Category: cooking

Christmas Cookies Galore

Marie Haigh2 Comments

We are swimming in cookies now.

I have only baked 3 batches myself.

Buttermilk sugar cookies (drop style with green frosting on top)

Cranberry chocolate cookies

Dan’s favorite, the Highland Shortbread cookies

Thanks to the cookie swap with the Mom’s Club, I look like a baking goddess though.

I still have one more batch of cookies to make because Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without my gingerbread men.

Growing up, we always made sugar cookies and I still do make them during our get together with friends, but I could take them or leave them. A few years ago the gingerbread men took their rightful place as my favorite cookies to make. Why?

Because the gingerbread men are so much fun to decorate and to personalize!

Almost Done Christmas Shopping

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The lion’s share is done.

I realize most people don’t start their Christmas shopping until December. Some even wait until a week before Christmas. I’m too much of a nervous Nellie to do that. Besides there are some key benefits to finishing early.

Finishing early allows me the necessary time to make at least one handmade gift for Elly. I’m working on two this year: a yarn boa and an apron.

The apron will be a larger version of this one as she has skyrocketed in size since this picture was taken a year ago. The design allows her to put the apron herself, something my independent girl loves to do.

More importantly, finishing early allows me to dedicate the entire month of December to baking cookies, cakes, gifts and pies. This year is going to be even better because I now have a little helper in the kitchen with me. She has become quite the decorator of cupcakes. The trick will be to limit her intake of frosting and sprinkles. Or I could just make more icing.

Home at Last

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Since Wednesday of last week, we’ve attended a wedding, enjoyed 2 days at the Jersey shore and attended a bridal shower.



Although every bit of it was fun, I am glad to be back home.

I plan to do absolutely nothing today.

OK, that is not entirely true. I plan to stay in the neighborhood to facilitate a boatload of cooking. Folks, it’s harvesting time.

The carrots, jalapeno peppers and, most importantly, the tomatoes are in. First up on the menu: tomato sauce. Oh boy, oh boy!

Pet Arthur is Still Alive

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Amazingly, I haven’t killed the sourdough starter I bought from King Arthur Flour a year ago. The main reason it hasn’t been tossed in the trash is that Pet Arthur is extremely resilient. It surely isn’t because of my diligence. I’ve forgotten about it for upwards of two weeks. I’ve used almost all of it up in a bread recipe, leaving less than a quarter of a cup, but it stayed alive and even thrived with newly added flour and water.

The best part is that it has been making amazing waffles and breads. Just yesterday, I baked 3 loaves of sourdough potato bread.

I used King Arthur’s recipe as a jump start and then added the leftover mashed potatoes we had in the fridge. The end result was a bread with the telltale sour taste of a sourdough and with an incredible moist crumb typical of a potato bread. It might be the best sourdough bread I’ve made to date.

Recipe:
1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water, enough to make a smooth dough
2 cups leftover mashed potatoes
6-8 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Combine the starter, water, leftover potatoes, and 4 cups of the flour.
Let rise 4 hours. Then, transfer to fridge and let rise overnight.

Remove from fridge and add remaining ingredients. Incorporate enough flour until a soft dough is formed. Knead until smooth and elastic. Let rise until doubled, about 6 hours.

Divide into thirds and place into loaf pans. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (done in this order so the dough can rise again). Bake for 30-40 minutes or until lightly brown and sounding hollow when tapped.

Yes, it takes 2 days to make, but most of the time it’s sitting in the fridge or in a corner rising. You can walk away and forget about it. Goodness knows, I have several times. Sourdough appears to be very forgiving for the bread is always delicious.

Here is the bread in my new bread box, another yard sale find.

A Kitchen Wiz at 2

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I love to brag that Elly knows more about how to cook and bake than her Daddy does.

When Elly was 15 months old, I started letting her help me in the kitchen.

A year later, the list of tasks Elly can accomplish on her own is amazing.

1. Turn the stand alone mixer on and off.
2. Inform Daddy of all the hot surfaces and hot food.
3. Crack an egg.
4. Wash dishes.

