ummm, hi. hello. sorry i'm late. do you know i've posted 11 times in 2010? yup, blogger FAIL. my bad.
it's not that i haven't cooked... well, i didn't more or less all summer because my darling husband can (and WILL) grill an. y. thing. (nom.) when we moved, we got a new grill to go with our new patio-- a full-height camping grill. beats the one that sits six inches off the ground. and it gets a full-sized propane tank. HOORAY. he also got a cuisinart griddler for our anniversary. so much grilling.
um, yeah, anyway.
lately i don't want to blog without pictures, i guess, so i just don't blog. but while my parents were in paris, france, europe the past couple weeks, we got their csa and i've been cooking some interesting stuff. like butternut harvest soup.
ingredients:
1 butternut squash, peeled, gutted and cubed
1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and cubed
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 leeks (white and light parts only) cleaned and chopped
2 tbs butter
6ish cups chicken broth
salt, pepper, nutmeg
greek yogurt
prep:
peel, gut, core, chop, cube
actual cooking:
saute leeks and carrots in butter until tender
add broth and bring to a boil
add apple & squash and simmer until squash is easily pierced with a fork
remove from heat and blend in a food processor or with an immersion blender
season with salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg if you like
stir a heaping tablespoon of greek yogurt into each bowl
so, this was the first of 4 soups i made over the course of two weeks. i also have a massive fail (with pictures) to blog and a pretty awesome seat-of-my-pants dinner. i will try very hard to blog them.
(daddy, mama, michael, nardo, kevvie, j, bill, sue, mary, frankie-baby, james, moi, joseph, jim & joe. mara & col were gone by then and old greg graciously took this one for us. and i have no idea where steven was. i kept asking and never got an answer.)
this past weekend, we had my favorite annual tradition: gaining four pounds in two days while the ice in our drinks melts way too fast in the sweltering northern virginia august. also known as the hughes cousins convention at uncles jim & frank's.
after a solid year of emails and obsessive, mouth-watering discussion, jim & i finally got to make our zuchotto. bill recorded it for posterity. because by the time it was unveiled, jim & i were SEVERAL margamaritas in. what? they're GOOD.
zuchotto is a dome-shaped confection compromised of layers of pound cake "bricks," whipped cream with roasted hazelnuts and whipped cream with chocolate chips, all generously doused with booze and set in the fridge for several hours.
so, basically, you line a bowl in cheesecloth, spray booze, then line it in bricks. which you spray with booze.
does my family turn it ON when there's a camera, or what? this was about 10am. if mama didn't do it, kevvie would have had to, but he was busy JUMPING OUT OF A PERFECTLY GOOD AIRPLANE at the time.
then a floor of whipped cream with whichever mix-in. you want to alternate. then bricks. then booze. repeat as necessary.
we used about five 8" pound cakes, 2 quarts of heavy cream and... um... some nuts & chips. and booze.
young james was SUPER helpful with disposing of leftover bricks. spread with nutella, natch.
did i say REAL whipped cream? cause: REAL. and unsweetened. trust me.
after a good spraying, wrap her in cheesecloth, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 7-24 hours.
perfect!
and HUGE. cutting through it wasn't doing my tendinitis any favors, let me tell you. so uncle jim took over and people started sharing cause-- whoa-- my uncle cuts a serious piece of cake.
(i mean, he DID jump out of a perfectly good airplane that morning!)
(also known as: blogger bail-out. because my mother hates to see me be lazy on the interweb.)
The Red Recipe Binder
My mother (Clare’s Mimi) says that I “couldn’t find the kitchen” before I got married, which is true. I lived at home. My grandmother did all the cooking. My only kitchen chore was drying dishes once in a while.
So when I got married and moved out of state I had to learn to cook or face a lifetime of what my new husband had eaten in his starving-student days. Fortunately, his cousin Beth gave me The Joy of Cooking, as shower gift. I read it like a novel, all 900+ pages. And I decided that maybe the Tuna, Noodle and Mushroom Casserole on p. 215 (subtitled “An excellent emergency dish”) was something I could tackle.
