Baking Day...

Baking Day is pretty much most days for me. I have to go to my horticulture class tonight and I have several writing deadlines I am working on,but I also am home baking because there is basically always a need for me to be baking goodies to deliver to one of my local customers. Today: gluten free magic bars, gluten-free brownies, unicorn bars (the pink sparkly darlings above), coffee cardamom bread, and some mini-quiches. But I kind of want to make cupcakes today, even though I won't get to it. The ones pictured are coffee walnut cupcakes that are super delicious. I got the recipe from the New York Times.

The unicorn bars? They're just Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Pan Cookies, made with white baking chips instead of chocolate, and frosted with vanilla buttercream and sprinkled with my own blend of crazy colorful sprinkles. They make me happy to look at them! And they're super popular at the movie theatre; the employees love how pretty they are and the customers find them hard to resist. They're very tasty too.

This blog has been sitting fallow and Byron thought maybe we should get it going again. I have had issues with the changes made to Blogger so it may be a learning curve trying to change cover photos and design etc. But we'll give it a go, so watch this space!

Bottled Cider

I should probably begin by saying how sorry I am not to have written. But I won't because I'm not. It's been a marvelously busy year and any of you who are still somehow faithful to this little blog have no doubt had many delicious things to keep you occupied in my absence.  

We had an enormous apple crop from our MacIntosh tree this year and we kept harvesting and harvesting until we had almost 80 pounds of apples. Absolutely organically grown--which includes all the critters that love apples as much as humans do.  So it was 80 pounds of apples that had to be washed and cut up and all that before it could go through the cider mill to become...cider.

That took a fair amount of time and I was still processing apples in the last few minutes before I was taken to the airport for three weeks of research and teaching in England and Scotland.  Going through security was a breeze compared to all that apples processing!

We ended up with 5 gallons of gorgeous and flavorful juice and we made it into apple cider. Hard cider, I mean.  It did its first couple of weeks in an ale pail, off-gassing merrily. Then it went into a glass carboy where it stopped off-gassing fairly soon and just sat there, fermenting quietly.

We bottled it yesterday and got almost 50 bottles of what will be a very dry hard cider with a kick like a Buncombe county mule.  It'll be ready to drink in about a month and will continue to get better for a few years.

We drank the last of the 2010 bottling a couple of months ago and it was very good indeed.

I also made an experimental batch that was 1/3 apple juice and 2/3 elderberry juice.  It is ruby red and pretty tasty. There's only a gallon of that, though.

What have you been doing? What have you been eating? How have you fared this summer and fall?

the very welcoming front doors of a local brewery

Nettles. This time, tea.

Evening, friends! I harvested the first batch of nettles today.  They had a lot of dirt from backsplash after last week's heavy rain, so it took a couple of washes to get them clean.

Then I set a big pot of water to boil and when it was boiling, I used the tongs to jam the nettles in.  I removed it from the heat, put the lid on and left it to steep for several hours.

After that time, I poured it through a strainer and into a half gallon mason jar.  There was enough left over for a tall glass of fresh nettle tea.  Here are the pics...

Here they are--the dirty little darlings--waiting for their first washing.

the second washing-- I poured the dirty water into watering cans

Here's the greenish-gold final product...and my own glass was delish.

Nettle tea is a wonderful spring tonic. And summer tonic. And autumn tonic.  I also make a cream of nettle soup and that will happen sometime this week, I think.  You can add some honey to the warm tea, if you like, but I prefer it unsweetened.

Italian Grain Pie

I've only made this once before but my daughter brought her boy friend home for the weekend and I thought I'd do it as a tribute to a holiday we don't actually celebrate.  It takes forever to do but it's worth the time and effort.  It has a very unusual flavor, is dense and rich and definitely not for those who don't do gluten.  I'm going to post the pics first and the recipe after.

whole grains, soaking in water. this is kamut and a little brown rice

grain cooked, drained and cooling

 rubbing sweet butter into the flour for the rich crust

the crust has the yolks of three eggs, from local hens

crust divided into halves, ready to chill

lattice top on and ready for the oven

out of the oven and cooling

ready to serve, garnished with fresh violets

Crust
2 C plain flour
1/2 C sugar
pinch of salt
3 yolks
3 T cream
1 T cold water
stick of sweet butter, softened

Sift all the dry ingredients together, rub the butter in, add the yolks, then the liquid. Form two balls of dough, allow them to chill.

