Rich Jelly Bar Cookies

This cookie recipe dates back to my early childhood.  I fondly remember my mom making them every Christmas for our family.  About fifteen years ago, I asked my mom for the recipe and I have baked them every Christmas since.  We enjoy the festive color of the white cookie with the red raspberry filling.

Recipe:
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup margarine or butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/4 cups flour
Jam or Jelly for filling (Raspberry Preserves work best)

Directions:

1. Cream sugar and margarine, add egg, baking powder, vanilla, and nutmeg – mix well.
2. While slowly mixing, add the flour until incorporated.
3. Divide dough into four equal portions.
4. Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper.
5. Roll each portion into a long log, arrange two rolls to a cookie sheet, and flatten rolls into strips that fit the length of your cookie sheet.
6. Create a grove down the center of each strip (I use a table knife handle).  Be careful that you do not make the grove too deep or the cookies will break.
7. Fill the grove with Jam.
8. Bake at 250 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.
9. Remove from oven and move parchment paper with cookies to metal cooling rack, let completely cool.
10. Cut cookies about 1 inch wide on the diagonal.

The biggest problem I have had in making this recipe is finding raspberry jam that includes seeds.  Using seedless jelly does not produce the same cookie.  Several years ago, I purchased a jar of jam (jam has seeds, and jelly does not – or so I though), it turns out that most jams now have no seeds, now I purchase raspberry preserves that include the seeds.

It took several years of trial and error to find the best implement to make the groves down the cookie dough strips.  I tried bamboo chopsticks and other implements until I started using the blunt end of the table knife.  When I make the grove, I use the knife held at about a 45 degree angle and press it repeatedly down into the dough about 1 /4 inch deep, moving the knife down the strip about 1/8 of an inch every press.  Once I make the initial grove, I lightly draw the knife along the grove to smooth out the rough edges.


Fill the grove by spooning jam from the jar into the grove with two spoons.  The first spoon to get the jam from the jar and the other spoon to scrape the jam into the grove and to smooth out any lumps in the jam.

In the past, I moved the baked cookies strips from the pan to the cooling rack using a large spatula, which led to cracks, splits, and breaks, but I have found that just sliding the entire parchment paper from the cookies sheet to the cooling rack keeps the cookie strips intact.

These cookies are a fun and easy cookie to make.  The sweetness and flavor of the raspberry the jam complements the nutmeg in the cookie and makes a great combination.  This cookie will continue to be on my “nice” list.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

I enjoy making Peanut Butter Cup cookies for two reasons: they are easy to make and they contain chocolate peanut butter cups.  The first thing I do when preparing to bake this recipe is to sit in front of the TV and unwrap two small packages  of peanut butter cups(one milk chocolate and the other dark chocolate).  This unwrapping process includes watching a Christmas program and nibbling on a few of the peanut butter cups while trying to keep the little extra pieces of chocolate from getting all over the living room.

With my peanut butter cups unwrapped, it’s time to make the cookies.  Because there are only three steps to the directions, the recipe very easy to make.  I start by creaming the butter with the sugar.  Using my adjustable measuring cup, I measured out the ½ cup of peanut butter (Crunchy Jiff).  I really like the adjustable measuring cup when I measure a sticky substance like peanut butter, molasses and corn syrup, because once you fill the measuring area, you push the plunger and then just scrape off the ingredient.  There is no using a spatula (or your finger) and trying to get the all the sticky ingredient out of the measuring cup.

Once I creamed the sugars, I added the egg, vanilla, and milk and mixed, then I added the flour.  The directions call to shape the dough into 40 small balls.  If you try, you will quickly find the dough is very gummy and when you try to form the balls, you will just end up with a mess.  To solve the problem you can either spoon about a teaspoon of dough into the mini muffin pan (that’s what I did this time), or chill the dough for about an hour, and then you can form the dough into balls.


Once the pan of cookies has finished baking, I removed the pan from the oven and quickly pressed a peanut butter cup into the center of one of the cookies.  I usually fill two or three cookies, and then I use a fork and remove the cookies from the muffin pan.  I have found that if you wait too long to remove the cookies, the peanut butter cup gets very soft from the heat of the cookie and will deform when you take it out of the pan.  You could wait for everything to cool before removing the cookies, but that would take about an hour for the peanut butter cups to cool.  If you want to make another batch of cookies right away, then remove the cookies just after you press the peanut butter cup into the center.

The last time I made this recipe, I ended up with about fifty finished cookies.  Once they were completely cool, I placed them in a Ziploc bag and popped them into the freezer.  When our family comes for Christmas, I will remove the cookies from the freezer about thirty minutes before serving and they will be just as fresh as the day I made them.

