Cranberry Sauce

This one is for all my American friends who are either going without cranberry sauce or eating expired cans of it this holiday season--the struggle is real! Yesterday I found this recipe from Hip Pressure Cooking and gave it a try. It is 100% doable with what is usually available and is super easy. No, it doesn't taste exactly like what's in the can, but neither does the delicious cranberry sauce that comes from fresh cranberries.

Cranberry Sauce
1 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup cranberry drink (Real brand or other tart variety)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon orange zest (optional)

To your pressure cooker, add cranberries, water, cranberry juice, lemon juice, and orange zest if using. I used a couple pieces of candied orange peel. Close the lid and cook over med-high heat until you get the first blow of the pressure cooker. Turn the heat down to medium-low, enough to keep it at high pressure, but not continuously blowing. Cook at this pressure for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and slowly release the pressure in short bursts. The original writer recommends stopping if anything other than steam comes out.

Once pressure is released, remove the lid carefully. Holding the pot at an angle, use an immersion blender to pulse the mixture, but do not puree it unless you're aiming for a more "jellied" type sauce. Return the cooker to the stove on low heat with the lid off until you can pull a spoon across the bottom and leave a clean trail. Transfer the finished product to a container and either serve warm or chill for up to 5 days.

Gingerbread Pancakes with Sauteed Apples

I love gingerbread! I'm not talking about gingerbread cookies or biscuits, but soft cakey gingerbread. I think it started in Girl Scouts with my first box of cheap Martha Washington gingerbread topped with a dollop of Cool Whip. I was hooked. This recipe, which is a melding of this one (which is vegan and gluten-free if you need that) from Jessica in the Kitchen and this one from Genius Kitchen has all the right flavors and then some. I think we might have a new pre-Christmas breakfast tradition!

Using our weekend plates. :)

Gingerbread Pancakes with Sauteed Apples

For the apples:
Apples, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons butter
Pinch of salt

Peel and chop enough apples to fill a pan for your family. Add the butter, cinnamon, and a 3-fingered pinch of salt to the pan. Cook over medium heat until apples start to turn a caramel color. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the apples are softened to your liking.

For the pancakes:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 egg
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup molasses
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil*

Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the wet to the dry and stir until just combined. Don't over mix or you'll get flat pancakes. Cook over a griddle heated to medium heat and just brushed lightly with oil on a paper towel. Flip once bubbles have formed and outer edges are set.

Top pancakes with sauteed apples, butter, and any other toppings your family loves!

*I accidentally omitted the oil, and our pancakes still tasted awesome so you could completely leave that out.

Buckeyes

I grew up in the South and had never heard of buckeyes until I began celebrating holidays in Ohio. I was so confused by this strange dessert and wondered why anyone would want to eat a dessert made to resemble the eye of a deer. My southern ignorance brought forth some blushing when I eventually found out a buckeye was a nut, not a buck's eye. Where I come from, we just dip the whole ball of peanut butter in chocolate so there is no peanut butter visible, and we call them peanut butter balls. Regardless of how you decide to dip these, they taste delicious!

Buckeyes made by my awesome husband

Buckeyes or Peanut Butter Balls
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup or 192g butter, softened
500g powdered sugar (icing sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla
Chocolate for melting

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until uniformly combined. If the mixture feels too sticky, you can add a little more icing sugar to make it easier to roll. Roll into 1 inch balls and refrigerate for about 1 hour. Melt chocolate and using a toothpick, dip balls in chocolate and allow to set. Keep cool so buckeyes don't stick together. Makes just over 3 dozen buckeyes.

Note: I have not been successful in melting local chocolate chips. The large baking chocolate bars by Selbourne tend to work better. If your chocolate is not quite as thin as you'd like, add a teaspoon of oil or shortening. Avoid adding butter if possible as the little bit of water in butter might cause the chocolate to seize.

Slice and Bake Cookies

Years ago, I stumbled upon this recipe in a list collected by a group of women I had met. It has been my "go to" sugar cookie recipe since then. What inspired me to try these the first time was a little note with the recipe explaining that it came from a woman who always kept these in her freezer so that she could make a few fresh out of the oven cookies if a guest stopped by. She must have been an amazing hostess! You could roll and decorate these, but if you're looking for something super simple, these are great to just slice off and bake.

