Simple Almond Strips

Almonds are Nature's candy! Ever eaten a big handful of raw almonds? They taste sweet, just like almond paste or marzipan. A delight known only to gluttons who dare to eat a big enough handful. For years, my Dad used to make something he called "Banquet" (pronounced Bahn-ket), a pastry strip with almond-paste filling. A confirmed Europhile who is fluent in German, he would make it in the form of a P with X through its base, an old symbol for Christ. These little cookies aren't symbolic, but they are so simple to make compared to, say, sugar cookie cutouts. They also adapt well if you add some whole wheat flour in place of the all-purpose flour the recipe calls for. This recipe comes from my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, where it goes by Almond Strips.

Ingredients: 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (or a mix of all-purpose and whole wheat), milk to brush on the cookies, 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Method: Preheat oven to 325 F. Beat butter with an electric mixer. Add sugar and baking powder, beat till combined. Beat in egg and almond extract. Beat in as much of the flour as you can. Stir in the remaining flour. (When I made this, the dough was so dry that I had to knead it a bit with my hands to get the last of the flour to go in.) Divide dough into four equal portions. Shape each portion into a 12-inch long roll. Place rolls 2 to 5 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Using your hands, slightly flatten each roll to 3 inches wide. Brush flattened rolls with milk and sprinkle with almonds, pressing slightly to get them to adhere. (Go ahead, crowd those almonds on there! They will spread out during baking.) Bake at 325 F for 12 to 14 minutes or till edges are lightly browned. (I had to bake them for closer to 20 minutes, but don't start with that.) While the cookies are still warm on the baking sheet, take a big knife and cut them diagonally into 1-inch strips. Cool on wire racks. If desired, drizzle with powdered sugar icing.

Buried Cherry Cookie Fail

Ingredients: 1 10-oz jar maraschino cherries ... 1/2 cup butter ... 1 cup sugar ... 1/4 teaspoon baking powder ... 1 egg ... 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla ... 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder ... 1 1/2 cups flour ... 1 6-oz package semisweet chocolate chips ... 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

Drain cherries, reserving juice. Halve any large cherries. In a medium mixing bowl beat butter. Add the sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Beat till combined scraping bowl once in a while. Beat in egg and vanilla till combined. Beat in cocoa powder and as much of the flour as you can. Stir in the remaining flour.

Shape dough into balls. Place balls about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet. I ignored this warning and got cookies that were baked together on the sides. Press your thumb into the center of each ball. Place a cherry in each center. ... For the frosting, in a small saucepan combine the chocolate pieces and sweetened condensed milk. Cook and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted. This step can be done while preparing the dough, if you are well organized. Then stir in 4 teaspoons of the reserved cherry juice. Spoon one teaspoon of frosting over each cherry, spreading to cover. (Frosting may be thinned with additional juice, if necessary.)

Look at how much there was left. What I am I ever going to do with all this extra frosting? I'm sure I'll think of something ... Bake in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes or until edges are firm. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. Transferring them is tricky. They tend to rip around the cherry area. I guess 1 minute must be the optimum cooling time on the sheet, not that I followed that. If any do come apart, it is your duty to eat the mangled pieces as soon as they cool.

So why do I call this a fail? They just don't look like my Mom's. Her frosting is nice and thick and chocolately, not flat like this. I used the Better Homes & Gardens recipe. Maybe I should get hers. Maybe she doesn't bake her frosting.

