Refreshments take 2

The old topic was getting slow to load.

If you want east, quick cookies, Garibaldi biscuits are a good call. I use Delia's recipe https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/british/garibaldi-bis... doubled. You don't really need currants, but if you use larger raisins and fruit, you should chop then first.

It's really a simple pastry recipe. You rub butter into flour, but a fairly small amount, and softened so it's easy. You add liquid, mix, roll out, spread the fruit over half the dough, cover, roll out again. (This is why you want small pieces of fruit.) Cut into bars and bake. The bought ones are good, but mine are better.



Um, well, Delia says to trim the edges and cut them carefully, but I just cut. I alsi skip the egg white and sugar on top. Lazy.

>2 MarthaJeanne: Yes, please!

Ruth, can you remove the pin or move it ti this topic, please?

I harvested some of my Bärlauch (wild garlic) today and used it in bread. Very good (with a slice of brie on top). There is also plain bread, most of it made into hamburger buns for supper.

That's 50g of chopped Bärlauch in about 470 gram dough before baking.

I really ought to bake some cookies, too. Maybe tomorrow.

I'm not sire cardamom with molasses is going to become a favourite taste combination.

https://feelgoodfoodie.net/recipe/cardamom-cookies/#wprm-recipe-container-29105

Now it's back to peeling eggs. The supermarkets are full of them right now, so I started pickled eggs earlier. Now I'm getting ready for an old family favourite: Gratin of Chopped Eggs from the Time Life Eggs and Cheese. With added bacon and sorrel. Apparently I never added this series. The recipe is simple. chopped hard boiled eggs, white sauce enriched with a raw egg, topp with buttered crumbs. Drip olive oil over the top when it comes out of the oven. That last step is what makes this work.

I have three cakes in the oven. Not as bad as it sounds.

A Few days ago the supermarket had rhubarb, so of course I bought some. Then on Friday we were at the farm store in Mannsdorf where I got some ready ground white poppyseed.

I finally settled on a recipe for a Mohnkuchen. One of the problems with the recipe was that it said "Prepare your cake pan." with no mention of size. I prepare both my large and small bundt pans.

Once the batter was ready I filled the smaller pan. Then I chopped the rhubarb, added it to the batter, and filled the larger pan. Oh! Well, I have some nice fresh ginger, which goes well with rhubarb, so I grated a piece into the remaining batter, found another pan, and all three versions are baking.

BTW, there are three kings of poppyseeds grown in Austria. The blue is considered standard, but the grey, which looks and tastes very similar is considered to be higher quality. At least it is specially advertised. The white is much lighter in colour and has a nutty flavour which I just love, when I can get it.

We recently saw an American complaining online about the horrible food in Austria. One of the complaints was about ordering poppyseed noodles, which came with some sort of black powder over them instead of proper poppy seeds. If you eat unground poppyseeds you don't get the full flavour, and your digestive tract can't do much with them. So they are ground before use. It needs to be fairly freshly done. I used to have a special mill for poppyseeds, but gave it to one of my boys when he finally found a source to buy the whole seeds. I've never replaced it. I buy a lot of poppy seed products, and lazily buy the preground if I want to bake myself.

Oh, the noodles - They are usually potato based, The noodles are boiled, then served with melted butter, ground poppyseeds and powdered sugar. Nothing for low carb or low fat diets, but absolutely wonderful.

The two smaller pans are out now. Ikm giving the larger one a few more minutes.

Jerry managed to get them to release. He also took the picture for me. My blood pressure is at 89/59, so I'm not quite functional.

Well, something isn't working.
ETA Works today. Still don't understand why I couldn't do it yesterday.

The rhubarb crisp I made didn't do its job, so I bought more at the supermarket. My guglhupf book has a rhubarb recipe, so that's what's in the oven now. Biggest change is that I mixed the rhubarb into the cheesecake filling instead of layering cake, rhubarb, cheesecake, rhubarb, cake. This may make the filling too soft.

It worked. It also tastes good.

>10 MarthaJeanne: Yes, please! I’ll take a chunk of that.

Currently on offer are

a very good fruit bread including fresh blueberries and apricots. The dough is about half sprouted spelt.

Rhubarb-berry pan dowdy flavoured with elderflower syrup. This used up the blueberries and the raspberries.

Or there is also some sage-onion bread, also with the sprouted spelt. This went well both with a fried egg and with sage derby cheese.

Og, dear. I don't think I can make these muffins.

"Divide the batter between the muffin cases and bake for 5 minutes at 425°F (218°C) then lower the temperature to 350°F (177°C) and bake for 15 more minutes or until a skewer comes out clean."

My oven can only be set at 5°C intervals.

I made them anyway, but with several changes (besides the temps).

Well, it must be summer. The fruit grower in Raasdorf has apricors, cherries and sour cherries.

I decided to bake a cake, and settled on http://www.claudecooks.com/recipes/cherry-and-apricot-cake/

However, I soon came up with various difficulties. She uses ground almonds/almond meal. As if they were the same thing, but the almond meal I have is defatted. Hmmm. And I don't have enough, and I don't have ground almonds. OK, I'm going to use what I have, and fill with ground hazelnuts, which I do have. I need to get a cake pan out, but which one? Based on the recipe saying it makes 8 pieces, I chose my medium sized one, and the batter seems to fill it nicely. Besides the nuts, it also calls for both white flour and cornstarch. No cornstarch. So I'n using whole spelt flour for both. Since the flours are only half the weight of the nuts, that shouldn't matter. Oh, yes, she calls for 2T cognac in the fruit and 2T milk in the batter. I replaced them both with the orange and spice stuff I put together in January.

It's in the oven now, so we'll how it turns out in an hour.

Oh, dear. It's raining again. I hope they got most of the apricots harvested first. She was worried about it.

Quite edible. But better you don't see the t-shirt I was wearing when pitting the cherries.

>16 MarthaJeanne: Oh my! That looks delicious! Scrumptious even!

I still (again) have lots of apricots and cherries. When looking for recipes a few days ago I found this: https://onehotoven.com/apricot-cherry-upside-down-cake/

On the one hand, it looks delicious, and I love the idea of doing it in the cast iron frying pan, on the other hand, that's an awful lot of sugar in a diabetic household.

Well, Jerry left for the US this morning.

