It’s our Christmas Cabinet. We only open it once a year. The Christmas Cabinet Man lives in there. Every Christmas Eve we let him out and he cooks us a midnight feast. He’s the best cook ever.

Welcome to the third part of Inside the Christmas Cabinet, a behind the scenes series about my Christmas horror novelette “The Christmas Cabinet” published in the Summer 2026 issue of Assemble Artifacts Short Story Magazine. If you haven’t already, first read Part One on the setting and Part Two on literary/film inspirations, as well as the story itself. The following contains spoilers! You have been warned!

For many American families, special seasonal recipes and large meals surrounded by family and friends are essential highlights of the holiday season. Arnold, Greta, and Carol have some rather peculiar Christmas culinary traditions, it’s true. But some of the more, um, conventional foods in the story are very good.

Greta arranges the uncooked biscuits into a hot cast iron skillet. They sizzle in bacon grease as she presses them into place and brushes them with butter. “And into the oven we go. Should be done before you know it. I will fry some eggs and sausage, and you can fix them however you like.”

Many who know me or have followed me on Instagram know I know my way around some cast iron. I’m also a big fan of breakfast foods. One of my favorite recipes are southern-style buttermilk biscuits cooked in my Lodge 10-inch skillet.

After Elizabeth’s strange first night in Port Crayon, Carol having led her downstairs in the middle of the night to admire the Christmas Cabinet with anticipation (He knows it’s almost here!), Greta comforts her nerves with hearty biscuit breakfast sandwiches. Below is the recipe so that you too can cook biscuits just like Greta’s!

Greta’s Buttermilk Skillet Biscuits

Directions:

• Grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet and place in the oven as it’s preheating to 475.
• Cut 5 Tbsp from the butter and cube it, then set aside in the freezer to chill for at least ten minutes.
• Melt the remaining 3 Tbsp of butter and set aside.
• Add the chilled butter to 3 1/4 c self rising flour in a medium mixing bowl. Separate and smash the cubes between your fingers and distribute evenly throughout.
• Add buttermilk to the flour. Begin with a wooden spoon, stirring until it won’t mix easily, then press and fold with your hands. Incorporate as much flour as will make a lump of sticky dough. There will likely be some left over.
• Sprinkle the excess flour onto the counter to prevent from sticking, then dump the dough onto it. Sprinkle more flour on top of the dough to prevent it from sticking to your hands. Flatten the lump out with your hands until it is a flat circle, around an inch or two thick, or roughly the same diameter as the skillet. Cut with a circular cutter, gathering and combining the dough as needed, until you have 6 to 8 biscuits depending on the size of your cutter.
• Remove the hot skillet from the oven. Add biscuits to the skillet, using a fork to arrange and squeeze them in. Evenly brush the tops with the melted butter.
• Bake for fifteen minutes. The buttered tops should turn crispy and golden brown.
• Remove from oven, let cool. Cut in half to serve with eggs, sausage, cheese, etc for breakfast sandwiches.

Sated by Greta’s phenomenal biscuit sandwiches, Elizabeth nurses her third coffee and peers out the living room window into the pale, still scene. The storm has left its mark on the neighborhood: white dunes soldier past besieged houses and into the road; leafless, snow-laden maples sleep, most undisturbed by the past onslaught, except for the one across the cul-de-sac, whose heavy limb has fallen and nearly disappeared into the ground. Its diminished crown seems relieved despite its bright wound.

Elizabeth often finds herself overcome by lethargy at Greta’s house. Maybe it’s because of all of that mouthwatering home cooking filling her up. On the day before Christmas, she lies down for a quick nap and is disturbed to find out she slept until six thirty in the evening. The weather is threatening, but Greta’s Christmas Eve snacks are cozy and delicious.

“I’ve made some little noshes to hold us over,” Greta whispers as she quietly transfers a baking sheet of pigs-in-a-blanket from the oven to the counter, next to a rack of cooling sugar cookies. Her smile beams. “Have as many as you like.”
Elizabeth takes one. The poppy seed-topped crescent roll wraps a juicy maple breakfast sausage that snaps when she bites into it. Her stomach was slow in waking, but this gets it rumbling. She reaches for another.
“We’ll eat a proper meal later on,” Arnold says gently.

I must have been hungry writing this story. The maple sausage pigs-in-a-blanket came to me as I was writing. I had never had them before, but I could envision them perfectly, could taste them, could smell them as I was creating the scene. After I finished the story I knew I had to make them for myself. They seemed rather simple, but I wanted to be sure to get it right on the first try. I knew I couldn’t have been the only one to have the idea. So I looked around the internet, thinking I could find something similar and adapt it accordingly. Sure enough, I did not invent this appetizer so much as absorb it from our collective snack-consciousness. I found the exact recipe I was looking for, right down to the poppy seeds, at taste & tell. Greta’s recipe below is almost exactly how Deborah instructs on her blog, save for some very minor modifying touches—the major one being that Greta makes big batches of everything, so her recipe is doubled!

Greta’s Maple Sausage and Poppy Seed Pigs-in-a-Blanket

(adapted from https://www.tasteandtellblog.com/breakfast-pigs-in-a-blanket/)

Ingredients:

• 16 maple-flavored breakfast sausage links
• 2 cans of crescent roll dough
• 3-4 Tbsp REAL maple syrup
• 1 large egg
• 1-2 tsp poppy seeds

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375.
• Sauté the breakfast sausages until cooked through, set aside on large plate lined with paper towel to absorb excess grease.
• Open crescent rolls, separate and spread out to make 16 triangles.
• Brush all triangles with maple syrup on one side.
• Place a sausage on the wide end of a dough triangle and roll around the sausage. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat with each sausage and triangle.
• Whisk the egg with a bit of water in a small bowl to make an egg wash, then brush the tops. If one egg is not enough, prepare another, but you should not need a lot of egg wash.
• Sprinkle all the rolls generously with poppy seeds.
• Bake until golden, 10-12 minutes.

“So, big Christmas Eve dinner, huh?” Elizabeth says. “What’s on the menu tonight?”
The family trades knowing looks among themselves. Greta smiles—gleaming, intense. “It’s a surprise,” she whispers, almost giddily. Restrained excitement rolls off Carol in almost visible waves. Arnold is enthusiastic, too, though he seems a bit embarrassed, maybe remembering what it was like for him before he was let in on the secret.

These are only a couple of the great recipes Greta has in her culinary repertoire. Unfortunately I don’t have the recipe to her home-made hot cocoa. I know that she likes to add a splash of the Bacardi she keeps in the cabinet above the sink, but I’m pretty sure there’s a secret ingredient she adds just for Elizabeth, which affects her head much stronger than the rum.

And as good a home cook Great is, we all know that her abilities can’t compare with the Christmas Cabinet Man’s. As Greta’s own daughter, Carol, admits…

…He’s the best cook ever.

When a babysitter gets stranded with a Hallmark-perfect family over the holidays, their cheerful traditions start to feel less like Christmas spirit and more like ritual. The daughter’s unsettling obsession with a locked cabinet opened only on Christmas causes a growing dread for what is unleashed on December 25.