Let 3/4 of a pound of whole grains soak in fresh water for about half an hour.  I use kamut wheat, but this time I was 2 ounces short and added in the rice. Cook it in enough water to cover it for about an hour, until soft. Drain it. Put 1/2 whole milk in the same pot. Add 1 T sugar and bring to a boil. Put the cooked grain back in, stir it up and cook for 3 mins. Let the grain cool to room temperature.

Roll out one of the balls of crust and put it into a buttered pie pan.  Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the following:
1 1/2 pounds of ricotta cheese
1 C heavy cream
1 1/2 C sugar
6 yolks

Add to cooked grains.

Combine the following:
1 t grated orange peel
1 T cinnamon
1 T orange juice
1 T candied citron

Add to cooked grain mixture.

Beat 4 egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold them into the grain mixture. Pour into crust. Use the second ball of crust and make a nice lattice on top. Bake for 1 hour. Turn off oven and let the pie set for 1/2 hour in the warmth.

There was enough filling and crust to do a second pie, without the lattice top. I haven't worked out the amounts for a single pie, so plan to give one to a friend.  A very good friend.

Serve it warm, with softly whipped fresh cream.

Staying with the Cake Motif

I used to do decorated cakes all the time but haven't done much of that lately. But my dear sister-in-law asked me to help her with her daughter's wedding cake a few years back and since then I've helped with a few other food-related jobs.

This is the baby-shower cake for the same daughter a couple of months ago.  I keep all my pastry bags and couplers and tips in a white tin and throw that and some favorite spatulas into a bag when we're headed down to her place.

My personal preference is for a more dense and robust cake but I certainly enjoy wielding the pastry bag full of shortening/butter/powdered sugar icing.

Birthday Cake

I love old Grange cookbooks. I have one that is called "Our Favorite Grange Recipes" and it was compiled in the late 1960s. The cover features a drawing of a smiling farmer with a bushel basket of vegetables. The sub-title is "a Collection of Rural Recipes Which Have Made Grange Cooking Famous Throughout the West Since 1870."

That pretty much says it all.

The cake recipes run the gamut from what we'd call in the South "white-trash cooking" (lots of processed ingredients thrown together in a "creative" way) to old-school deliciousness. I chose Midnight Cake for my birthday and made a double recipe for four layers.  Here it is--

1/2 C butter
1 1/4 C sugar
2 eggs
1 t. soda
1 C hot water
1/2 C cocoa
1 1/2 C cake flour
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
1 t. vanilla

Cream butter, add sugar gradually, beat well. Add eggs and beat one minute. Add hot water to cocoa and mix until smooth. Add cocoa mixture to eggs and sugar. Sift together dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture, beating well. Add vanilla. Bake 20 mins at 350.

I used regular cocoa for the first batch and dark cocoa for the second which gave it a subtle variegated look when stacked. It is a very tender cake and you would be wise to let the cooked cake rest in the pans for 5 minutes of so and then cover your cooling rack with parchment or waxed paper before turning the layers out.

The icing also came from this book. It is the last icing recipe in the section.

Chocolate Fudge Icing
1 C light brown sugar
1/4 C milk
3 T butter
3 T cocoa
Boil the above ingredients for 3 minutes, remove from hear and add 1 1/2 C sifted powdered sugar and 1 t. vanilla. (and I needed an extra  T. milk to make the icing the right consistency). Beat until firm.

Then you have to ice the cake fast.  It took three batches to get the level of coverage I like for a four layer cake.  I'd do one--ice like a maniac.  Do another, ditto. And again.  Serve stingy little slices because it is very, very rich.

It is a very firm frosting--a good keeper,as they say. The taste is extraordinary--so unlike the crap frosting on grocery store cakes or the garbage that comes out of a can.

Next time--and there will be a next time--I'm going to do a sour cherry filling for the layers. Same icing. A slash of whipped cream on the slice, as you serve.  On the photo above, I rolled out some little dabs of this firm frosting and stuck them in a circle on top of the cake.  I broke up a bar of crystalized honey infused organic chocolate and stuck a piece in each dab.  Sifted a little powdered sugar on the top and it looked a little like a stone circle in a light snow.

