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Baking
By Madeline | December 20, 2007
I just spent the entire night slaving over the oven making Christmas cookies. Specifically my families traditional kiflies. Basically a doughy crescent shaped cookie with a lightly sweetened nut mixture inside and sprinkled with powdered sugar. As I was standing there, thinking about my back hurting and how exhausting this all was, I had to appreciate what the servants/peasants of the Tudor times did.
First off, I had to buy the ingredients. I was able to purchase most of my items in premeasured containers saving me from having to do it later. For example, my pound of powdered sugar was already in a one pound box. If I were in the Tudor times, I would have to not only measure all of my ingredients on my own, but I’d also have to grind all of the salt and spices that the recipe called for.
I was using the nut grinder to grind down 1.5 lbs of walnuts that I purchased preshelled and realized that if I were in Tudor times, I’d be shelling 1.5 lbs of walnuts and then grinding them all by hand as I had the spices previously.
Dare I even get started on what my Kitchen Aid super mixer did to those dozen egg whites and that super thick dough in only a matter of minutes? P.S. I LOVE that thing!
As I’m rolling out the crescents to stuff, I’m getting the oven preset for the correct temperature and loading up my stick free pans with cookies. I’m sure after working a Tudor oven for your entire lift, gauging the proper temperature for something as delicate as pastries would be an easy feat, but from a measurement/organization freak like me, I don’t think I could ever possibly conform.
Once it came time to clean up, I simply rinsed the items, loaded them in the dishwasher and swiped everything down with my handy dandy Lysol wipes and voila! Clean kitchen in only twenty minutes. Lacking the dishwashers of now, those in the Tudor age were stuck with using eggshells and water to scrub out their dirty dishes, although the poor didn’t always have access to eggshells and would often use sand. Sort of the last thing you’d like to clean your cooking utensils off with, huh? Not to mention the hours it would probably take to clean all of pans, bowls, etc. that the baking entailed.
All in all, I suppose that in addition to not feeling the need to black out a tooth to show I can afford sugar, I also have the ability to bake a large batch of cookies with relative ease thanks for our modern age. However, I’m still a history fan and would be transported back in time in a heartbeat if I could…so long as I was a noble! 
For those of you interested in making Kiflies, here’s the recipe (NOT LOW FAT - not even a little bit)
Ingredients for dough:
12 egg yolks
1 cup of sour cream
6 cups of flour
1 pound of softened butter - see? I was serious about the not low fat thing…
Ingredients for filling:
1 pound of powdered sugar (additional powdered sugar needed for topping later)
1.5 lbs finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 375
Directions for dough: Mash up softened butter and flour in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine the egg yolks and sour cream. Mix the egg mixture with the flour - easier said than done, trust me. Once done, roll dough into small balls approximately the size of a walnut. Cover and place in the refrigerator ideally overnight or at least for a couple of hours until cold.
Directions for filling (*Do not do this until you are ready to make the kiflies): Whip the 12 egg whites until stiff and gently fold in the remaining ingredients.
Directions for cookies: Place a ball between two sheets of wax paper (cleanest way to flatten it) and roll out with a rolling pin. When rolled out, place a scoop (approx 1.3 tsp depending on the size of the dough ball) of the filling mix in the center of the rolled dough and spread around as much as possible trying to keep it mainly in the center. Next, roll up the dough starting on the side that appears the longest lengthwise. Once you have a rolled up tube of a cookie, bend in the middle to make into a crescent shape. Now do this one thousand more times (J/K though it feels like that with this many cookies!) Once done, pop in the oven for approximately 12 minutes (or until LIGHTLY browned at the edges). Once it cools, sprinkle with powdered sugar. You can do this while it’s hot still for those of you who are overeager (and I understand!) though it gets a little gooey and messy.
Enjoy your kiflies!
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