Slice and Bake Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix. This works best with your hands so you can really work it into a uniform dough. Once you have a dough that is not crumbly, slowly roll the dough to form a log shape and place in plastic wrap. I find it easier to get a rough roll first and then smooth it once it's wrapped in plastic. Place the roll in the freezer overnight if you plan on slicing them or in the fridge if you want to roll them out the next day.

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. Slice cookies with a sharp knife into 1/4 to 1/2 inch rounds. Sprinkle with chunky sugar or other decorations if desired and bake for 8-10 minutes. If you slice thicker, you'll get a more chewy soft sugar cookie, and if you slice thinner, you'll get a more crisp "biscuit" type cookie. You can also opt to roll them out and use cookie cutters, but let the dough rest about 15 minutes after removing from the fridge first.

Eggnog

Eggnog is one of my husband's favorite Christmas drinks. I can remember seeing him drink it straight from the carton in front of the fridge on many an occasion when we lived in the U.S. With Christmas approaching, I was excited to hear last week of a local dairy making eggnog for Christmas, only to find out Friday that I had likely missed the last chance to order. After some research, I realized making my own pasteurized eggnog was not as hard as I'd imagined. Now you can try it, too! It also doubles as a delicious coffee creamer. Freeze the egg whites in ice cube trays for the next time you need just whites.

Eggnog
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar plus 1 Tablespoon
2 cups milk (pasteurized and cooled)
1 small box (or 1 cup) fresh cream (heavy cream)
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a saucepan off the heat, whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar until the yolks turn a lighter yellow color. Into the mixture, add 1 cup of cold milk and the nutmeg. Over low heat, begin heating the mixture without boiling it until the temperature throughout is 160F/71C. Keep at this temperature for about 30 seconds. This is the temperature just before small bubbles would begin to form. Switch off the heat and chill immediately over an ice bath or in the freezer. Once cooled, use a whisk to stir in the remaining 1 cup of milk and the box of cream until smooth. Keep in the fridge once the eggnog is finished and enjoy!

Note: Some recipes call for the addition of whipped egg whites to the final mixture, but since I can't guarantee the safety of raw eggs here, I would not advise it. Also, if you'd like a thinner eggnog, heat the cream with the milk and the mixture will not thicken as much.

Maple Roasted Pumpkin

About this time of year, pumpkins begin flooding our vegetable stalls in various stages of ripeness. The classic thing to do is turn them into puree that you can use to make cakes, pies, and nutty breads, but if you’d like to showcase pumpkin another way, give this a try. The recipe includes the combination of thyme and allspice, but if you don’t have access to allspice, try substituting nutmeg or swapping for a sage/nutmeg combination. If you don’t have those, just sprinkle on some cinnamon and leave out the herbs. Anyway you do it, these will give you another way to enjoy pumpkin. I think this would look gorgeous if you roasted some beets with the pumpkin for an orange and red combo. 

Maple Roasted Pumpkin 
3 cups pumpkin (or other winter squash), cubed

2 Tablespoons oil
2 Tablespoons maple syrup or brown sugar
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon salt (more to taste afterwards)
Pepper

Place the pumpkin cubes in a baking dish. Sprinkle over all the ingredients and rub with your hands to coat evenly. Bake in a 200C/400F oven for about 20-30 minutes until they have golden edges and are fork tender. 

Note: If you use brown sugar rather than maple syrup, I would suggest placing a sheet of foil in the bottom of the pan for easier cleanup after roasting.  

Faux Sweet Potato Casserole

Ah, the week of Thanksgiving—quite possibly one of my favorite weeks of the year! I dream of all the delicious food I get to consume. Last year, I was just a little too busy to do much posting around the end of November, but I did a quick roundup linking you to some of my favorite recipes for this time of year. This time, I’m going to attempt to share a few in advance to hopefully give the American readers some inspiration for turkey day and others some ideas for Christmas dinner.