Next item of business was the new freezer being delivered between 10 and 12. They finally got here at 14:15. OK, things happen. They only took 10 minutes, and I can turn it on in two hours.

There are still two deliveries expected this week. Jerry's sugar sensors could still come today, and I'm getting a third magnifying glass so that I always have one charged up.

I deserve a treat, I think. My smaller skillet is only 18cm =7", so it is only half the size of a 10" pan. So I have half the recipe in the oven.

I'll report back later.



Very good cake. But it made rather a mess of my frying pan.

There's cake in the oven.

I started with https://redcurrantbakery.com/german-apricot-cake-aprikosenkuchen/#recipe, but made more changes than usual.

I used whole wheat flour instead of white, as usual, but then replaced the whole wheat flour in the recipe with ground almonds.

I also replaced a bit of the sour cream with Amaretto. Then I could leave out the almond flavouring.

I reduced the sugar to 150 gm, 50 of it demerare. I used more baking powder than she called for. 1/4 of soda and 1/2 of baking powder seems like a very little bit. I added cinnamon and cardamon as well as the vanilla and lemon peel she called for.

And then, I did not crowd the top with apricots, but left gaps which I filled with red currants.

So far, all I can say is that the batter tastes good.

It also looks and smells good.



I also think she needs a new oven. I did not turn mine 180° half way through baking, and I baked mine for 10% shorter time than she said, and probably should have made it even shorter.

Yes please!

>21 2wonderY: Come by while it's still here.

Tastes good, too, but could use even less sugar. (I did not sprinkle the top with sugar.)

At the supermarket today they had Apfeldicksaft again, otherwise known as boiled cider, so I can finally make https://www.librarything.com/topic/329029#8358171 again! I also got tubes of mayonaise with olive oil, so the fact that they didn't have the crackers I like (The whole snack aisle looked ravaged. BTW, Austria can still stay in the competition.) or the clam pasta sauce I wanted is bearable.

Probably not today, as I have been having the runs, They stopped when I remembered that I had hydration tablets, and started drinking that instead of plain water. I guess I just got my electrolytes off balance, so I doubt I'm contagious - but still shaky, and with a delicate stomach. Supper tonight will probably be either biscuits or muffins with omelettes.

What do you mean, 'What competition?' Euro 24 football, of course. We play the Netherlands tomorrow with both teams needing a win. No, I don't watch the games, but like to follow the scores.

I made the cake. It is not coming out of the pan nicely. But it tastes good.

I added (rum-soaked) raisins this time. Yes!

I had three very ripe bananas, and we bought a bunch of fruit, so I made my traditional banana cake, using chopped nuts instead of raisins, and put it into a rectangular flat pan, then decorated it with quarter apricots and a mixture of sweet and sour cherries. Amaretto instead of milk, of course. and extra spice.

Oh, dear, I'm really going to need help. I have a gerngugelhupf (traditional Austrian yeasted bundt cake) in the oven, but I just found a recipe for a gooseberry tart to use the gooseberries I bought yesterday, that I really want to bake tomorrow. Jerry is off to Bangkok on Thursday. Haw much of this can we eat up before he leaves? Which of course, is why I want to make the second bake before the first one is gone. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

Actually the Gugelhupf isn't totally traditional. The big argument is always with or without raisins. I have used some mixed fruit - mostly raisins and other vine fruits, dried blueberries that I recently found in an old pile, and some chopped chilli chocolate that I usually use for cookies. So not quite what Franz Joseph's mistress, Katharina Schratt used to bake for him. But I expect it will taste good.

Baking today.

I have buckwheat crackers in the oven.
https://nutritionrefined.com/buckwheat-crackers/
Only real difference is herbes de Provence instead of rosemary and rhyme. Oh, and extra salt because I need it.

Then dill bread goes in.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/dill-bread/

I started this first, and it is on its second (final) rise. For a yeast bread this seems very easy. I'm used to using both sourdough and yeast, lots of rises, lots of kneading, start in the evening to finish about 20 hours later

I should have bought more topfen (cottage cheese replacement). I will run out before Jerry is back. Dillweed, fresh, frozen and dried is readily available, but not dillseed. I used caraway instead. And fresh dill weed. Now what am I going to use the rest for. More pickles, yes. Freeze more? Probably. Maybe not chopped this time.

Only I'm to tired to wait for it to cool down to taste it.

Peach and raspberry with a little lemon thyme. Oh, yes, I replaced some of the milk with Amaretto.

G'night.

>28 MarthaJeanne: Oh, yes please!

Looking for a cake recipe inline, I came across the famous yoghurt cake. I'd forgotten how easy this is. I used different fruit from the recipe, my yoghurt came in a smaller container than theirs. Never mind. I used peaches and raspberries to match the yoghurt I used. Both fruits also need using up.

To remind you: Heat your oven to 180°c (360°F). Prepare a cake pan. Prepare whatever fruit you want touse. Take a pot of yoghurt, plain, flavoured, whatever you have. Pour it into your mixing bowl, scrapping as much as possible out. Now add 2 pots of your flour of choice, one if sugar, brown if you like it. Now about half a pot of oil or very soft butter. If your flour isn't self-raising add baking powder x 2-3 tsp. Mix well with any added flavourings you want and three eggs. Mix in the fruit, put into the pan, stick it into the oven. Timing will depend on the relationship of amount of batter to your pan. Since my yoghurt was 125ml, and I'm using a 23cm pan, I'll start checking at 35 minutes unless I smell it earlier. I've done this in foil loaf pans on a canal boat to great acclaim. It's not a fancy impressive cake, but easy, even with limited equipment, and it's good cake. Probably gone before anyone even notices the lack of fancy. It will certainly get me to eat that fruit.

ETA Just smell the raspberries and peaches cooking. Ow! I burnt my tongue!

>30 MarthaJeanne: Making another yoghurt cake.

This one has lemon yoghurt. I reduced the sugar, replaced the second pot of flour with ground hazelnuts, added spices. I used the rest of the raspberries, a few apricots, some peaches and a few handfuls of red currants. Luckily, as I was purring the batter into the pan I realized that I had forgotten the baking powder. Back into the bowl!

I also have 'kriechl' which are very nice tiny plums, but they are very clingstone, leaving most of the flesh around the stone, and an almost empty skin. I need to make a sauce of them.

