Monkey Bread

Hey, hey, we're the Monkees, People say we like to monkey around...

Every Christmas morning, my family makes monkey bread. It’s such a decadent (read: mucho calories!) treat that once a year is enough. This year we mixed things up by going up to my grandmother’s in North Georgia. We usually spend Thanksgiving there, but hadn’t spent a Christmas there in thirty-some years.   

It was cold and wonderful, and somehow in all the festivities, we failed to make monkey bread Christmas morning!

Since I’m the biggest fan of monkey bread, the biscuits were sent back with me. I woke up today to a windy 20 degree morning, and knew before I got out of bed that it was a monkey bread morning.

Since it’s just me, I cut the recipe down to one can of biscuits. It’s okay to eat one can in a day right?!

Monkey Bread

1 can jumbo, buttermilk biscuits (I’ve also made my own biscuit dough and used it in before to excellent results)

½ cup white sugar

2 tsp cinnamon (I like a lot of cinnamon)

6 Tablespoons of butter or margarine

¼ cup brown sugar

1.      Open up the biscuits and revel in that “POP!”
2.      Cut each biscuit into quarters.
3.      Mix the white sugar and cinnamon in a bag or jar.
4.      Add the biscuit quarters to the sugar mixture and shake, shake, shake your biscuits!
5.      Once the biscuits are covered, take out and put them in a loaf pan, ramekin, or small Bundt pan. I used one mini loaf pan and two ramekins. Tetris skills come in handy here. 
6.      In a pan over medium heat, melt the butter and add the brown sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture becomes one, mostly uniform, golden color.
7.      Pour the butter mixture over the biscuits.
8.      Put in a 340 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. I used my toaster oven and it took about 50 minutes. To check, stick a toothpick in the middle and check for doughiness.
9.      Allow to cool slightly. Run a knife around the sides and dump out on a plate, giving it some love taps if necessary.
10.    Use fingers to pull off crunchy tops and flakey middles. Dip finger in the gooey butter mix on the bottom and lick off.
    
    
    

Star Tree Topper

This is my first Christmas tree - the very first of my own in my own apartment. My mom, sister, and I piled in the car the first weekend in December and brought back this beautiful tree tied to the top of my car. My mom has been buying us each ornaments since forever so I have plenty. Lights were purchased and strung. But the tree topper - that needed to be special.  

It had to be a star. Nothing else would do. I like the angels and the bows, but I love starts. 

I  got a piece of foam board and cut out a start. I didn't use a pattern so it's not perfect, but I wanted it a little free form.

Then I took yarn and wrapped it. I tried to keep it single strand all the way around until it was completely wrapped. I tied it in the back. 

You could use a hot glue gun, but I thought it would be nice to reuse the yarn later for something else and create a new topper next year. Hey, I might have my first tradition.

Pumpkin + Kidney Beans + Kale

This year for Halloween I got a couple of little pie pumpkins. I painted the outside - a bat and a ghost - so that I could still use them in the kitchen later. I peeled and chopped them, and put them in the crock pot with enough water to cover the bottom. A few hours later, they were soft yumminess. This thing didn't even need any butter or salt or anything else! I was spooning it out of the pot! 

It made a lovely combination with kidney beans and kale. I simply put it all in a pan together over medium heat until the kale was cooked and the beans were hot. I added salt and pepper. This is the type of dinner that makes me feel good because I'm eating healthy foods, lots of lovely colors, and enjoying every bite! 

Kitty Foods & Meowing Holidays

My sweet Charlie cat has been on a diet. It has meant more meowing, a definite attempt at herding me into the kitchen every time I walk down the hallway, and much more interest in what I'm munching as I sit on the couch watching TV. But it's also meant a reduction belly, which means a healthier kitty. He has also been a lot friskier!

After Thanksgiving, Charlie got the remains of the chicken. He gets two treats a day and for a whole week this was chicken bits. He loved it! And his coat got super soft and glossy. He put back on a little bit but is still slimmer and trimmer.

But there are the Christmas trimmings to go....the holiday season is just beginning....

Thanks to the Patch, I've got some ideas of what Charlie can (and can't) have.

NO: Onions, garlic, chives, alcohol, caffienated drinks or food, grapes and raisins, liver in large amounts (a tiny bit is okay), milk or excessive dairy products, candy, gum or baked goods containing xylitol

YES: Baked carrots, steamed asparagus or broccoli, cooked green beans, winter squash, or chopped greens, small amounts of cottage cheese (if your cat tolerates it), small portions of cooked fish or poultry (no bones)

Will Charlie eat baked carrots? Cottage cheese? Broccoli? I guess there's one way to find out. To be continued......