5. Turn the faucet on and off.
6. Cut open packaging with scissors.
7. Slice cheese.

8. Remind me to put our aprons on.
9. Knead bread.
10. Pour items into bowls.
11. Smash nuts into smaller bits.
12. Sprinkle salt over popcorn.

Of course, her favorite task is to taste test. Often Elly complains when I put the uncooked dough in the oven.

I only wish I had more pictures of us in the kitchen together.

(All photos by me except the last one was taken by Elly’s Aunt Michelle). 

Kellogs Cereal

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Much to my surprise and delight, Kellogs sent me 2 of their new cereals to taste and to blog about. I was so sure they would pass over my small blog and opt for a blog that maintains a higher readership. Despite blogging for about 4 years now, I am still a small-timer. When I first started this blog, my goals were to become one of the top knitting blogs and to promote my knitting patterns. Much has changed. My priorities are different. Elly, of course, comes first now. The blog has taken a back seat. It is written strictly for pleasure now. After her birth, I had even entertained the idea of retiring the blog. I chose not to because I love to write about my hobbies and I love to brag about Elly.

Enough of my babbling about this blog, I’m sure you are dying to know what I thought of the cereals. Even if you could care less, I’m dying to tell you.

The first cereal Elly and I tried was FiberPlus Cinnamon Oat Crunch. My reaction was mixed. With milk, it tasted both good and bad. I loved the spice of the cinnamon and the crunchiness of the O’s. The one thing I didn’t like was the texture. It was too light and airy and it became soggy too fast.

Elly’s reaction was different. She prefers her cereal dry so she tried the Cinnamon Oat Crunch without any milk. She cleaned her entire tray of them. She even prefers them over Cheerios, which shocked me, since Cheerios were her first love.     As soon as my local grocery store Weis carries it, I’ll be buying Elly her own box. Thanks to the high fiber and antioxidants in it, I will gladly fill and refill her snack container.

On a side note, we have retired the snack traps. Elly refused to put her hand into the opening in the lid. Apparently, it’s much too inefficient. She preferred to yank the entire lid off and then dump the contents rendering them useless.

The 2nd cereal I tried was Kellogg’s FiberPlus Berry Yogurt Crunch. This cereal had a leg up in the taste test; I love dried fruit in my cereal. It didn’t disappoint. It had a great crunch and a melody of flavors from the yogurt covered blueberries, nuts,and sweetened flakes. Although I had no trouble devouring the entire box – so much so that I didn’t find time to take a picture-, I found the cereal a bit too sweet to eat on a daily basis. As an occassional treat, it’s perfect.

Elly turned her nose up at the Berry Yogurt Crunch cereal. She wouldn’t even try it. Ha! Kellogs shouldn’t be offended. Elly often turns her nose up at new foods, especially my homebaked breads. I hope she’ll learn to love my cooking and baking as she gets older, but I’m not holding my breath. Most kids would live off of chicken nuggets and french fries if allowed. Elly is no different.

Disclosure notice: As mentioned above, I have a material connection because I received a cash payment, gift or item of nominal value from a company affiliated with a brand, topic and/or product that is mentioned herein.

Blueberries and Cherries

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On Fridays, Elly and I visit the Pottstown Farmers Market. Two Fridays ago, there were blueberries and cherries for sell. I grabbed 2 pints of each.
My original plan of what to do with the fruit involved a blueberry pie and a bowlful of cherries on the dining room table to periodically nibble. The downside with my plan was that Elly wouldn’t be able to eat any cherries because I would be too worried about her choking on the pit.

While biking home, I came up with plan B: a blueberry and cherry pie. Pies are nothing more than fruit, sweetener and thickener. Yet, I still felt compelled to locate a recipe in order to get the proportions correct. I chose this recipe because it used equal amounts of sweet cherries and blueberries. After reading the reviews, I knew to cut drastically back on the sugar and cinnamon. I added only a little of each and then taste tested the fruit. The fruit was so flavorful and sweet that it didn’t take me long to find just the right balance.