How to Make the Most of your Rice Cooker

If you live in Asia and have access to electricity, you probably have a rice cooker ... that wonderful gadget where you put in the rice and water, plug in, turn on, and it makes perfect rice and keeps it warm until you want to eat it. But that's just the beginning of what you rice cooker can do. Let's start with leftovers. These can be reheated in the rice cooker as you cook a pot of rice. Simply put them in the steamer basket - most rice cookers come with one - over the rice, before closing and turning on the rice cooker. When the rice is ready, so will the leftovers be, and piping hot too. If your leftovers are sloppy, they may drip through the holes in the steamer basket and flavor your rice. You can avoid this by putting them on a small plate or bowl that fits in but doesn't fill the steamer basket. Secondly, dumplins. The Better Homes & Gardens cookbook has a great dumplin recipe that is designed to be cooked in a covered pot, resting on top of chicken that is simmering in broth. Why shouldn't this work in a steamer basket? Well, I've tried it, and it works great! 1 cup flour, 2 t baking powder, 1/4 t salt, 1 beaten egg, 1/4 cup milk, 2 T cooking oil. Combine the four, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. If desired, you can also add 1/4 t dried oregano. In another bowl (or measuring cup), beat the egg, milk, and cooking oil; add to the flour mixture. Stir with a fork till just moistened. Drop dough in globs directly onto the steamer basket, or use a small baking pan that fits in the steamer basket. Steam for 10 to 12 minutes or until a toothpick poked into the dumplins comes out clean. Most rice cookers will automatically stop active steaming when you open them (at least mine does). Don't get burned! Last but not least, brownies! If, like us, you happen not to have an oven at the moment, you can still enjoy cakelike brownies. Simply buy a steamed brownies mix at your nearest Indonesian or Malaysian grocery store, follow the directions, and steam it in your rice cooker. I don't steam brownies over rice, but I add enough water to cook about 5 cups of rice, since the brownies need to steam for a total of an hour with the mix I use. Adjust as necessary. You can line the steamer basket with waxed paper (being careful not to cover ALL the holes), or use a small brownie pan (which might not hold all your batter).

New World Cheesecake

A new ‘n improved version of Chocolate Pinon Cheesecake. Ingredients Crust 2 cups Graham Cracker crust mix 2 T sugar 1/2 cup butter or margarine (1 stick) Filling 1 - 2 T butter 4 squares baker’s chocolate 3 8-oz packages cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese 2 cups sugar 2 t chile powder ¼ t ground red pepper 5 eggs ¼ cup pinon nuts, plus more for garnish Method Thaw the cream or Neufchatel cheese an hour or two before beginning the process. Preheat oven 350 F. Grate the baker’s chocolate into a saucepan. Add 1 – 2 T butter and put it on the lowest heat possible. While you are doing the rest of the recipe, stir occasionally. For crust, mix Graham Cracker crust mix and sugar in a small bowl. Melt butter, stir it into the dry mixture, then press the resulting mixture into a cheesecake pan with your hands. Cover the pan and chill the crust until you are ready to add the filling. For the filling, beat together the cream cheese (I find it helpful to cube it first), the sugar, the chile powder and the ground red pepper until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add the melted chocolate and beat until it is thoroughly mixed. Fold in the pinon nuts. Pour the filling mixture into the crust and smooth to make it even. Bake at 350 F for 55 minutes or until the center is just firm to the touch. The cake will puff up in the oven, then slowly settle as it cools. Cool to room temperature, then chill the cake before serving. Top each slice with a squirt of Hershey’s Semi-Sweet chocolate syrup and additional pinon nuts.

Chocolate Pinon Cheesecake

This recipe was inspired by the people in my last post. I took a basic cheesecake recipe of my mother’s, and added chocolate, cinnamon, chile powder, and pinon nuts. All but cinnamon are native to the New World.
The pinon nuts in this picture were bought from a man selling them out of his van at the side of the road. He showed us a pinecone and explained, “El pinon esta aqui en el dentro.” We understood from him that pinon nuts are harvested once every five years, which explains why the generous cup’s worth we bought cost $20. However they are very rich and their piney taste stays with you.
Actually, this recipe is just a first draft. It came out very rich and chocolately, and tasting a little bit complex, but we could not actually taste the chile powder. In future recipes, I (or you) might try cutting the amount of chocolate in half (or cutting the sugar further), increasing the chile powder or substituting cayenne pepper instead, or adding a little cinnamon to the crust.

