Category Archives: food and cooking

Christmas Cookies for Show-and-Eat

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The new favorite cookie this year was Salted Toffee. This was a happy accident sort of thing. We had come by a bag of mini Heath Bars, not something we normally would buy, and I didn’t want to end up eating them one-by-one, so after we ate a few I thought I would make cookies with the rest.

 

 

I’d seen recipes online for Heath Bar cookies, and I used one of them that didn’t have nuts. My version had a little less Heath ingredient, since we had snacked it down. The specialness I added was to combine some large-crystal sugar (Demerara) and coarse sea salt and roll the tops of the cookie-dough balls in that before baking.

Everyone loved these cookies. If that bird were real, he would have eaten the whole cookie by now. But he is painted on a pretty tray that May gave me for Christmas.

Soldier’s Joy brought the darlingest delicious thumbprint cookies that were filled with strawberry and rhubarb, and some chocolate-dipped dried apricots that combined to add to the visual appeal of the cookie platters.

Those bright-white round cookies are our only store-bought item, Pffernusse from Trader Joe’s that Mr. Glad wanted to try in memory of the cookies his German grandmother used to make.

The coconut-y balls are Date Delights, for which I’ll give you the recipe here. They are another chewy toffee-ish experience we have been creating ever since my grandma gave our family a tin full of them one Christmas past.

Date Delights

1 cube butter
1 cup cut-up pitted dates
1 beaten egg
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups Rice Crispies
sweetened coconut flakes, about 7 oz.

In a 9×12 baking pan mix the walnuts and Rice Crispies. Set aside. In another bowl put the coconut flakes. 

In a saucepan melt the butter, and add the dates, egg and sugar. Stir all together in the saucepan and boil over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and beat in the vanilla, and immediately pour the candy mixture over the walnuts and cereal. Stir well. As soon as the mixture is cool enough to handle, form into balls and roll them in the coconut flakes. Cool.

The red squares in the foreground are Cranberry Jellies. I adapted a recipe from a past Sunset Magazine to make a treat that Pippin and I especially like. It’s refreshingly lacking in any fat except for walnuts, and is a nice chewy way to get your cranberry fix and add color to the display.

Cranberry Jellies

3 cups Trader Joe’s Cranberry-Orange Relish (2-16 oz. tubs)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water
13 envelopes plain gelatin
3 cups chopped walnuts

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl (I used a stand mixer) and while the paddle is turning, gradually add the gelatin. When thoroughly mixed transfer to a saucepan and heat just until the gelatin is dissolved. Stir in the walnuts and pour the mixture into a 9×12 pan. Refrigerate until firm. Cut into small pieces and dust lightly with cornstarch. I don’t refrigerate them after this point.

Many times I’ve told myself that I must make fewer cookies at Christmas, but this year I realized that it’s one of my favorite things to do. I have so much fun thinking of the collage of different flavors and forms of the little sweets that I don’t even feel the need to eat them. It was long after Christmas Day that I even tried one of the new Peppermint Cream Cheese cookies I made this year.

But now by what is the Seventh Day of Christmas, as I finish up this post, and also New Year’s Eve, I’ve expanded the festive feelings by eating lots of cookies, too! They all taste as good as they look, or better. The last red plateful will go out of here this evening — I wish I could bring one to your house when I say Happy New Year!

Jello is so refreshing.

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When I was a child, a leafy-green salad was prepared almost every evening of the year, including on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our custom was to eat our salad after the main course, but on many holidays the healthy bowlful was discovered too late, waiting forgotten on the kitchen counter, long after anyone had any appetite left.

GJ preparing heavy dishes

My husband’s family introduced me to the tradition of jello at Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law had a nice strawberry jello salad that our whole family came to appreciate because it was one item on the heavy-laden table that wasn’t calorie-dense and fat-heavy.

Over the decades since then we’ve had a variety of lighter dishes on our table for these feasts, including Korean Kale Salad and other salads that may seem odd to the typical palate but keep us feeling like our usual happy Glad folk. For many years we let the jello custom lapse, probably because it was too sweet, and we didn’t need another item that seemed to belong in the dessert category.

When half my life was past I discovered that I did love grapefruit after all, and I experimented with creating a gelatin salad recipe that would be less sweet, and would feature the refreshingly bitter-sour tang of grapefruit. I love grapefruit even more after having lived in Turkey briefly, where they spell it greypfrut. But I didn’t eat any jello there, so that is just name-dropping — even though as you can see the Turks did not drop the name when they were changing the spelling.


Here now is the current version of my gelatin salad. I have played around with it over the years, using coconut milk and pineapple juice at times, making a smaller batch, and adding fresh peeled orange sections when I had them. So it is definitely flexible  — try it with your own preferred flavors or handy ingredients.

Grapefruit Gelatin Salad

64 oz. Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice Drink
7 envelopes unflavored gelatin granules
1 qt. L&A or any pineapple-coconut juice
1 cup sugar
peeled fresh orange sections or a large can crushed pineapple

Put about 6 cups of the Ruby Red in a pot and whisk in the gelatin. Heat these together until the gelatin is dissolved. Add and dissolve the sugar, remove from heat and add the remainder of the Ruby Red along with the pineapple-coconut juice.

