Fluffy Powdery Goodness Christmas

We've moved beyond your typical white Christmas and into fluffy powerdy goodness. To be fair, there was a little bit of wind-swept crusty bits, but that's to be expected.

This Christmas was spent at Francie's Cabin, in the backcountry mostly south of Breckenridge. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful and filled with lots of powdery snow. Plus! This cabin has a wood fired sauna. W-O-W! Play outside, go in sauna.



The highlight of Christmas day was cake! Christmas day also doubles as Geir's birthday. I'd scoured the web and found a really yummy recipe for Cherry Chocolate Surprise Cake. Most of the huts in the 10th Mountain Division system have some sort of cast iron Little-House-on-the-Prairie stove/oven. And dutch ovens for cooking. This cabin did not. So I improvised and created a "dutch" oven out of 2 cast iron skillets. Put the cake batter in one skillet, use the other as a lid, and put this on a propane burner stove and wah-la! Cherry Chocolate Surprise cake. It lived up to its advertisement. Cooked all the way through and moist. And is now all gone. The key was to keep the heat on the burner as low as possible.

Happy Holidays. May this year be filled with surprisingly good cake.

With love, Sandie