Ingredients
Crust
¾ cup all-purpose flour + ¼ cup whole wheat flour
2 T sugar
½ t baking powder
¼ t salt
1/3 cup butter or margarine
2 – 3 T milk
Filling
1 - 2 T butter
1 12-oz pckg semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups)
1 lb (2 8-oz packages) cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese
1 cup sugar
1 t chile powder
½ t cinnamon
5 eggs
¼ cup pinon nuts

Method
Thaw the cream or Neufchatel cheese an hour or two before beginning the process.
Preheat oven 350 F.
Put 1 – 2 T butter and the semisweet chocolate chips in a saucepan on the lowest heat possible. While you are doing the rest of the recipe, stir occasionally and add splashes of milk as needed to melt the chocolate chips without allowing them to burn.
For crust, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the butter using a pastry cutter. Then add a little milk at a time, tossing with a fork each time, until the mixture is just moist. I added 1 or 2 tablespoons too much milk, so my crust dough was sticky and hard to handle. Form the dough into a mass, place it in the bottom of a springform cheesecake baking pan, and pat it out until it makes a crust that covers the bottom and an inch or two up the sides, more or less evenly. My crust was far from perfect, but the cake still came out OK. Cover the pan and chill the crust until you are ready to add the filling.
For the filling, beat together the cream cheese (I find it helpful to cube it first), the sugar, the chile powder and the cinnamon until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add the melted chocolate, a little at a time, beating until it is thoroughly mixed. Fold in the pinon nuts. Pour the filling mixture into the crust and smooth to make it even. I poured it into the crust first, then sprinkled on the pinon nuts and lightly folded them in. But this was difficult to do without disturbing the bottom of the crust.
Bake at 350 F for 55 minutes or until the center is just firm to the touch. Cool to room temperature, then chill the cake before serving. If desired, garnish with additional pinon nuts or even with chile peppers!

Tractor Cake for A Three-Year-Old

You can find much better-looking tractor cakes if you Google it, but this is my version. We used two loaf pans, two small Pyrex bowls, and two cupcake cups to get the desired shapes. A lot of toothpicks holding it together. My little bro built the foil-covered cardboard platform on which we raised the cake. A great use of his architectural training to serve others. The grill and the headlights are licorice candy. The steering wheel is a peppermint patty.
The three-year-old immediately recognized it as a tractor cake and was very pleased.

Make these for the family you love

Not the greatest picture, but you get the idea.
Taken with only very few tweaks from Better Homes & Gardens' Sugar Cookie Cutouts.

Ingredients
1/3 cup butter or margarine
1/3 cup shortening
½ cup sugar
1 t baking powder
1 egg
1 t almond extract
2 cups flour, 1 white, 1 wheat
4 candy canes

Method
Preheat oven 375 Fahrenheit.
Crush candy canes by putting them in a plastic bag and pounding them with a rolling pin. Or, crush them with a mortar and pestle.
Beat butter and shortening until combined. Add sugar, baking powder, and a dash salt. Beat till combined, scraping bowl. Beat in egg and almond extract. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer, starting with the white flour. Stir in the remaining flour. Divide dough in half. The book recommends you chill the dough for up to three hours to make it easier to handle, but I find room-temperature cookie dough easier to handle. I then flour the rolling pin frequently so it doesn't stick and pull up dough.
Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
On a lightly floured surface, roll half of the dough at a time to 1/8 inch thick. Use a large heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out heart shapes. Transfer heart cookies to aluminum foil covered cookie sheet. Then use a tiny heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the middle of the cookies. Remove the cut out pieces. Fill the holes with crushed candy cane. Take the cut out pieces, combine them with the dough scraps, re-roll and cut more cookies. Continue until all the dough is used up or eaten.
(To make the smaller cookies pictured, use a medium-sized heart cookie cutter, place cookies on an ordinary cookie sheet, and sprinkle with pink colored sugar.)
Bake at 375 F for 7 to 8 minutes or until edges are firm and bottoms very lightly browned. Cool cookies completely before removing from foil.

Build Your Own Apple Crisp

One person can't eat gluten. Another is avoiding sugar. We accomodated everybody at a recent Bible study meeting by creating a build-your-own-apple-crisp bar.

First came a glass baking dish filled with sliced baked apples (that's right, just apples - no sugar, cinnamon, or anything). Then a glass bowl of sliced fresh apples. Then four little stoneware crocks, each labeled, containing dry oatmeal, chopped pecans, brown sugar, and melted butter.