Tamales and Candy

I have always loved tamales--from the time I was a wee child and my mother would buy Hormel tamales in that curious red sauce--the ones in a small glass jar?

Later I discovered that I could order tamales at Mexican restaurant, even if they weren't on the menu.  That was very good to know.

My best tamale experience until last week was at a small Latino Episcopal community in a neighboring county.  I knew the priest and we cooked up this idea to do a combined Day of the Dead/Samhain event with our two communities.  The event would be focused on sharing food and crafts, and building an altar together.

The church had a wonderful cob oven in their side yard and we built a fire to cook bread, pizza...and tamales.  They were incredibly delicious and the whole event was a fun learning experience.

My daughter is home from college and we decided last week to make some tamales.  We have lots of meat in the house from the holidays and we got a bag of masa and read the directions.  Instead of steaming them properly, we found a recipe that allowed us to stack the husk-wrapped tamales in a baking dish with 1/2 inch of water.

It didn't take long to make them or to cook them or to eat them.  They were pretty darned yummy and really easy but we determined that the masa mixture needed lard or some other animal fat for maximum taste.  We're going to try it again tomorrow with some rendered pork fat.

On now to candy.  My family traditions around the holidays always included odd, old candies--seafoam, boiled fudge, marzipan fruits.  My cousin Evvie--she of the Cold Oven Pound Cake (which I insist on called the Old Coven Pound Cake)--always made chocolate-covered bonbons.  I remember one year she got into a time crunch and I went out to help her with her candy.  It was a fun time--she was one of my favorite relatives ever.

After her death, I took on making these bonbons.  This year, I was doing so much baking and making that the bonbons never got their chocolate coating.  They are still bright and delicious. And this year, I finally rolled them into small enough balls to not get too much of their richness.

Here's the recipe--

14 oz coconut
2 boxes 10X sugar
1/2 C unsalted butter
1 can condensed milk
1 t vanilla
chopped pecans (optional)

Cream together butter, sugar and canned milk. Mix all the other ingredients by hand and roll into dime-sized balls. Dip in melted dark chocolate.

Easy. Fast. Surprisingly yummy.

What? Where?

Did I starve last year?  Was there no food about which to write?

Erm.  No.  I published a book in June and started a blog about that.  I got a new blog platform at Witches and Pagans and did that.  I gardened like a maniac.  There were several deaths.

Blah blah. Blah.

I'm going to attempt to revive this little blog and be true to it. Because cooking and food preparation is so important to me and to all of us, I will also write about Appalachian cooking, subsistence farming, water, food sovereignty and other things that will fall loosely under this umbrella of Pagan Foodies.

I am hoping to inspire Peg to also return and to maybe add some more writers so we have a little more diversity of outlook.

Anyway, it's 2013.  Time to get serious about food, I reckon.

What are you cooking today?

coconut cake with a cooked frosting

Why Must Everything Be Soup?

Don't get me wrong--I love soup.  I write poems about soup.  I sing praise-songs to soup.

And I seemingly can't not make soup.

I had a packet of chicken quarters taking up too much room in the freezer, so I thawed them today for supper tonight.  They went into a baking pan with orange juice and some spices and baked in a slow oven until they were crispy.

The smell is wonderful. And the chicken is very tender and flavorful. I de-boned some of it and then I couldn't throw the bones away.

I couldn't--I swear!

They went into a pot, along with the juices--the pot likker--from the baking pan.  All that simmered for a while and now it is cooling before I refrigerate it. Because tomorrow, it will be soup.  A lovely soup for the midday meal.

I can't help it.  I don't believe in sin but if I did--wasting food would be at the top of the list.

Speaking of Green...Nettles

I'm sure you were all so good as to not drink green beer last weekend.  Beer, yes,perhaps.

There are some yummy green things you may drink to your healthy advantage, however. One of those is a rich green tea made from fresh stinging nettles.

O, come on, don't be a baby.  Yes, they are called stinging nettles for a reason and you must be very respectful in the harvesting of them.

