Category Archives: food and cooking

Happy-making baking.

Christmas, food and cooking

Cookies! That is to say, baking cookies is happy-making for me. Really, the only time I do it is at Christmastime. It’s a creative project that I can do alone and without any pressure or expectations from anyone else. If I’m successful my cookie platter will have a balance of colors, flavors and textures, and include something for everyone’s taste.

This year Pearl and Maggie got me started – they came for several hours on a Saturday and we made six kinds of what we think of as Christmas cookies. Some were traditional for me, and a couple were new.

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One of Maggie’s ideas was to make meringues, and she did that beautifully. I wanted to make some Peppermint Cookies that we have done several years. But we were so busy I forgot to take many pictures.

 

 

Yesterday I finished up what we started of the Ginger Spice and Chocolate Macaroons…

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And I baked a new kind of cookie — Christmas is the only time of year when I take the time to try new cookie recipes — that I found in Fine Cooking magazine: Winter Stöllen Cookies. They were a good bit of work, requiring the chopping of candied and dried fruit, and two kinds of dough that are layered and rolled up jelly-roll fashion. Then you freeze the dough and slice it to bake.

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You are supposed to brush the rounds with butter before and after baking, and dust with powdered sugar afterward. I skipped the afterward parts for most of the cookies I made, because I didn’t want them to be too sweet. I also didn’t want to hide the swirl in the middle that was faint to begin with. I don’t know what the purpose was of that layering of dough.

I probably won’t make these again; they are too soft and cake-y for my taste, though I did like the burst of tart cherry flavor. (I see now that the description calls them “tender.”) We’ll see how they rate with the rest of the family.

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So much kitchen momentum developed yesterday, I began imagine two or three more recipes I could revive, or try for the first time — but then bedtime arrived. Today tasks like housecleaning are calling me, and late tonight the first of my children will be arriving. But maybe, just maybe, I can squeeze in one more batch….

If I manage to take a picture of my cookie platter this year, I will post it here, and also share another recipe, after we come back from celebrating. If you bake special cookies for Christmas, I’d love to hear about them.

Gingerbread Experiments

food and cooking, , ,

gl-chips-etcOne of my favorite flavor combinations is chocolate and ginger. Years ago my friend Madalyn served a chocolate chip gingerbread that I loved, but I guess I lost the recipe at some point. I found a substitute online, and I started baking it as a bundt cake, but it’s often a problem….

No matter how thick the batter, the chocolate chips like to sink through it as the cake bakes, and they may all end up on the bottom of the cake and maybe even burn. 😦 To prevent this Madalyn used to put the batter in the 9×12 baking dish and sprinkle the chips on just before putting it in the oven.

If you want to try this cake you can also find a recipe online. I will tell you some things I have learned from mgl-gingery many experiments:

1. Don’t use silicone bakeware. I was given a set of this once, and the silicone bundt pan was the worst for burning on the bottom, which becomes the top when you turn the cake out, and has to be sliced off before glazing or frosting.

2. The recipe online doesn’t have enough ginger for me. I tripled the powdered ginger and added some fresh grated ginger as well.

3. I thought a little more butter would be better – of course! – so I used a whole cup, instead of 3/4 cup. I don’t see the purpose of whipping the room-temperature butter with the sugar, etc. if you are going to melt it all by adding hot water shortly, so I might combine some steps. To get a thicker batter I should use less hot water.

4. The recipe has more sugar than is optimal. I used one cup and that made a cake that was plenty sweet.

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5. If you want a black cake such as I made this time, use the Fair Trade Black Cocoa Powder sold by Frontier. I think it has a very odd flavor, not like chocolate at all and more like chili powder, but I had it on hand, and its flavor goes okay with all the spices that are in this recipe. I regret buying it, however!

6. My next experiment will be to make this recipe as cupcakes; I will try to make a thick batter so that the chocolate chips I sprinkle on at the last minute might not sink all the way to the bottom. If I could find some small and extra-dark chocolate chips it would be helpful; the Ghirardelli 60% cacao are very big and that no doubt causes them to sink through the batter faster.

7. If I perfect the recipe I will post my Best Version. And if any of my readers already bake a similar cake, I’d love to hear about it.

My cake was rather mangled by the time I got it out of the bundt pan where so many of the chips were burnt and encrusted on the bottom. But it didn’t fall apart. I was able to slice it and put a large dollop of whipped cream on top of each serving, and everyone thought it was a gastronomic success.

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cool panna cotta with blueberries

food and cooking, summer, ,

I’ve made the Italian pudding called panna cotta several times now. It is a wonderfully refreshing and easy dessert for summer especially, so clean and cool — especially if you include yogurt or buttermilk, and not too much sweetening. If you haven’t made it before, this page, Why Panna Cotta is the Perfect Dessert, is a good place to start; the author shows how versatile it can be, how you can even make it dairy-free and vegan, though the traditional recipe calls for milk or cream, and gelatin.

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My good friend Ruth came for lunch yesterday and I made panna cotta for our dessert, the Rosewater Panna Cotta with Blueberries from the same site. I doubled the amount of rose water and blueberries. (Unfortunately I took the picture before I put the sprig of mint on the puddings.) If you are interested in the other recipe I made in the past, with buttermilk and an apricot compote with candied fennel seeds ! , it is from Bon Appetit. It was yummy, too, but of course the toppings took much longer to prepare than rinsing some blueberries. I remember thinking that the buttermilk panna cotta all by itself was perfect and needed no dressing up anyway.

I had been hoping that Ruth and I could eat in the garden, with olive trees and yarrow waving in the breeze by our table…. but it was 97° out there, so we opted for the house, almost 20 degrees cooler. We let the sound of the fountain come in through the screen door; I think the birds were having their siesta. The heat crept in, too, but not too fast, and just enough for us to appreciate our lightweight dessert, perfect for an otherwise wilting afternoon.

If you have ever made panna cotta, will you share your favorite recipe with me?

Back to my happiest place…

food and cooking, my garden, , , , ,

gl2 P1040417This afternoon I returned from a short road trip, and within a few minutes I’d taken a stroll around the garden to see what changes might be evident. I hoped that the newly planted items had made it through the weekend without my attentions, and they had.

The Terra Cotta yarrow has begun to bloom, and it looks pretty against the blue pincushion flowers nearby. In a month the rows of lavender bushes will all be flowering in contrast as well, but already one variety is starting to open enough that a fat black bee was checking it out.P1040414

 

The vegetables have not stopped growing huge — just what magic is in this custom mix of dirt for planting boxes? I’ve never grown or even seen such lush and large leaves of kale and Romaine lettuce.

 

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Just the day before my trip I had set out  a flat of flower and vegetable starts, including this feathery fennel and two zinnias. I always like some zinnias mixed in with vegetables. In the garden, that is.

That’s rice straw mulching the fennel; another task I had completed the day before my trip was to wrangle a bale of the stuff out of my Subaru and into the back yard so that I could at least tuck it in around the tiniest plants for protection against drying out while I was gone.gl2 P1040422

 

 

It’s surprising how several of the Iceland poppies are still flowering even in the warming weather, no doubt encouraged by having lately enjoyed several spells of cool rain, and by the well-drained soil that they reportedly appreciate. Usually they don’t make it through the summer around here….

 

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Lovage towers above leeks and parsley.

The happiness of being home in my garden again gave me the energy to actually use some of my produce; I picked a dozen kale leaves and cooked a mess of greens in the pressure cooker, to go with my eggs for dinner.

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