The crocks looked very pretty, but no, I didn't take a picture of it. I've got a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old, both sick. I don't got time to be taking pictures of food lately.

Almond Strips

This is our new family Christmas tradition, if something can be a tradition that you did once two years ago, and then several times this year. People tend to think these cookies are biscotti when they see them, but they’re not as hard. Still, they are nice for dipping. Maybe we could call them “bis-NOT-ti.”
Taken with only a few tweaks from my trusty Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.

Ingredients
½ cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup sugar (for the cookies in this picture, I used unpacked brown sugar)
2 t baking powder
1 egg
1 t almond extract
1 cup all-purpose (white) flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
a little milk
½ cup sliced almonds, coarsely chopped

Method
Preheat oven 325 F.
Beat butter with an electric mixer. Add sugar and baking powder; beat till combined. Beat in egg and almond extract till combined. Beat in as much of the flours as you can; stir in the remaining flour.
Divide dough into 4 equal portions. Shape each portion into a 12-inch-long roll. (I find that I can’t actually roll it out with my hands without its falling apart; it’s better to sort of gently squeeze and shape it.) Place 2 rolls 4 to 5 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Using your hands, slightly flatten each to 3 inches wide. Repeat with remaining rolls. Brush flattened rolls with milk and sprinkle with almonds.
Bake in a 325 oven for 15 minutes or till edges are lightly browned. Cut warm cookies diagonally into 1-inch strips. (Put on an oven mitt before you do this, or you may burn your hand on the edge of the cookie sheet as you cut them.) Cool cookies on wire racks. Makes about 40 cookies.

Pie Month: Mango Glace Pie

This recipe has never before been posted on this blog because I don't have a good picture. But it is tasty and healthy. Enjoy!

Adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook recipe for peach glace pie. My changes: reduced the amount of sugar, substitute mangos for peaches. There are turpentiney mangos and there are sweet ones. If you get good ones, they can taste just like peaches.

Ingredients
1 baked pastry shell (i.e. pie crust)
1.5 to 2 kilos mangos (about 5 to 7), cubed
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
2 T cornstarch

Directions
For glaze, in a blender combine 1 cup of the mango and 2/3 cup water. (If using apple juice instead of water, you can use just 1/3 cup sugar later.) Cover and blend until smooth. Add enough additional water to the mixture to equal 1 1/2 cups. In a medium saucepan combine sugar and cornstarch; stir in blended mango mixture. Cook and stir over medium heat till thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir 2 minutes more. Cool for 10 minutes without stirring.
Spread about 1/4 cup of the glaze over the bottom and sides of the pastry shell. Layer half of the mango cubes, then half the remaining glaze, then the rest of the mango cubes, then the rest of the glaze. Chill 1 to 2 hours. According the book, the glaze may begin to water out after two hours, but in my experience this takes several days, and our pies never survive that long (I'm the main culprit there. Hey, mangos are a good source of folic acid!)

(The easiest way to get the meat off a ripe mango is to make two cuts on either side of the large central seed. You now have three pieces. One is the seed, still surrounded by lots of meat. Cut as much meat off of it as you can. The other two pieces are each an oval of somewhat leathery skin with meat on one side. Score the meat in a grid shape, then just slide your knife along next to the skin, and the meat will come off, already cubed because you scored it.)

More Banana Bread

This recipe, found on the Taste of Home web site, yields a moister banana bread than the one I posted previously. It's closer to the kind I remember my Dutch-American Grandma making. The secret is the buttermilk.

My changes:
used 1 cup wheat flour and 3/4 cup white, instead of all white
reduced sugar to 1 cup
added 1 t cinnamon
increased bananas to three
used plain yoghurt instead of buttermilk
instead of walnuts, stirred in 1 cup each raisins & chocolate chips
It still came out great.

Somewhat Chocolate Bread Pudding

My husband likes to bring home those bakery-fresh French bread loaves that supermarkets sell. Problem is, they are usually too much for our small family to finish before they go stale. Also, through our work we get a lot of day-old bread.

