Leanne Shawler, Artist

As I was working from home on Monday, I was able to get all the prep done for these jelly donuts (recipe by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen ) and thus able to fry them first thing Tuesday morning to take into work for a Chanukah treat. There are two rises involved with this yeasted dough and I got a bit worried: the milk didn't froth with the yeast in it (not lukewarm enough?) and although after the first rise the dough was a bit puffy, it looked pretty sad and flat the next morning after the second overnight rise in the fridge. BTW, I did the "peskier" method where you prefill with jam before frying. Having never made these before, I had to do a taste test. (My hubby was dispatched to work with the one donut that "exploded" during frying.) Thankfully, they turned out pretty dang good (I think the lemon zest really made it) ... ... and off to work they went! Portrait #2 is underway for the 52 Portraits in 52 Weeks challenge. This time it is...

You may have noticed that passionfruit has been on my mind a little bit . As we have a lot of it, with still more to come, I think. On Sunday, I made jam from the passionfruit.  This required unearthing all the jam-making equipment that my mother-in-law had given me and washing everything. The passionfruit was cut open and the skins were left to soak in water overnight, and then boiled for 30 minutes (I should've done it a little bit longer) ... And then the jam making began in earnest. The result being two and three quarter pint jars of pink-colored (from the skins that were boiled) passionfruit jam. And then to wait for 24 hours to see if the seals took. The recipe I used came from here . I had some passionfruit skins left and I really liked the color of the jam in this guy's recipe , so I tried that next. First boiling the skins for 1.5 hours boiled down the water (guess my pan lid wasn't close fitting enough?) so I felt if ...

So I like to bake things every year, partly for the family gathering and partly as gifts. Here's my wishlist. We'll see how many of these I do. St. Lucia buns springerle rum balls fudge (probably peanut butter) Milky Way delight poppy orange quick bread bacon cheese quick bread banana brown sugar white chocolate quick bread pumpkin whoopie pies malted milk brownie bites brandied mince tarts lebkuchen (gingerbready stuff) banana choc chip muffins gingerbread muffins Ok, it's pretty unlikely I'll get to the muffins but I do have two weekends to get it all done in. What's on your Christmas baking list?