ETA I've now got about half the Kriecl in the microwave with some apricots and a splash each of white wine and amoretto.

Later. Mmmm, good.Better than the first one. I love the nutty texture. Of course with less nuts and less fruits, it might not fall apart so much. But one cannot complain about the flavour.

Did you want buckwheat-buttermilk pancavkes for breakfast this morning? Sorry, you missed them. I had some with my mixed fruit sauce, and a final one with Philadelphia and blubarb jam. I strongly recommend the recipe at https://cookieandkate.com/buckwheat-pancakes/. My only changes were to leave out the sugar and vanilla. Since I currently have more buckwheat flour than spelt, and no way of getting more, and had buttermilk in the refrigerator that needed using, these were not only delicious, but also a good way of using my resources. They would have been banana as well, but the bananas were past using, even in pancakes.

(Yes, I have a few left over which will become grilled ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches later. They are already reserved.)

>32 MarthaJeanne: What an interesting idea ~ using leftover pancakes for sandwiches. What is a leftover pancake?

>33 2wonderY: Not my idea. When I was in boarding school in India we just knew that if we got pancakes (with jaggery syrup) for breakfast we were going to get cold pancakes folded over peanut better for tea. Not actually my favourite because just 'bread' and peanut butter can sort of glue your mouth together. Funny, I really remember that, but otherwise have no idea what they fed us for that after school snack. Besides the sweet milky tea, of course.

Leftover pancakes are the ones Jerry would have eaten if he were here. The recipe only calls for a cup of flour. Mixing up less seems rather weird. I have many years of experience cooking up pancakes for growing boys. and haven't made them much since. Wouldn't three or four cups be better?

About to put the two side together.



The left hand side has basil pickles.



Yum.

Yes. I’d rather make French toast than pancakes anyway. It’s been a long time for either though.

I'm thinking of malibg these Apple Tahini blondies.https://tandysinclair.com/apple-tahini-blondies/

But they call for xylitol. Since many websites tell me I could replace sugar one to one with this stuff, I'm going to assume that the other way around works too. Any thoughts? (You know I'm going to reduce the amount anyway.)

>37 MarthaJeanne: They are in the oven. So far, I think these are going to be good. It was high time I used the apples that weren't brown and dripping. Oooops.

Whole spelt flour.
Replaced the weird stuff with 150g sugar, mostly brown. Replaced the bit of maple syrup with boiled cider. Probably was a bit on the generous side with the spices. Could anyone object to a bit extra cinnamon or cardamon? Oh, and my apples were on the small side, so I used 2 1/2. For me this is following the recipe quite closely.

One negative comment. The recipe uses a frying pan, a baking pan, and several mixing bowls. The bowl for cooling the butter can be quite small, but I didn't realize that in time.



And now I'm supposed to let it cool completely before cutting.

Yeah, right? No, wrong. They taste very good warm. The tahini is good, and so is the browned butter and the brown sugar. It all works together well. It could maybe do with more of the cooked apple mixture.

I'm using evelina, a new variety our supermarket has been pushing. They taste good, and they stay as pieces when cooked. There are dishes where you want the apples to melt, but this is not one of them.

ETA Neighbour and grandson both approve.

I decided to bake cookies. Would the cornmeal I just bought be good in them?

I decided to bake cookies. Would the cornmeal I just bought be good in them? https://www.sweetestmenu.com/perfect-cornmeal-cookies/

After reading the comments I reduced the sugar to 80 g. But I also added mixed fruit because I wanted fruit in my cookies. I did not add spice because I want to taste the corn.

The first ones didn't spread so I scrunched the second batch with a glass.



I think you have to leave out the fruit to taste the corn. Very good, but still very sweet.

Interesting!

Not sure why they taste so sweet. I would normally try to reduce sugar to the weight of the flour(s). We have nearly 300g flour, and about 100 g sugars (including a spoonful of honey). And I normally add in fruit.

Jerry likes them in spite of no cinnamon.

I'm working on a plum caje.

https://www.gutekueche.at/tiroler-zwetschgenkuchen-rezept-3535

This recipe appealed because
a) It is for a springform, not a whole sheet cake.
b) You first bake half the dough for 10 minutes, then add the fruit and the rest of the dough. Whoops, that's now.

I used honey and cinnamon on the plums instead of sugar and vanilla sugar. I also added spices to the batter.

I'll report back later.

Tastes good!

Might taste even better with ice cream.

>44 MarthaJeanne: Ooh! Quick add the ice cream while the cake is still warm.

To late. I are the whole piece before I could get up.

I'm not up to it today, but I thought it might be nice to make a blueberry yoghurt bread of some sort, so I started Googling.

I found a recipe for a banana blueberry yoghurt bread, which sounded good, until I saw that it had lots of sugar, but basically was a banana bread recipe with one of three bananas replaced with yoghurt, and blueberries added.

There was also the reminder not to overmix because you don't want to develop the gluten. It seems to me that then you could easily replace some of the regular flour with oat flour, making less gluten to develop, and we all know that blueberries and oats go well together.

So what if I use my normal (no added sugar) banana bread recipe, replacing one of the bananas with Greek yoghurt, half of the flour with oat flour, and adding blueberries? Or does this sound like too much experimenting at once? I think maybe I could leave out the raisins, but use a bit of arancini. Orange peel also goes well with blueberries. Cinnamon, of course.

I seem to recall that the recipe makes a big point of having the children help make it, teaching them to weigh all the ingredients carefully to be very accurate.

I discussed it with my neighbour while I was out giving her a taste of fire roasted tomatoes. She thought I should go for it, but made it clear that she wanted a taste. So I doubled the recipe (lots of ripe bananas around) and used my multiple mini pan. only problem: I thought we had plenty of blueberries. Someone must have been eating them, so I had to use raspberries for part of the fruit. Auch nicht schlecht.

Warm they are too delicate to remove from the pan.

Very good. I like the fact that it is less bananay. Also, it seems to hold together with nice texture now that it is a bit cooler. I'll let you know what the neighbour thinks.

Oh, yes, the tomatoes are really good. Halved (my small tomatoes) and on a rack over a sheet pan under the oven's grill at 230° Some are going in tonight's supper, the rest in the freezer. If I'd known this a few weeks ago... Not sure how long they took. Not long, but that will vary by oven. I could smell them, and most had brown edges.

