Gingerbread Pigs

I’ve done almost no baking this year. There have been years I’ve used four, five, even seven pounds of butter making sugar cookies, molasses crinkles, toffee bars, almond crescents, and a whole list of other Christmas favorites. This year I tried some new recipes like the grasshopper brownies I found over at the Smitten Kitchen, and some gingerbread caramels from Martha Stewart, and I made a batch of candied walnuts, and so far that’s been it.

(On a related note, I remembered why I usually make cookies instead of candy. The caramels, some sprinkled with pink Hawaiian sea salt, are delicious but too hard to cut (and tough to chew!) The walnuts, normally foolproof, came out sticky. I blame the weather.)

The one cookie I don’t think we can do Christmas without is gingerbread. The recipe I have is old, maybe three generations. It doesn’t just say gingerbread at the top, but gingerbread pigs.

Gingerbread Pigs

1 c. soft butter
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. dark molasses
1 egg yolk
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground cardamom
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. salt (I’m sure I add at least 1/2 t. plus I use salted butter)
1/4 t. ginger (I definitely use more ginger…more like 1 t. or so, freshly grated)
1/8 t. black pepper
3 c. sifted flour

Cream together butter and sugar. Stir in remaining ingredients except the flour and mix until smooth. Stir in flour to make a stiff dough, shape into a ball, and chill an hour. Roll to 1/4″ thickness, cut with a pig-shaped cookie cutter, and bake at 350° for 10 minutes.

Why pigs? Well, I didn’t find a good explanation for the gingerbread pigs specifically, but my Finnish friend Henri told us they were a Finnish tradition, and Rachel Ray apparently heard that somewhere too. Pigs do make many appearances in Christmas traditions including marzipan pigs, peppermint pigs, and even a tradition of slaughtering a pig on Christmas in Romania. Most explanations attribute this porcine focus to a sense of abundance or prosperity associated with having a pig, though Snopes mentions the tradition of eating pork on New Year’s Day is attributed to the pigs’ habit of rooting forward (unlike chickens or other poultry which move backwards as they scratch for bugs) symbolizing forward motion in the new year.

The recipe turns out equally good if you cut out ginger people, hearts, or even mooses (we gave out Christmoose cookies in lieu of cards a few years ago, back before it was a political statement) but I always enjoy the stacks of spicy piggies, whatever they symbolize.

Pumpkin pound cake is as good as it sounds

A few years ago someone was nice enough to share this pumpkin pound cake recipe on Chowhound. For some reason I always have a hard time tracking it down again; now I’ll always know where to look. I usually make it for breakfast and snacking on Thanksgiving, but really it would be great for any fall occasion. It makes a lot of cake!

Pumpkin Pound Cake
3 c. extra fine sugar (I’ve used regular granulated sugar with no problems)
3/4 c. unsalted butter, room temp
2 eggs
4 egg yolks

2 3/4 c. sifted flour
1/4 c. turbinado sugar
1 T baking powder
1 3/4 t. ground cloves
1/2 t. table salt
1/8 t. ground allspice

1 15 oz. can pumpkin
5 T heavy cream
1 T honey
1 T vanilla

preheat oven to 350

Cream together sugar and butter, then add eggs and yolks one at a time.

Mix remaining dry ingredients together in a bowl and wet ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Turn the mixer on low and alternate adding wet and dry ingredients to the butter, sugar and egg mixture.

Pour the (thick) batter into an oiled and floured non-stick Bundt pan, and smooth the top. Bake the cake at 350° for about an hour or until a skewer comes out nearly clean (I usually have to bake it longer, but elevation plays a role in that.) Let the cake cool some in the pan (the recipe says five minutes, but I leave it until I can handle it without potholders) then turn out onto a serving tray and cool to room temperature.

I have, as the original poster suggested, made a simple glaze of powdered sugar, water, and cinnamon to pour over the top, but the next time I make it I’d really like to make something a little less sweet and a little more creamy, like some kind of cream cheese or sour cream glaze.

It keeps well but will dry out, so wrap it tightly if there are leftovers.

