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Archive for the ‘Holiday baking’ Category

The Remains of the (Birth)day

The very last of Mamaw's pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

The very last of Mamaw’s pound cake and the three-layer fig cake.

“My mother likes to use recipes,” said our youngest daughter to her friend in a tone that implied I abuse kittens. Both of these young women are the kind of intuitive cooks that fix what’s in the cupboard. Me, not so much. I’ve never been an improviser — at the piano, on stage or in the kitchen.

My cooking talent, if I have one, is the ability to intuit what a recipe will taste like. The Spicy Mango Sweet Potato Chicken, for instance, I made a few days ago did not need the called-for 3 tablespoons of hot sauce. I didn’t have to make it as written to figure that out (I used 1 teaspoon and it was just right.)

That, of course, is especially true of baking, made more difficult around here by the fact that our 23-year-old gas oven will not hold a constant temperature. Baking, so goes the cliche, is a science while cooking is an art. In our kitchen, you bake on a wing and a prayer.

This beloved child and my husband, Vlad the Plaid, share a January 20th birthday so when she came home this week, I made a cake for each. He wanted our neighbor’s dried figs ground into a fig-orange and almond layer cake filling. This extravaganza included cooked icing  more like divinity than frosting.

The Hamster, who will be 22 on Sunday, got Jean Easter’s Mamaw’s Poundcake, second prize-winner from a 2006 contest in the Winston-Salem Journal. It is a practically perfect poundcake, crispy on the outside and tender but dense inside. Coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts give it a distinct, sweet taste that is a combination of all 4 but somehow different. The Hamster’s buddy said it smelled like popcorn because of the butter flavoring, but if it had been a wine, we’d say it had “notes” of the other three as well.

The only changes I made were the substitution of real butter for margarine and cake flour for all-purpose. The crumb was fine, moist and even.

Mamaw’s poundcake

3 sticks (1-1/2 cups) butter, softened

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons each coconut, butter, vanilla and lemon extracts

3 cups cake flour (maybe you’re lucky enough to have access to King Arthur’s)

1 teaspoon baking powder

Dash of salt

Heat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.  (I usually spend about 10 minutes doing a thorough job of this.)

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. (The air you beat into this mixture is most of the leavening in a poundcake.) Add extracts; beat until mixture is lemon-colored and smooth.

In separate bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add this flour mixture to creamed mixture, one-quarter at a time. Turn off mixer before mixing completely and finish by hand. (The more you mix flour into cake batter, the tougher the cake.)

Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours, turning pan at midway point to prevent a “sorry streak” (undone places). Cake is done when tester inserted into thickest part comes out clean, top is golden and beginning to crack. Cool on wire rack in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out to cool completely. Makes 20 to 24 very, very rich slices of several thousand calories apiece.

Category:

Baking, Butter, Cake, Desserts, Holiday baking, Recipes

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Vegetarian vacation

Apricot and brandy-glazed coffeecake with pecan, currant, brown sugar and butter filling.

As wonderful as it is when the children come home, it stinks when they leave to go back to college or work or both. Our youngest drove off in pouring  rain this morning, leaving the house feeling chillier and duller.

We had a wonderful time, saw 9 movies during the 8 days and 9 nights she and her imaginary cat were here (although last night her ‘fraidy cat  actually made it all the way from bedroom to living room) and ate ourselves silly.

Since she’s a vegetarian, we ate shells stuffed with mashed sweetpotatoes, blue cheese and caramelized onions, cream cheese- and blueberry-stuffed oven-baked French toast (stuffed being the operative word in both recipes), cannelini bean soup and a green chili and egg casserole. We ate in Lebanese, Mexican and Chinese restaurants. We ate homemade oat bread, James Beard’s sweet coffee cake and a melt-in-your-mouth fruitcake that begins at Thanksgiving with fermenting fruit. We had enough sugar, butter and chocolate to last us until next Christmas.

We are blessed, which does not stop me from feeling sad on this drippy morning. The house looks like Times Square on New Year’s Day, but  next week someone else’s children will spend the night here when the choir from Westminster College of Pennsylvania sings at our church. And we’ll give thanks again for young people of passion and talent.

Green chili and egg breakfast casserole

10 medium eggs

2 cups small curd cottage cheese

2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese

2 4-1/2-ounce cans chopped green chiles, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter 2-quart rectangular baking dish or spray with cooking oil.

Break eggs into mixing bowl and beat with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in remaining ingredients and blend thoroughly. Pour mixture into baking dish, place dish into oven and bake for 50 minutes or until center is firm. Bake only until casserole becomes firm but remove it from oven before top browns. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before cutting into it. Serves 8.

Beloved college junior focuses on sugar cookie decorating.

Category:

Breakfast-brunch, Desserts, eggs, Family, Holiday baking, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating

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Bread of life

The recipe came originally from the King Arthur Flour catalog. So, eventually, did the Saf-Instant yeast that  works like magic. I love King Arthur, even though the Bread Baker of the house tends to grab the new mailings and drool over them as if they featured naked women instead of luscious baked goods.

This remarkable bread is dense without being heavy.

When someone requested his recipe for this dense, easy, nutritious and, most of all, delicious oat-wheat bread, he suggested I call it “Any Fool Can Make It” bread. Indeed, there’s no such thing as a failure here — it’s an intensely forgiving procedure for making the kind of bread that college students dream of eating warm from the oven with a bowl of home-made soup when they come home from a week of finals fueled by snacking and take-out only.