I just took a peach-blueberry bundt cake out of the oven. I mixed elements of different recipes and added my own changes in as well, so we'll see how it turns out. At this point I van only say that it smells wonderful. Apparently I should wait an hour to take it out of its pan.

Since my supermarket had grated pumpkin, I decided to whip up a batch of pumpkin halwa.

https://fatimacooks.net/pumpkin-halwa/

>50 MarthaJeanne: Is that served warm or cold?

>51 2wonderY: Either way, but not hot off the stove. Hmm. Just took a spoonful. Somewhat less solid than I would prefer, but lovely taste.

Now I need to make a pumpkin bread to use up the rest of the grated pumpkin. But I suppose I should work on the laundry first, and I am making chicken, mushrooms and sorrel for supper, which entails a lot of prepping, so maybe bread should be tomorrow. I'm not using my traditional sorrel recipe, but this is also Craig Claiborne, so it should be good.

https://www.flora.com/en-gb/recipes/pumpkin-cookies-183601

are in the oven. Excepr I replaced the Flora Buttery with real butter, and tweeked the seasonings a bit.

Since I'm still staying in because of storm Boris, and since we have several overripe bananas, not to mention a few bits here and there that need using up, I have put a banana bread into the oven. It includes a blueberry yoghurt for the third banana, fresh blueberries, raisins and chopped cashews I had fried up for a garnish, some canned apricots.

Our fruit seller is closed Mon and Tues anyway, and I question how much saleable fruit she will have on Wednesday, so maybe we should buy fruit at the supermarket tomorrow. Shock! I mean, besides lemons and bananas.

I made Tarte Tatin. See https://www.librarything.com/topic/363580

Now I have an Anjou pear cake on the oven. We bought pears that were rapidly getting overripe, and https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/anjou-pear-cake called for soft buttery pears. I'm going to glaze it with the pan scrapings from yesterday's jam.



Ow! It's hot! But good. The pear and the cake sort of melt together in your mouth.

Oooooh! Perfect breakfast food!

>56 2wonderY: Why wait for breakfast? (Although, as Bill Cosby would say, "Flour, eggs, fruit... Nutrition!")

It’s breakfast time here… or maybe second breakfast.

It's been a while since I made cookoes, and I couldn't decide between two favoutite recipes.

Last night, when I set up a poolish, I decided to also ger ready to make bara brith. I have fond memories of times I have eaten it in the UK. Particularly of sitting in a marina cafe reading and eating slice after slice of it with butter while waiting for my laundry. They had a really good laundry set up, and it was faster and less onerous than most places I did it on our canal cruises. Anyway, the more I think about it, the major difference between my normal fruit breads and this is the bit about soaking the fruit in tea over night. A yeast bread dough enriched with butter, fruit, spices, maybe an egg or sugar. Then baked after the regular bread is done.

My fruited loaf was baked before the others - poolish bread rises very slowly, and I gave the fruited loaf extra yeast. They are all out now. The fruited one is very good. Time for bed.

Today's banana bread is using the two bananas that have been ripening tomatoes. they have been doing a great job, but are also getting nicely overripe themselves. I had a sample of lebkuchengewürz, so I added that in along with adding candied ginger to the dried fruit mixture.

I'm not sure this is the most beautiful cake I have ever made. But it tastes good.



https://bakesbybrownsugar.com/orange-upside-down-cake/

But I cut the sugar way down. 50 g in the caramel, and 120 g in the cake. The bits from the pan taste really good. The thyme really works well.

The orange should have been cut more thinly I think, and overlapped less.

The pan is a new enamelled cast iron pan. It is 26cm at the top, but a good deal smaller further down.

It's pie day!

I've taken a picture which I will upload later.

Supper was individual chicken pies. The thing is, I was planning on making pie dough. I had half a cooked chicken, servings of cream of goose soup, a single serving of chicken soup. So buying some chopped soup veggies, cooking then up with bacon and onion in the chicken soup until (at least some of) the carrots were soft, adding chicken and goose soup, and loading it into pie shells was fairly easy. I had bought some lemon herb salt. Couldn't add too much, but I think it helped.

The whole point, though was that I had bought mincemeat, and had marzipan and cranberries, so I wanted to try https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/mincemeat-cranberry-almond-pie. It's very good. Hints if you want to try it. Stick the marzipan in the freezer for an hour or two. It will be much easier to grate. I had 200g of cranberries, and they made a single berry layer, which is not too sour, given the mincemeat.

I made the pie dough with 4/5 whole spelt flour and 1/5 almond flour. That didn't affect the flavour much, but it was very easy to handle. As usual, I used half butter and half lard. I wanted to use the dough scraps, so I rolled ot out and laid cutouts on top of the chicken pies. The cooky cutter I found in the drying rack was a fir tree. That is the only reason for the trees.

Hearty and sweet too! A good day’s work!

I found this recipe https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/giant-cinnamon-roll-cake/ which sounded like it would be a useful start. For the dough, I used fresh yeast, mixed whole wheat and whole spelt flours, but otherwise left it alone except for adding mixed spices.

For the filling, I spread the softened butter, and then added a good layer of chopped walnuts. Then I scattered blueberries over the top. I pressed down on these layers to try to embed them in the dough a bit. Then the cinnamon sugar and pressed again. rolling the strips after the first one proved a bit tricky, but my long skinny offset spatula helped a lot, as did cutting the strips in half. Now it is rising.

Good for Sunday brunch on a cold snowy day!

>68 2wonderY: You mean Sunday supper after a crisp sunny fall afternoon.

I am not going to add frosting.

The only question is, does one try to cur neat trangular pieces, or just tear out pieces?

I’d just pull hunks. I can nearly smell it!

I gave Jerry the choice. Hunks it is.

Yes, I like the blueberries and nuts.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sticky-pear-ginger-cake

This is the sort of thing I like, but I did it in muffin pans so that I can freeze most of it. It's really too sweet for Jerry.

Yesterday I made the date mush. You chop lots of dates, put them in a pan with milk, butter, dark brown sugar and ginger preserves. You bring that up to the start of a boil, give it a good stir and leave to cool. To be honest, I could have just eaten that, but it might not be such a good idea.

