Peanut Blossom Cookies (aka Kiss Cookies)

The original idea behind this blog was that I'd share a recipe I'd used that day. Yeah... Well, here IS what we're making tonight. Peanut Blossom Cookies, aka Kiss Cookies, or in my husband's case, chocolate star cookies. The name really gets it right, the peanut butter blossoms in your mouth alongside the satisfying chocolate crunch.

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

 Extra white sugar


Hershey kisses, chocolate stars or peanut butter cups


Combine everything except the kisses, blending at low speed.
Shape into balls, using a rounded teaspoon for each. Roll balls in white sugar.
Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and immediately top with kisses (or whatever chocolate) Press the chocolate until the cookies cracks.
Cool. Then eat. We like to keep ours in the freezer.

Butterfinger Angelfood Torte

For me, this recipe is like biting into my childhood. As I began to make it myself, I modified it -eliminating nuts, and increasing the sweetness factor.It's a creamy, sweet sin. The fluffy cake soaks up the light creaminess, while the candy adds a bold crunch.

Note: This recipe includes raw eggs. While I've never known anyone to get sick from it, I avoided it when I was pregnant.

1 angel food cake or two angel food cake bricks, sliced into 1-inch cubes
6-8 Butterfinger candy bars, chopped or crushed (put leftovers on top of ice cream)
1/2 cup butter
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tsps vanilla
8 egg yolks
1 pint heavy whipping cream. 

To make the filling, whip cream until doubled in volume.
In a separate bowl, whip together butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and egg yolks.
Slowly add sugar mixture to cream (put your mixer on its slowest speed and add a dollop at a time.)

Place half of the angelfood cake into a 9 x 13 cake pan. Spread half of filling on top of cake. Sprinkle half of candy bars on top. Top with the remainder of the cake, the filling and the rest of the candy bars.

Refrigerate overnight.

Cleaning pots with ketchup?

Does anyone else get freakishly detailed in cleaning their house at this time of year? A few years ago, I read in a magazine (Real Simple, I think) that you can use ketchup to clean copper bottom kettles.
Seriously? Does that sound crazy to you too?

It did to me too. So, when I grabbed some crazy cheap ketchup at the grocery store and my husband refused to put it on the table, I thought I'd give it a try.


Crazy? Yep. Effective? Yep.
Squirt some ketchup on our pot, and smooth it around with your fingers - don't forget the lip up the edge. Let the ketchup sit for about 5 minutes, then rinse away. Wash a you normally would with soap and water.

Depending on how dirty your pots are, they may not be perfectly clean, but they will be shinier. 

Check out the photos: 

I know, my pots all need to be cleaned.

Baked Ziti

My friend Angie came to my house and made this dish for my family (and hers) just after the birth of my third child. It was sooooo good - the nice firmness of the pasta, with the somehow creamily tamed zesty tomato sauce. Mmmm...  I've made it for a number of large gathering occasions, to good reviews. I usually double the recipe.

1 lb pasta (ziti, penne)
1 large can or jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce
1 brick of cream cheese
1 lb of shredded mozzarella cheese (ok, start with 2 cups, go from there)

Look at the box of pasta, and follow the instructions to cook it to Al Dente.

Cut the cream cheese into cubes and add it to a saucepan along with the spaghetti sauce. Heat the mixture until the cream cheese is completely melted. Taste the sauce. If it's too rich for your taste, open another jar of spaghetti sauce and add a little at a time until it tastes good to you.

Mix together the pasta, sauce and two cups of shredded cheese. Top with more shredded cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, until the cheese is thoroughly melted.

How I make my turkey

Every year at this time, there comes the question: who will make the turkey? In my family, the answer is now my husband and I. We are devoted fans of Alton Brown. We've gained copious amounts of cooking knowledge from his show Good Eats on Food Network. His turkey cookin recipe on FoodNetwork.com is famous - but it's not the one I use. My favorite of his turkey recipes comes from his book I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0

I've modified it slightly.

15 ish lb bird thawed (smaller, bigger, the brine works either way...)
3 cups kosher salt
1 cup dark brown sugar (if all you have is light, go for it)
2 gallons water
12-oz container of orange juice concentrate
2 gallons of ice cubes
Canola Oil
A cooler big enough to fit your bird and two gallons of liquid
bleach (to clean the cooler when you're done. YES BLEACH!)

For the brine: dissolve the salt, sugar, and juice concentrate in 2 quarts of hot water. Cool the solution with 6 quarts of cold water.