Eagle Brand Magic Lemon Pie

My family often escapes to North Georgia for the Fourth of July. It's a little cooler up in the mountains where my grandmother lives and let's face it, any degree below the 100+ temps and killer humidity we've been having in Atlanta is welcome. Plus, the small towns around here throw the best birthday parties for America. I'm not sure how they do it, but the fireworks are always amazing. The little downtown areas come alive and every four-way stop is a traffic jam, especially this year since they just discontinued the only two red lights in town. If I listed all the food we consumed, one would easily think we were providing for a small army camped out in the hills. But no, just three petite women with healthy holiday appetites. By the second day we had run through all the planned desserts so my Granny whipped up an Eagle Brand Lemon Pie. This is a recipe from "The Dessert Lovers'Handbook" printed in 1969. In the introduction, it explains that "Eagle Brand is the 'magic' milk product...And what a wonderfully easy way of getting extra milk in your family's diet!" I just might be gullible enough to believe this, or let it make me feel a little better eating something magical!

Filling
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juice (we used 2.5 large lemons)
2 egg yolks
Combine the milk and juice. Blend in the yolks.
The original recipe calls for a pastry shell or crumb crust. We use ground Nilla Wafers in the center surrounded by whole wafers standing up for the crust. Starting in the middle, pour in the filling. Meringue
2 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar

Beat the egg whites and cream of tartar in a small bowl until soft peaks form. Add the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Spread on top of the filling. Bake at 325 degrees F for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. I like this best chilled.

Apple Cookies

It's holiday party time! I made these apple cookies using the last of my stash from the fall for a work holiday luncheon. A lot of my coworkers aren't big on very sweet desserts so I went for something fresh and fruity. These cookies are very soft and slightly chewy. The recipe makes four dozen so I thought I might have a few leftover cookies to bring home. But no, they were gone, every single one.

Apple Cookies

adapted from James Beard's American Cookery

1/2 cup of butter

1 1/3 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 egg

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)

1 cup diced apple

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1) Cream butter. Add sugar and combine well. Beat in egg.

2) Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

3) Add dry ingredients to butter mixture. Then add milk and combine until the dry ingredients and milk disappear.

4) Stir in apples and pecans.

5) Drop by the teaspoon onto buttered cookie sheets.

6) Bake at 375 degrees F for 10-12 minutes or until a light brown.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Today, I'm thankful for....

good food....
followed by sweet things....

for beautiful things....

and wonderful family, both furry and human, relatives and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving!

twd ~ Not-Just-For-Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake

This week's TWD pick is by Jessica of A Singleton in the Kitchen.

Thank you Jessica!

This dessert is definitely one that I would never have made on my own. It involves making a jam of cranberries, oranges, and sugar, and then putting that between two layers of shortbread. Sounds finicky. Plus, the name both intrigued and intimated me - Shortbread Cake...shortbread cookies I know, cake I know, what is shortbread cake?

It's delicious! And it's much simpler and easier than it sounded to me. I was even left thinking that this would be a great dessert to whip-up for guests at a dinner party. You are supposed to let the dough refrigerate for about 20 minutes or so. I didn't want to wait and only left it in about ten, and it still turned out wonderful.

I halved the recipe and put it in four ramekins. It was the perfect amount for all four. (Notice only three in the pictures? Alas, one didn't make it to photo-time.) The ramekin was the perfect thing to eat it in because the filling was a bit messy around the edges. The cranberries gushed out such a bright, beautiful color! This would be great for Christmas parties!

twd ~ Peanuttiest Blondies or Werewolf Balls

This week's pick promised to be delicious! It has lots of chunky pb, the batter tasted great, and it smelled so good baking...until it started burning. I made the blondies a week ahead, and put the batter in the freezer, planning to bake them the night my sister and her boyfriend flew in from nyc. The burning really threw a hitch in my plan.

So, I scraped off the burnt tops, and crumbled it into pieces. Then I made a caramel sauce with sugar and milk, drowned the blondie bits in it, and used the caramel to bind the bits into balls. Since it was just before Halloween, I called them Werewolf Balls. The name got an odd look, but guests had no problem finishing them off. Oh well, they turned out okay, but I'll definitely be trying the real recipe again soon!



For the recipe, check out Bakeologie http://bakeologie.blogspot.com/ by Nicole.

twd ~ Mini Caramel Pumpkin Pies

Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs picked Caramel Pumpkin Pie for this week's TWD. Oh, Janell, thank you.

Thank you for picking such a wonderful seasonal dessert. Pumpkin in October!

Thank you for making it one that's so easy to mini-fy.

Thank you for making it one so good that everyone in my women's group now thinks I'm a great baker.



I stuck to the recipe this time, except that I cheated a little on the crust. Since I was baking it during the week for a meeting, I bought pie crust and cut circles out, like cookies, and put them in my muffin tin. It made perfect little caramel pumpkin pies that were a huge hit! A couple of people even took some for the ride home. This was two yums up!