So I held myself back, and today added flour, baking powder and baking soda, ginger and other spices and chopped pecans, as well as two eggs. That should have been straight forward, except that I needed to open a new tin of soda. It comes in luttle tins with a plastic top, and sealed with metal with a pull ring. Well, the pull ring just pulled off, but I hammered with the handle of a knife, and got it open.

Then once the batter is in the pan, you top it with chopped pears. When using muffin tins, this gets fiddly. Adding more pecans would have been even fiddlier, so I didn't.

Even though I had no intention of soaking the cake, I decided to make the brandy syrup. We must have brandy, right? Maybe not right. I finally found a bottle of fine old cognac. Well, seeing as the bottle is probably at least 30 years ild, and still half there, I decided to use it. So I pulled ... the red top off the cork. A first attempt with a corkscrew brought up some cork crumbs. A second attempt landed what was left of the cork in the cognac. The syrup needs to be sieved before I store it.

It tastes good and Jerry came home with low blood sugar, so he also ate one.

>73 MarthaJeanne: My assumption was right. These were much easier to get out of the form frozen.

A slight pause in baking sweets. We were at the British shop, and they had Mr. Kipling's mince pies in. So I have six boxes of them to eat through.

It's almost Christmas, and we just realized that we have no bubbly in the house for New Year's Eve. So we checked that our vintner is having his normal Thursday evening open house today. We also saw on the website that Leopold (Poldi) has been in the business for 42 years. That takes us back to 1982. We moved into our not qyite finished house. Our eldest son was born. And we met a young wine grower, just out of agricultural college, trying to convince his father to let him try out some of the modern techniques he had learned. His wife was also from a grape growing family in the same town, and eventually they took over both sets of vineyards. So we are headed out to the Eastern border of Austria to get bubbly this evening.

But I can't show up just before Christmas with empty hands. That should explain why the oven is on.

I decided against sweet Christmasy stuff, as everyone has more of that than they need right now. But I do have homemade candied orange peel in the house. The latest even from cara-cara oranges. So I settled on making crackers with the peel and rosemay. No recipe.

Crackers are flour, water, salt, and whatever else you throw in. Usually oil, sometimes a very little baking powder. In this case, I used whole spelt flour, finely chopped peel and rosemary, a small amount of olive oil. Mis it, roll it, cur it, bake it. Easy, fast and tasty.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Normally, about this time I would be making Pannetone. I love pannetone, and used to buy it until one year I made my own with whole wheat flour. Well that was the end of buying it. It's a lot of work, but very satisfying.

Bit this year I got to thinking back to when I was a little girl, and my mother would bake Swedish cardamom braids for Christmas. I had more or less decided to do that this year, when my sister called to say that Mom had died. Now this is not a tragedy. She was 96, had been quite lucid and active until a few months ago, but she wasn't really there any more the last time I talked to her. She took a fall, which left her unconcious for a few days. She was in her own bed with a quilt over her with the pictures of all her family. (4 children, 7 grands, and at least 5 great grands) My sister was there holding her hand. I'm not so much sad as lonely. She isn't there for occasional calls any more. And even if they weren't frequent, I miss the possibility of them desperately. Anyway these are for you, Mom. BTW Note that I come by my love of baking honestly.

Anyway. I started with https://beeskneesrecipes.net/2019/02/18/cardamom-berry-braid/

Whole spelt flour. I made 1 1/2 recipes to use a kilo bag of flour. I mixed a bunch of my homemade candies mandarin peel into the dough. I divided the dough into 4 parts. From two I made smaller wreaths than hers, filled with some cranberry with cointreau jam I had bought. It's good but my first impression was to use it in baking, and not on bread. The other two are braids, as I had used up the jam. I'll put pictures up once it is all baked. They look good at present.

The other braid is already at the neighbour's house.

I made Cape Cod Oatmeal Cookies from my old Fanny Farmer. Main change was lots more spice.

BTW I have also been experimenting with candied orange peel.

Adamah has bio oranges, so the peel is edible. The big oranges have a lot of white pith, which makes for extra work, but the clementines don't, so I put the peels of four of them in a small pot with a cup of water and a cup of sugar. Bring it to the boil, and then down to a simmer. If the syrup gets to thick, add more water. You do not want it to caramelize. After about half an hour test a piece to see if it soft enough for you. WARNING in the meantime the syrup has gotten very hot! (If it hasn't started turning brown, it is still below 165°C or 330°F, but still hot enough for bad burns.) When you are happy, pour out sugar on a plate or cutting board. Remove the skins from the syrup and turn them in the sugar, then leave to dry. Did I say that they are very, very hot! I cut them into long strips before storing to save space.

Then the only question is whether to use it in baking, or just to eat it as candy. I save the syrup and add more water and sugar for the next batch.

If you have oranges with a thick white pith, it is a good idea to try to cut some of that off. Then boil the skins up in plain water once or twice to remove more bitterness. After that, the process is the same. But thar feels a lot like work, and the others are really east.

ETA
The left over syrup is also quite tasty. I might boil it up with some spices and keep it.

I decided I needed to use some of my orange peel in cookies. For these I started with https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/19145/grandma-minnies-old-fashioned-sugar-cook...

I only wanted half a recipe. For the flour I used 1 cup whole spelt and 1/2 cup ground almonds.

The sugar included what was left from dredging the peel. My eggs are small, so 1 was fine. I replaced the cream with orange juice. I had a small piece of marzipan in the refrigerator, so I creamed that with the butter.

After forming the cookies I added a raw cranberry to each heap, just to gild the lily.

Good.

Now I need to make supper. We're havind chicken and mushroom risotto.

I bought too much mincemeat before Christmas so tonight I'm making mincemeat cookies.

https://www.copywriterskitchen.com/old-fashioned-mincemeat-drop-cookie-recipe/



Good. These will be a nice change. The last two were both crunchy. Good to have a change.

I don't frost cookies as a general rule. However, I made up some hard sauce for a left over Christmas pudding. More than the pudding needed. I have discovered that a spoonful of it spread on one of the mincemeat cookies is very pleasant.

