Le Snob

I'm by no means a great baker, but I like to bake. As the holidays approach, I think about baking holiday cookies, and perhaps a bit more. Last year, I scooped up about four magazines with holiday baking recipes, thinking that they'd be pretty standard, year to year, and so far, that seems to be the case. I'm sure that inventive people will always be doing inventive things with baked goods -- ah, but now we slice the banana on a forty-three degree angle, dredging it through the cookie crumbs before dusting with the superfine sugar -- but I'm not into that. I'd simply like to be able to bake about a dozen different kinds of cookies that are tasty, and don't take a ton of time.

It is therefore ironic that one of the recipe sources I picked up last year was the December 2006 issue of Bon Appetit magazine, where I am looking at this recipe on page 94. It happens to be sponsored by McCormick's Seasonings, so it's also on their site:

Triple Chocolate Gingerbread

1 package chocolate cake mix
1 package (4-serving size) chocolate instant pudding mix
4 eggs
1 tablespoon Ground Ginger
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Ground Allspice
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup water
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Confectioners' sugar (optional)
Whipped cream (optional)
White Chocolate Drizzle, recipe follows (optional)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Beat all ingredients except chocolate chips in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed just until moistened, scraping side of bowl frequently. Beat on medium speed 2 minutes or until well blended.

2. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour into 10-cup Bundt pan that has been sprayed with no stick baking spray with flour.

3. Bake 50 minutes or until cake pulls away from side of pan and cake springs back when touched lightly. Cool in pan 15 minutes. Invert cake onto wire rack. Cool completely. If desired, sprinkle cake with confectioners' sugar and serve with whipped cream. Or, spoon White Chocolate Drizzle over cake.

White Chocolate Drizzle: Microwave 1 cup white chocolate chips and 4 teaspoons milk in small microwavable bowl on MEDIUM-HIGH (70% power) 1 minute. Stir until chips are melted and mixture is smooth. If needed, microwave 10 to 30 seconds longer, stirring every 10 seconds. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract. Immediately spoon over cake as drizzle tends to thicken as it sits in the bowl.

Despite the fact that this is more complex than I have in mind, and beyong my ability to pull off (well, probably), I sniff at the first ingredient: Chocolate Cake mix? What the heck kind of baker uses a mix? If by god you can't do it from scratch, why bother?

Proving that snobbery is not limited to the talented.

Will I make it anyway? Well...maybe just for the practice....