Clean the turkey and place in the cooler. Pour the brine over the turkey. If it isn't completely covered with the brine, add some chicken or vegetable stock. (Don't add water - it will weaken the brine.) Cover the whole thing with ice, close the lid, keep the kids away and brine for 6 to 8 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees when there's about 30 minutes remaining in the brining process. 

Remove the turkey from the brine, and dry it thoroughly with paper towels. Rub it liberally with canola oil (get it good - every little cranny.)

Put the turkey in a roasting pan on a roasting rack (if you disposable pans - use two.) Cover the wing tips with aluminum foil.

Roast the turkey at 500 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove the bird from the oven, reduce the heat to 350 degrees and cover the breasts with a double-layer of aluminum foil, folded in a triangle. Insert a probe thermometer into the thickest part of the breast (right through the foil) and set the thermometer to 161 degrees.

Depending on the size of your turkey, it will take about 2 to 2.5 hours.

Don't forget to let your bird rest before carving.

TO CLEAN THE COOLER: Take it outside if you can, or in your laundry tub. If you have to use the kitchen sink, clean it thoroughly when you're finished. Rinse the cooler several times with water, and then clean it with bleach (ok, I guess you could use lysol, but preferably BLEACH)

Turkey Soup

One of the greatest things about cooking whole (or nearly whole) animals is that you can stretch them into multiple recipes.
Turkey Soup is a natural extension of thanksgiving.

1 Turkey Carcass with 2 cups cooked meat
2 tbsp canola oil
2 cups chopped onions
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
2 cups sliced carrots
2 cups green beans
2/3 cup shell pasta
Chicken soup base

Remove meat from carcass. Chop meat into bit size pieces. Chop carcass into pieces small enough to fit into your stock pot.

Saute onions in oil over medium heat. Stir in carcass, seasonings, and 2 quarts of water. Increase heat to high and quickly bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for an hour.

Remove and discard carcass. Skim anything you wouldn't like to eat off the top of the water.

Stir in veggies. Cover and keep simmering 20-25 minutes.

Increase heat to high, bring mixture to a boil and stir in pasta. Lower heat to medium and cook 8-12 minutes until pasta and veggies are tender.

Stir turkey into soup. Heat over low heat 5-10 minutes until it reaches 165 degrees.

Taste the soup. Stir in chicken soup base mix if needed to taste (1/2 tsp at a time)

Pecan Pie

Whoever said making pecan pie is difficult, LIED. Make it for Thanksgiving. This my Aunt Mary's recipe ;)

1 cup corn syrup
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups of pecans
1 unbaked pie crust (9 inches)

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix the fix five ingredients together thoroughly. Stir in pecans. Pour mixture into pie crust. Bake for 55 minues to an hour.

Cranberries your kids will eat

I didn't grow up eating cranberries. My husband did; and when I overheard a version of this recipe on Food Network, I decided to try it. It's so good. The oranges and cranberries melt in your mouth and the pecans and an awesome crunch. Your kids (and my meat-and-potatoes brothers) will eat it.

14 oz can Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce
11 oz (small) can Mandarin Oranges, drained
1 handful of pecans (whole, half, pieces)


Dump the sauce, dump the oranges, stir. Just before serving, stir in the pecans. If you like to be fancy, put some more pecans on top.

This recipe serves a family of four comfortably. If you'll be having a table full at Thanksgiving, multiply the recipe. Roughly two cans of cranberries, one large can of oranges and two handfuls of pecans.

Applesauce

This isn’t my recipe for applesauce. This is a process you can go through to try to create your “recipe” for applesauce.

Ingredients:
Apples

Ingredients to have on hand:
Sugar (brown or white)
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Cloves

What kind of apples? Ask the person who grows your apples. Yes, that means going to an apple orchard. My favorites are Hillside Orchard near Casco, Wisconsin and Collegeville Orchards in Collegeville, Minnesota. My favorite applesauce apple is Macintosh. I recently did a batch using Paula Red, and it turned out well.

How many apples? As many as you have, or as many as fit in the pot. For your first batch, grab a peck (a small bag)

Begin your sauce by washing and polishing the apples. This removes any pesticides or anything else nature may have left behind. Please, don’t think peeling the apple removes all of this stuff. It removes a lot, but, in my opinion, if it’s on the knife, it could be in the pot. I feed this stuff to babies…

When they’re clean and dry, sit down and start peeling. You can use an apple machine if you have one, but a simple knife will do. (Well, two actually, one to peel and one to quarter and remove the cores from your apples.) While I don’t mind my applesauce turning a little brown, if you do, toss your apples into water with Fruit Fresh or lemon juice after you peel them.