Happy 2010!!!

As per tradition, gotta have the greens and the black-eyed peas. Yes, I would like the economy to bounce back and the more greens you eat, the more greenbacks will come your way. The peas, as mere coins, aren't quite as important.


As what goes better with greens and black-eyed peas than cornbread and gravy?
Rosemary cornbread and curried gravy perhaps?


5-Spice Black-Eyed Peas

Sautee onions and garlic in a little oil
Add Chinese 5 Spice, salt, and pepper to taste
Add black-eyed peas and cook until tender
Add tomatoes at the end, and let cook for about five minutes

Curried Gravy

Brown flour in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly
Add salt, pepper, and curry powder to taste and brown until the flour is a nutty, medium brown
Add milk, stirring constantly to avoid lumps

Rosemary Cornbread

1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/6 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
fresh rosemary, about 1/8 cup

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and butter or line a muffin pan. This recipe made 5 cornbread muffins.
2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter begins to brown, add the fresh rosemary. Continue cooking about 10 minutes until it turns a light brown and has a delicious, nutty aroma. Filter out the rosemary, but keep all the browned milk solids.
3. Whisk together the eggs and milk. Drizzle in the butter, whisking constantly to avoid cooking the eggs.
4. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
5. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir just enough to form a batter. It will have a few lumps, which is fine. Overbeating could make the cornbread tough.
6. Pour into the pan and bake about 25 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry.
7. Serve forth while still hot, with lots of good sweet butter. I stirred together some butter, honey, and cinnamon and slathered it on. Very good.

Neiman Marcus Cookie Mix

These are my favorite chocolate-chip cookies of all time. As a kid, I didn't even like chocolate-chip cookies. I thought they weren't sweet enough. But I never had these.

This is a recipe that my sister got from somewhere, attached to a lovely, potential urban myth about a lady wanting to buy the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe. The waiter said it cost "two" and she said "Done." The recipe came, then the bill, with an actual price tag of $200.00 or $2000.00 depending on the telling. So revenge is sweet when you freely spread the recipe around.

Regardless, it's divine. My sister teaches in China and chocolate-chip cookies just aren't really part of the life there as they are here. Well, our lives anyway. So I decided to send a bag across the big wide ocean. The mix would work well as a gift, too, in a pretty jar. The baker just needs to add one egg, .5 cup butter, and .25 tsp vanilla to the dry mix.

Neiman Marcus Cookie Mix

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 cup oatmeal

6 oz chocolate chips

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup nuts (optional)

twd: All in One Holiday Bundt Cake

I've been looking forward to this pick by The Nitty Britty for a whole month!

Once it came out of the oven, I couldn't wait anymore and I dumped the cake out too early.

It wasn't cool enough. It came out looking like Jekyll and Hyde - one side smooth and brown, the other a hot mess!

But it all tasted oh so good!

This is the perfect way to begin a Thanksgiving week.

Using All the Pumpkin: Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

We started with pumpkins for Halloween, painted them into a witch and a cat, gutted them for Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds, then baked them into Pumpkin Bread. I suppose it would be called 'getting the most out of your pumpkins.'


There was no thinking about what to do with the seeds. While the orange pumpkin muck was still clinging to my fingers, I could almost taste Martha Stewart's Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds (found here). Just like the name, they are sweet, and spicy, but it's the cumin that really does it for me. The aroma and taste really add another dimension to the sweet/spicy combo that puts them in a league all their own. Definitely worth digging through the strings and fleshy bits to get to the seeds.

Bloody Brownie Eyes

Say hello to my little friend...and his bloody brownie eyeballs!

I've been searching online for Halloween food ideas. Some are very scary and not at all appetizing. A pumpkin puking something I'm supposed to dip a chip into does not appeal to me. I prefer much sillier fright factors.

I saw many eyes. Made of eggs, made of olives, made of bread. Why not brownies? Dipped in white chocolate, with chocolate chip irises and red food coloring veins? Move over Van Morrison, here comes Brown-Eyed Ghoul.

To the peanut butter and jelly kids song:

First you take the brownies and you roll them, you roll them, you roll them roll them roll them.

Then you take the balls and you dip them, you dip them, you dip them dip them dip them.

Singing, Bloody, Brownie eyeballs with veins! Bloody, Brownie eyeballs with veins!

These are super easy to make. Just bake your favorite brownie recipe and almost completely cool. Cut into squares and roll each square into a ball. Let these cool completely. You can even let them sit over night in a sealed container. When ready, dip the balls into melted white chocolate, leaving a circle on top free of chocolate. Let these cool completely before marking them with red food coloring. I used a skewer to dip in the coloring and then draw on the chocolate.
They can be scary all together - or really cute on a pumpkin head!