That’s where it all started. We didn’t have no stinkin interweb back then. We had home delivery of the daily and Sunday paper, and Mimi has always favored magazine subscriptions as gifts. So every month I would read Redbook and McCall’s and Good Housekeeping and cut out the recipes I wanted to try. And every Thursday I’d read the Food Section of the paper so I could cut out those recipes, too.
I scotch-taped each recipe onto a page of looseleaf paper and filed the pages in a 3-ring binder with sections for each of the chapters in Joy, starting with Beverages and moving on to Hors d’Oeuvre, Salads/Soups, Vegetables, Fish, Meat, Poultry, Breads and Coffee Cakes, Pies and Pastries, Cookies, and so on. I left out Canapes and Tea Sandwiches, Game, and Canning, Salting, Smoking and Drying.
The scotch tape is all dried out now, and a lot of the pages are ripped on the edge where the 3-hole-punch used to be. Paging through the tattered remnants of my homemade cookbook, it’s easy to see what foods fascinated and frustrated me in the 70s. There are a dozen different pie crust recipes, lots of fancy dinner party dishes like Coquilles Saint Jacques (which I am absolutely certain I have never cooked). There are five carrot cake recipes, including the definitive version from the first “new” Philadelphia restaurant, Steve Poses’ Commissary. The Frog-Commissary Cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Frog-Commissary-Cookbook-Steven-Poses/dp/0940159732 didn’t come out until a few years later, but somebody at work had the Commissary calendar (1979?). It was a pinup page-per-month calendar, with a hand-lettered recipe for each month. Porn for office girls.
If a recipe turned out especially well, I drew stars on the clipping. Like this one, which I’ve been making ever since.
Chicken and Sausage
Ingredients
1 broiler-fryer chicken, cut up (now I use skinless, boneless thighs)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tablespoon salad oil
¾ lb sweet or hot Italian sausages, cut in 2-inch pieces
1 can (28 oz) whole tomatoes, drained, reserving ½ cup liquid
½ cup dry red wine
1 cup sliced onions
2 medium green peppers, sliced
1 tsp basil, crushed (now I use fresh or fresh-frozen)
Pinch sugar
1 ½ cups sliced fresh button mushrooms (this was before we knew about portabellas)
1/3 c. flour
3 tablespoons water
Prep
Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Slice everything up and have it ready.
Cooking
In large skillet, heat oil. Add chicken and cook until well browned on all sides, about 5 minutes. Remove chicken and set aside. Prick sausages with a fork and brown in the same skillet. Remove and pour off excess drippings. Add chicken and sausages back to the skillet. Add tomatoes, wine, onions, green peppers, basil and sugar and cook for a few minutes, stirring up browned bits from the bottom. Return chicken and sausages to the pan. Add mushrooms and stir until well combined. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes, until chicken is tender. Push chicken and sausages to one side of the skillet. Combine flour and water until smooth; stir in ¼ cup of pan juices. Add to the skillet and cook until sauce bubbles and thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Stir to mix everything together. Better the second day.
i'm not going to type out all my christmas cookie recipes. i'm just not. because, gentle readers, it's a pain in the ass.
