Savage snowmen!

Happy Christmas Eve! This is my favorite day of the holiday season because I can spend all day baking and not dealing with other human beings. Before I started my stacks of cutout cookies, loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, and pans of dinner rolls, I had to make a Cookbook Wednesday post just for anyone who would rather read blogs than cook (or spend time with actual human beings....)

This week I've chosen another holiday cookbook that sees Christmas as an excuse for a craft project, but this one has a slightly better grasp on reality than last week's entry. Today we have An Edible Christmas by Irena Chalmers (1992).

You can not only see that I got a good deal on this one, but also the white bit in the bottom left corner is the library call number tag. This is a library discard. Unsurprisingly, this book mostly got checked out from mid-November to mid-December, but it also got checked out in mid-March more often than I would expect. Is there some reason '90s library patrons suddenly needed holly cookie wreaths around St. Patrick's Day?

This book does pretty well at keeping the craft projects appealing:

The puff angels look like... well... angels. I imagine last week's magazine would find a way to make puff pastry angels look more like they should be Halloween bats.

The recipe itself is fairly easy since there is no dough to make. It just takes a lot of waiting around for the puff pastry to chill properly.

Sorry about the glare on the margin! I didn't want to dismember the book for a scan.

Of course, I can't ignore those little guys on the cover: the popcorn snowmen!

This batch seems to be having a great time practicing for their curling tryouts, using their licorice and shredded wheat brooms to sweep the counter before the fruit-ring pucks. Well, most of them are, anyway. I'm not so sure about the one in the upper left. He's apparently bathing in a tub full of snowman body parts. (I'm imagining Calvin made this one with perhaps a little help from Hobbes. Maybe it's a commentary on depravity and excess in this holiday season made especially poignant by the fact that the other snowmen seem so willing to smile and overlook this monster's murderous ways. Is this the snowman Patrick Bateman?)

Should you want to make your own snowmen (Calvin-style or otherwise), it's not much harder than making Rice Krispie treats:

Happy Holidays! And remember, it's better to take out your holiday aggression on popcorn balls than on your family. Bite off a snowman's head for me.

As always, Cookbook Wednesday is courtesy of Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.