Way bacj in college, my German professor's wife gave me a cookbook. Eat Drink and be Healthy. This is a Health Food Cookbook from back before that was really a 'thing'. (1962, it was not a new book, even when I got it. I have cooked a number of things from it over the decades, but the one I keep coming back to is Carrot- Oatmeal Cookies. A little care is needed, as they are also a very good solution for constipation. Basically, rolled oats, grated carrot and raisins are held together with a minimum of cookie dough. That sort of acts like a chimney sweep's brush, cleaning out whatever is blocking the way. Anyway, I do like them, and the supermarket sells grated carrot. I added some of my orange peel, and replaced the milk with orange juice.

That is between a loaf of bread that at least looks lovely, and pear and cheese strudel for supper to go with slices of goose left over from last night. But right now I'm letting the oven cool off for a bit.

I bought fresh orange juice from the other supermarket yesterday, and am not pleased. There is too much oil from the peel in it. But then I remembered, well, the puckery flavour reminded me of the citrus bread I used to make years ago. Breads of the world was published in 1977. When my paperback copy fell apart I was still able to find a used hardback. This is a quick bread from Barbados. The orange juice is perfect for this, and I haven't made it in years. Looking forward to it. I'll make a double recipe in my 6 mini loaves pan, and freeze most of it. Got to do it now, though, as there is going to be pork in the over from 16:30.

I even have notes on doubling for that pan. Note: tripling it might be better.

BTW, My pan is losing its nonstick coating on the bottom. This doesn't really matter a lot, because I use strips of baking paper down the sides and across the bottom to lift the loaves out with. But I can't have owned it for much more than 20 years because I know that I bought it in Chamonix, which means while we lived in Geneva 1999-2002.

It is 6 metal loaf pane welded into a heavy wire frame, with ace between the loaf pans, so its very stable, handles as one pan, but bakes as separate pans. It's one of my favourite pans. I don't know how I could replace it. It seems sad that it is wearing out after only 20 some years.

Well, for some reason, I got a real gusto today for peanut butter cookies. Then I realized that we probably had some crunchy natural PB around, because Jerry has stopped eating it. I double checked with him, and he thought it was a great idea.

The first problem was finding a recipe. Although for spreading, I'm a creamy fan (Skippy's), I have always preferred chunky for cookies. The first few recipes not only called for smooth (really?) but insisted that you shouldn't use natural peanut butter. Well, Humpf! So I added natural to my search, and came up with https://lovelylittlekitchen.com/soft-and-chewy-peanut-butter-cookies/

I pretty much followed it. A bit less white sugar, whole spelt flour, all the milk that was in the box, (probably twice what it called for) and I added in a chopped bar of chilli chocolate just to gild the lily. The results are really good.



Except she prefers great big cookies, and I don't.

Ooo! Chili chocolate chunks!

It's the chocolate I keep in the refrigerator for cookies. Not very hot at all, but they make decent chocolate chips, because it's good chocolate.

Well, I started with this recipe: https://wildwildwhisk.com/mascarpone-mixed-berry-cake/

But it wasn't really what I wanted. First, I'm using a bigger pan, so it had to be doubled. Except I only had one package of mascarpone, so the second one had to be Philadelphia. Plus a bit as packages here are 200g. Whole spelt flour and reduced sugar, as always. I used the blender to add candied orange peel to the sugar and mixed in cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla.

I did not intend to mix berries in, but wanted apricots and rhubarb on top. The apricots are in jars from a local grower. I cut up the rhubarb, let it sir with a bit of sugar for a while, then a short time in the microwave. I crumbed 4 stem ginger biscuits and added them, both for flavour and to soak up the juices a bit.

Once the cake was in my heavy pan, I arranged the apricots on one side and spread the rhubarb on the other side. Now we wait to see what comes out.

>89 MarthaJeanne: I haven't tasted it yrt, but it sure looks pretty.



It tastes good, too. I had the rhubarb, and Jerry had the apricot. Very dense, with all the cheese and egg, but moist.

Happy day after St. Patrick's Day.

I had a can of Guinness Zero, and decided that yesterday was the day to taste it. Not really my tipple, but my son used to make a great Guinness cake from Delia Smith's Book of Cakes. I decided to repeat that with the rest of the can. The deal was, If I needed a cake for a bake sale or potluck, I would buy him a 4 pack of Guinness, and he would bake me the cake. He made sure the rest of the Guinness wasn't wasted.

https://travel-gourmet.com/2021/02/07/wholewheat-fruit-guinness-cake/ is that recipe. no chocolate.

Like the blogger, I used butter. I got creative with the fruit. Must buy more raisins etc. A bit more spice than the recipe calls for.

BTW this is a British recipe. the ounces are weight, not volume. And a British pint is 20 fluid ounces, not 16. My one problem with the recipe is that the ingredients calls for 2 eggs, beaten, the directions call for egg yolks. I used whole eggs, and you need that much liquid.

So far, I have only tasted the batter, which is lovely. I'll let you know more after the loooong baking time. Oh, I did not decorate the top. Too lazy.

>91 MarthaJeanne: This is a very good cake.



I like the Guinness much better in cake.

Ooooo! Yes please!

I just put rhubarb cake in the oven. I more of less worked from https://unpeeledjournal.com/easy-rhubarb-cake-recipe/ after having read lots of similar recipes.

Of course I used melter butter, not oil. I reduced the sugar, and used brown. I did use vanilla, but replaced the lemon peel with a quite large hunk of fresh ginger, grated. Ginger is very good with rhubarb. Whole spelt flour, of course. A taste convinced me to add cinnamoh as well. When I got to the rhubarb, I added most of it, along with chopped walnuts and a box of blueberries. The rest of the rhubarb went on top of the cake. Yes, I did sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. I can let you know more in an hour.

This was from the supermarket. mine isn't quite ready to start picking yet. BTW, I used the whole 1/2 kilo package, which was about the right amount, but about a dozen stems. This was skinny rhubarb.

Oh. This should be interesting. I grabbed the wrong bag of flour, and use whole rye flour.

Something is not working right.

The cake is very good, even if I can't show you a picture.

Making Hot Cross Buns in honour of the day. Turns out to not be the easiest project. My 'recipe' is based on Elizabeth David's, as is https://sharingthefoodwelove.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/traditional-english-hot-cr... I did not bother reducing the sugar. (brown) I used whole grain spelt. Yes, I got the right bag this time. For the spice I used Mocca Mix, cinnamon and cardamom.