BUT. (haha, see what i did there? the segue? from ASS to BUT?)
here are my resources:
cookies by lou seibert pappas, copyright 1980, nitty gritty productions
joy of cooking by irma s. rombauer and marion rombauer becker, copyright 1975, the bobbs-merrill company
the international cookie cookbook by nancy baggett, copyright1988, stewart, tabori & chang, inc.
favorite brand name old fashioned holiday recipes, copyright 2004, publications international, ltd.
the internet (i had to google the quaker oats oatmeal cookie because... i bought generic oats? last winter? in the midst of a HUGE oatmeal kick? and then it got warm again?)
cookies was bought second-hand from the helen kate furness library in wallingford, pa, for (i THINK) thirty-five cents. it's now held together with duct tape. joy of cooking was... a gift? or i bought it for myself. THAT narrows it down, doesn't it? the international cookie cookbook is a loan from my mama, who probably means to get it back someday, so i should probably copy out the one recipe i use. favorite brand name... was a gift from my mother-in-law and is full of fantastic recipes that i don't make, plus two super-easy fudge recipes and a biscotti made with cake mix that i do.
i'll be wrapping up the holiday baking on friday (or saturday) and then focusing on christmas dinner. and sometime in there, i SWEAR i will blog about bûche de noël. AFTER THAT, i promise a pasta-making tutorial for dear julia.
and, speaking of julias, while you're at it, you MIGHT AS WELL make a thousand. (this? is pretty much julia child in a nutshell. and my baking philosophy.)
Homemade granola: why bother? Of course, at this point in my life, that’s my reaction to the idea of any homemade food. I’m officially done with cooking. But thirty years ago I was the cookingest girl in the feminist book group, the bakingest mom in the La Leche League. I had a baby food grinder and an electric yogurt maker. I grew sprouts in my kitchen window. No kidding.
And once in a while, even now, I get the urge to open the door of one of my ovens (I have three – which is a lot of ovens for somebody who doesn’t cook any more), pull out all the pots and pans I store in there, and see if it still works. I’m especially prone to that impulse when the weather turns cool and crisp and the only available outdoor activity is raking. Just because I’m over cooking doesn’t mean I’m into manual labor.
Which is how I ended up last weekend making six pounds of granola and five loaves of dense hippie-style multi-grain high protein bread while Clare’s daddy filled a 4’ x 10’ compost bin with shredded leaves.
Both of those recipes date from those halcyon days of yore when medical science told us that vegetarians had to eat complementary amino acids at each meal or risk kwashiorkor. So your granola had almonds and grains and nonfat dry milk and coconut and lots of oil and honey. And your bread had sunflower seeds and wheat germ and rice flour and cornmeal and soy flour and you slathered it with gobs of cream cheese and jam. And your burrito had beans and brown rice and a sky high pile of shredded cheddar. And your dessert had carob and wheat germ and almonds and butter and brown sugar with whipped cream on top. Because that was healthy eating. Maybe I’ll write down the hippie bread recipe some day. It’s really good, if you don’t mind the fact that a paper-thin slice has the heft and texture of a roofing shingle and counts as three Weight Watchers points. We weren’t on Weight Watchers back then. We were on the Scarsdale diet or drinking Metrecal.
This is definitely the grooviest granola you ever finished a pound of when you were high and got the munchies. At least, that’s what people said at the time, through the haze, as they crawled around on the floor to find the rest of their clothes. Not me. I never ate more than half a cup at the most. On top of a big bowl of ice cream. While sober as a judge. SweartoGod. The recipe’s coming soon. Two things first.
Thing one: For as long as I’ve been making this granola I told people it was from a magazine column by Julia Child. But when I looked up the recipe in my big box of magazine recipes from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s (an interesting archeological expedition, about which I’ll write some other time), the clipping doesn’t have Julia’s name anywhere on it. The headline is, “Another Recipe for Granola Freaks” and the text reads, “This one comes from Marilyn D. in San Francisco, who says it makes the best mixture she’s ever tasted, so much so that she is quite willing to ignore the cost both monetarily and calorifically.” It sounds like something Julia would say, and I swear Julia had a regular column in one of the mainstream women’s magazines back then (McCall’s? Redbook? Good Housekeeping?), but I can’t prove it from this clipping.
