Cooking time: approximately 2 hours Preparation time: 15 mins Main cooking utensils: baking sheet 1/2 to 1-in plain nozzle and pastry bag Oven temperature: 225-250°F Oven position: center
For about 12-18 you need:
2 egg whites
1/2 cup granulated sugar or 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
Flavorings: see card 31**
oil or butter to grease baking sheet
Decoration:
little whipped cream
red currant jelly
lime jello
chocolate buttons
1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.
2. Add the sugar. Card 30 gives the ways in which this may be done.
3. Put the mixture into the pastry bag to which the nozzle has been fitted.
4. Pipe into desired shapes – bake.
For animals cut shape in paper, oil well, put onto oiled or buttered baking sheet, pipe over or put cookie cutter of desired shape onto baking sheet, fill carefully then pull up from the meringue mixture.
5. For fingers, hold nozzle near baking sheet at angle of pen when writing, pipe slowly but evenly, lift up rapidly for neat end.
6. For rosettes, pipe desired size, hold pastry bag completely upright, lift up very sharply.
7. For mushrooms use 1/4 inch plain nozzle, make short finger, then small rosette. Bake separately. Sandwich together with whipped cream or butter cream.
*From Card 30 Adding sugar: Gradually beat in half the sugar, then fold in the remainder. There are other ways of incorporating all the sugar – it can ALL be folded in – it can ALL be beaten in gradually, but the above is generally the best, giving a stiff, shiny mixture.
**From Card 31 Flavorings: Chocolate: Add 1 tablespoon sifted cocoa or 1 tablespoon drinking chocolate powder to the sugar Coffee: Add 1 1/2 -2 teaspoons instant coffee powder to the sugar. A few drops of coffee extract may be added to the egg whites after beating.
So… this month I thought.. “Hey, I’m a veteran now. I’ve done this once. I can do this without quite so much drama this time.” Lies I tell you. All lies.
This time I got hooked up to send DorthyMarie a package only to discover that she’s my complete polar opposite! She’s a pescatarian and I eat neither fish nor vegetable. Uh. Oh. That threw me right out of the gate. I survived… sorta… by picking her up some random treats in gourmet stores I found on my trip to Seattle and Portland. (Totally different story, but I went there to ride the 200 miles from Seattle to Portland on my bike with my friend Molly and 10,000 other cyclists. And we had a blast). I even rallied to the cause and found salmon jerky. Who knew?
When I got home from my trip I got this fab package from my new friend Becca from Pennsylvania. She sent me all kinds of fun local products. My husband immediately grabbed the TastyKakes and hoarded them for himself. He grew up on the East Coast and these made him feel homesick. I on the other hand grabbed the pretzel rods. She couldn’t have known but I’m a huge salt whore and love to sit and suck all the salt off of pretzels. I also immediately Instagrammed the picture of the Bacon Dressing to make my friend Jodi (who is the Queen of All Things Bacon) jealous.
Now the Chow-Chow was a complete new one on me. You think you know everything and then wham! You find out you have no clue. I’m saving this for an upcoming dinner party – I want to see what all my Californian friends think since no one I know has ever heard of it. I will also be cracking open the bacon dressing and whipping up some decadent salad with it – or just serving it with a spoon!
2. Sift flour with baking powder and salt; set aside.
3. In medium bowl, with rotary beater, beat egg yolks, milk and salad oil until well combined. Gradually add flour mixture, a little at a time, beating after each addition; beat only until smooth.
4. In small bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form when beater is raised. With rubber scraper, gently fold egg whites into batter just until combined. Stir in pecans.
5. For each waffle, pour about 1/2 cup of batter into center of lower half of waffle iron, until it spreads to in inch from edge.
6. Lower cover on batter. Cook as manufacturer directs, or until waffle iron stops steaming. Do not raise cover during baking.
7. Carefully loosen edge of waffle with fork; remove. Serve hot. Makes 4 large waffles.
* Sift before measuring
A SPECIAL FAMILY BREAKFAST
Pecan Waffles
Maple Syrup
Strawberry Sauce
Sausage
Bacon Curls
Coffee
Cocoa
Preparation time: 20 mins.
Main utensil: bread knife
For 1 large loaf:
Suggested fillings:
a) cream cheese blended with crushed pineapple, nuts, or olives
b) liver sausage blended with a little cream cheese or butter
c) chicken, shrimp, egg, or salmon salad
d) cottage cheese blended with chopped chives, celery, or green pepper and seasoning
butter
1 cup cream cheese or small curd cottage cheese
1 cup salted peanuts
Garnish:
cucumber
parsley or watercress
1. Choose and prepare three of the suggested fillings.
2. Remove all the crusts from the loaf, then slice lengthwise to give four long slices.
3. Spread three slices with butter; sandwich the slices together with the different fillings.
4. Coat the top and sides, not the ends, with the cream cheese or cottage cheese, softened and blended with a little milk if necessary; press the chopped salted peanuts against the sides.
