Moravia, whisks, and website design

I'm working on the Moravian White Christmas Cookies (December 1946). The dough is chillin' and I'm feeling good. I wish I'd taken pictures, because this was really pretty dough. There's a lot of beating that needs to happen, so today I'm very grateful for the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. 


The butter and sugar gets creamed until it is light (paddle attachment, 5 minutes) then four well beaten eggs (hand whisk, 2 minutes) get mixed in (whisk attachment, 5 minutes). The result is fluffy and light and really beautiful. Then flour, cinnamon, nutmeg alternating with sherry (wow!) are added (paddle attachment, 5 minutes) and that brings us to the Now. 


I should have taken pictures. It would save me a thousand words. Maybe I'll make these again over the weekend if the taste lives up to my hopes. 


While we're waiting for the chilling to occur, I want to share two things. Neither is trivial. 


First, my whisk.  

I bought this silly looking thing from the William Sonoma catalog over ten years ago. It was sort of a gag gift for someone else because it was so silly looking. Later, I was at the recipient's house and the power went out before she'd whipped the cream to go with dessert. I was handed the silly whisk and a bowl of cream and told to Whip It. Much to my amazement, I had whipped cream in no time. I went out and bought one for myself and have never regretted it. Turns out, you can't judge a whip by its cover. 

Secondly, Moravia. 

If you're smarter than me and know where Moravia is already, you can skip this part. But I'm a fairly well-educated person and I finally admitted to myself and my stand mixer that I didn't know where it was. 

According to Wikipedia, Moravia was a historical region of Central Europe in the the eastern part of what is now the Czech Republic. At times the Moravian Empire also included area that is now part of Poland and Slovakia. It's name comes from the Morava River. Today, Moravia is part of the Czech Republic. 

The Moravia Tourism website tell us that there are 8 sites in Moravia on the UNESCO World Heritage List. That's really something. 

If you're interested, the Discover CZ website has details on each site, but it's kind of hard to navigate that site. I took a class in library school on cultural differences related to  website design and information management, and the Discover CZ site would be an interesting case study of culture influencing design (she says having spent exactly 45 seconds on the site...). The layout is hard for me to navigate, but there's clearly an architecture to the information that makes sense. 

Gotta run now to a Halloween party at the wee man's school. I'll update later on the cookies - with pictures!