So what’s the solution? French toast, of course! Or try this bread pudding. I adapted it from Better Homes & Gardens to make it chocolately and doubled it to accommodate how much bread we had.

I originally tossed 1/3 cup of chocolate chips with the oatmeal and bread cubes, but they sank to the bottom during cooking, creating a delicious but hard-to-clean crust.

Ingredients
6 beaten eggs
3 ½ cups milk
½ cup sugar
3 T cocoa powder
8 cups stale or oven-dried French bread cubes
1/3 cup dry oatmeal

Method
Preheat oven 350 F. In a bowl beat together eggs, milk, sugar and cocoa powder. (I had a hard time getting the cocoa powder to stop rising to the top of the mixture. It might help to mix it thoroughly with the sugar before adding both to the eggs and milk.) In a large baking dish, casserole dish or Pyrex bowl, toss together bread crumbs and oatmeal. Pour egg mixture evenly over bread mixture.

Bake at 350 F for 90 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. If desired, after an hour of cooking, sprinkle the top of the pudding lightly with chocolate chips and additional oatmeal. Cool slightly; serve warm. Store leftovers in the fridge for an instant breakfast.

Chocolate-Oatmeal Muffins

Adapted from the basic Better Homes & Gardens muffin recipe.

Ingredients
2/3 cup white flour
1/3 cup wheat flour
¾ cup rolled oats
1/3 cup sugar
3 T cocoa powder
2 t baking powder
1/8 t salt
1 beaten egg
¾ cup milk
¼ cup cooking oil
½ cup chocolate chips

Method
Preheat oven 400 F.
Grease or line with paper liners 12 standard-sized muffin cups.
In a medium mixing bowl combine the flours, oats, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Mix well, make a well in the middle of the mixture, set aside.
In another mixing bowl, beat egg. Add milk and oil, beat again, and add wet mixture all at once to dry mixture. Stir till just moistened (batter should be lumpy). Fold in chocolate chips.
Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake at 400 F 20 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean (except for the chocolate chips it will hit on its trip through). Cool in muffin cups on a rack for five minutes. Remove from muffin cups. Because of the oats, these muffins are best served warm. Later they will tend to stiffen up.

"Dad"cakes

Don’t tell Dad, but the wheat flour, wheat germ, and yoghurt in this recipe make the cupcakes … not health food certainly, but at least not quite so bad for Dad.

Ingredients
cupcakes
1 c. white flour
½ c. wheat flour
1 T wheat germ
½ c. cocoa powder
1/3 c. sugar
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
2 eggs
2/3 c. milk
2/3 c. oil
2/3 c. plain low-fat yoghurt
1 t. vanilla
frosting
¼ c. natural peanut butter (containing peanuts only)
1/3 c. butter (softened)
1 to 1 ¼ cup powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar)
mini M&M’s

Method
Preheat oven 350 F. Line 2 cupcake pans (for 24 cupcakes) with liners, or grease and flour. I had better luck with metallic liners than with paper.
In a large bowl mix or whisk together dry ingredients for cupcakes. In a separate bowl, beat eggs. Add milk and oil; beat again. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture. Add the egg mixture, and mix or beat until smooth. Add the yoghurt and vanilla and stir until thoroughly mixed.
Drop dough by scant ¼-cupfuls into the cupcake pans. (1/4 cupful should fill each cupcake liner about 2/3 full.) Bake at 350 F for 19 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in the pan 5 minutes. Carefully transfer cupcakes to cooling racks and cool completely before frosting.
For frosting, cream together peanut butter and softened butter. Add powdered sugar ¼ cupful at a time until you get a stiff, spreadable frosting. I ended up adding a total of 1 ¼ cups of powdered sugar, and it made more frosting than I needed for the cakes.
Frost cakes with the peanut butter frosting. Decorate with mini M&M’s in the colors of your choice (yellow does not look very good). In the States, you can buy M&Ms in just one or two colors at some candy or party stores. Or get a child to help you go through the bag and sort the M&Ms into color piles. Even with mini M&Ms, the cupcakes were not big enough to allow me to spell out “Dad.” But you can put Dad’s initial, or a heart or design as shown.