Find the recipe at: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/peanut-butter-cup-cookies/Detail.aspx

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Black-Eyed Susan Cookies

We enjoy having Black-Eyed Susan’s as part of our desserts for Christmas.  These cookies are very festive being a white shortbread with a chocolate kiss added on top.  My wife received this recipe in 1994 from a friend at a cookie exchange and we have occasionally made them at Christmas ever since.  We have not made them every year because we have not been happy with the results.

The problem that we encountered with these cookies is that the original directions we received specifies to mix the dough, make balls and place on a cookie sheet, press a chocolate kiss into the center and bake.  The resulting cookies were good, but the tips of the kisses burned and the rest of the chocolate bubbled and was not very appetizing.  We tried adding the kisses near the end of the baking process which helped a little.  My inspiration to fix this recipe came from making Peanut Butter Cup Cookies, where the peanut butter cup is added after the cookies finish baking and are removed from the oven.  This year I found this process also works great when baking Black-Eyed Susan’s.

The following recipe includes the modified directions:

Recipe:
1-cup sugar
1 ½ cups margarine or butter
1 egg (room temperature)
1-Teaspoon baking powder
½-Teaspoon almond extract (optional)
1-Teaspoon vanilla
3 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 Package Chocolate Kisses, Stars, or balls

1. In bowl of stand mixer, add the margarine and sugar and beat on medium speed for several minutes until creamed.
2. Add the egg, baking powder, almond extract, and vanilla to the margarine mixture and mix until well mixed.
3. Add the flour slowly while mixing on low speed, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula as necessary.  Mix until all the flour is incorporated into the dough.
4. Place bowl with dough in the refrigerator to chill for 1 to 2 hours.
5. Form dough into one-inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes
7. Remove from oven and press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie.
8. Move the cookies from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack and let sit until the chocolate is fully cool.

The cookies that I made this year are well formed and the chocolate kisses retained their shape and texture.  I was out of almond extract, so I left it out and the cookies still taste great.  These cookies are very light yet they retain their shape and don’t easily crumble, they also freeze very well.  I place the cooled cookies into a large Ziploc bag, and put it in the freezer.  Let the frozen cookies thaw for a few minutes, and they are ready to serve. 

The recipe made about four dozen cookies, just right for a bag of Hersey’s KISSES. 

Next I may have to try making the recipe with some of the other Hersey’s KISSES varieties like Special Dark or Mint Truffle, and see how they turn out.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Panna Cotta with Balsamic Berries

While going through some magazines, my wife found a recipe, in House Beautiful that she thought looked good.  It is a recipe for Panna Cotta with Balsamic Berries by Ina Garten the Barefoot Contessa.  A few days after she gave me the recipe, we were having some friends over for to share a BBQ dinner, and my wife asked if I would make this recipe for dessert.

After a quick trip to the store for whipping cream, one vanilla bean and some fresh berries, I was ready to make the dessert.  I started the day before our BBQ and made the cream portion of the dessert.  I read the directions and quickly decided that while the dessert looks complicated, it is quite easy to make.

I started by cutting a slit the length of the vanilla bean and using the blade of a knife to scrape out the seeds.  I was expecting seeds I could see, but instead the seeds looked like black tar as I scraped out the bean.  Next, in a large mixing bowl I added 1 1/2–cups of the whipping cream, a pint of whole milk yogurt, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract, the vanilla bean seeds and then used a whisk to mix all the ingredients.

Into a medium saucepan, I deposited another 1 ½-cups of the cream, and ¾-cup of sugar and stirred the sugar into the cream.  I set the saucepan over a burner on the range and set the heat to medium to bring the cream to a simmer.  While the cream heated, I added one package of unflavored gelatin powder into 1 ½ tablespoons of cold water and mixed.  The gelatin had to sit and soften for 10 minutes, which is about the time it took for the cream to simmer.  I didn’t want to mix the gelatin too early because I learned in another recipe that if it is left too long, it becomes a hard mess that is virtually unusable.

Once the cream mixture began to simmer, I removed it from the heat and whisked the gelatin into the cream.  Next, I slowly added the hot cream mixture to the cold cream in the mixing bowl and combined the two cream mixtures using the whisk.  I set out eight ramekins, poured the cream mixture into the ramekins, filling seven of the eight.  I could have poured less of the mixture into each ramekin and prepared all eight, but seven was fine for our dinner and gave a larger portion of the cream to each guest.