TO SERVE: Garnish with cucumber and parsley before serving for an outdoor buffet. To carry on a picnic wrap the loaf in foil before coating and take the cream cheese or cottage cheese and chopped peanuts in screw-topped jars to put on just before serving.
TO VARY: Use one slice white bread then one slice brown bread.
Cooking time: 45 mins. Preparation time: 15 mins. Main cooking utensil: 2-lb loaf pan Oven temperature: 375°F. Oven position: center
For 10 servings you need:
4 cups all-purpose flour sifted with 4 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup lard or shortening
2 eggs
1/3 cup currants
1/3 cup raisins
1 cooking apple
milk to mix
Decoration:
1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
little water
1 tart eating apple (red) cored and sliced
lemon juice
1. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt
2. Rub in the fat, mixing in beaten eggs, currants, raisins, peeled and diced cooking apple.
3. Add milk to make stick consistency.
4. Put into greased and floured loaf pan.
5. Bake for time and temperature given.
6. Test by pressing firmly on top, if no impression left by finger and if cake has shrunk away from sides of pan, turn out.
7. When cool, ice cake with glace icing made by blending confectioners’ sugar and water.
8. Decorate with sliced apple, dipped in lemon juice to keep white.
TO SERVE: As a cake, but if not decorated it is also a good coffee cake.
TO STORE: Eat when fresh.
TO VARY: 1/4-1/2 cup sugar may be added at stage 1 if liked.
When I saw my friend Yinzerella’s post about her foray into the Foodie Pen Pal program I decided to follow her lead. Although having seen what she’s willing to eat, I don’t make it a habit to follow blindly along behind her or I’ll find myself eating a seafood Jell-O mousse concoction while wearing a mustard yellow polyester pantsuit.
I got matched up with Sarah, a mom from Kansas, and we swapped emails and I immediately liked her because we had similar tastes. She likes salty and sweet, and her son is a junk food freak. That pretty much sums up my pantry. So, I really wanted to be clever about this whole thing. Only when I went to the store, I panicked. It’s a rare moment when I get stage fright in a food emporium. It was like a first date and I’d forgotten to shave my legs. (No, really, I forgot.) Suddenly I was panicked that she’d think I was weird, had awful taste in food, and absolutely no imagination. And I was pretty sure she was imaging a nice girl with shaved legs shopping thoughtfully for a clever box of treats to send to her. Instead she got me. Argh! How could going to the store to shop for food I like be so damn complicated?
I was also hungry, Voracious Ravenousitis hungry, and like Samantha during her lost weekend, I started pulling stuff off the shelves into my basket. I thought “Oh, I like those, I bet Sarah will too…” and “mmmmm…. those are good too… I wonder if she has a Trader Joe’s near her? Would it be mean to get her addicted to something she can’t find locally?” And next thing I know I’ve got an enormous pile of totally unrelated items and several bottles of wine in my basket. This Pen Pal thing was definitely making me edgy and desperate for a giant glass of wine to settle my nerves and to try with the cheese and crackers I just bought. Trying to narrow it down to just a few items and keep within the $15 limit was a definite challenge. Binging and budgets don’t go together well. More about what I sent Sara in a minute…
Fabulous package I received.
Shortly after I posted my package to Sara I got a shiny red box in the mail from my Pen Pal Haylee from Utah. First thing out of the bag told me that she was psychic because she intuited my borderline pathological love of anything covered in cheese dust. No, seriously. I would snort this stuff if I could. She sent me Chicago Mix popcorn which is a magical mix of cheese dust popcorn and toffee popcorn. WHAT?!!! I know, right? Awesomeness. She also surprised me with a nifty new treat from the evil geniuses at Keebler. White chocolate covered, peanut butter filled, pretzel bites. My husband I devoured the little snack packs with relish. She was also kind enough to include two Utah Truffles that I’m hoarding in a place my husband will never find to treat myself to when he’s not looking. He needs to get his own Foodie Pen Pal, this isn’t a team sport in our house.
Let me just say that Haylee totally gets me, which is probably freaking her out a little right about now.
The box of binge-worthy goodies I sent
I decided to go with a few core favourites: Sea Salt Caramels, Mesquite Smoked Seasoned Almonds (addicting like crack), Hob Nob Biscuits which I became addicted to at university in London. For her son, I decided to share with him my weird taste in candy. Wait? What? You’re surprised I have weird taste? Where have you been? I like candy that I have to work at chewing. I really, really love stale Red Vines, but I thought that might be a little weirder than total strangers might be willing to work with, so I went with Wine Gums and Haribo Mega Roulettes. They are both gummy candies that I also discovered at university. They not quite as tough on your dental work as Jujubes, but they aren’t nearly as soft as gummy bears. They do a nice job of getting stuck in your teeth, and if you eat the whole bag in one sitting your jaw muscles will hurt. It’s really kinda awesome when your jaw is so tired from shoving a lot of chewy candy in your mouth. You know it is.