Tools I Use: the no-excuses notebook

We have a plan for dinners most weeks (yup, even when I don’t get it posted here.) I figure out what to make and what to buy, and I usually do the cooking too. This is not because Jeff can’t or won’t cook, but because I like to do it (and also, I’m much faster. Sorry babe.)

There are those nights, however, when I don’t get home until later, nights when it would be nice to have dinner at least started, if not ready to go. I say “Can you please get dinner started? The recipe is online.” and Jeff says “Ugh. Online?” Yes, my system has a minor flaw.

Starting with tomorrow’s menu we’re trying something new. We’ll have a three-ring binder in the kitchen with all the recipes we need (or notes about which books and which pages if we’re using something from a cookbook.) That way Jeff has the plan for the week readily available for those nights when he needs (or wants) to cook and we’ll also have a good way to keep track of any printed recipes we might want to use again. We’ll see how it goes.

Tools I use: Vegetarian Planet

Though we’re not vegetarians, one of my go-to cookbooks is one I’ve mentioned a few times before, Didi Emmons’ Vegetarian Planet. A gift from my friend, college roommate, and pro-commenter Steph, I haven’t even come close to trying everything worth trying in this well-written meatless meal guide. Lucky for me Steph marked some of her favorites when she gave me the book, years ago, and then again with updated favorites this summer (thanks!)

A sure sign of a favorite recipe though, is when the book automatically drops open to the page, all wrinkled from water, stained with food, and with crumbs stuck in the binding. For us the recipe this book opens to every time is the Caramelized Balsamic Vinaigrette:

Caramelized Balsamic Vinaigrette (from Vegetarian Planet)

1 c. sugar
6 T. water
5 T. balsamic vinegar
1 c. olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 t. salt
fresh-ground black pepper

Mix the sugar and 4 tablespoons of water in a 2-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil until it starts to darken very slightly and then remove from heat and stir in the vinegar (the book warns this could sputter, though I’ve been lucky enough never to have that problem.) Make sure all the sugar dissolves. Next, slowly whisk in the olive oil and then the remaining 2 tablespoons of water. At this point the recipe says the dressing should be fully emulsified though it generally separates for me as it cools and I never mind, I just stir it up when I want to use it (and then lick the spoon!) Add the garlic, salt, and pepper (I do all three of these to taste, never bothering to measure.)

This is one of our favorite dressings, simple to make and delicious on pretty much everything. It’s just one of the many great recipes in Vegetarian Planet, a book worth checking out from the library or even adding to your own cookbook collection.

Sour Cream Cookies: baking makes memories

Grandmother Mosley's Sour Cream Cookie Recipe

For out-of-town guests at our wedding reception in September we wanted to do something simple but special. We decided to give cookies made from recipes each of us had from our late grandmothers who would have been so happy to see the day when we finally decided to get hitched!

From my side of the family I chose my Grandma June’s chewy oatmeal cookies, a recipe I blogged about last year. From Jeff’s side we chose the sour cream cookies his Grandmother Mosley used to make frequently, even sending them in care packages when he went to camp. Luckily we had photographed the recipe–I don’t know who has her recipes now. His family was so excited to see the cookies, and many folks who hadn’t grown up with them asked for the recipe which I promised to share. It took me a bit, but here it is.

Grandmother Mosley’s Sour Cream Cookies

1 1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter (ok, the recipe says shortening, but butter worked just fine)
2 beaten eggs
1/4 t. salt

–Mix well–

1 c. sour cream
1/2 t. soda
1 t. vanilla
2 1/2 c. flour

Drop onto cookie sheet & bake 10-12 minutes. (There’s no oven temperature listed, but I think 350° worked well–I just baked until the edges began to brown slightly since our altitude always makes baking times a little suspect.)

For the frosting:

1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
2 T. butter (browned, at my mom’s suggestion)
1 t. vanilla
“a little water”

Melt butter and mix with sugar, vanilla, and water. Frost tops of cooled cookies.

These will be lumpy, uneven, and tas-ty.

Movin’ to Foodsville

It’s not often that my contribution to infodoodads could have just as easily been a post here, but the site I reviewed, Foodsville, is pretty sweet if you’re at all interested in the history of food.