I placed the ramekins on a cookie sheet and placed them in the refrigerator to cool.  Once the cream mixture was cool, I covered each ramekin with plastic wrap and I finished for the night.

On the morning of the BBQ, I did some more preparation of the dessert by slicing two pints of fresh strawberries into a large bowl.  Next, I added a pint of fresh raspberries and a pint of fresh blueberries.  I sprinkled three tablespoons of sugar over the berries and mixed the sugar into the berries.  The recipe calls for two tablespoons of sugar, but the raspberries were a little sour so I added more.  I covered the berries with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator to stay cool.

Thirty minutes before it was time to serve the dessert, I added five tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and a touch of black pepper to the berries and stirred to mix.

Next came the trickiest part, the directions say to run a small knife around the sides of each dessert and then dip the bottoms in hot tap water to loosen the cream and then turn over on a plate and tap the bottom and the cream should fall out.  I did all this and the cream remained stuck in the ramekin.  I found that while having the ramekin inverted, I insert the knife blade along the side of the dessert to make a small opening to allow air to enter, and then the cream drops out of the ramekin onto the plate.

All that remained was to spoon some of the berries around the cream and then grate a little bit of fresh lemon peel onto the cream and serve.

Everyone enjoyed their panna cotta dessert.  The cream portion was very light and the little bit of lemon zest added just a little enhancement to the flavor.  I would never have thought to use balsamic vinegar with fresh berries, but the vinegar added just a little bite to the sweetness of the berries and was delicious.

This is a dessert that I will make again; the hardest part will be waiting until all three types of berries are again in season.  At first glance, the dessert looks very difficult to make, but in the end I found it very easy to make.  When I looked for the recipe on-line, I was initially surprised that some of the measurements of the ingredients were different, then I quickly realized that the on-line version is makes 4 servings instead of 8, so all the measurements are one half of the recipe from the magazine.

Find the recipe at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/panna-cotta-with-balsamic-strawberries-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Bunnymallow Treats

My wife recently mentioned to me that we had some marshmallows that needed to be used up.  On my next trip to the store, I picked up a box of Rice Krispies so that I would be ready to make marshmallow treats.  When I went to make the recipe and got out the bag of marshmallows, I found that my wife had purchased the bag around Easter, and the marshmallows were in the shape of bunnies.  I decided that no real bunnies would be injured in the cooking process of making the treats, and I decided to go ahead and make Bunnymallow Treats.

I followed the recipe printed on the box of Rick Krispies and melted the margarine in a saucepan and then added the marshmallows and stirred until all the bunnies were melted.  I was concerned at the color of the resulting mixture because the bunnies were several different pastel colors for Easter, but the resulting mixture was slightly pinkish-gray and didn’t detract from the final results.

Once all the bunnies melted, I added the Rice Krispies, mixed it all together, and spread it out in a prepared pan to cool.  Once the contents of the pan were cool, I cut the treats into two-inch squares and individually wrapped them in plastic wrap.

The bunnymallow treats are good, but had a taste that wasn’t quite right, they are almost too sweet.  I checked the package of the bunny shaped marshmallows, and they were vanilla flavored, that explains the off taste.

Making the bunnymallow treats was a great way to use up the extra marshmallows before they hardened.  I guess we could have made smores with them, but somehow using bunnies shaped marshmallows for smores just doesn’t seem right.  Next time I make marshmallow treats, I will stick to the standard white regular marshmallows without any color or flavoring.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Quick Artichoke Salad

Now that summer is here with very hot days, I didn’t want to heat up the house by using the oven and at 90 degrees, it is too hot to be outside grilling dinner.  I went to my stack of recipes to try that I print after watching programs on the Food Network, and I found the recipe for Quick Artichoke Salad by Sunny Anderson.

I already had all the ingredients in the pantry and I could see the only item to heat would be the boiling water for the bowtie pasta.  I gathered all the ingredients and started to work.  The recipe calls for ½ pound of the bowtie pasta, and the bag that I had contained a full pound, so I went ahead and cooked the contents of the entire bag.  Because I was using twice the pasta, I doubled the remainder of the recipe.  While the pasta boiled, I sliced a full can of black olives, chopped a small red onion (the onion I didn’t double), 8 sun dried tomatoes (I used dry tomatoes, not the ones soaked in oil).  I used the remainder (about half) of a supersized jar of artichoke hearts, making sure all the pieces were quartered.