Because I’m a baker at heart, I included Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups and my favourite recipe for cookies that goes with them. Basically I’ve bastardized the old Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe replacing all the sugars with dark, dark, dark brown sugar and doubling the vanilla. Toss the peanut butter cups in, bake, and binge. They are especially awesome if you put them in the freezer and eat them frozen. Trust me. Sounds crazy, but seriously the taste is excellent.
The last little treasure I included was a small jar with a sample of my favourite salt in the world. In my house we call it Magic Salt because the smallest amount makes everything taste better. You’d be amazed what it can do to a Lean Cuisine meal. It’s an expensive Italian salt, Vignalta, that I was given as a gift years ago and would have blown my Foodie Pen Pal budget to send a whole bottle, but it was a treat I had to share with a fellow salt lover.
Finally, with my card I also included in my package one of my favourite recipe cards from my collection. You know, just to spread the love…
Next month, I’m going to shop with a plan, and have lunch first. So I don’t wind up embarrassing myself and everyone else shopping at the store by muttering to myself insanely while pulling all kinds of items off the shelf and screaming for Dr. Bombay.
4 slices enriched white bread
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/3 cups cottage cheese
3/4 cup buttermilk
4 medium eggs
Artificial sweetener to equal 1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
Dash of salt
ADVANCE PREPARATION: Sprinkle one side of each slice of bread with cinnamon. With rolling pin, roll bread thin, then cut into 1-inch strips. Place strips, cinnamon sides to pan, on bottom and around sides of a non-stick, 9-inch square pan, or a 9×5 inch loaf pan. (The cheese filling will fill any spaces between bread strips and will hold the cake together.) Combine cheese, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, lemon rind, sweetener, and salt in a blender container; process at high speed until mixture is smooth and creamy. Carefully spoon cheese mixture into pan. Bake at 275°F (very slow oven) for 1 hour. Turn off heat, and let stand in oven, 1 hour longer. Refrigerate at least 1 hour.
FINAL PREPARATION: Turn upside down onto serving platter. Divide evenly. Makes 4 luncheon servings.
I grew up in a household of women who really couldn’t cook. Mostly because they didn’t really eat. My grandmother, the original health nut, ate like a bird and followed a diet designed by her a Chinese nutritionist, Dr. Dong, whom she regularly flew to San Francisco to see. He cured her arthritis, but he killed any hope of my having the quintessential cookie baking grandmother. Instead I was offered carob snacks and could graze off the alfalfa sprouts growing in the fridge.
My mother, despite her early attempts to be the perfect wife and mother, making us matching outfits and crocheting my baby blankets, steadfastly refused to learn to cook. When the microwave was invented, she was relieved from her kitchen duties once and for all. We were the first family on the block to have one, which I swear was a big as a regular oven. From then on I lived on a diet of Tab, Wheat Thins, and Stouffers’ Lasagna.
Given my early influences and clear genetic predisposition, it is almost miraculous that I went to culinary school and became a chef.
Despite their epicurean inadequacies, there is one thing that they could both make, and make well. So well in fact that generations have begged for this dish to be made for every family function. I have no idea where this recipe originated, but it has been refined and handed down in my family like a treasured heirloom.
Rip’s Tamale Pie
(feeds approx. 14)
2 pounds ground beef
8 XLNT Beef Tamales
3 14oz cans can petite dice tomatoes
2 14oz can fresh sweet corn
2 large onion diced
6 cloves garlic diced
4 c cheddar cheese
2 4oz can sliced black olives
2 tbsp cumin
Salt & Pepper to taste
Cook onions and garlic in olive oil until softened.
Add beef and cook through. Remove from heat.
Add corn & tomatoes. Stir to combine.
Season with cumin, salt and pepper.
Break up the tamales into small pieces. Mix in with meat and vegetables.
Mix in 1/2 of the cheese cheese.
Put in oiled casserole dish, top with remaining cheese and olives.
Let sit in fridge overnight – it’s amazing how much better it is if it
sits over night.
Bake for about 45 minutes at 350. Until cheese melts and casserole is
heated through.
Serve with warm corn tortillas.
You can also freeze the left overs and reheat in microwave.
Cook’s note:
XLNT Tamales are difficult to find outside of Southern California. They are amazingly good, but the recipe will not suffer if you use any brand of tamale, including fresh.
Vintage Recipe Cards 