Serve immediately or store in the fridge for up to 24 hours before the frosting begins to melt and the M&Ms begin to bleed.

Cupcakes are hot

They made the cover in a recent Winter issue of Taste of Home magazine. They featured in a 2007 Reader's Digest "100 Best" article. And in the April 09 Family Circle's recipe contest, the winners in the Cakes and Desserts divisions were both cupcake recipes.
The trend seems to be huge gobs of frosting. Fine with me.
My sister suggested we make these for a family party. Hers was the vision of cupcakes in bold colors. We just made them from a mix. We whipped up our own frosting with shortening, butter, powdered sugar. Then for each cupcake we used a knife to spread a thin layer of frosting for a base, then we piped on the stars using a very large pipe tip. The final touch was sprinkling them with clear sugar ... also my sister's inspiration. They went like, well ... cupcakes.

Resurrection Cookies

It may seem pretentious to name a cookie for the resurrection, but I stand in a long tradition of symbolic foods, such as colored eggs and pretzels.
In these lemon-chocolate cookies, the dark of the chocolate is supposed to represent the black period during which Christ was dead, and the sunny gold and white of the rest of the cookie is the joy of His resurrection.
I got lazy and didn’t wait for the chocolate to become completely liquid before I dipped the cookies. If you have more patience, perhaps you can create a cookie of which exactly half is bathed in a smooth layer of dark chocolate.
You can experiment with variations, such as separating the diamonds before baking (this will probably reduce baking time) and cutting other shapes.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
½ cup cornmeal
zest of one lemon
6 tablespoons sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
¼ bag semisweet chocolate chips
about 9 – 12 teaspoons powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar)
about 4 – 5 teaspoons lemon juice

Method
Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit.
In a mixing bowl combine flour, cornmeal, lemon zest, and sugar. Using a pastry cutter, cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling. Form the mixture into a ball and knead until smooth. Divide in two.
On an ungreased cookie sheet, pat or roll half the dough to ½ inch thick. Cut into diamond shapes by making parallel horizontal cuts, then parallel diagonal cuts. On the edges you will have some triangle shapes. Do not attempt to pull the diamonds apart; leave them together. Repeat the process with the other half of the dough on a second cookie sheet.
Bake at 325 for 25 minutes or until the center is set and the edges are just faintly starting to brown. Remove from the oven; cool for 10 minutes on the cookie sheet; then re-cut the diamonds along the grooves. Carefully pry apart and transfer to a wire rack to cool. The tips of the diamonds will tend to crumble.
While the cookies are cooling, slowly melt the chocolate chips over low heat in a saucepan. When the chocolate has reached the desired consistency, dip the cookies into it one at a time. I found that dipping one side of the cookie, with a swiping motion, was better than trying to dip it so that one corner of the diamond was completely covered, because the point would tend to fall off in the chocolate. If you come up with a trick for this, let me know!
After dipping, place the cookies on a plate with waxed paper and let them chill in the fridge while you dip the next batch.
When all the cookies are chilling, make the lemon frosting. I did this by putting 3 t powdered sugar in a little bowl, then adding lemon juice ½ teaspoon to 1 teaspoon at a time until I got the desired consistency. Then I drizzled it over the cookies, one batch at a time, making more lemon frosting as needed.
Return the cookies to the fridge until it is time to serve them. After that, store them at room temperature in a sealed container. They won’t last long. This recipe makes about 30 cookies.

P.S. As of Easter 2010, I am FINALLY starting to figure out that the chocolate needs a little parafin in it to make it go on as smoothly as I'd envisioned. I will experiement and post an update when I've confirmed that this is the thing needed ...

Pretty Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies

We had a cold snap for a few days here, so I had to bake! These cookies are based on Better Homes & Garden’s “Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds,” but with quite a few tweaks to make them healthier. You cannot taste the peanut butter in the final product, they just taste like oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.