Once I prepared each ingredient, I dumped it in a large mixing bowl.  When the bowtie pasta were cooked, I drained the water from the pan and added the pasta to the rest of the ingredients in the bowl.  I added twice as much of the lemon juice, red wine vinegar, and olive oil on top of the rest of the ingredients and stirred to mix.  I covered the salad with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator to cool and for the flavors to mingle for about thirty minutes until we were ready to eat.

While the salad cooled, I sautéed a chicken breast in the liquid left over from the jar of artichoke hearts.  At dinner time, I served the salad and found that I should have used a large spoon to mix the salad instead of the large fork, because the onion and garlic were still at the bottom of the bowl.  Fortunately, when I served the salad, I used a large spoon and mixed everything together to get a good distribution of ingredients.  We had a great dinner of the sautéed chicken breast and artichoke salad.  We were surprised at how much of the dressing the pasta absorbed and I ended up adding even more lemon juice, red wine vinegar and olive oil to the remaining salad.

The artichoke salad was very sweet tasting: possibly due to the red wine vinegar.  My wife had some feedback for me on the salad.  She really liked the taste and ingredients, but she would like more dressing, some additional color interest like raw broccoli and maybe some julienned Italian salami.  I realized when I was writing about making this recipe, that I forgot to add the chopped parsley leaves, which would have added some nice color to the salad.

Neither one of us liked the chopped onion pieces, because the pieces were small and tended to sift to the bottom of the bowl.  My wife suggested using quartered strips of the red onion that would stay suspended in the pasta, unlike the small chunks.

I am keeping this recipe to use again, possibly when we need to take a cold salad to a picnic or a party.  I will add some other ingredients like the salami, broccoli, green olives, carrot and whatever else I find in the refrigerator.  Hmmm, I should have added some of the fennel bulb and stalk.  Oh well, next time.


Find the recipe here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sunny-anderson/quick-artichoke-salad-recipe/index.html

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Tropical Blueberry Smoothie

One of the recipes I picked up at our Saturday Market from the Oregon Farm Direct Nutrition Program: Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is for a Tropical Blueberry Smoothie provided by the Dole Food Company.  As we are now in the fresh blueberry season, I decided that making smoothies would be a great dessert after dinner.

The recipe is very easy:
   1 can (8 ounces) crushed pineapple (drained)
   1 ripe banana
   1-cup milk
   1-cup fresh blueberries

Put all the ingredients in the blender and blend until thick and smooth.  As we were having another warm evening, I also threw in a few pieces of ice to make sure the smoothie was very cold and frothy.  This recipe made enough to fill two large glasses so both my wife and I enjoyed a glass.  When we drank the blueberry smoothie, we could taste the three fruit flavors and enjoyed the thick and frosty consistency. 

This is an easy recipe to make on a warm evening that highlights the fresh taste found in summer blueberries.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Pulled Pork Rollups

After cooking the Easy Roasted Pork Shoulder, I was left with a very large bowl of shredded pork, which I distributed, into multiple bags that I sealed and froze.  Now that these bags of pork are in the freezer, what do I do with them?  With the help of my wife and a friend, we recently came up with one answer to that question.

In a previous blog entry, I mentioned how my wife and I traveled to Corvallis Oregon to stay with a friend.  For dinner that night, we volunteered to bring a bag of the thawed shredded pork for dinner.  When we arrived we decided to and make pork rollups (soft tacos).

Ingredients:
   2-cups pulled pork
   1-package tortilla shells (we used six-inch gluten-free rice tortillas)
   1-cup prepared guacamole
   1-cup salsa
   1-cup sour cream
   1-cup grated cheese (Tillamook extra sharp cheddar is excellent)
   8-miniature sweet peppers, sliced
   4-cups lettuce
   3-green onions, sliced

We started by washing all the vegetables, and then tearing the lettuce into smaller pieces and slicing the onions and peppers.  Next, we grated the cheese and heated the pork in the microwave.

The next step is easy, lay one of the tortilla shells on a plate (optionally warm the tortilla), and layer the ingredients on the tortilla.  Once the desired mix of ingredients are added, the tortilla can be rolled for eating by hand or left flat for more refined eating with a fork.  The biggest problem that I encounter when preparing my rollups is that I use too much of each ingredient, which makes it difficult to roll the tortilla and keep all the contents inside.  I guess the answer would be to use a larger diameter tortilla, but then I would just add additional ingredients inside and be back where I started.