Make your own: cheese!

I hedged a little in my last post, but it turns out paneer really *is* easy to make!

I brought one quart of whole milk to a boil

Removed it from heat and added about 3T of lemon juice (from one smallish lemon)

Poured the mixture through a piece of cheesecloth

Let it drain (and squeezed and twisted it some to get more whey out)

Patted it into a rectangle and put some weight on top

And now I have a (small) brick of cheese (and almost a quart of whey…wonder what I’ll do with that….)

Good thing it’s not this easy to make Camembert.

Make your own: teriyaki sauce

While I am not a big fan of sweet stuff on my meat, Jeff loves it. Barbecue sauce, maple syrup, honey, jam–you name it and he’s probably tried to broil it on a chicken breast or grill it on a pork chop.

If we don’t have dinner planned yet (hey, it happens) Jeff will inevitably suggest “chickie-rice,” his name for the chicken, rice, and teriyaki sauce combo you can pick up from any bento place. While we had made this dish at home before with purchased teriyaki sauce, it never occurred to me that the sauce itself was incredibly simple to make until we finished off the seemingly-bottomless bottle of it in our fridge.

Teriyaki Sauce from Recipezaar

1/4 soy sauce
1 T. grated ginger
3 T. brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T. cornstarch

Combine everything but the cornstarch in a small saucepan with 1 c. water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Stir the cornstarch into 1/4 c. cold water and whisk into sauce, cooking until thickened.

The recipe makes two cups of teriyaki sauce. You can adjust the sugar, ginger, etc. to taste, and thin the sauce out with more water or soy sauce if you need to. Now you can spend the $4 you would have spent on the sauce on something else!

(A note about fresh ginger: I think I have mentioned this before, but I keep ginger in my freezer in a ziploc bag. It’s really easy to peel a section and grate it with my microplane grater when it’s frozen, and this means I always have it on hand.)

News flash: polenta is really easy to make

This is probably not a news flash to anyone else. Feel free to ask me where I’ve been.

For some reason I always thought polenta was very labor-intensive, requiring just the right type of ground corn, constant stirring, the perfect temperature, blah, blah, wrong. You can make it with cornmeal. In the oven. You stir it twice. We’ve eaten more polenta in the past two months than I’ve had in my entire life previously.

Now, I’m aware that if I were a polenta connoisseur this method might not be acceptable, but since I’m not, it’s a nice change of pace from rice or pasta side dishes. It’s easy, seems to be foolproof, and can be adapted to go with lots of different flavors. I found it in The Everyday Food cookbook that I seem to be obsessed with.

Oven-baked Polenta from the Everyday Food: Great Food Fast Cookbook

Preheat the oven to 425°
(conveniently, this is also a good chicken-roasting temperature)

In a baking dish with a lid whisk together 3/4 c. cornmeal (I’ve been using the Safeway store brand that comes in a 5lb. bag) with 3 c. water, about 1 t. salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.

Remove from the oven and stir in 1/4 c. milk and 2 T. butter.

The recipe also calls for…marjoram I think? I actually haven’t tried it with marjoram because it’s not an herb I have in my pantry. Instead, I’ve been adapting the recipe since the first time I made it. Tonight I added chicken broth instead of milk at the end, skipped the butter, and stirred in a small can of green chilis. I poached some chicken breasts, then put them on top with some jack cheese and put the dish back in the oven for a bit to get all melty. Not fancy, but good.

I think I might have to buy that book.

Pumpkin Pie: I lied

When I was writing about desserts last week I said I wasn’t going to do anything wild with the pumpkin pie. Then I started seeing references to the “One-Pie” brand pumpkin pie recipe. With molasses. Mmmmm.

Molasses may not be exactly “wild”; in fact, it seems like a natural addition to pumpkin pie but I’ve never seen a recipe that called for molasses before. (“Lied” may be a little dramatic too, but here you are reading this, so there you go.) The One-Pie recipe seems to be a popular New England version of this essential fall dish.

How perfect would maple whipped cream be on top? I’m liking the idea of a June “half-Thanksgiving” more and more.