Tuesday with Dorie - Berry Surprise Cake

This week Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen chose Berry Surprise Cake. Which did not want to play nice with me. I tried to make it twice. The first time it just did not rise and the second in rose and then fell all the way. This is a cake where I have a feeling that the altitude that I live at played a factor in. 6062 feet is just a little high and this tend to make some my baking a little different. I ended up using what I had in a few trifles. Which went over well at the parties I went to last week.

Tuesday with Dorie - French Pear Tart

This special three kings day version of Tuesday with Dorie was Chosen by the author herself… Dorie Greenspan has chosen the French Pear Tart. This tart was very good. If you were to make it all in one day a little time consuming but I did a little for the last few nights so it was not that bad. The recipe had me do some new things for me. I poached pears and made almond cream for the first time. Poaching the pears was not near as hard as I thought that it would be. I used the left over syrup in a muffin recipe as the liquid. For the glaze I used some peach jam.

Tuesday with Dorie -Tall and Creamy Cheesecake

Well this is just a week late. Last week, December 30: Anne of AnneStrawberry chose Tall and Creamy Cheesecake. Wow this was a good basic cheesecake recipe. This is a recipe that you can do a lot of things with. I just changed the crust, I used Oreo cookies, this was fun. The cake did not last more than 2 days. My brother and I had a small piece and then I took the rest to work where it did not last after lunch. Everyone like cheesecake, the pieces take were fairly large.

Cookie Exchange

I got some very good Scandinavian Christmas Nougats from Siri, the Transplanted Baker. With them was some black liquorice and a very cute ornament. Well the Nougat is disappearing fairly fast, by the time I got the picture two and a half pieces were gone. Wow this is good. I liked the liquorice but my brother did not.

Thank You! Batter-Splattered for holding this.

Tuesday with Dorie the Cookie edition

December 2: noskos of Living the Life chose Linzer Sables

December 9: Ulrike of Küchenlatein chose Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

December 16: Heather of Randomosity and the Girl chose Buttery Jam Cookies

I have to say that I am not that good at making cookies, I generally can make the dough OK but the baking of the cookies mostly goes wrong for me. The Buttery Jam Cookies came out the best. I used cranberry jam and they come out a little biscuit like. I will most definitely make them again.

Linzer Sables Cookies these were the cookies that really went wrong. I think that they needed some more moisture, the dough was very dry. I padded out half of the dough and spread some more of the cranberry jam and sprinkled the rest of the dough on top. After cooling I cut the cookies as if they were bar cookies. They tasted good but in no way looked like what they should have.

Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies taste great but I had trouble rolling and cutting them out. In the end I just rolled them into a log and sliced them. They did take twice as long to cook.

I am glad that I am done with cookies for a while.

Dorie will be late

Back up computers! Especially if there is irreplaceable info on it. That and you can buy a 1 Tera bit external hard drive at best buy.

Canned Cranberry Sauce recipe

When I went to my Sisters for Thanksgiving I sent apple and peach pie filling and 3 jars of canned Cranberry Sauce that I had made. The cranberry sauce went over well, there was none of the three jars left, and my sister wanted the recipe so I thought that I would put it here so that I could reference it later if need be. It was partly taken from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, one of the best canning books I have.

Cranberry Sauce - Whole Berry
Yield about 6 pints
8 cups cranberries
4 cups sugar
4 cups water
zest of a lemon or an orange
2 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 to 1 cup of crystallized ginger, this depends in how much of a zing you want

Wash and sort cranberries
Combine sugar and water in a large saucepot. Boil 5 minutes.
Add cranberries. Continue boiling, without stirring, until the skins burst. Lower temp to low.
Add the zest, ground ginger and crystallized ginger. Stir, smash cranberries with potato masher until the texture you like.
I tend to have to cook the cranberry sauce for 30-40 minutes to get the constancy that I like. Just stir every once and a while.

Ladle hot sauce into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust two piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

I had to add another 15 minutes for altitude. I am at 6038 ft, just over 6000ft.