My version of the blueberry and cherry pie:
2 ½ cups pitted sweet cherries
2 ½ cups blueberries
½ cup sugar
2 tbsp arrowroot or cornstarch
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp butter
1 recipe pastry for a 9.5-inch pie

Cover pie shell with tinfoil. Weight tinfoil down with dry beans. Parbake pie shell in a 425 degree oven for 12 minutes. Remove tinfoil. Reduce oven temperature to 350 and bake for 12 more minutes or until shell is golden brown.
Mix fruit in a big bowl. Coat with sugar and cinnamon. Taste. Add more sugar if desired. Add arrowroot. Toss to combine.
Pour fruit into parbaked pie shell. Dot with butter.
Cook at 375 for approximately 45 minutes or until bubbly.

Elly’s 1st Apron

Marie Haigh2 Comments

Elly loves to help me in the kitchen now. A step stool sits in front of the island so Elly can reach the countertop. Stirring is still difficult for her but she keeps trying.

Jake cleans up most of her spills. When she’s not stirring, she’s tasting. Often she ends up covering her face along with whatever she’s wearing in flour. Rather than change her clothes repeatedly and in turn have to do more laundry, I whipped her up an apron.

Full details about the pattern and fabric can be found on my Elly-Made blog.

More Zucchini Please

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Article first published as More Zucchini Please on Blogcritics.

Beginning last week, the zucchini plant in my garden started bearing fruit. Thus far I’ve made sautéed zucchini rounds, zucchini bread and zucchini chocolate cake. That might be enough zucchini for some folks, but I was hoping for much more.

I’m the sort of person who likes to buy several pounds of a fruit or vegetable that is in season -much more than Dan and I could possibly eat before it all spoils. Then, I sift through my pile of cookbooks searching for ways to use it all up.

I had come across some zucchini recipes I was excited to try: soup, a walnut bread, etc. Mostly, I just want an excuse to bake another Zucchini Chocolate Cake. My, it was so good. The zucchini made the cake incredibly moist. I didn’t even bother to ice it. Though Dan turned his nose up at the idea of putting zucchini in a chocolate cake, he was impressed by the results. Unless you grated the zucchini by hand or someone you trusted swore she put it in the cake, you wouldn’t believe it. You don’t taste the zucchini at all.

The recipe I used can be found here. Though the instructions didn’t specify, I finely grated the zucchini and drained off the excess liquid.  I also made a change to the list of ingredients by adding 1 teaspoon of espresso powder. I learned that little trick from Ina Garten. She always adds coffee to her chocolate recipes to enhance the flavor of the chocolate.

Well, here’s hoping the current orange blossoms on the plant bear more squash.

Using up Buttermilk in Cookies

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Article first published as Using up Buttermilk in Cookies on Blogcritics.

After making waffles last weekend, I still had 1/4 of a bottle of buttermilk leftover. Unable to dump such goodness down the drain, I rummaged through my recipe book to find a way to use it up.

There were the usual recipes for buttermilk: biscuits, scones, and pancakes. Yet, I wanted something different and something sweet. Then, I found it: buttermilk sugar cookies.

The recipe I used is here on Maggie’s Madcap Life blog. The only changes I made were to sprinkle coarse sugar on top, to use parchment paper and to use a cookie scoop. These are changes that I would make to almost any cookie recipe. Coarse sugar lends a cookie a touch of crunchiness. Parchment paper makes for easier clean up. Cookie scoops are ingenious.

Really. I don’t know how I lived for so many years without one. They cut in half the time it used to take me scoop the cookie dough up with 1 spoon and then scrape it onto a cookie sheet with a 2nd spoon. If you don’t have one, trust me; you need one.

The cookies came out moist, puffy, cake-like, crunchy on top, and sweet but not too sweet.

They are the perfect quick-to-make sugar cookie to have with a cup of tea or coffee. Your kids should love them too. My almost-18-month-old had a blast helping me make them and she loves to help her Daddy and I eat them.

However, they are nothing like Christmas sugar cookies. If Christmas cookies are what you want, don’t skimp on the work. Don’t try to bake drop style cookies and expect them to taste like the cookies that must be refrigerated, rolled, cut out, rolled again, baked, iced and decorated. It’s not fair. This recipe is good but it can’t produce a miracle.