Cooking the sauce: Cover the bottom of the pan with a little bit of water. Add the apples (drained, if you had them in water) and salt them. When I say salt, I mean, as if they were a helping of mashed potatoes or vegetables. Cook on medium low, stirring every few minutes. Apples can scorch, so keep an eye on the pot.

From here, the recipe becomes yours. How long do you cook the sauce? Until it’s the consistency that you like. What it thicker? Keep cooking. Like it lumpy? Cook it less. Like it smooth? You might want to whip it with an immersion blender or hand mixer in the pot, or in a blender or stand mixer just before canning.

As for sweetness, spiciness, etc. It’s up to you. When the sauce is nearing the consistency you like, taste it. Is it sweet enough for your taste? If not, add sugar, brown sugar or some splenda – about a quarter cup at a time. Stir until it’s well-incorporated, then taste again. If you like cinnamon, add it, a half or full teaspoon at a time. Nutmeg, try a quarter teaspoon at a time. Cloves, a pinch. Each time, stir until well-incorporated. IMPORTANT: you can always add a seasoning, you can’t take it away, so go slow.

To preserve: Applesauce freezes well, so if you have the space, pour into a freezer zip-top back, get rid of as much air as possible and freeze. Personally, I prefer to can it. Pour the sauce into jars, leaving a little headspace. Process pints in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.

Every time I make applesauce, it tastes different, and that’s ok.

Apple Pie Filling in a Jar

This is by far my most requested recipe. It is not mine. It comes from my mother. She got it from Angie Haen, mother of one of my dad's high school buddies. Where Angie got it, I don't know, but I do know that this recipe is best when two people work together at it. One using an apple machine to peel, core and slice the apples, and the other person doing the rest.


Enough Apples to fill 7 quart jars (ok, well, when I do, 9 jars)
4 1/2 cups of sugar
1 cup cornstarch
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
10 cups of hot water
3 tbsp lemon juice

Peel, core and slice the apples into as uniform slices as you can. As you slice them, toss them into a combination of water and Fruit Fresh or water and lemon juice to prevent browning. I prefer Cortland apples for this, though I recently used Paula Reds with good results. Any strong baking apple with do.

For the syrup, combine all of the other ingredients except the lemon juice and cook until thick and bubbly, stirring frequently. Add lemon juice. 

Tightly pack the apples into quart jars. Shake, twist and tap the jars to get as many apples in each as you can. Pour syrup over apples, leaving a little head space. Carefully clean the rim of the glass. Seal the jars and process for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. (or at 5 lbs for 10 minutes in a pressure canner) 

To make a pie, dump a quart of the pie filling into an unbaked pie shell. Slice a fresh apple or two on top, just to be sure there are plenty of apples. Top with another crust and slice a few holes, or do the whole crisp-pie thing.  Bake at 350 degrees for an hour.

This recipe is also amazing over pork chops.

Cherry Bread Pudding

A friend asked me for a bread pudding recipe, and I realized that I'm generally not a fan, except of this one. It's soooo yummy. It's a recipe my mom gave me, and she says it's served at the cafe at the Door County Coffee & Tea Company in Carlsville, Wisconsin.


Cherry Bread Pudding

1 Cup Dried Cherries – soak in hot water
9x13 cake pan full of cubed bread (about 10 cups but do not over pack)
9TBS Butter
1 ½ Cup Brown Sugar
¾ tsp Baking Soda
3 – 12 oz. cans Evaporated Milk
1 ½ Cups Milk
6 Eggs
½ tsp Salt
2 tsp Vanilla
1 tsp Cinnamon if using Cinnamon Bread Rolls
2 tsp if using plain bread



Directions:
Cube bread and drain cherries. Toss together and place in greased pan.
Melt butter in saucepan, stir in brown sugar and cinnamon.
Dissolve soda in milk, add gradually to sugar and butter mixture. Stir until blended. Set aside.

Beat Eggs lightly.
Add salt and vanilla.
Combine with cooled milk and sugar mixture.
Pour custard over bread cubes and drained cherries.
Let stand at least 15 minutes to absorb.
Cover with foil.

Bake at 325 at least 1 hour and 10 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Lime Cake

You're noticing a theme? Limes were on sale at the grocery store this week. This is an adaptation of a recipe from  The Cake Mix Doctor.

1 yellow cake mix
1 3 oz package lime jello (sugar free works too)
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup hot water
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt cake pan.

Place the cake mix, jello, oil, water and eggs in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for two minutes more. The batter should look thick and well-blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until the cake is light brown and just starts to pull away from the sides of the pan - about 40 minutes. Remove the pan from the over and place it on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the glaze:

2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
2 tbsps lime juice
1 tsp finely grated lime zest (I've made it without...)