The difficult bit was the currants (please, not currents). Well, the last time I looked for currants in Vienna, I didn't find them. Plus I always put mixed peel in my hot cross buns. Well of the three stores we tried yesterday, not one had any candied peel. When we asked, we were told, "Oh, yes, we carry that at Christmas." I was able to establish online that the other big supermarket chain does carry it this time of year, so I bought up several packages. Mixing the dough, I set out to find raisins for most of the fruit. Oops, I seem to be out. Guess it's going to be cranberries.

BTW, David does not say to fiddle with paste crosses. She says just to cut them with a knife. I was wondering though, as I seem to have lots of marzipan, whether I might add that on at least some of them.

The other question is whether I just put them on the baking sheet, of if I make a lamb. My biggest lamb mould is really just a large lamb shaped frame which sits on a baking sheet. Kind of cute, actually, but nobody (but you) would see it, and I would have to search the basement for it. And then wash it. If you think I should do that, you'd better get your votes in fast.

I don't think it sold well. I bought it at an Easter market where they tried to sell me 3 for the price of two. No. One is cute, but I would never use more than one at a time, and storing even one requires a good deal of space.

>96 MarthaJeanne: I would usually vote for ease; but now I’m curious. Maybe just take a picture of the mold.

The work, you realize, was in finding my lambs. I found two. I think there should be a third one that was two pieces held together with clips that made a stand up lamb. That was my first one, and I used it for years, and it usually worked, more or less, but I may have lost bits of it and discarded it. The full mould is good for a cake you want to turn out. But the frame is better for filling with hot cross buns, os cinnamon rolls etc. It is smaller than I thought. One is still enough.



BTW, for many tears I mede three batches of hot cross buns every Easter (Besides the lamb cake). One without sugar - This was before Jerry went on insulin. One without egg for Edward, who seems to have grown out of that allergy. And a bigger batch for the rest of us with both egg and sugar.

I mashed marzipan with some amoretto and the heated it in the microwave to spoon into the crosses. I did not glaze the buns either with sugar and milk or with apricot jam. I don't really care for sticky tops to my buns.

They look yummy.

>100 2wonderY: Coming by for some?

It's a good bake. I have since found the raisins. Next time.

For more details see https://www.librarything.com/topic/367057#8852719

Love the way this comes out so easily. Guess I'll have a piece while it's still warm.

ETA Now that is a goood piece of cake. Poor me will have to force the whole thing down all by myself.

Oh wow!! I wish we lived closer!

>103 2wonderY: I'm eating another piece in you honour.

Which seems to have set off some rain. Good, as I had not done ant watering today.

>104 MarthaJeanne: How sweet of you! Thanks!

I'm trying to make half a recipe of https://www.errenskitchen.com/eggplant-spinach-dip/

Do I really have to weigh out half of 283.5g of spinach? Or half of 226,8g of cream cheese? Whoever writes the conversion rules for these recipes should teach the computer about significant digits.

And this in a recipe that doesn't indicate how big the eggplants and garlic cloves are supposed to be.

Anyway, chips and dip in half an hour.



Bah! The dish washer wants rinse aid. How do I do that?
ETA Google and Utube to the rescue.

There is lots of rhubarb out there in the garden. I just found recipes for
rhubarb oatmeal cookies https://www.stephaniesdish.com/rhubarb-cookies/ and
Rhubarb custard bars https://chocolatewithgrace.com/rhubarb-bars/

I can't decide which to try tomorrow. Any opinions? Both at once is not an option. I need to eat up one treat before making the next, especially when I am alone.

I’d vote for the custard bars. I’ve actually never eaten rhubarb anything. As I understand it, at least in Appalachia, you add a lot of sugar and that’s the predominant taste.

But I did buy a rhubarb plant last week and gave it to Rose.

I don't add that much sugar. The predominant taste is sour. Dad used to make us rhubarb custard pies when Mom went away for a few days in rhubarb season.

Notes on the rhubarb bars:
I only used 1 cup of sugar, half of that demerara.

Rhubarb and ginger go together well, so I added some chopped crystallized ginger.

4 cups is a lot of rhubarb. I will have to wait a while before I harvest more.

I think my bed needs a bag of good soil added.

Mmm! That is plenty sweet enough.

It is very moist. Could almost stand mixing sugar and rhubarb the night before and reserving some of the syrup.

Oh, and for those who aren't used to rhubarb; it is quite an effective laxative, so it might be good to limit how much you eat at once.

I thought I'd like some smores this summer. Apparently the graham crackers he found me in NY are gluten-free (ie no graham flour), vegan, and have added cinnamon. I hope he leaves them there. Or else he can eat them. I certainly won't.

Today I am baking bread. The options have gotten quite bad since I was last shopping 10 days ago.

I started with a milk starter today, as I wanted to make some special bread with a richer than usual dough. I prepared mixed rolled grains with boiling water. Half of that went in the combined dough. Then I split the dough ing half. The 'bread' half got the rest of the rolled drains, a bit more water, some olive oil, a small amount of rye flour, and enough more spelt to make a good dough. The other half got an egg, butter, and the right amount of spelt. Once the doughs had all risen, I could form the bread. Then I split the other dough. Half had a bit of honey added. I rolled it out and spread it with a mixture of softened dried mango, lime curd, cardamon and chopped walnuts.

Back in a minute.

Just put them in the oven.


I rolled out the dough, spread the filling, rolled it up, cut it in half, twisted the two sides and made a wreath.

For the other half I had browned a chopped onion in butter, and added lots of chopped sage from the garden, That got partly added to the dough. Then I rolled it out much less, added the rest of the mixture and rolled it up.

Now to see the results.

>113 MarthaJeanne: Apparently, after several stores with various modern takes on 'graham crackers', he found an Amish supermarket that actually sells classic Nabisco Graham Crackers!

He also informs me that he is returning on Monday, not Tuesday as he told me before he left.

The neighbour I bought a lemon cucumber plant for is taking me to the supermarket tomorrow. I'm actually doing fairly well, but bananas, tomatoes, raspberries, blueberries have all reached their limits. If I buy strudel dough I could make another spanakopita before the spinach bolts. I have the feta.