Bookmarked Recipes - Crockpot Peanut (Not Brittle) Candy

This weeks Bookmarked Recipe is from A Year Of CrockPotting who has a very cool website, I have been looking to make some of her stuff, I needed thank you gifts for spending the night at relatives so I started with Crockpot Peanut (Not Brittle) Candy. I made it the day before I left, it was very easy and most everyone liked it, the only person who did not like it does not like chocolate.

I tended to call it nut candy. I made some changes and found out that this works much better cooling on silicon or parchment paper than aluminum foil.
It stuck to the foil big time. As in I could not get any of it off.

Changes:
Added 2 cups more nuts, we like our nuts. I used half almonds and half peanuts.

After pouring out the candy to cool I sprinkled some chocolate chips and when they had melted I spread them out.

For one of them I had also added some dried cranberries. It gave the candy just that little something extra.

I will most definitely be making this again. Every one wanted the recipe, at the end of the week I had it mesmerized from writing it out so many times.

flight home pictures

Well I am home, Tuesday with Dorie will be a little late this week. I got home late. Seattle was wet and the Day after I got home, the day that I was going to the store it snowed all day and I got 6-7 inches of snow. Anyway here are some pictures I took an the flight home. The first one has the moon, Venus and Jupiter with a sunset.

Tuesday with Dorie - Arborio Rice Pudding

This week Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa chose Arborio Rice Pudding. As rice puddings go this was pretty good. I did get around having to stir and make sure the pudding did not burn by cooking this in my crockpot. The other change that I made was that I added another 1/4 cup of rice and some cinnamon. I put everything but the water in the crock pot and set it to high for 30 min and then set it to warm overnight. It was good the next day. I had some some warm for breakfast. For more pudding check out Tuesdays with Dorie.

Tuesday with Dorie - Kugelhopf

Well this went so fast that I could not get a picture. Thank you Yolanda of The All-Purpose Girl for picking this recipe. Though I am still not sure how to say it. Over all this is not a recipe that I will make again, it was very time consuming and needed to be eaten soon ofter taking out of the oven. The next day will not work. I ended up using most of Sunday to make it and then got up at 3am to put it out for the final rise.

I did make a few changes. Because some many people were saying that it was a little bland I added 2 teaspoons of coconut extract and used dried blueberries instead of raisins. With the powdered sugar I also put some toasted coconut. It tasted pretty good.

For other takes on Kugelhopf take a look at Tuesdays with Dorie.

Tuesday with Dorie - Rugelach

I want to say thank you to Grace of Piggy's Cooking Journal. She chose Rugelach for the recipe this week. I have never made these and thought that they would be very hard, but they were not. Which is not to say that I did not have any problems. Time is an issue, there are 2 sets of resting times and the dough did not play nice with me.

The picture on the left was the first half of the dough. When I rolled the dough out it stuck to the waxed paper. So I put it back into the fridge and then tried to roll the crescent shapes when the dough was cold. Breakage occurred. So the second half I made them into pinwheels and then chilled the dough in the freezer for an hour. This made it much easier to cut and I got more cookies out of the dough.

I used rehydrated apricots, cinnamon, sugar and mini chocolate chips for the filling. The dough was very light and buttery. For more Rugelach fun check out Tuesday with Dorie.

Tuesday with Dorie, Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

I Love Food 4 Thought chose Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes this week. Wow these were good. I did not think that they needed any topping. They also freeze well and defrost in time for lunch. For more spooky cupcakes visit Tuesday with Dorie. Many of the other people went with a Halloween theme.

Bookmarked recipes - Apple Pie Jam

For my Bookmarked recipe this week I made Apple Pie jam. I got the recipe from Clumbusfoodie. I made 2 batches, one with the full amount of sugar and one with half of the sugar and low sugar pectin. For the second batch what I did was double everything but the sugar. This jam really does taste like apple pie. Now I can have some apple pie everyday on toast.

Tuesday with Dorie, Pumpkin Muffins

These came out very good. Thanks Kelly from Sounding My Barbaric Gulp for picking this week's recipe! I love pumpkin muffins and these were one of the best that I have had. I did make a few changes; White Wheat Flour instead of all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup dried cherries and 1/4 cup dried currents instead of golden raisins, and no sunflower seeds. I like the taste of the currents, it is something different. The recipe made 18 muffins. I think that mini chocolate chips would have made them just a little bit better.

For more muffins check out Tuesdays with Dorie.

Garlic

Yaaa! I got my garlic planted for next year. I would take a picture but well there is nothing to see right now.

First frost

Well this morning I had scrape frost off my windshield for the first time this fall. I did make it to work on time though. Now I need to set aside another 5 minutes a morning for this. That and my furnace kicked in for the first time. Winter will be here soon.

oven

To bake it helps if your oven works. Mine just gave up the ghost recently. I got a replacement range but when you use the oven part, even opening the door for the oven light there is a high pitch buzzing sound. I am having the Sear's repair guy come out and take a look at it soon.

Jamming Jelly Exchange

Batter-Splattered hosted a very cool exchange, Jam or Jelly. I go a very tasty jar of Cocoa Fig Jam made by Neena in Georgia. This was very cool. Thanks!!!!

Sweet 100

Cakespy had a sweet 100 that I thought was cool I did add number 5. Most of the ones that I have not had I have not have not heard of.

1) Copy this list into your site, including the instructions!
2) Bold all of the sweets you’ve eaten!
3) Cross out any of them that you’d never ever eat.
4) Consider anything that is not bold or crossed out your “To Do” List.
5) Italic the ones you have made

1. Red Velvet Cake
2. Princess Torte
3. Whoopie Pie
4. Apple Pie either topped or baked with sharp cheddar
5. Beignet
6. Baklava
7. Black and white cookie
8. Seven Layer Bar (also known as the Magic Bar or Hello Dolly bars) and a non dairy version
9. Fried Fruit pie (sometimes called hand pies)
10. Kringle
11. Just-fried (still hot) doughnut
12. Scone with clotted cream
13. Betty, Grunt, Slump, Buckle or Pandowdy
14. Halvah
15. Macarons
16. Banana pudding with nilla wafers
17. Bubble tea (with tapioca “pearls”)
18. Dixie Cup
19. Rice Krispie treats
20. Alfajores
21. Blondies
22. Croquembouche
23. Girl Scout cookies
24. Moon cake
25. Candy Apple
26. Baked Alaska
27. Brooklyn Egg Cream
28. Nanaimo bar
29. Baba au rhum
30. King Cake
31. Sachertorte
32. Pavlova
33. Tres Leches Cake
34. Trifle
35. Shoofly Pie
36. Key Lime Pie (made with real key lime)
37. Panna Cotta
38. New York Cheesecake
39. Napoleon / mille-fueille
40. Russian Tea Cake / Mexican Wedding Cake
41. Anzac biscuits
42. Pizzelle
43. Kolache
44. Buckeyes
45. Malasadas
46. Moon Pie
47. Dutch baby
48. Boston Cream Pie
49. Homemade chocolate chip cookies
50. Pralines
51. Gooey butter cake
52. Rusks
53. Daifuku
54. Green tea cake or cookies
55. Cupcakes from a cupcake shop
56. Crème brûlée
57. Some sort of deep fried fair food (twinkie, candy bar, cupcake)
58. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
59. Jelly Roll
60. Pop Tarts
61. Charlotte Russe
62. An “upside down” dessert (Pineapple upside down cake or Tarte Tatin)
63. Hummingbird Cake
64. Jell-O from a mold
65. Black forest cake
66. Mock Apple Pie (Ritz Cracker Pie)
67. Kulfi
68. Linzer torte
69. Churro
70. Stollen
71. Angel Food Cake
72. Mincemeat pie
73. Concha
74. Opera Cake
75. Sfogliatelle / Lobster tail
76. Pain au chocolat
77. A piece of Gingerbread House
78. Cassata
79. Cannoli
80. Rainbow cookies
81. Religieuse
82. Petits fours
83. Chocolate Souffle
84. Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)
85. Rugelach
86. Hamenstashen
87. Homemade marshmallows
88. Rigo Janci
89. Pie or cake made with candy bar flavors (Snickers pie, Reeses pie, etc)
90. Divinity
91. Coke or Cola cake
92. Gateau Basque
93. S’mores
94. Figgy Pudding
95. Bananas foster or other flaming dessert
96. Joe Froggers
97. Sables
98. Millionaire’s Shortbread
99. Animal crackers
100. Basbousa