No-Knead Oat Bread

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (King Arthur being my flour of choice)

1 cup traditional whole-wheat or white whole-wheat flour (ditto)

1-1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking)

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted soft butter

2 teaspoons salt (you do need it all!)

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

2-1/4 cups cool water

Put all ingredients in large bowl. Stir, then use your hands or a stand mixer with dough hook to mix up a sticky dough. Continue to work the dough enough to incorporate all the flour or beat for several minutes in a stand mixer. (Last night the Bread Baker explained to me how and why you can overbeat the dough in your KitchenAid. Don’t.)

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature overnight or for at least 8 hours. It will become bubbly and rise quite a bit so make sure your bowl is large enough at the start.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. To make single loaf, use a 14- to 15-inch-long lidded stoneware baker; a 9- to 12-inch oval deep casserole dish with cover; or a 9- to 10-inch round lidded baking crock. (I use my mother’s cast-iron Dutch oven.)

Shape dough to fit and place in lightly greased pan of your choice, smooth side up. Cover and let rise at room temperature for about 1 hour, until dough becomes puffy and fills pan about three-quarters full.

Garnish by sprinkling a handful of oats on top, if desired. If baking a round loaf, slash a hash mark pattern (#) on top.

Place pan in cold oven. Set oven temperature to 450 degrees. Bake bread for 45 to 50 minutes, then remove lid and continue to bake for another 5 to 15 minutes, until bread is deep brown and/or an instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers about 205 degrees.

Remove bread from oven, turn out onto rack and directions say to cool before slicing, but that is just “kwazy,” as our granddaughter Ashley used to say about everything. Slice and eat immediately, the more butter, the better.

Category:

Bread baking, good food, healthy cooking, Holiday baking

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Reasons for the season

“After all, recent research shows that by the year 2020, it’s estimated that 83 percent of men and 72 percent of women will be either overweight or obese.” Adam Bornstein, livestrong.com editorial directorImagine, a nation of Michelin men and women, waddling in and out of big-box stores and home to collapse on their sagging sofas in front of hundreds of cable channels. 
So, as Bornstein suggests in the same posting, in the interests of avoiding such a fate, we need to plan now, this morning, to start our New Year’s healthy eating and fitness regimes today, rather than spending the entire month of January simply recovering from our December excesses. Well, yuck. That would be like looking for meaning in the month and not excuses for indulgence. Real grownup stuff this, and, not coincidentally, real possibilities for epiphany.
 
Last December I baked cookies like a Keebler elf. Every day and in every way. I also ate cookies like a full-sized person, more than full-sized. Not as many as in previous holidays, but enough to sometimes have days or nights of the sugar “blahs.” And I exercised if I felt like it, if the weather was good, the stars were propitious or it was a day beginning with the letter “W” or “X” or whatever.
 
This December morning I weigh 6 pounds more than when I and Mr. Honeybuns Are a Food Group married 23-1/2 years ago. Yet the other day when I tried to fasten a pretty snakeskin belt I wore on our honeymoon, it was at least 6 inches from latching. An unfortunate reality to put up against dear friends’ saying recently, “You’ve never looked better.” Alas, there was  a time, brief though it may have been, when I wasn’t built like a sparkplug.
 
For Christians this is the season of Advent, of waiting, anticipating. And how does this connect to nurturing ourselves, physically as well as spiritually?
 
From Gail Godwin’s “Evensong” (her 1999 sequel to “Father Melancholy’s Daughter”): “…in inner-world terms, as people drawn to the light, we go about preparing for the hoped for and the unforeseen in exactly the same way. You clean your house and make yourself ready, you light your candles, you say, “Come, Lord, come.” And then you compose yourself and wait for the knock.”
 
Making ourselves ready, composing ourselves, is — for want of a better cliche — being the best that we can be. We should be able to take a child in need onto our laps and extend ourselves for that child (literally: others). We should be good stewards of the resources with which we’ve been blessed, and good health is certainly one of the greatest of blessings. Being ready can be as simple as being physically able to take a walk when son or daughter suggests one.
 
So I’m headed to the kitchen now to make lentil-tomato soup for friends and a lemon cake to put into the freezer (cake batter’s not nearly as appealing as cookie dough!) for the 12 Days of Christmas. Tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day, and neither cake nor soup will fit into a a wooden clog, but I’ll  just re-read “The Christmas Anna Angel” (Ruth Sawyer, 1949) instead of baking more small and tempting comestibles.
 
From the November 2011 issue of Taste of Home magazine:
Lentil tomato soup
4-1/2 cups water
4 medium carrots, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
2/3 cup dried lentils, rinsed
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried dillweed
1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
In soup pot combine water, carrots, onions and lentils; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until vegetables and lentils are tender. Stir in tomato paste, parsley, sugar, vinegar, salt, thyme, dill, tarragon and pepper; return to boil. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes to blend flavors. Serves 6. Each 3/4 cup serving has 138 calories, a trace of fat, 351 mg sodium, 9 g fiber and 8 g protein.
NOTE: You can also saute carrots and onion in 1 to 2 tablespoons EVOO before proceeding w/ recipe for a slightly richer vegetable taste.
 
 

Category:

Advent, Holiday baking, Holiday eating, Soup, vegetables

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