Happy St. Patty's Day EASY PEASY PASTA

Happy St. Patty's Day!
This past weekend I happened upon "pasta with personality." ??? A marketing line by the pasta company that was totally un-needed. I was already suckered in by the tiny shamrock shapes of the green and white pasta by the time my mind registered any words. As someone who doesn't eat meat (except seafood), I typically don't like my food to register any personality at all.
To add to the festivities of the day, I wanted to make a pasta salad that has crept into my mom's cooking reportoire as a simple, fast, satisfying dish.

EASY PEASY PASTA

1 package mini penne pasta, or other of similar size and texture

1 package frozen green peas

mayonaise or soynaise

spices: salt, black pepper, cayenne

1. Boil salted water. Add pasta and cook until al dente, adding the peas about three mintues before its done.
2. Drain the pasta and let cool about ten minutes.
3. Add mayonaise/soynaise. The amount largely depends on taste. I usually put in about half a cup.
4. Add spices and stir. Can be served immediately, but best if served cold.

This can easily be dressed up. I like to throw in a can of tuna. I also added two tablespoons of Green Goddess salad dressing, which was great. This is the type of thing that I can eat on all night and never get tired of.

Discoveries:

• Sometimes I do like my food to have personality.
• Simple is a great way to celebrate.

CHRISTMAS COOKIES

Every Christmas my Mom, sister, and I make sugar cookies - the same recipe baked by the sheetful and slathered with colorful butter cream frosting. It is one among many traditions that my Mom has instilled in our holiday, although it is the only one I know that pre-dates the arrival of her kids, and the only one with a necessity I have never really questioned.

When my Mom was about 16, she decided to bake sugar cookies. I can just see my Granny looking on with a look of quiet observance, as if she would neither be surprised nor moved if the cookies turned out to be the best in the world or if they caught fire in the oven. My Mom continued to bake the same recipe every year, giving them to the multitude of relatives and friends that comprised her small town. One year, so the story goes, she doled out 150 cookies. It may have been the first thing my Mom did in the kitchen that was hers - without help, without guidance, without it being her father's favorite or her grandmother's best dish. Unlike my maternal great-grandmother, my sister, and myself, my Mom was never a culinary spirit. She doesn't particularly enjoy preparing or creating food. Her enthusiasm about these cookies is unrivaled. My sister and I picked up on this at an early age, and have since always tried to display equal enthusiasm, even in teen years on a pertual diet or miles away in China where my sister missed out on the cookies this year but was with us in spirit saying that I should write about them on my blog.
SUGAR COOKIES (makes about 40-50 cookies)

2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon milk

Sift flour, salt, and baking powder together. Cream shortening and sugar together, adding eggs and vanilla. Then add sifted ingredients and milk. Mix with a spoon. Roll and cut.

Cook 300 for 10 minutes.

BUTTER FROSTING

4 tablespoons softened butter
3 tablespoons milk
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Work butter with spoon until very soft. Add sugar gradually, thinning with milk. Beat well. Add vanilla.

As a child, I didn't touch the cookies without the rich butter cream frosting. I also liked to make the colors as deep and psychedelic as possible. I'm still crazy with the food coloring paste but also like the cookies bare.

Tuesdays with Dorie: GRANDMA'S ALL-OCCASION SUGAR COOKIES

TWD: GRANDMA'S ALL-OCCASION SUGAR COOKIES...with Watermelon sprinkles

That's right, watermelon sprinkles. Slightly bizarre. But let's go in order here.

First, the cookies. Fabulous and soft and buttery. I'm in the soft-sugar-cookies-rock camp so I agreed with Dorie that this makes an excellent basic sugar cookie.

Now for the sprinkles: These cookies are intended for holiday treat bags for co-workers and so a festive flair was needed. A trip to Publix revealed a ratio of approximately 10/1 of flavored sprinkles to regular sprinkles, and nothing in the holiday line. The pink and green just caught my eye and held on so there you go. The sprinkles taste like watermelon candy before baking but seem to lose a bit of their flavor afterwards. Or maybe the sugar cookies are just that good that the watermelon sprinkles cannot even compete for the taste buds' attention. Guess we'll never know.

Tuesdays With Dorie: TWOFER PIE

Twofer Pie is the perfect reminder that two is better than one, sometimes.


First, a description. Twofer Pie is a double decker combination of two fall favorites: pumpkin on the bottom, pecan on the top. While being quite good, it won't replace pecan pie as my favorite Thanksgiving treat nor satisfy my hunger for pumpkin pie after the Tofurky and gravy. It looks neat with the pecan filling stacked on top of the pumpkin pie in a sort of split level cohabitation arrangement that all seems very 1970's to me. While it may be economical in the way that you get two for one, neither pie filling is strong enough to be really fantastic. This would be great to take to a holiday party though, where its novelty would be bonus points. I liked it best room temperature, the day after it was made.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!