But when they are immersed in boiling water, they get soft and safe.  I filled a cookpot with fresh nettles and poured boiling water over them from the kettle. Covered them and let them steep for a couple of hours and then strained the tea through cheesecloth and put it in a half gallon mason jar.

I drank some hot, with a bit of honey from the Lost Hive.  And I drank it cold all day yesterday and some today.

It's a great spring tonic and a deliciously verdant drink.

Here they are, with the tongs that made them safe to handle. Blessed be the tongs!

For the love of Brigid, don't drink green beer or eat bad soda bread

Yes, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day.  You will be asked to drink green beer or possibly flat Guinness.  You will be offered dry and humorless soda bread. You may be told to have fish and chips for lunch.

Please, my friends, please don't.

Begin your day with a nice fry up--eggs, toast, bacon, beans, tomatoes, whole meal soda bread, mushrooms, strong tea.

That will set you up for whatever may come your way.  With any luck it will be a dollop of Bushmill's Black Bush.  If you must put it in creamy coffee, then you must. I won't judge you.

Here's what we may eat for supper, in two separate pans in these pics, but I often cook them up together.  Cabbage and potatoes.  Serve this was soda bread and sweet butter.

That peanut butter tofu thing

That turned some of you right off, didn't it?  I made this for lunch today and hadn't made it in a long time.  I'd forgotten how yummy it is.

Cube up some extra firm tofu and saute it in olive oil.  Add a little crushed garlic, but not much.  Seriously now. Not much.  You want a little rich ping--not the wedding in the Godfather.

When it's heated thoroughly, take the pan off the heat and stir in 1/4 cup of peanut butter.  Stir it with a wooden spoon until the tofu cubes are coated.  Let it rest for a moment.

Steam some fresh broccoli--it should equal about 3 cups when you're done.

Toss the broccoli and the peanut butter tofu together.

Throw in some walnut pieces.  And dried currants, if you like.

Serve it with brown rice and eat it plain out of a bowl.

We ate it too fast--I didn't get a picture.

Mmmm.

Neglectfully Yours

O, dear.

I will say that Peg and I have been up to our eyeballs with projects.  I have a soon-to-be released book on Appalachian folk magic that has taken up much, much time.

But still...I have been cooking and eating the whole time.

I just had a delicious lunch that I haven't made in a while so I will leave this post as an apology for being gone so long.

Nutmeg Feather Cake

My daughter loves to bake and to try new cakes. This is a Nutmeg Feather Cake--truly light and simple and flavorful. I know this because she just came in and offered me a bite. Quality control, you know.

1/4 C butter

1/4 C shortening

1 1/2 C sugar

1/2 t vanilla

3 eggs

2 C sifted cake flour

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

2 t fresh ground nutmeg

1/4 t salt

1 C buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 13 x 9 pan.

Cream together butter, shortening and sugar, beat til light. Add vanilla, then eggs one at a time. Sift together the dry ingredients. Add to the creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Scrape down the sides and pour into prepared pan. Bake for about 1/2 hour.

Topping--Cream together 1/4 C butter and 1/2 C brown sugar. Add 2 T milk and mix well. Stir in 1 C coconut. Spread this mixture over the warm cake and slide it into the oven. Broil for about 5 minutes until golden.

Happy New Year! Eat well in the New Year!

Turkey Hash--Don't Be A Hater

My mother-in-law was all for throwing away the legs from the Christmas bird and offered them to us for our trip home. I had wrapped them in foil--tidy and fat packages of succulent delight.

We had turkey tetrazini our first night home. Sauteed onion, garlic, tender sweet peas and bits of turkey in a rich cream and Parmesan sauce, tossed into long pasta, more grated Parm on top, liberal use of the black pepper mill.

The second night we had masses of yummy vegetables--greens, zucchini, salad--and lean ham.

The silver turkey legs remained in their ziplock bag, waiting...waiting.

I was booked for a couple of tarot readings this afternoon and our sunny warm day started slanting toward a cooling evening. As I drove home, I started thinking about something hot for supper, doing a mental inventory of what was in the fridge, in the pantry.

Celery, mushrooms, greens, potatoes, turkey legs.

Hash. Delicious turkey hash.