Combine all glaze ingredients in a small bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.

Run a long, sharp knife around the edge of the cake and invert onto a serving platter. Spoon glaze evenly over warm cake so it drizzles down the side and into the center.

Lime Grilled Chicken

I found this amazing recipe on www.cookingforengineers.com.(Check the pictures out there) However, when I printed out the recipe, it took up 15 pages.... Note if you do visit that site, I halved the recipe.

Step 1: Marinade
4 lbs chicken (I used chicken thighs, but any will do)
2 cups water
2 tbps salt
1 lime
1 tsp garlic powder (or one clove of garlic)

Rinse your pieces of chicken. Dissolve the salt in water. Add the juice of the lime and the garlic powder. Stir. (By the way, to juice the lime without any special tools, roll it on the counter a few times, slice it in half, and squeeze. If any seeds fall in, don't worry.) Place the chicken in a zip top bag, pour the liquid in and close. Try to get as much air out as possible so all of the chicken is submerged.

 Let the marinade do its magic for an hour or two, but not more.


Step 2: Season and Cook
1/2 tbsp paprika
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lime (save the other half for garnish)

Take the chicken out of the marinade, and rinse each piece under running water. Discard the marinade. Place the chicken in a nice big bowl. Let it sit while you combine the seasoning.

Combine the first four ingredients above in a small bowl. Stir to combine.

If any liquid has collected in the bottom of the bowl, soak it up with a paper towel. Add the seasoning, oil and the juice from half the lime. Toss several times to coat.

Grill the chicken. (Here's the part I really can't help you with) Don't crowd the pieces, turn every five minutes.

ENJOY!

Zucchini Creole (Slow Cooker)

This is an adapted version from Life's Little Zucchini Cookbook: 101 Zucchini Recipes  It's sooooo good.

2 lbs Zucchini, seeded and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
1 small green pepper, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 lb shrimp (preferably raw, deveined)
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or 2 cans diced tomatoes, including juice)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 stick butter
2 tablespoons parsley

Throw it all in a slow cooker, tomatoes and butter on top. Cook on high for 2 to 2.5 hours. You can also add a diced eggplant. Just increase the butter a tablespoon or two.

Note: You'll want to serve with salt. It makes a HUGE difference.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

When your mother and mother-in-law comment on the same dish, you're probably doing something right. This is a really easy dish to prepare for a crowd.

1 pork roast
1 chicken bouillon cube

Sounds complicated, doesn't it?

Take the pork roast, put it in your slow cooker. Toss in the bouillon cube. Add enough water to cover about one third of the roast. Put on the top and let it cook on low. I usually let it cook for about 8 hours, while I'm at work. ( I should note that I usually start from a frozen state.)

IMPORTANT: Check with a meat thermometer to be sure the roast is thoroughly cooked.

Take chunks of the roast and shred it with two forks, discarding any fat, bones or anything else that doesn't look like you want to eat it. Return the shredded pork back to the liquid.

Serve the pork with a slotted spoon. I like it on buns with my favorite barbecue sauce.

Stuffed Zucchini

Until yesterday, I had never made stuffed zucchini. But I thought this was quite good. I have to give credit to Life's Little Zucchini Cookbook for the inspiration.

2 medium to large zucchinis
2 boxes of your favorite stuffing mix (I like chicken flavor)
1 lb of ground turkey or beef (I suppose pork might be good too.)

Brown the ground meat and drain. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare your favorite stuffing mix according to package directions. Slice the zucchinis lengthwise and scoop out the white, fluffy seedy center.

Mix the meat and stuffing together. Pack into the spaces in the zucchini. Heap if you need to. Place the zucchinis on a sheet pan. Cover (tent) with aluminum foil if you prefer moister stuffing. Leave the foil off if you don't.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Impressive Cake

This recipe (well, more like a tip) came about quite by accident.

One cake mix (chocolate, yellow, white) or other layer cake recipe
A small jar of jam (strawberry and raspberry are my favorites)
One recipe vanilla buttercream frosting

Prepare the cake using the two-layer method.
Cool.
Spread the jam on top of layer cake one, stopping about a half-inch from the sides.
Place layer cake two on top, wiping away any jam that oozes out (it makes it harder to frost.)
Frost the whole thing.

If you aren't going to be serving soon, you may wish to spread a little frosting on the top of layer one and bottom of layer two to keep the jam from seeping into the cake too much (and thus, tumbling over.)