Christmas on the Sales Floor and Stress Baking

I often think I'd like to live off of peppermint tea for the rest of my life. Then I remember I'm a baker.

For functional and therapeutic purposes alike, the holidays are a great time to be caught in a fit of marathon stress-baking. So, when I recently found myself in a particularly restless state, out came the stand mixer and measuring cups. Three batches of cookies, two batches of frosting, two dinners, and a loaf of bread later, the fog in my brain had dissipated. (As had all the food. It's nice to live around people who can take entire batches of cookies off your hands) Polish off with a kitchen full of dishes done four times over, and I'm feelin' fancy-free.


This last month, I was blessed in the form of cash and more cash when I was hired back for the holidays at my old job with [ImmerEinundzwanzig] (actual name not used here because I'm done saying it for the day and I think it makes the mouth sound lazy). I've enjoyed refreshing the important life skills useless parlor tricks that can only be developed and perfected by someone who has spent too long working in a clothing store. My repertoire includes being able to handle 150+ hangers at a time (clothing included), speed-folding, and a number of one-handed feats, including buttoning, tying (optional variation: bow-tying), zipping, hanging, and folding. The holiday season is so impossibly busy, my list of things to do turns into a kind of logic puzzle. I'm good at those. So naturally, I'm good at my job. It's a swell feeling.

On the other hand, sometimes people are less-than-civil to their local shopgirl. Some days they spill their sodas on my floor and leave me to tackle the atrocity with nothing more than paper towels and a garbage can. Some days they watch me lovingly fold a large pile of clothing, only to nonchalantly dump it onto the floor as I walk away. Some days they leave diapers in my dressing room.
Diapers.
On one such recent day, I was working in lingerie and doing my darnedest to appease the masses of holiday shoppers. After a brief hiatus from panty-land (one that involved soda and paper towels), I returned to find my section looking like a pink war zone. One look at my once beautifully-arranged table of delicates (now a heaping, tangled mountain of unmentionables) had me wanting to swear and burn all the lace in the world.
Making exasperated eyebrows at customers is discouraged, so my only consolation was the thought that in four hours I would be home with my feet up, teacup in hand.

A particular quote comes to mind (Sam, if I may):
"Chocolate cream pie! You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That's such a comfort."
-Julie Powell, Julie & Julia

And that's exactly what I did. Only I added the egg whites too, and made this:

That's right, it's another cake!
Whipped peppermint cream + smooth, velvety ganache = peace, love, and compassion.

Butter and sugar may not be good for the heart, but surely they are good for the soul -especially when shared with a room full of your favorite people. Once again, stress baking has saved the day.