Ingredients
¼ cup butter or margarine
½ cup peanut butter
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup brown sugar (not packed)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
½ cup apple juice
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon wheat germ
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup carob chips or semisweet chocolate chips

Method
Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit, I believe that’s 190 Celsius.
In a large mixing bowl beat butter or margarine and peanut butter till combined. (In the tropics, the butter and peanut butter will soften so much that you can do this by hand with a potato masher, aided by a rubber scraper to clear the masher occasionally.) Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. Beat until combined, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally.
Beat in the eggs and apple juice till combined. If mixing by hand, beat the eggs separately with a whisk first. At this point the mixture will be very wet, but don’t worry; it will stiffen up as you beat or stir in the flour and wheat germ.
Finally, stir in the rolled oats and the carob or chocolate chips.
Drop dough by rounded teaspoons on an ungreased cookie sheet. You may find it helpful to chill the dough first so that it’s not so sticky. Bake at 375 about 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 10 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes 30 to 40 cookies.

Sweet Potato Pie

As a pregnant lady, I need folic acid. (Found in mangos, peaches, pumpkins, broccoli & sweet potatoes. According to the book What To Eat When You're Expecting. See http://www.family4life.com/Images/whattoeat_when_expecting.htm )

And right now we have a crate of sweet potatoes sitting in our basement. And I have a sweet tooth.
This recipe is only slightly tweaked from the Better Homes & Gardens recipe.

Ingredients: Crust
1 1/4 cups flour or 1 1/8 cups flour + 1/8 cup wheat germ
1/3 cup shortening
about ¼ cup cold water
Ingredients : Filling
3 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 pound)
a scant ½ cup brown sugar
½ t ground cinnamon
¼ t ground allspice or cloves
¼ t ground nutmeg
1/8 t salt (leave out if likely to clump)
3 slightly beaten eggs
1 cup buttermilk, whey or sour cream

Method
1. Scrub sweet potatoes thoroughly with a brush. Pat dry; prick potatoes with a fork. Bake at 450 Fahrenheit for 40 to 50 minutes or till very tender. Cool till easy to handle.
2. Meanwhile, make the crust: Put the flour in a mixing bowl. Optionally, substitute wheat germ for 1/8 cup of the flour and mix well. Cut the shortening into the flour until the pieces are pea-sized. Move a small amount of the flour mixture to one side of the bowl; moisten with 1 T water and toss with a fork. Continue this process until all the mixture is moistened and tossed; form into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, use your hands to slightly flatten the ball. Roll out into a circle about 12 inches in diameter, flouring the rolling pin as often as necessary to prevent sticking. To transfer the dough, roll it back around the rolling pin and move it gently over the pie plate. Ease the dough into the pie plate, patch as needed, trim, and crimp.
3. Line the dough in the pie plate with a double thickness of aluminum foil. Bake at 450 F for 8 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 4 or 5 minutes, or until set and dry (may be less time). Obviously, this baking step can be done while the potatoes are baking.
4. For filling, cut the baked potatoes in half and scoop the pulp into a large mixing bowl. Use a potato masher to mash the pulp. (You should have about 2 cups.) Stir in sugar, cinnamon, allspice or cloves, nutmeg, and salt. Add eggs. Beat lightly with a rotary beater, fork, or whisk just till combined. Gradually stir in buttermilk, whey or sour cream; mix well.
5. Spoon the filling into the partially baked pie shell. If the filling is very liquid, you may want to put the pastry shell on the oven rack first, then pour in the filling to prevent spills.
6. To prevent overbrowning, cover the edge of the pie with aluminum foil. Reduce oven temp to 375 F and bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Chill in the fridge at least 2 hours before serving. Good with whipped cream!

Buckeyes, A Family Recipe

OK, this is not in any sense a recipe you can do in Southeast Asia. Neither is it a recipe I invented or even tweaked. But a blog is all about what you're doing from day to day, right, and we made buckeyes this last week, sooo ...
This recipe comes from my husband's family, who hail from Ohio. The finished product is supposed to look like what they call buckeyes, what I grew up calling horse chestnuts, and what the British call conkers.

