Bambini Jesu: how to

Babies made of bread are an Italian custom at Christmas: Bambino. They're usually pretty big and tapered, a fairly complicated shape to make (especially if you only do it once a year). The eyes would be raisins on a traditional one. The goal isn't to make the face look realistic, but to make fancy swaddling bands.

I hardly bake bread at all now, so it's a big deal to the kids. They really wanted to do it themselves this year. So we made little ones with a basic mock braid.

The only sneaky trick here is the dough, which is a chilled challah. This is challah made with oil rather than butter, so it's pretty stiff without being brittle. Note in the pictures that there's no stray flour on the counter: you want it with just enough flour that it doesn't stick to the counter. I set it in the fridge at the end of the first rise. A couple of hours later it was chilled throughout and ready to shape.

Once it's in flat pieces it warms quickly as you handle it and gets too sticky and stretchy for little kids, so don't dawdle. I made the cuts with a bench knife and showed them how to do the mock braid. The only tricky part is to lay the dough strips gently, without stretching them, and that gets really difficult if the dough warms up. Again, they're on an unfloured surface.

Then they rise on the pan and go into the oven at normal challah temperature. The kids were in bed when the bambini came out of the oven, but they had them for breakfast Christmas morning. These two were each a quarter of a recipe of challah; the other half got braided and baked after the bambini for meatball sandwiches. Challah makes great French toast, too.