Sweet potatoes (the orange-fleshed ones) are a classic this time of year, especially in the Southern U.S. where I come from. I went a number of years going without them and other years trying to make the white sweet ones work for this dish. Finally, I came up with a pretend sweet potato solution that involves blending other vegetables that look and taste similar to sweet ‘taters. This is the result of that experimentation!
 

“Sweet Potato” Casserole 
3 pounds (or about 1.5 kg) pumpkin and carrots, cooked and pureed

½ cup milk
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup/64g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts, cashews, or both)
½ cup marshmallows (optional)
½ cup shredded coconut (optional)

For the puree, you can either steam, pressure cook, or roast the vegetables. Use about half of each kind to make the total amount. Once pureed and cooled, add the milk, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and beaten eggs to a bowl with the puree and stir to combine. Pour into a greased baking dish. Sprinkle chopped nuts over the top. Bake uncovered in a 170C/350F degree oven for about 25 minutes. If you’d like, you can stop there. For that extra gooey, marshmallow goodness, cut marshmallows into smaller pieces to make mini-marshmallows. Sprinkle marshmallows (and coconut if desired) on top of the nuts, and bake another 5-10 minutes until the marshmallows melt and begin to brown.

This is the PERFECT holiday side because it gives you the excuse to eat dessert twice. After all, this is made of vegetables, right?! Thanks for your inspiration Neely's!

Molasses Cookies

Apparently it's molasses time here, and of course, it would fall after people need it for making gingerbread houses and other seasonal treats. Having spotted small packets of the solid form of molasses in a shop near my house and secured an ongoing source for the rest of the year, I decided it was time for something warm and gingerbread-y. Molasses cookies are one of my favorite, favorite cookies. They're so classic winter, and you could almost get away with saying they're healthy because of all that iron. :) There's a chewiness there that you don't find in a lot of cookies either. Mmmm...

Molasses Cookies - Makes roughly 3 dozen
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon each cinnamon and ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup or 128g butter, softened (tricky this time of year!)
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1/2 cup liquified chaaku or molasses
White sugar

In one bowl, mix all the dry ingredients down through the cloves. Stir to get the baking soda and spices mixed throughout. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Once fluffy add the oil, vanilla, egg, and molasses. Stir until everything comes together. It will look almost curdled. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet until you have a somewhat sticky brown dough. Cover and chill until firm. This happens in about 30 minutes on the counter during winter in our house!

Preheat oven to 190C/375F. Pour some sugar (chunky or fine--both work) into a bowl. Form 1 inch balls with the dough and roll them in the sugar before placing them on a baking sheet. They don't spread too far so 2 inches or so apart is okay. Bake for about 9 minutes. Look for crinkles forming on top that look just barely dry (even underdone) and remove from the oven to cool.

Try not to eat them all... By the way, the dough does not taste good before it's cooked so don't judge the cookies by their raw flavor.

Mini-Mince Pies

I think the name of these is not the most appetizing, but I discovered these little gems while celebrating Christmas with my friend Penny when my husband and I lived in India. I felt like we Americans had missed out on these delicious little morsels, having the ugly cousin, fruitcake, on our tables instead. Traditionally, mincemeat pies contain suet, the fat from around the kidneys, and some booze as part of the mincemeat. Since the suet kind of grosses me out and since I want my kids to eat these, I leave both of these out and still have a tasty little product--more tasty if you ask me. The first instructions are for a food processor with regular instructions following. That's a kitchen tool I waited years to get in Asia and just got a few months ago. Indispensable! You can use whatever dried fruit you'd like in this recipe. Last year I did cranberries and apricots. This year I used dried figs and cherries--both ways were delicious!

If only mine looked this beautiful! They disappeared too fast!

Mincemeat
Juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
Zest of 1/2 an orange
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 apple, cored and cut into large pieces (not peeled)
1 cup golden raisins/sultanas (kismis locally)
1 cup mixed dried fruit
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 cup orange juice or brandy

Since everything is going to chop finely, I use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest from the lemon and orange (white and all). Then, with the outer peel side down, I scrape a paring knife over the peel to remove any pith.

Next, place the orange and lemon rind in the food processor with the brown sugar and whiz until finely chopped and mixed. Add the apple, lemon juice, and half of the golden raisins and mixed fruit. Whiz until the apple is finely chopped, then add the remaining raisins and fruit, spices, salt, and orange juice/brandy, and blitz again just until everything is combined. Sit out overnight in a covered container.

