A Christmas Party


Tedd graciously offered to host a Christmas party the Sunday before Christmas and I wanted to do something special for everyone. I'm normally quite the baker during the holiday season and had been stymied in all baking attempts by the lack of an oven. Enter Hye-Young, my lovely Korean friend and proud owner of an oven! She is going to France in February to study French and baking and is already a knowledgeable baker herself. I went to her family's apartment for a lovely afternoon of cookie decorating and pumpkin pie making. It was comforting to be able to keep at least some traditions this holiday season. The cookies were gobbled up and at least Tedd and I enjoyed the pumpkin pie.

Tedd had some surprises of his own for the party. In addition to chocolate covered strawberries, he wanted to serve eggnog. The morning of the party, he brought a bowl of 24 egg yolks in sugar and a bowl of 24 egg whites to my apartment so I could keep them cool in my larger refrigerator. Slightly skeptical of his plan to just mix everything together before the party, I quickly looked up some eggnog recipes. Most recipes call for far fewer eggs, but the real kicker is that eggnog requires whipped egg whites. Whipping egg whites is simple and relatively quick with the help of a good mixer. But in the absence of a mixer, whipping eggs whites is a tiring manual process, one that I happily never had to do before coming to Korea. Tedd and I spent close to 45 minutes taking turns whisking egg whites into soft peaks by hand. We were quite proud of our egg white transformation and concluded that the eggnog was glorious and worth the effort.