Thing two: The granola has morphed over the years to the point that Marilyn D. might not recognize it. I use half as much oil as the original recipe and I cut out the coconut altogether to eliminate saturated fat. Instead of a whole cup of honey, I sweeten it with apple cider and a little molasses. I add flax meal because it’s supposed to lower your cholesterol, and I leave out the salt because I have high blood pressure. So I guess that makes this
Another Recipe for Granola Freaks with AARP Cards
Ingredients
5 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup sunflower seeds
½ cup freshly ground flax seeds
½ cup wheat germ
1 cup Grape Nuts
½ cup powdered skim milk (optional if you’re vegan)
½ cup canola oil
¼ cup molasses
1 cup apple cider
½ cup dark, seedless raisins
Prep
Throw all the dry ingredients into a huge bowl.
Stir together the oil, molasses and cider in a separate bowl and pour over.
Mix thoroughly.
If you want clumps and clusters, you’ll need more oil and more molasses. My way, the granola is drier and less clumpy. You can double or triple or quadruple the recipe if you have a big enough tub to mix it in and enough pans to spread it out in for baking. And three ovens.
Actual Cooking
Spread into a 13 x 9 inch baking pan.
Bake at 350 degrees, about 40 to 45 minutes.
Stir every 10 minutes, adding the raisins in the last 10 minutes of baking.
Remove from oven; cool.
If you want to blow your friends’ minds the next time they get the munchies, add about a cup of chocolate chips when it’s ALMOST cool. They’ll melt just a little and ramp up the deliciousness significantly.
Store in an airtight container.
I usually mix an ounce or so of granola with some nonfat plain Greek yogurt for a total of 180 calories (140 per ounce for the granola) and lots of energy to start my day. We didn’t have Greek yogurt back when I began making this granola. Well, I guess the Greeks had it, but where I come from we didn’t. Instead, we had to take the yogurt out of the electric yogurt maker (they still make them: http://www.vmc-health.com/index2.htm ) and let it drain through a tea strainer lined with cheesecloth overnight. Because life was hard back then. Nasty, brutish, and covered in sesame tahini.
to go with saturday's ribs, i made a classic mac & cheese, the way my mama taught me when i was about eleven. sure, i could use fancy cheeses or put bread crumbs on top, but the only alterations to this recipe i can get behind are 1) fresh ground sea salt & pepper and 2) more interesting macaroni than elbows-- mom uses whatever she's got, i like cavatappi or pipetti.
this is for a standard-sized batch, though i made double this over the weekend (in case of hungry marines, naturally).
ingredients:
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup flour
sea salt & pepper
1 quart milk (whatever kind you like is fine)
1/2 pound american cheese, torn into shreds
1/2 pound cheddar cheese, shredded
1 pound pasta
prep:
preheat oven to 350*
shred cheese
cook pasta according to package instructions
actual cooking:
melt butter in a large saucepan
add flour and whisk until combined (this is your roux)
add milk and whisk until smooth (now you have bechamel!)
add salt & pepper
slowly add cheese
pour cheese into pasta or pasta into cheese & combine
pour the whole shebang into a casserole and bake until as brown as you like it
Cut the brussels sprouts in half lengthwise. Microwave them, covered, with a little bit of water for about 5 - 7 minutes. They should be brighter green and a little softer than they were to start with. Then chop about 3 strips of bacon and microwave or fry till crisp. Toss the bacon and about 1/2 of the drippings with the sprouts. Throw in some pine nuts. Roast uncovered at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so. They should be a little bit brown and roasty looking. Taste for seasoning. Depending on how salty the bacon is, you might need salt.
i found this recipe through the lovely and talented lexa. it's perfect for if you need an excuse to drink most of a bottle of cheap sparkling wine alone in your jammies.
and for your mother's birthday.
cake ingredients:
2 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup softened butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 pears
1 cup sparkling wine (j. roget "champange" in this case)
frosting ingredients:
1/4 cup softened butter (no, seriously, if it's not really softened it will be gross)
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups confectioners sugar
splash "champagne"
prep work:
preheat to 350*
peel & quarter pears
grate them in the food processor, ohmygod, not by hand
combine flour, salt & baking powder
actual cooking:
beat together sugar & butter
beat in eggs one at a time
add dry mixture
add vanilla & "champagne"
add pear
distribute into lined muffin tins-- they won't rise much, so feel free to fill them a bit more than usual
bake until a toothpick comes out cleanish (lexa says 12-15 minutes, my experience was more like 25)
beat together frosting ingredients
frost
use leftover frosting to take a funny picture of any brave soul you can convince to eat frosting at nine am to star on your blog (thanks, pop)
have four beers and forget to take a picture of, oh, i dunno, your mom blowing out her birthday candle or ANYTHING
so, in making nardo's cookies 'n cream cake, i tried very, very hard to evoke the general cookies 'n creaminess of cookies 'n cream without, um, getting him a carvel ice cream cake. in cookies 'n cream. if that wasn't clear.
one thing that was sort of bugging the living shit out of me was that BUTTER and VANILLA cause uncolored frosting (and cream filling) to be not-white. but a drive by at joann's with my mom a few weeks ago (okay, like a month now) saved my life. which is to say, i met wilton's white white icing color. joy. rapture.
naturally, it worked like a freaking charm. because wilton? they know what they're doing. i used a generous squirt or two (four. it might have been four.) in the cream filling/frosting and noticed no flavor change. i may or may not have licked some off my finger, too.
i worried very briefly when my mom told me that the main ingredient (titanium dioxide) is the pigment used in titanium white paint, but, again, i deferred to wilton's superior knowledge and certainty that if a dye they marketed specifically for wedding cakes was toxic, it would totally destroy their credibility. i only just now looked it up. seriously.
(it is, indeed, nontoxic.)
i used a squirt on monday when frosting the creamcicle cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting (which had butter and vanilla) just to lighten the color, not turn it completely white. i had a good experience with that, too.
what i love about white white is the possibility. specifically, the possibility of fixing screw-ups as i continue on my journey toward understanding color saturation.
First of all, wait for a dry, cool day. You can't do this when it's humid. And you will need a deep fryer with a thermostat. You can do small batches in one of those Fry Baby things, but you're better off with one that has a basket rather than the slotted spatula thing for scooping stuff out of the oil. Walnuts covered in molten sugar are tricky to work with. You don't want to be chasing them around with a spatula. You want to be lifting them out of the boiling oil with a nice sturdy basket. We have a big Waring deep fryer, and we use it for just three things: 1) fried walnuts, 2) smelts for Christmas Eve, and 3) Clare's faschnachts. I can't remember the last time I deep fried anything else. Even so it was worth spending $100 and having this big honkin thing sitting on my counter top in the downstairs kitchen because those three things are just that good.
For each pound of fancy whole unroasted walnut halves, you need about 1-1/3 cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of water. The amounts are approximate. You should err on the side of more syrup rather than less syrup because extra sugar will just crystallize into walnutty sugar dust that you can use the next time you make a coffee cake or cobbler. And some of it melts into burned walnutty brittle in the deep fryer that you can crush in the food processor and sprinkle on ice cream. So don't skimp. Put the walnuts and sugar and water in a bigger pot than you think you need, because you want to be able to stir them when the syrup is boiling without having it slop over the side. Also, overcrowded walnuts tend to break more and you want the walnuts to stay whole. My big spaghetti pot is big enough to do 3 lbs at a time but that's pushing it. If you want to make a total of 5 lbs of nuts, you're better off boiling up 2 batches.
Set the pot over medium high heat and stir frequently (but carefully) once it gets bubbly. Keep stirring until the syrup gets really thick and then -- suddenly! -- the bottom of the pot is dry when you scrape it with the spoon, and all the nuts are covered in sugar. They will be gritty, not candied, because the syrup doesn't get to the temperature you need for hard candy. Spread the nuts out in a single layer on a big pan. You'll need to separate them once they cool down a little. Let them cool completely but don't let them sit around too long or they'll pick up moisture. Overnight is OK if it's dry.
Fill your fryer with oil (canola, vegetable, or peanut oil all work OK) to the fill line and heat it to 375 degrees. Fill the basket to the fill line and submerge the nuts in the oil. Shake them around gently to keep them from sticking. When the walnuts start to brown and look a little shiny, pull the basket halfway out and shake VERY GENTLY to drain off as much of the oil as possible. Watch them carefully -- this only takes a couple minutes. If they're a little undercooked, they'll be gritty. If they're a little overcooked, they'll have a slightly burnt taste, which a lot of people actually prefer. If you're working with small batches, the later batches will cook faster because of the layer of burnt sugar that builds up on the bottom of the fryer.
Dump the fried walnuts onto a jelly roll pan. Don't line the pan with paper towels or anything, because they'll stick like a sumbitch. Working fast while they're still hot, push them apart with the back of a big spoon with one hand while sprinkling them with a salt shaker with the other hand. After a couple minutes, I usually transfer to walnuts to another pan so they cool faster.
Once they're cool enough to touch, I separate the stuck ones with my fingers. When the oil cools off and you pour it out into a jar to use again the next time you fry walnuts (or faschnachts, but take it from me, DO NOT use walnut/faschnacht oil for smelts, much less smelt oil for walnuts or faschnachts), don't forget to scoop out the fried sugar and drain it on paper towels (it won't stick, because it's cool by then) and crush it up to use on ice cream because it's like getting a sundae for free. That's it. Everybody really loves these. Almost everybody, anyway.
we call this dish calzone-- but we say ghav-uh-zoon-- and we pretty much live for easter so we can have it. we love it so much we'd make is other times of year, but you can only get basket cheese at easter, so we can't. because of the magnitude of this project, we have to do it at my mother's house where there are three ovens, and the occasional excitable teenaged brother willing to forgo book learnin' to get elbow deep in family tradition for an afternoon.
3 pounds sweet italian sausage, out of the case, browned
3 pounds ham, diced
1 pounds soprasotta, thick-sliced, diced
1 pound proscuitto, thick-sliced, diced
1 pound ricotta cheese
1 basket cheese, diced
20 hard boiled eggs, diced
chopped fresh parsley
6 eggs
prep:
hard boil 24 eggs, chop 20 of them and set aside
brown sausage
dice meats & basket cheese
combine meats
combine dry ingredients for dough
blend in shortening
add eggs & water
blend thoroughly
turn out and knead (or massagia)
add basket cheese & parsley to meat
preheat oven(s) to 375*
break for a lovely lunch of egg salad sandwiches (those last 4 eggs!), carrots and limeade. it's traditional.
add hard boiled eggs to meat
add raw eggs & ricotta to meat
actual cooking:
roll out dough into large circles
paint egg wash around edges
pile half with filling
fold other half over
crimp edges
move to a greased baking sheet
brush with egg wash
vent
bake at 375* until browned and bubbling
cool for 5-10 minutes (depending on the size) on the sheet
move to a rack to cool completely
serve lukewarm or cold
this recipe made 2 extra larges (about 16"x8"), 7 larges (about 10"x5") and 6 smalls (about 8"x4"). that's a lot. but somehow, we always need as many as we make. they freeze so well that we usually have one in january to hold us over.
mardi gras, fat tuesday, fatty/fattening tuesday, shrove tuesday, pancake day, fastnacht day or paczki day is the day before ash wednesday when, depending on your language and tradition, you use up all the "luxurious" ingredients in your pantry before lent starts and they all go to waste, by making doughnuts, pancakes, crepes or parade floats. you know, those luxuries like eggs, butter and sugar.
the pennsylvania dutch call their doughnuts fastnachts (yeah, that means "fast night" as in "fast and abstain" not "i blacked out!" that's more mardi gras...) and make them without holes and out of potatoes. i didn't really make fastnachts. i made doughnuts without holes. close enough.
i started with the black & white donut hole recipe from williams-sonoma. then i doubled it and cut the bullshit.
ingredients:
7 cups flour, plus 1/2-1 cup for dusting
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
4 cups sugar (2 for the dough, 2 for coating)
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup (half a stick or 4 tbs) unsalted butter, melted & cooled
vegetable oil for deep frying
prep:
sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon & salt
beat eggs until frothy
add 2 cups sugar to eggs and beat until lemony-yellow
add buttermilk & butter to egg mixture
pour egg mixture into the center of dry mixture and combine to form a very soft, sticky dough
roll out to 1/3 inch on a generously floured board
cut out 3-inch circles & 1-inch circles
refrigerate overnight
actual cooking:
heat 3 inches of oil in a large saucepan or deep fryer if you can get your hand's on one (thanks mom!) to 380*
fry doughnuts in small batches
turning frequently until golden (about 5 minutes)
remove from oil with a skimmer
deposit on paper to drain
put remaining sugar in a paper bag
drop in warm doughnuts & shake to coat
wake up your loved ones
i started frying at 3:45 this morning, had my doughnuts packed up for delivery (3 1/2 dozen regular ones + a few dozen little ones) by 5. i was eagerly greeted at the door by della, dottie & ginger (the dogs). ginger even mustered the strength to jump from the floor to the dining room table without a chair stop-over for the first time in her 12 years to snag a bite. everyone seems pretty happy with the results. as a matter of fact, the only person who got doughnuts that i haven't heard from today is anthony.
on the first day of modern christmas, also known as black friday, i hit the stores like every other nutcase. only i had them almost all to myself. i was at the grocery stores.
i went to the local supermarket first, hoping to buy everything in one shot. i was mostly prepared. i had edited last year's list (removing cookies that didn't work out, adding some new ones, changing amounts) and mapped out the recipes on my christmas cookie spreadsheet. what, you don't do that? huh.
i estimated, generously, how much i'd need of everything and prepared a comprehensive list of things i needed to buy. it is as follows:
rolled oats
10 pounds flour (i already had 5)
1 bag confectioners sugar
10 pounds granulated sugar
4 pounds brown sugar
24 teaspoons vanilla extract (who said my system is perfect? i bought two bottles of the store brand and i hope it's enough. if not, i think trader joe's brand is cheaper, actually.)
almond extract
18 ounces of milk chocolate chips
48 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips
28 ounces of white chocolate chips
1.5 cups slivered almonds (i take the shortcuts as they come)
2 cups walnuts
1.5 cups unsalted macadamia nuts
2 cups dried cranberries
3 chocolate-orange cake mixes
a lemon
candy canes
peanut butter
seedless raspberry jam
13 pounds of butter
4 dozen eggs
so, i bought nearly all of it at the supermarket and then moved on to trader joe's. there i bought the butter (because it was, like $1.30 cheaper per pound, and that adds up when you're buying thirteen!), the almonds, the macadamia nuts, the eggs ($1.50 cheaper, at least, i forget the exact amount), the white chocolate chips and the milk chocolate chips (i try to avoid buying either hershey or nestle for political reasons. i bought store-brand semisweet.) and tried to buy the chocolate-orange cake mixes. but they didn't have them. so i might have to actually make my biscotti dough, which might mean more flour and definitely means a trip to the supermarket for orange essence.
there was other stuff, too, of course. stuff i already had (mostly not shown):
instant coffee
3 ounces semisweet bakers chocolate
molasses
light corn syrup
decorating sugar
vegetable oil
cream of tartar
anise seeds
cinnamon, cloves, ginger
gluten-free flour
and stuff i wasn't sure would keep until i had that confection scheduled, namely, heavy cream. which i can buy next door or at any supermarket/grocery/dairy store. so i'm not worried.