We enjoyed our dinner with the pulled pork rollups.  It is refreshing to have the crunch of the peppers to contrast with the other soft ingredients and add some body to the meal.  The nice thing about this meal is each diner can make their own rollup with their own set of ingredients.  This is also a summer great meal (when it is 90+ degrees outside), the rollups can be made without using the stove or oven.  I thought it was a great time to try a new recipe with the frozen pork.  One package of shredded pork used, and three frozen packages to go.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Potato Pals

I recently wrote about visiting the local Hillsboro Saturday Market, and about our friend, that presents the Chef Live demonstrations.  Recently, adjacent to the Chef Live booth was a booth representing the Oregon Farm Direct Nutrition Program: Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).  At the WIC booth, there were discussions and recipes on how to make nutritious yet inexpensive meals.

I picked up a few of the recipes and decided to cook a few of them and see how they turned out.  I was planning to prepare steak for dinner (your basic top sirloin), and wanted a side dishes to accompany the steak, so I chose the recipe for Potato Pals that was supplied to WIC by the Oregon State University Extension Service. 

This recipe is very easy to make, it calls for 1 pound of red potatoes, 1 tablespoon of oil, salt, pepper, and some garlic powder.  Wash and peel the potatoes, cut into one-inch cubes.  Place cubes in a bowl, add the oil, and toss.  Place on cookies sheet, sprinkle on the spices and bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

I didn’t have any red potatoes, so I used one large sweet potato and two russet potatoes.  I washed and peeled the potatoes.  I cut them into (roughly) 3/4 inch cubes so I would be sure they would fully cook in the allotted time.  I placed the cubes in a large mixing bowl, poured in some olive oil, and stirred with a slotted spoon.  I dumped the oiled cubes onto my cookie sheet and sprinkled the sweet potato pieces with just a little salt, and sprinkled the salt, pepper and garlic powder on the russet potatoes.

The oven was already hot because I was trying to crack open a coconut (I finally used a hammer), so I put the cookie sheet with potatoes in the center of the oven to bake for twenty minutes.  While the potatoes baked, I went outside and cooked the steak on our camp stove using the grill that belongs to our indoor range.  I didn’t want to make a mess in the house, and our air conditioning unit is the perfect height for me to use as a grill stand.

The potatoes finished baking just after I returned to the kitchen from grilling the steak.  I turned off the oven and placed the Pyrex pan containing the steak into the oven to keep the steak warm while I prepared the Brussels sprouts.

We enjoyed our dinner of steak, Potato Pals, and Brussels sprouts and finished with ice cream with some of the left over raspberry sauce from the lemonade pie.  Both the sweet potato and the russet potato pieces were fully cooked and the tops had just the start of some browning.  The olive oil kept the cubes from drying out, but next time I would stir the cubes half way through the baking because some of them started to get a little dark on the bottom.

This was a fast and simple way to make a side dish for a meal.  The cubes were bite sized and easy as well as fun to eat.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Pulled Pork Sandwiches With Coleslaw

Happy Independence Day everyone!  My wife and I decided to claim our independence from making a large meal for dinner and instead to use some of the shredded pork shoulder in our refrigerator for dinner.  I looked at the article in the paper for Pulled Pork Sandwiches With Coleslaw and saw that we needed to pick up a head of green cabbage and some small hamburger (or slider) buns at the store while we were out running a few errands.

I prepared for the dinner by finely slicing a little more than half the head of cabbage.  I put the sliced cabbage in our salad spinner, gave it a rinse and then a spin dry.  I looked at the coleslaw recipe that was printed in the paper and I thought it would not have very much flavor, as it was just one tablespoon each of red vinegar with olive oil, a little salt, and pepper.  I decided to make a small batch of coleslaw with that recipe, but asked my wife to make a more traditional coleslaw dressing.

She found a few recipes, but in the end created her own dressing recipe: Cheryl’s Coleslaw

Ingredients:
   1/2 cup Miracle Whip
   1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
   1/2 teaspoon salt
   1/4 teaspoon pepper
   1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard
   2 tablespoons milk
   1/4 teaspoon celery seed

To prepare this recipe, she whisked all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and stirred it into the shredded cabbage with some carrot strips (made with a peeler). 

We heated some of the pulled pork that I cooked a couple of day before with just a small amount of Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue sauce.  We place the small buns on our plate, added a serving of the pork and then added some of the coleslaw on top, then topped with the other half of the bun.

I tried both versions of the coleslaw on the pork and my wife’s was definitely better than the recipe in I made from the paper.  The crispness of the cabbage gave some body and definition to the soft bun and pork.  The spices in the Miracle Whip, vinegar, and mustard were a great combination to add with the barbecue sauce.

We have enough buns, coleslaw, and pork remaining to have for lunch tomorrow, I can’t wait!

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell