Bake These.

These are baked apples and they are really great. Yes, very descriptive. So, try them and come up with your own description. I think they make a nice dessert during the fall, especially after a heavy meal where perhaps oh, let's say chocolate cake, seems like overkill. You can use any kind you like - these were from when I went apple picking back in early October.

All I do is slice them in half lengthwise and remove the core. Then I sprinkle cinnamon and a bit of sugar (brown or white, whichever you prefer - I use brown). I also like to add ground clove and nutmeg (you can use apple pie or pumpkin pie spice too!).

Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes. They should be tender, yet still have a slight crunch to them. Serve warm (you can add a little vanilla ice cream if you had a light supper :)

Molasses Cookies are SUPREMELY addictive

This is a recipe I have not tampered with and have taken straight from the Joy of Baking (yes, Joy of Baking, I am giving you full credit, I promise...because BAKING SHOULD BE JOYFUL!). I highly recommend it for your holiday baking, your dead-of-winter-god-it's-cold treats to go with hot drinks, and anytime you need a taste of home. The Joy of Baking is a really great website to dig up great cookie recipes, especially at the holidays (try the Snickerdoodles too, they were a big hit last Christmas!

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable, canola, or safflower oil
1/3 cup unsulphured molasses
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Garnish:
1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar for covering the cookie balls before baking

Directions:

Molasses Cookies: In a large bowl sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2 - 3 minutes). Add the oil, molasses, egg, and vanilla extract and beat until incorporated. Beat in the flour mixture mixture until well incorporated. Cover and chill the batter until firm (about 2 hours or overnight).

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place about 1 cup of white granulated sugar in a medium sized bowl. When the dough has chilled sufficiently, roll into 1 inch balls.

Then roll the balls of dough into the sugar, coating them thoroughly. Place on the baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart and, with the bottom of a glass, flatten the cookies slightly.



Bake for about 9-10 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies have crinkles yet are barely dry. They will look a little underdone, so be sure not to overbake! Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies, depending on size.

Roasted Vegetables

These roasted vegetables are an easy and tasty way to add a side dish to your dinner.

I chose to use a colorful combination of potatoes, carrots and onions for this, but you could use any number of veggies (though I would say root vegetables work best).

Dice up the potatoes into bite size pieces - I chose purple potatoes and charlotte potatoes. Next cut up the carrots, and slice the onions. I season it with rosemary from my garden, a bit of salt and pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Bake at 350°F for about one hour.

Potato Leek Soup

My favorite soup. Simple, tasty and smells excellent while cooking.

2 tbs butter or olive oil
3 leeks (or more if you like)
4 medium potatoes
2-3 cloves garlic - I used 1 large clove of fresh garlic, much too strong to use any more, you may not want the garlic to steal the show from the leeks!
1 qt. chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
milk or half & half to desired consistency

Slice the leeks and soak out dirt. Strain and set aside.

Dice garlic, set aside.

Cut potatoes into thin slices. Add to pot with butter or oil. Saute until they start to brown.


Add garlic, saute for 1 minute, be sure not to burn! This alters the flavor, and not in a good way.

Add the leeks and saute until they soften up.

Next, add the chicken stock.

Simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes, until potatoes are well cooked.

After turning off the heat and allowing the soup to cool a bit, add half to the blender, blend until smooth (or a bit chunky if you like it that way) then set aside. Add the other half and blend, then mix in with the other half you set aside. Add milk or half & half to your desired taste/consistency. You may not even want to do this, depending on your taste. You can also add salt and pepper as desired, and I like to add chives as well.

Serves about 4.

Stuff and Things

First of all, I haven't posted in forever because I have been making stuff like crazy so I would have things to post here when I don't have time to cook/bake/craft. I also forgot my password and Google was not as helpful recovering it as one might think, so it's taken me a while to guess enough to get it right.

Moving on.

A delicious cinnamon raisin bread...a perfect breakfast treat for those cold mornings we have had all week!


The recipe can be found here

Be warned though, this recipe makes at LEAST 3 loaves. I finally used rapid rise yeast for this and was so much happier, it took so much less time to rise the first time, and a fraction the second time. But I only have two full size bread pans...so I had to wing it, there was SO much extra dough.

I actually liked the alternative better! Little muffin sizes!


Side note: my boyfriend enjoys this so much in bread pudding! This bread can also be frozen.

So get to it. Now.

More to come. Lots more.

Pumpkin Soup

I have no pictures for this post (amended 12/7/09!), because I forgot to take them while making this soup last night, but that's ok. We all know what a pumpkin soup would look like (yellow to orange..and soupy).

I really winged the recipe, didn't use anything but a few hints from recipes I sort of liked, but nothing really got my attention. I wanted something simple, and everything I found had too many flavors that I wasn't looking for. The only thing I would change would be to either use two small pumpkins or a larger single pumpkin.

Ingredients:

One medium sized pumpkin (I used a pumpkin on the smaller side, probably only about 2.5 lbs)
1/2 large onion (I used one small Walla Walla onion)
2 tbs olive oil
4 cups chicken stock - adjust according to how thick you would like the soup
splash of milk or heavy cream (I had neither so I used half & half)
salt and pepper
dash of cinnamon
1/2 tsp of nutmeg

You need to roast the pumpkin first. Cut up and 'gut' the pumpkin, saving the seeds to roast later if you like them (I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!)

After you cut it into large chunks, peels off the outer skin. Cut up into small pieces, about an inch or two.

Spread out on a baking sheet and cook at about 250°F for about an hour, but this really depends on how much you have and how small the pieces are. I probably needed about an hour, but mine was small and I cut it into very small pieces.

Once the pumpkin is done, add olive oil to large pot. Saute onions until they start to brown, and then add the pumpkin. Cook for about another minute, and add the chicken stock. Add salt and pepper as desired, and cover while simmering for about 30 minutes.

Allow the soup to cool a bit, and then blend until smooth (do this in a least two batches, unless using an immersion blender...which I did not). Add a bit of milk or cream to taste, and add a pinch of cinnamon and about 1/2 tsp of nutmeg.

Simple, easy and delicious. If you chose to roast the pumpkin seeds, you can add these on top as a garnish when serving.

Saturdays at the Market

Just another quick little blurb...since we just had a refined sugar overload, let's get a look at some perfect fruit...and better and tastier place to get your sugar.


Look at all those beautiful melons! And the purple peppers...and the purple basil, and if you look behind all that, the tiny pumpkins and the other colored peppers. The farmer's market in Troy has some of the best vendors, who all offer something cool. This particular vendor has been offering beautiful and colorful produce and flowers all summer. If you are from the area and have never been, I highly recommend visiting. It runs Saturday mornings in Troy on the waterfront across from Franklin Square/parking garage from 9-1. There are wonderful place within easy walking distance to grab a coffee & breakfast...or browse antique and craft stores. For the record, I lived in Troy when I first moved upstate, so I am a little biased, but I think that this little city has a lot of great spots to visit!

Lollipop, lollipop!

Lollipops! Not for the faint of heart...the sugar overload in these...WOW. and my molds are HUGE.

This is a recipe I came across while looking for science experiments at Exploratorium.

What you need:

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 to 1 teaspoon flavoring
liquid food coloring

Head over to their site for instructions. I would offer my own up since I tweak it, but honestly, you are better off following theirs :)

For flavoring, I chose a lavender lemon combo. During the stage where the heat is rising to 300°F, I added the dried flowers (be sure to use culinary lavender if using this0 and also added grated lemon peel.

Once the mixture reaches 300° I turn off the heat and I VERY briefly submerge just the bottom of the pan into cool water. This will prevent the temperature from climbing about 300°. Once cooled to 275°F, I added a bit of lemon extract. Probably 1/2 tsp.

I stirred smooth and poured in my molds. After they cooled I managed to jimmy them out. This, in my opinion, is the hardest part! I also coated them in powdered sugar to prevent them from sticking to the wax paper I wrapped them in. A LOT of sugar. I recommend using MUCH smaller molds. I used cookie pop molds, they are about 3" in diameter. I recommend you make them much smaller considering the sugar content.

But they look nice, despite the lighting issues;


If anyone has a recipe for hard candies without using corn syrup I would be very interested to hear about them. I suppose it would be difficult, but I would love to try something that had less refined sugar. Or, I could just get smaller molds.

lavender sachets. REALLY homemade.

I got a sewing machine for my birthday last month from my parents. I definitely have no idea how to use it. I thought I threaded it correctly, but...no. I failed. If anyone wants to tutor me, I would be so excited...

So I have been hand sewing these sachets for about 8 months now. Usually when I get bored and have an urge to craft.

I am working with wool from a sweater that was totally shot, washed several times first. I had a really old bag of lavender my father bought me in London about...8 years ago? Maybe longer, I'm getting old. But I didn't want either to go to waste, and they were headed towards the garbage since one was old and damaged....and the other was old and not of the culinary variety. But together they make nice little sachets for your drawers. Which is a good place to hide them, because they aren't pretty. Once I figure out how to use my sewing machine I am going to make cute ones for gifts.

I still plan to use materials that are re-purposed, like old clothing and blankets that no longer serve their originally intended purpose.

Take a gander:


Yes, that's my little sewing box. My parents gave these to me and my sister for Valentine's Day one year. In fact, I think it was my dad's idea...perhaps he thought we would help him mend his clothes? Well, that did not happen. I didn't open this until college when I started losing buttons, and now I use it more regularly to mend clothing...and my lopsided sachets. Gotta get the sewing machine up and running soon!

Bread. Chocolate Bread. Chocolate Zucchini Bread.

Yea, it doesn't look that great. We have a lighting situation in my apartment. But bear with me...

So I had a zucchini, and wanted to add some cocoa, but I didn't want to wing it...so I searched on Foodgawker for a recipe. I found one at One Ordinary Day. This blogger found this recipe at the Joy of Baking, which generally has solid recipes (a lot of my Christmas cookie recipes come from this site).

I thought it was good, but instead of the cinnamon & mace combo, I added Apple Pie Spice & some ginger. If I made it again I would add a lot more spice, but honestly I like regular zucchini bread more...but others in my household enjoy the added cocoa :)

I will post actual recipes when they are more of my own, not just mild adaptions of others!

Drying Herbs

This year, I let my herbs go too long in the heat wave before collecting them for drying, so I am not working too hard to dry them. Last night I went out and took some cuttings of what survived, leaving smaller, newer leaves to grow a bit. We are cooling down a bit here upstate, so hopefully they will have a few weeks to grow a bit more before my final harvest. Anything else I need to will get at the farmer's market, or my parent's backyard (they have so much of the now-popular Apple Mint it gets mowed over regularly because of how much it has grown into their yard).

So far, the most sizable of the plants I have cut, cleaned and set out to dry are:

Lemon Verbena - this plant was really difficult to find up here, finally found a potted plant of it at the Co-Op in Albany

Lavender leaves - this plant hasn't flowered (too young perhaps), but I will dry and mix with lavender buds for sachets

Rosemary

Bee Balm

Miscellaneous mints - my mint started to wither a few weeks back...so what I have is a combination of apple mint, chocolate mint, spearmint & orange mint

Some of these herbs are going to be combined with other herbs such as lavender & chamomile for tea. These are going to be part of Christmas gifts...but let's not get too far ahead here. The way I am drying these isn't the best method, but for the small amount I have for now, it's the best method I have for now.

Welcome!

Welcome to my newest blog, Country City Cooking Gal. In an attempt to update more often than my last blog, I will be adding updates other than cooking. Crafting, gardening and other disasters, er, creative experiments will also be a big part of this blog. I will also be taking reader's requests for recipes they would like to see - if you send me an idea and I like it/am intrigued, I may post it!