Refrigerate the gelatin until partly jelled. Stir in the fruit and refrigerate again until firm. I think next time I will put some sweetened flaked coconut on the top.

About the size of the pan: The one I use holds more than 3 quarts, and this salad after the fruit is added comes right to the top. It would be easier and maybe prettier to use a jello mold or fluted pan(s); then when the fruit has been mixed in I could prepare the pans by putting some shredded coconut and even a few maraschino cherries before adding the gelatin-fruit mixture.

I’d very much like to hear from any of you who also have favorite salad or vegetable dishes that lighten up your holiday menus. Leave a comment or link me to your blog. Thanks in advance! Oh, and if you just have jello stories, as I do, please tell me those, too.

I rescue cookies.

Christmas, food and cooking

At the beginning of November I had a cookie craving, and it occurred to me that I might as well make one of our favorite kinds of Christmas cookies; I could eat a few and freeze most of them, and be ahead of the to-do list. Our family’s holiday traditions include platters piled with various kinds of cookies, most of which won’t be seen again until the next Christmas. For this first session of baking I chose the soft Ginger Spice Cookies that feature an intoxicating combination of spices and diced candied ginger as well.

Something went wrong, or maybe a few things. I had made a note on the recipe card suggesting that I cut the sugar back another 1/4 cup from the previous alteration, because, “they are plenty sweet.” I am reminded of the story about the farmer who discovered he could add some sawdust to his horse’s feed and save money that way. He kept adding more and more sawdust and the horse seemed to do fine with it, until one day it died.

The recipe must have been just about perfect before I changed it just a little, and then the cookies came out terrible. Was it only the lack of sweetness that made them taste strongly of baking soda with pockets of overwhelming clove flavor? Or perhaps I hadn’t mixed the dough enough? I thought I would have to throw them out.

But wait – couldn’t they be used for something? If I dried them in the oven, and ground them finely in the food processor, I could use them as the basis for different cookies….so I tried just that. To the fine crumbs I added a cube of butter, an egg, and extra sugar and flour. A little more ground ginger and a tiny bit of cardamom. Then instead of dropping the dough by teaspoonfuls I chilled and rolled it, into trees. Now we have crisp gingerbread cookies that surprise the eater with an occasional tiny piece of candied ginger, and that warm your mouth with an even more complex and winning flavor. Alas, never to be duplicated.

This made me brave enough to tackle the other failed cookie product that had been sitting in the freezer for awhile, since the time I made some Russian Tea Cakes but only put in half as much flour as they needed. The buttery, pecan-studded cookie crumbs I had stuck in a jar in the freezer, being unwilling at the time to give up on them.

Now I dug them out and experimented in a similar way, adding an egg, sugar, flour, baking powder and lemon zest. I tried to roll this dough, too, but it would not hold together, so I shaped disks and stuck a pecan half on each one. Behold! Another new and non-repeatable Glad Christmas cookie, which the man of the house has tasted and approved. I do hope nonetheless that I can avoid making a yearly tradition of the Cookie Rescue.

If you need a vegan pie crust…

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Pineapple-Coconut Pie

In the course of telling about various pies over the years, I’ve mentioned this versatile pie crust recipe which can easily be made vegan, and is mixed up right in the pie plate.

I thought I had never given the recipe for it, but just today I saw that it was featured in the second post I ever wrote, in which I report on my experiment with sweet potato pie. I’ve now put it conveniently where it ought to have been all along, on the page titled “Recipes and Vague Instructions.”

In the Orthodox Church we have a good many days all throughout the year when we fast from dairy and eggs, those go-to ingredients for many desserts, so I’ve made use of this recipe on special occasions that also happen to be fast days.

Sweet Potato Pie with Black Bean Crust

An example is the pineapple-coconut pie which I mention on a rambling post that offers vague instructions indeed. But the crust recipe comes originally from the Amish, who aren’t known for fasting or eating vegan, and it’s a wonderfully quick shell to throw together even for a rich pie, like the colorful first one I ever blogged upon.

Since my last detailed pie recipe here, I have acquired a convection oven, and I want you to know that I no longer have to do the foil collar thing to keep my crusts from over-browning. Now it is easier (what?) than ever to whip up a pie, any day of the year.

As the Nativity Fast is soon upon us, any pie I make will likely be a vegan one using this recipe, which I am giving in the original Amish version with my notes. Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for… back for a second appearance… TA DA!

Pat-in-Pan Pie Crust
Single-crust 8-9” pie
Quick, crisp, but tender
(can’t be rolled)

1 ½ cups plus 3 tablespoons flour (does not have to be wheat)
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup vegetable oil (you might even try a little butter!)
3 tablespoons cold milk (dairy, soy, nut, etc.)

Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a pie pan and mix with your fingers until blended. In a measuring cup beat the oil and milk with a fork until creamy. Pour liquid all at once over the flour mixture. Mix with the fork until completely moistened. Pat the dough with your fingers, first up the sides of the plate, then across the bottom. Flute the edges.

Shell is now ready to be filled. If you are preparing a shell to fill later, or your recipe requires a pre-baked crust, preheat oven to 425°. Prick the surface of the pastry with a fork and bake 15 minutes, checking often, and pricking more if needed.


For a 10” shell I used:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup oil
3 tablespoons milk