Ingredients
1 lb butter, softened
2 lbs peanut butter (one crunchy, one smooth)
3 lbs confectioner’s sugar
2 12-oz packages chocolate chips (we like semisweet)
½ stick parafin

Method
Cream butter and peanut butter. Using clean hands, thoroughly mix in the confectioner’s sugar. Roll into balls about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Place the balls on a cookie sheet covered in waxed paper. Chill. If you’re making it in winter, as is traditional, you can put the sheets of peanut butter balls on your back porch or in your garage.
Meanwhile, place parafin in the bottom of a large pot and cover with chocolate chips. Turn the burner on the lowest setting and allow the parafin and chocolate to slowly melt. Stir together. Leave the heat on the lowest setting.
One cookie sheet at a time, bring the chilled peanut butter balls inside. For each ball, stick it with a toothpick,
dip it in the chocolate mixture and twirl it around until it is covered in chocolate except for a bald patch at the top. Return to the cookie sheet. When each sheet is done, return it to the cool place to chill it. Chilling overnight is perfect. Once the chocolate and parafin have set up, transfer the buckeyes to a storage container and store in a cool place until it’s time to serve them. Yield: TONS of buckeyes!

Scratch Pumpkin Pie

We are now back in the States (that’s another story) and actually spent Thanksgiving there, but before we left Indonesia I did manage to make pumpkin pie using the pumpkins sold in the markets here, labu kuning.
Above are some labu kuning on sale in the wonderful market in Jakarta. In our home city, in Central Kal, you don’t see huge stacks of labu kuning like this, usually no more than a quarter of a pumpkin sitting forlornly atop the other veggies. A quarter of a pumpkin being all that was available, I bought it hoping it would yield enough pumpkin to make the Better Homes & Gardens recipe below. I also expected that it would take a couple of hours to cook down. To my surprise, in only 45 minutes the pumpkin chunks that I boiled were soft enough to mash and drain. It yielded almost exactly 16 ounces of mashed pumpkin, and I had enough pumpkin pie filling that I had to cook the extra in a little Pyrex bowl. The hardest part was cutting the rind off the extremely hard pumpkin slices.
Below are some halved labu kuning being sold alongside beans and sweet potatos.

Seed, peel and cube about ¼ of a labu kuning. Put in a pot, cover in water, and boil 45 minutes or until soft. Drain, mash, and drain again. While the pumpkin is boiling and draining, make the crust. Then proceed with the recipe.

Ingredients
Crust
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup shortening (mentega putih)
5 to 7 tablespoons cold water
Filling
16 ounces stewed pumpkin
2/3 cup sugar
1 t ground cinnamon
½ t ground ginger
½ t ground nutmeg
3 eggs, beaten
1 5-oz can (2/3 cup) evaporated milk (NOT sweetened condensed milk)
½ cup milk
1 large square aluminum foil with the middle cut out

Method
Preheat oven 375 F, 190 C.
For crust, put flour in a mixing bowl. Using a pastry blender or fork, cut in shortening till pieces are pea-sized. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of water over part of the mixture; gently toss with a fork. Push moistened dough to the side of the bowl. Repeat process till all the dough is moistened. Form dough into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, use your hands to slightly flatten dough. Roll dough with a floured rolling pin from the center to the edges into a circle about 12” in diameter. To transfer pastry, wrap it around the rolling pin. Unroll the pastry into a 9-inch pie plate. Ease pastry into pie plate, being careful not to stretch pastry. Trim pastry to ½ inch beyond edge of pie plate. Use the trimmed pieces to patch the pie crust as needed; fold the edge under and crimp as desired.
For filling, in a large mixing bowl combine pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Add eggs. Beat lightly and carefully with a fork or wire whisk just till combined. Gradually stir in evaporated milk and milk; mix well.
To prevent overbrowning, cover the pastry crust with the aluminum foil with the middle cut out. Crimp or fold foil over the edges of the pie plate until it stays in place. Pull out oven rack; place pastry-lined pie plate on oven rack. Carefully pour filling into pastry shell through the large hole in the middle of the foil. Carefully slide oven rack back in.
Bake in a 375 F oven for about 40 minutes. Carefully remove foil. Bake 10 minutes more or until a knife inserted near the center of the pie comes out clean. (I had to bake much longer than 50 minutes total before the knife came out clean!). Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate within 2 hours; cover for longer storage. Makes 8 servings.