. (Note: frosting will thinly cover brownies. If you like more frosting, you may want to double the recipe.) Top with crushed peppermint candy. Makes a couple dozen or so, depending on what size you cut the brownies.

  Joy’s White Chocolate Shortbread

  The original shortbread recipe called for 4 cups of flour, but with that you wind up adding extra butter and/or a tablespoon of water to get the dough to hold together, so Joy just starts with less flour. If the dough feels sticky you can always add more flour.

  3½ cups flour

  2 sticks butter (use the real thing, salted—no substitutes!)

  ¾ cup sugar

  4 (1-ounce) squares white chocolate, melted

  Flaked coconut (optional)

  1. Mix the flour, butter, and sugar together until it holds in a ball like pie crust, then divide into 3 balls. Turn onto a large ungreased cookie sheet and flatten into circles about ¼ inch thick and 5 inches wide. Poke full of holes with a fork, then cut into pie wedge sections with a sharp knife. (This will make it easier to get the cookies apart once they’re baked.) You should get about 6 wedges per circle.

  2. Bake at 350° F. for 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Cut them again after you take them out of the oven and let them cool.

  3. Melt white chocolate according to package instructions. Then frost the shortbread from the tip to the middle. If desired, you can top each cookie with a teaspoon of flaked coconut. Let the white chocolate harden completely before storing. Makes about 18 wedges.

  Joy’s Gumdrop Cookies

  (In Loving Memory of Anne Bates, Who Died Way Too Young)

  ½ cup shortening or margarine

  ½ cup granulated sugar

  ½ cup brown sugar

  1 egg

  1 tablespoon water

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1 cup sifted flour

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1½ cups rolled oats

  ¾ cup gumdrops, cut into small pieces

  Approximately 1½ cups flaked coconut (optional)

  1. Cream together shortening, sugars, egg, water, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients and the oats to the egg-sugar mixture. Add cut-up gumdrops. Form into 1-inch balls and roll in coconut, if desired.

  2. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake the cookies at 350° F. for 12 to 15 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen. (Joy thinks. It’s very hard to get an accurate count when people keep snitching the dough and snatching cookies the minute they come off the cookie sheet. She suggests doubling the recipe.)

  Tiffany’s Snowball Cookies

  1 cup butter (can use half shortening)

  ½ cup powdered sugar, plus additional for rolling cookies in after they are baked

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  2¼ cups flour

  ½ cup chopped walnuts

  Cream butter and sugar. Add salt, vanilla, flour, and walnuts and mix. Roll into 1-inch balls and bake at 350° F. for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. (Watch these carefully. Don’t overbake them.) Cool on rack. After they are cool, roll in powdered sugar. Makes 2 dozen.

  Joy’s Frosted Biscotti

  (Adapted from a Recipe Courtesy of Susan Abbe)

  1 cup pecans, lightly toasted

  1 cup dried cranberries

  2 eggs

  ½ cup sugar

  ½ cup vegetable oil

  2 tablespoons grated orange peel

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

  1¼ teaspoons baking powder

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  ½ teaspoon orange extract

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 cups flour

  6 (1-ounce) squares white chocolate, melted

  1. Toast the pecans by placing them on a lightly greased baking sheet and into a 350° F. oven for about 15 minutes. Stir the pecans at the end of each 5 minutes of baking time. Take from oven and set aside to cool.

  2. Place the cranberries in a bowl with hot water to cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, orange peel, cinnamon, allspice, baking powder, vanilla, orange extract, and salt. Blend. Add the flour, pecans, and drained cranberries and stir into a stiff dough. Turn out onto a heavily floured surface and knead until smooth, counting your kneading turns. Knead about 20 turns. Add more flour if needed to reduce stickiness.

  4. Divide dough in half. Form each half into a 2-inch-diameter log with a slight hump going down the middle. (These actually look a little like mini bread loaves.) Put them on a large cookie sheet greased lightly with cooking spray and bake them at 350° F. for about 30 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch. Let cool for 10 minutes. (Make sure you cool them for the full 10 minutes or they won’t cut well!)

  5. With a spatula, carefully transfer the logs to a cutting surface. Using a serrated knife, cut them on the diagonal into ½-inch-thick slices. Return the slices, cut side down, to the baking sheet. Bake until brown at 350° F. about 20 minutes more. Cool on wire racks. When cool, melt white chocolate slowly in a heavy pan and dip one whole side of each biscotti in the chocolate, scraping off the excess as you remove each from the pan. Return the biscotti to wire racks and let them stand until chocolate is hardened. Makes 16 to 24.

  Carol’s Figgy Pudding

  (Formerly Mrs. Moyle’s Figgy Pudding; In Loving Memory of Florence Moyle)

  1/3 teaspoon baking soda (I know. Who uses 1/3 of a teaspoon of anything? My mom. And this recipe is so good I honestly didn’t want to tamper with it.)

  1/3 teaspoon salt

  1/3 teaspoon cinnamon

  1/3 teaspoon nutmeg

  1/3 teaspoon allspice

  ½ cup flour

  ½ cup sugar

  1/3 cup each of raisins, candied fruit mix, cut up figs, and dates

  1/3 cup grated apple

  1/3 cup grated carrot

  2 tablespoons melted butter

  1 egg, beaten

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  1. Sift dry ingredients together and mix with dried fruits. Add grated apple and carrot. Add melted butter and egg and stir in lemon juice.

  2. Steam in the top of a medium-size double boiler for about an hour or so. The pudding will remain a little moist, but just be sure the center is a little bit firm. It will firm up a little more when it cools. Wrapped in foil, it will keep well for several weeks in your refrigerator.

  3. To serve, heat the pudding in the top of a double boiler. Should be served hot. Makes 6 to 8 servings, depending on how much they eat.

  Old-Fashioned Pudding Sauce

  1 heaping tablespoon softened butter

  1/3 cup flour

  1/3 cup sugar

  Salt

  ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

  2½ cups boiling water
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  Lemon juice (optional)

  In a small saucepan cream together the butter, flour, and sugar. Add dash of salt and the nutmeg. Pour in a small amount of hot water to make a paste, then slowly add 2 cups boiling water to make a sauce of the desired thickness. If desired, add lemon juice to taste. Serve hot with the pudding. Serves 6 to 8.

  Happy Holidays and Happy Eating!

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my friend Kema Bohn for helping me get my cancer facts straight. You beat the disease with grace and dignity—you’re an inspiration. Thank you also to the Port Orchard Brain Trust: Lois Dyer, Rose Marie Harris, Patty Jough-Haan, Krysteen Seelen, Susan Plunkett, Kate Breslin, Susan Wiggs, and Anjalee Banerjee. Your insights were always appreciated. I also want to acknowledge my amazing agent, Paige Wheeler, and my wonderful editor, Rose Hilliard. Where would I be without you two? (I don’t want to even try to imagine.) Thanks, too, to all those great cooks whose recipes have added richness to my life and pounds to my hips. Speaking of recipes, thanks, Marliss, for helping me make some of those old family recipes make sense. And last but not least, thanks to my long-suffering husband, Robert, who said to make sure I spelled his name right, for helping me with my football terminology. (So, did I get the name right?) Happy holidays to every one of you! May your stockings be filled with all the good things you deserve and may the Sugarplum Fairy make the calories vanish from every Christmas cookie you eat.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ON STRIKE FOR CHRISTMAS. Copyright © 2007 by Sheila Rabe. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roberts, Sheila, 1942–

  On strike for Christmas / Sheila Roberts.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-2251-7

  I. Title

  PR9369.3.R635O5 2007

  823.3—dc22

  2007024548