i also picked up some decorating frosting in little tubes and what appear to be markers for use on... food. creepy. but possibly very useful for the making of gingerbread people with a four year old. and a boneless turkey breast-thing, a box of stuffing and a ritter sport bar (totally for bill)
cookie-related shopping came in about $14 under budget (without the cake mixes and heavy cream, though) and $11 over estimate (so far). but really, good enough for me!
next up, look for springerle cookies (which i've actually already baked) and 4 batches of peanut butter cookies (which i'm baking tonight as soon as i get the pretty-bottomed glass from my mom-- i'll explain later).
okay, i forgot to blog this phenomenal cake that i invented because i intended to play it close to my chest until almost thanksgiving, and now thanksgiving is tomorrow and i haven't posted it and i meant to do it in time for thanksgiving, so here are instructions, if not a recipe.
basic plan:
in a spring form pan, bake a spice cake from the recipe of your choice. (i use the spice cake adaptation of the "lightning cake" recipe from the joy of cooking but use pumpkin pie spice blend instead of whatever the spices called for are.)
next, in the same pan (or same-sized pan), make a cheesecake with crust only on the bottom and the crust mixture spiced with pumpkin pie spice blend. (i use this recipe, sans topping-- and the helpful hints? they are totally helpful.)
after both cakes are cool, so, several hours later, plate the cheesecake and put the spice cake on top of it. (you can use a little caramel sauce or cream cheese frosting to secure it if you want, but probably don't need to.)
either frost with a crumb coating of cream cheese frosting and top with butterscotch pudding or drizzle with caramel sauce and top with lightly-spices whipped cream.
so, what i really love about this cake is, once you get the idea, you can make it ANYTHING. you can make it chocolate and vanilla. neapolitan. chocolate-cherry. strawberries and cream. gingerbread. do you see where i'm going with this?
i'll post the full recipe later.
(oh, and i also made this for my mom's birthday. hi, mom's boss!)
when i was growing up, my mother made christmas cookies. thousands of them. hundreds of thousands. million, maybe. a whole damn lot. candies, too! fried walnuts and almond brittle. but, umm, that's crazy hard. CRAZY. now, with two teenaged boys in the house and one only half out, she can't set a batch of cookies aside, anyway, so why bother?
but christmas cookies are so NICE. two years ago, i guess i made some pretty regular cookies: chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal, and some gluten-free meringues. there might have been shortbread and spritzes. i don't remember. it just seemed like the thing to do, newly married in our own little apartment.
always trying to outdo myself, last year i made chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal, shortbread, springerle, spritzes, other spritzes, pinwheels, these insane chocolate pillows with maraschino cherries on top that are made with cake mix and never made it onto the trays because they looked a little obscene, gingerbread SNOWMEN-- each frosted and decorated because i bought cookie-cutters too late to find gingerbread people, sugar cookies, chocolate-orange biscotti, vanilla meringues, white chocolate cranberry-walnut fudge and candy cane fudge. i think that's it.
this year's plan includes choco-chip, pb, oatmeal raisin, shortbread thumbprints, springerles (which all go to my daddy), spritzes, pinwheels, gingerbread snowmen, sugar cookies, chocolate-orange biscotti, snickerdoodles, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, meringues, chocolate-pb oatmeal squares, white choc cra-lnut fudge, candy cane fudge and almond brittle. plus, some gluten-free gingerbread ladies (yadies), but that's just for fun.
ingredient shopping is scheduled for black friday (when everyone else is in a gift-shopping frenzy the supermarket will be all mine!), with springerles that weekend and everything else commencing december 1st.
this is the big one, people. the great christmas cookie flood of ought-eight.
ummm, hi. hello. sorry i'm late. do you know i've posted 11 times in 2010? yup, blogger FAIL. my bad.