Yeah, I know everyone looks down their noses at this wholesome and homely food. But think about all those ingredients and imagine them sauteed in olive oil and served piping hot.

It was very good--so good I didn't even take time to make a picture to post here.

Maybe it needs a better name or something.

I Cheated Today

and bought pre-cleaned collard greens. In a bag.

Honestly, my dead relatives are all probably spinning in their graves.

Or maybe they think I'm pretty darned lucky to not have to chop and clean all those bulky greens.

In any case, I will par-boil them--steam them, really--until almost tender and then saute them in olive oil with minced garlic.

Salt and pepper.

Served with black-eyed peas, corn bread, Boston butt pork roast.

Gosh, I'm already hungry.

Success! A Note About Cheese

The faux ricotta impastata mentioned in the Oct 9 post has passed the sister-in-law test. I made a batch for her to check for texture and was worried it would not pass muster. But she checked it yesterday and the texture was right.

She had been concerned that the lemon juice used to curdle the milk would flavor the cheese, so I used less on this batch, which made it runny. Too runny for cannoli filling.

So I'll mess about with the recipe and I think it will work.

Success!

Chockies

My cousin Evie used to make these yummy little bon bons about this time every year. I wanted a quick and easy candy to have available for both gifting and entertaining this season and ran across her recipe in my little recipe box. I have them listed as "Coconut Balls" but her daughter Kathy informed me tonight that Evie called them bon bons.

My cousin also opened a box of her mother's Rum (actually Bourbon) Balls and we tried those. String-flavored and very good, too. Evie is also the one who gave me the Cold Oven Poundcake recipe that I call the Old Coven Poundcake and which is, in fact, the best poundcake recipe in the world. I made two plain ones (plain! ha!) and one lemon one this season.

Back to the coconut balls...when I moved back here after grad school, I sometimes helped Evie get her candies ready this time of year and it was always fun. I remember those afternoons with great fondness every time I eat one of these fat delicious candies.

I tweaked the recipe a bit and here it is--

Cream together--

1 stick of butter

32 oz powdered sugar

1 can of condensed milk

1 ts vanilla

Add in 14 oz grated coconut.

Add in 1/4 finely chopped pecans (if desired)

Rolls into dime-sized balls and let dry out for a couple of hours. Dip them in melted dark chocolate.

I also added some prepared shopped orange rind--simply pressed it into the tops of some of the pre-dipped coconut balls and then dipped them.

My daughter and I are speculating some variations that include white chocolate for dipping.

Are you making seasonal candies or other yummies?

Cranberry...Sauce?

Get a big fat orange. Wash it. Peel it carefully, leaving all the white on the sweet sphere. CHop the peel into fine-ish bits. Juice the orange.

In a saucepan--

1 C water

1 C orange juice

1 C sugar (or to taste)

the chopped peel

Bring to a bowl, stir, add 1 pound of crans.

Boil gently, as the crans pop and the whole thing begins to gel up. It'll take 10 minutes of so. Once they start popping, reduce the heat to medium. Stir occasionally.

Immerse 1 C of chopped nuts (I use English walnuts or pecans) in 1/4 C booze (I use bourbon or orange liqueur or something else flavorful).

Once the crans have popped and jelled, remove them from the heat and stir in the nut mixture. Allow to set in the warm pan for about 10 minutes.

Et voila!

Sweet Young Carrots

We're having a mild November here in the southern highlands of Appalachia. Violets are blooming in the backyard and chickweed is out and very edible. Dandelions have acquired new fresh growth and it's damp and warmish like middle spring.

I went out late last week to think the winter-over greens--the spinach, lettuces, kale and chard that will be fat and sweet in late February. On a whim--and because it was a lovely day--I wondered back to the big summer garden to check on the strawberry runners and cut the last of the horehound for the season.

And there they were.

I had planted carrots as a companion plant for the cucumbers and hadn't been what you'd call thorough in thinning them out. The cuke vines are long gone and the cold-snap earlier this month fried the last of the heirloom tomatoes. So the beautiful, feathery fronds of the carrot tops were so alive, so fresh.

Who said gardening is a summer-time activity? As we explore old ways of lengthening the seasons, we are finding ourselves eating fresh veg out of the garden for almost 12 months out of the year.