By-hand Alternative: Finely chop the zest of the lemon and orange. Next, finely chop the apple and half of the golden raisins and half the dried fruit. Put all this into a bowl, and stir in the brown sugar, lemon juice, remaining dried fruit/raisins, spices, salt, and liquid. Stir to combine, cover, and sit out overnight.

Using a basic pie crust recipe (slightly sweetened if you'd like), press the crust into a muffin pan to make mini-pies. Fill each pie with about a tablespoon of the mincemeat. If using a mini-muffin tin, use only about a teaspoon. Top with another piece of crust. I like to use the star design that you see all over the web, but a simple crisscross looks great, too. To make them really sparkle, brush the tops with an egg wash or butter and sprinkle with chunky sugar. Bake in a 200C/400F oven for 12-15 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Once cooled, store in an airtight container. They freeze really well, too, so I think these shouldn't be just reserved for holidays.

These are perfect little afternoon tea snacks!

Note: The recipe did not come from the Joy of Baking site, but theirs were so cute I had to share the picture.

Gingerbread Houses

We have been enjoying a really nice time with family in America over the Christmas holiday thanks to a wedding in our family. While it has been wonderful, I have not had much time to add recipes though I've been testing recipes off and on during this break. Yes, though I'm far away, I have been thinking of my friends in South Asia and what they could make during this season with few ingredients. Soo..... I'm hoping over the next few posts to fill your heads with ideas that might inspire some post-Christmas celebrations or at least make it into the plans for next year.

Front of gingerbread house with sprinkle sidewalk

Building gingerbread houses was something I never did in my house as a child. We made gingerbread and sometimes delicious molasses cookies, but I can't recall ever building a gingerbread house until I made one with my daughter last Christmas. That time I found a kit on sale for $5 and thought it was a deal. With no such deals this year, I thought, "People made them all the time before kits came out. How hard can it be?" Not very, actually.

While I don't have a printable template for you to use, I can even explain how to cut the pieces out based on Beatrice Ojakanga's recipe. First, cut out 2 3x5 rectangles (outer walls of house). Then, cut 2 rectangles 3x5.5. These will be slightly larger than the wall pieces and will form the roof slabs. The front and back take some thought. Make a 3x3 square. Mark the halfway point vertically and draw a line extending up 2 inches higher than the square. From that point, you can make 2 slanted lines to connect to the top right and left corners of the square, and you'll have a house shape. Make 2 of these. With any of the pieces, you could cut just 1 piece and remember to cut 2 pieces of gingerbread for it.

Back of the gingerbread house

Gingerbread
128g or 1/2 cup butter, softened (not room temp since that's too cold this time of year!)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 Tablespoon ground ginger or 2 inches ginger, finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
2 Tablespoons water

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and baking soda. Once thoroughly combined, add in the flour and water. Mix until you have a well blended, moderately stiff dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm. This probably won't take long in winter anyway! Preheat oven to 190C/375F. Roll out the dough to 1/4 to 1/2 inch thickness. Lay the template pieces over the dough and cut them out. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes. You're looking for nice firm pieces. This makes enough dough to make some other gingerbread cutouts, too, if you want to add some flair to your house.

Once the pieces are cooled, prepare Royal Icing....or use gummy worms like Max and Ruby did.

Royal icing:
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or lemon juice
2-3 cups icing sugar

This is a rough approximation. You want this to be moderately stiff, but soft enough that it can go through a piping bag or plastic bag with a snipped corner. Add more water or sugar to get the right consistency. Cover with a wet towel when you're not using it. Use this to assemble and decorate your house. You can use books or other household objects to hold it together while the "glue" solidifies. Nowadays there are all kinds of exciting candies available locally to use as decorations.

Side view: Didn't she do a good job sticking on the candy?

This will totally be a family tradition for us because I love doing it. It was not super fun the first year with my 3-year-old, but now that she's able to contribute to the decorating, it will just get better. Happy housemaking! And yes, it's after Christmas, but c'mon, don't you want to make one?!