Sausage, Apple, and Fennel Corn Bread Dressing

A major factor in how we select recipes for any holiday is how much maintenance they require. (We suspect the same is true for many of you!) After all, when you're already planning to spend several hours in the kitchen, why commit yourself to more?

This year, though, we wondered whether we'd been unfairly limiting ourselves all this time. Maybe, by taking the term "labor of love" a little more literally, we could reap greater culinary rewards.

Enter Sausage, Apple, and Fennel Corn Bread Dressing (Cooking Light, 2006). This recipe has a record-setting 22 ingredients, a 4-star reader rating, and a Test Kitchen Guarantee. Surely it had to be worth the extra effort, right? With gusto, we accepted the challenge.

Step 1 was a reasonably simple undertaking: make corn bread. No frills, very simple cornbread. This step took about 5 minutes to assemble, 16 minutes to bake, and 5 minutes worth of cooling time. You could save yourself that time by buying pre-made corn bread from your local bakery; however, if you're looking for ways to make the holidays healthier, doing so leaves you with less control over fat and calories.

While baking the cornbread, it's possible to get a jump-start on preparing the sausage mixture. You'll notice from our ingredient line-up that we'd chopped all of our produce up the night before. It's not necessary to do so, especially since you'll want something to do while that cornbread is cooling, but we can vouch for the fact that all of the pre-chopped ingredients withstood 16 hours in the fridge.

Next, in stages, our produce was added to a non-stick pan and sauteed in olive oil. This process took about 20 minutes and our persistence paid off in the form of pleasant aromas in our kitchen! Once the sautee was completed, the mixture was cooled to room temperature before moving on.

While we waited for our sausage mixture to cool, we went ahead and crumbled the cornbread into a large bowl. It was similar to playing with one of those squeezable stress balls that were popular years ago - a nice little stress reliever for holiday season! Then we incorporated the sausage mixture, the broth, and eggs, and spread everything out into a 9x13 baking dish. The dish went into our preheated oven for 50 minutes - time we used to whip up some mashed potatoes and carve up our turkey!

Because we needed to farm out our baking dish for another tasty treat, we piled our finished dressing into another serving bowl, shown at left. To keep it warm, we covered the bowl with aluminum foil and stashed it in the microwave. Seriously, if you ever find yourself taking direction from a recipe to "keep [something] warm", look no further than that small, insulated space in your kitchen - it is perfect!

Now for the verdict: This stuffing is...good. Not great, nowhere close to what mom used to make, but a good, solid alternative. Maybe we'd gotten ourselves amped up for the fruits of our long and distinguished labors, but we were mostly underwhelmed. With strong ingredients like fennel involved, we expected to produce a symphony of flavors and ended up tapping out "Chopsticks" instead.

One reviewer on Cooking Light's website added dried cranberries, which we think might have broken up the beige blandness. Some almonds or walnuts might also provide another layer of texture and flavor. Something was just missing - so let us know if you find it!

Oatmeal Pecan Pie

Now that we've all arisen from our respective turkey comas, it's time to take a look at what the Yuppie household whipped up for Thanksgiving Dinner. We'll start with our favorite course: dessert!

Most homes make pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving, but Mr. Yuppie prefers pecan. We took things a step further this year and went for Oatmeal Pecan Pie (Cooking Light, Nov 2006) instead.

This recipe required us to buy only 2 items that are off our "keep around" list: pecans and pre-prepared pie crusts. The pecans themselves are conspicuously absent from our ingredient line-up, which is a theme from this year's Thanksgiving cooking. There was so much going on at any given time that we got ourselves flustered and either didn't take pictures, or forgot to pull the most essential items when prepping. So we'll do our best to fill in the blanks for you guys as we compile our Thanksgiving retrospective.

The first step is to place the pre-prepared pie crust in your buttered pie dish and flute the edges. These pre-prepared crusts, while not the healthiest option, are a busy cook's blessing. They brown up nicely and are nice and flaky when cooked. Sure, a hand-made pie crust is divine, but when you're pressed for time, one of these will do the trick.

Next, we assemble what might be the easiest pie filling ever. All of the filling ingredients are combined in a large bowl, then poured into the crust.

Now, the recipe calls for the egg whites and yolks to be lightly beaten separately, then incorporated into the other ingredients. After having done this, we're not sure why it's necessary; it seems as though you could've reversed the order of incorporation, putting the whites and yolks into the bowl, lightly beating them, then adding the other ingredients. That switcheroo would've saved you from cleaning 2 prep bowls, which at holiday time is a real blessing.

Next, the pie goes in the oven at 325 for 50 minutes. See? Easiest pie ever. About halfway through, we placed a pie crust shield like this one around the edges to keep the exposed crust from becoming burnt. Other than that, we set it and forget it!

Fifty minutes later, we removed our pie from the oven and cooled it on a wire rack. The top was set up nicely, and the pie shield did its job keeping the crust evenly cooked. Underneath that hard shell lies a gooey, oatey filling that should be enjoyed in moderation (anything more might give you a cavity!).

Our sole complaint about this pie was how difficult it was to slice and serve. Our slices looked less like pretty wedges and more like tasty piles than we would've preferred. We didn't care, because it was all going to the same place anyway, but if you're looking to wow a crowd, this might not be the pie for you. If you're just looking to pig out with friends and family this holiday season, then go grab yourselves some pie crusts from the refrigerator aisle and get to work!

Gingerbread Cookies with Confectioner's Sugar Icing

Our friend recently deployed to Iraq for a year. While he's gone, a group of us has committed to sending him care packages that represent the current season back home. We thought and thought about what we should include in the fall-themed package, and a trip through Hobby Lobby provided inspiration: gingerbread cookies in the shape of turkeys! It was obviously fated, so we snapped them up and ran home to bake.

The basis for our cookies is the Gingerbread Cookies recipe from Cooking Light's November 2009 issue. We made these for our annual Christmas party last year and they were a smash hit, so we were able to bake with confidence.

Before attempting these cookies, be aware that the dough requires an hour's worth of chillin' in the fridge. The good news, though, is that the cookies will keep for weeks in an airtight container, so you can make them several days ahead when you have time and ice them later.

We love the simple icing recipe that accompanies the cookies, but it's more for piping, and we didn't quite know how to pipe a turkey! That's why we headed over to Williams-Sonoma and snapped up a recipe for Confectioners' Sugar Icing instead.

The W-S icing requires 3 ingredients not pictured in our ingredient line-up - 1/2 stick of butter, water, and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar - and about 7 minutes to prepare (5 of which are cooling time). It results in a buttery, sugar icing that can either be drizzled or spread.

We chose the festive route and opted to drizzle the icing on our cookies, and they turned out looking very chic and modern! A tip for fellow drizzlers - lay your cookies out on a large sheet of saran wrap, leaving plenty of room on the top and bottom sides. Then, start the stream of icing before you get to the first cookie, and finish after you've reached the last one. That way, all of your cookies look perfectly uniform, with none of them looking like an obvious starting or ending point.

Our fingers are crossed that the desert heat doesn't melt these into a sticky, gooey mess! But hey, it's the thought that counts, right? And no matter how they look when they reach their destination, we know one thing's for sure: they'll still be delicious!