SusieJ's Advent Calendar: December 20, 2008

The recipe: Mulled cider

So many drinks at Christmas are alcoholic, and often the "virgin" version is not quite up to it. Not so with this hot, spiced apple cider. You can make enough for an evening at home or a party of fifty. It's not too sweet and easy to make.

The surprise: Food science

Popular Science magazine explores why food does what it does, from baking to roasting.

How I nearly killed my friends and co-workers.

The worst disaster involving my food (and every cook's nightmare) was the time I sent a friend to the hospital. In my defense, he forgot to tell me something.

He was not my first friend with a food allergy. In fact, as his hand reached for a rum ball, I even thought to mention that rum balls have nuts, but then I thought, what are the odds of having two friends with nut allergies? Even in the late 80s, pretty near certain it turned out.

So, Ty left the party early and spent the night in the emergency ward, and I now grill everyone about food allergies, sensitivities, special diets, general preferences, and the state of their pancreas. In the last decade, allergies and sensitivies, not to mention voluntary restrictive diets, have become more common. It makes throwing big parties interesting making sure everone can eat something.

Diabetic? I'll make a Thai dinner with Splenda! (A for effort, B- for taste.) Raw foodie? Here's the fruit platter! Vegan? Isa Chandra Moskowitz has the answers!

Which leads to tonight's disaster. My friends' son has a severe peanut allergy, along with eggs, dairy, beef and pork. Only the peanut allergy is truly life-threatening, and actually the easiest to work around -- scrupulous cleaning after baking with nuts; storing nuts away from everything else; not re-using measuring spoons and cups across different ingredients. It's the eggs and dairy that's killing me.

It turns out, eggs are important in baking; they have all that good protein that gives everything structure. Yes, cake without eggs is possilbe and very good (see Moskowitz's Vegan Cupcakes), but cookies are much harder.

The dough was extremely dry and barely stuck together. Picking up the cookies after cutting them out, some small bit often fell off. They puffe and ran so much that the stars look like flowers, and the snowflakes are bloated.

I just hope the kids are in a "it's sugar! let's eat it!" mood, and not a "it doesn't taste exactly like Nabisco! yuck!" mood.