Couple nights ago is when this Tale of Baking Woe begins. Kimmer’s taken it upon herself to make Christmas Stollen...
...using a recipe she massaged into place so as to avoid ingredients that could, you know, lead to her death.
Nuts... is what I’m talking about. Which is one heckuva trick ‘cause it’s what runs right through the stollen from end to end as an almond paste.
No easy task, Kimmer conjured a plan and decided to trail it out, putting her test loaf into the oven for baking the following morning.
So now we’re both asleep and, at 4 the next morning, yesterday morning, Kimmer’s brain switches to FULL ON Mode. And now she’s wide awake, brain cranking at 100%.
About half hour later, I dunno, maybe one of the cats wakes me up and I can’t get back to sleep. I’m turning this way, then that, when Kimmer says
Now we’re both up and it’s 430 in the morning. Which seriously blows ‘cause it’s also pitch black outside and hella cold.
Kimmer’s thinking if I can put on a movie... maybe that would distract her brain enough to allow her back to sleep.
Sounds like a legit idea. At which point...
When I wake up, the menu for “The Santa Clause” is on our bedroom TV, playing the same music box melody over and over.
The part where I said “I fall back to sleep”? Turns out I actually got out of bed, stepped out of our room, walked down the hall, and procured “The Santa Clause” DVD for Kimmer’s movie sleep therapy. Then I walked back down the hall, returned to our bedroom, turned on the TV, turned on the DVD player, popped it open, opened the DVD case, removed the DVD, placed it in the opened DVD tray, closed the tray, and after a few beats of the newly inserted DVD spinning up... I hit PLAY on the DVD controller.
Which is, apparently, when Kimmer’s brain told her to fire up the oven and prove once and for all how she nailed her Nut-Free Stollen recipe.
So she gets out of bed. Down the hall and into the kitchen to warm up the oven and sets the timer for 10 minutes. She comes back to the bedroom, gets into bed, and starts watching “The Santa Clause” playing on our TV.
Quickly, her brain disengages...
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the timer goes off.
Fifteen minutes later, Kimmer snaps wide awake and hustles herself to the kitchen.
Now I’m not gonna say she burned the Christmas Stollen. In fact, I think she nailed the flavor inside. The outside, however, has a hardened consistency approaching Biscotti.
Therefore, in the spirit of making the best of things, we shall endeavor to dip this 0.5 version of Kimmer’s Nut-Free Christmas Stollen into our teas until such time as we have a 1.0 version.