Just eating the sage bread crust. Good! Also took a tiny piece off the wreath. That is good, too.

I’m a terrible baker, but I love fresh warm bread smothered with butter.

Jerry is still a bit jet lagged, so I was up before him, making it a good day for blueberry buttermilk muffins. Oh, and I threw the raspberries in as well, and some spice, and less sugar. They were good, and, as you see, there are still some left for snacking. Right out of the oven they needed to be eaten with a fork, but cooled a bit they are more stable. Note to recipe writer: They taste best still hot, even if very crumbly. Cooling them down before serving is ridiculous.

Note on the pans: I have two of each. This made 18, so I had to use the totally silicon pan. The metal frame ones are much easier to handle. The only disadvantage is that the pan is a bit bigger. They didn't all really fit on one rack. I just stuck the third pan in anyway. The oven door bent the side up, which is why they are a bit lopsided. Still taste good, though. I used these straight out of the cupboard without using butter or paper liners in the pans, and they released very easily. If you have a choice, for muffins I would highly recommend the metal frame, silicon cup version.

Experiment time.

I was trying to make https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oatmeal-raisin-cookies

When I went to look for oatmeal I found a package of apricot hazelnut porridge. It looked good, so I used it, adding 360 g of the porridge and using extra raisin soaking liquid. I dropped the first pan of cookies, but the dough seemed very stiff, so I beat another egg and added to the second half of the dough. Currently I can say that the first batch are very good.

Although very crumbly when hot.

The second batch are less crumbly. Also very good.

I made another banana cake, this time with blueberries and fresh apricots.

Jerry's comment was that it seemed to have more fruit than flour. Well... 125g flour vs 2 overripe bananas, half of a 300g package of blueberries, and 3 apricots, volume about the same as the blueberries. So yes, 3-4 times as much fruit as flour. It does make transporting a piece somewhat difficult; but it tastes good.

Blubarb cookies based on https://www.stephaniesdish.com/rhubarb-cookies/

Good cookies. Very stiff dough, even after adding a good glug of rum. I ended up forming the balls with my fingers rather than with spoons.

I've been battling with myself ever since I finished up my last batch of crackers. WANT CRACKERS! However, in the heat I have been reluctant to turn on the oven during the day, but I've just been to tired to bake in the evening.

Add to that that I got Kamut flour and almond flour at the mall on Monday, and the desire to bake has been quite strong. This morning the outside temp is 'only' 25, although over 30 is predicted. And the a/c got the living room down below 20 overnight. I think I can risk running the oven. These are kamut, almond, oatmeal with milk.

Mmm! Fresh crackers with Spanish tapa cheese triangles for breakfast. Now I'll add a peach and berries with yoghurt.

We bought gooseberries yesterday. This recipe kind of caught my eye.
https://pinkhairedpastrychef.com/honey-gooseberry-cake-recipe/
however, I have just over 200g of gooseberries, not 350 g, and there are several other changes I want to make.

I have made the puree.
100g gooseberries
A large glug of elderflower cordial
A large spoonful of honey

For the cake I want about 2/3 recipe for a 20cm springform pan. That means
80g butter, softened
80g sugar, mixed white, brown, honey. (reduced)
2eggs. My eggs are not large, so this is about right.

40g whole grain spelt flour
40g almond flour (should taste good here)
3/4 tsp baking powder
The puree from above)
I added
A pinch of salt on general principles
A larger pinch of vanilla sugar because the batter seemed to want it.

It's in the oven at 180° C. I expect it to want about 40 min.

Note: Gooseberries have to be topped and tailed.

It's good.

I'm making homemade "pizza" today. As I usually make a fruit bread along with yeast baking, I took off a bit of the starter, and added oatmeal, melted butter, an egg, very little sugar and sour cream. Into the finished dough I folded red currants, blueberries and a cut-up peach. It is now rising in a bundt pan. I need to turn on the oven, and go help Jerry finish off yesterday's cake. Better to only have one going at once.

BTW Today is a lot warmer than predicted. They said some rain with a high of 30°. So far blue sky, and we're up to 35°. I shouldn't really turn the oven on, but we have all this fruit. And I bought the pizza stuff based on the prediction.

I needed to use up the red currants, so I thought this looked interesting.

https://www.apt2bbakingco.com/home/2012/08/fresh-currant-oat-scones.html

It is very rare to find recipes given in ounces. I just figured 30g to the ounce. I had 218g of currants (for 6 oz) once they were stripped from the stems, and just threw them all in. I did brush the tops with cream but didn't sprinkle with oats or sugar. As you probably expect, the flour was whole spelt, the sugar brown.

Should make me a nice breakfast. Jerry left before 8 this morning, and won't be back before 22 tonight.

I made blueberry muffins this morning. One of the recipes I looked at had advice for various problems. If your problem is that the hot muffins are hard to get out of the pan, and crumble and break apart when you do: just cool completely before serving. Now I will certainly eat cold muffins later today, and yes, they hold together better, but I thought the point of home-baked muffins was that you get to eat them hot, yes, crumbly, but so much tastier than after they have cooled down.

I would slice them still in the pan and add a pat of butter. Warm, buttery muffins are the best!

Personally, I go for cream cheese, not butter. But if you cool them completely before serving, you have totally spoiled them. Jerry wonders if too many people only know muffins from bakeries. (He had four while they were hot. He said he had to because he had gotten too much insulin this morning.)

Im planning to make https://www.cucinabyelena.com/easy-italian-pear-cake-torta-alle-pere/#what-makes... The pears we bought on Friday are so soft and juicy, I need to use them.

But I'll use blueberry yoghurt and add blueberries. Yes I will use spices. I will reduce sugar and use brown, and use whole spelt flour. I'm going to make it in a bundt pan, mostly because the springform that's up here is really too small, and the bundt pan is also up here. I have removed various ingredients from the refrigerator, so they will be ready later.

Well, the cake is in the over, but I may regret this. It is now 32° outside, and the ac is not keeping up. I am using the heat settings on the microwave, as it is a much smaller oven.

Does anyone have a brilliant idea for supper using eggplant or Hokkaido squash that doesn't involve a lot of heat? Available meats are precooked duck, frozen ground lamb, frozen British sausage. Hmmm. Forget about those veggies. If Jerry picks up a tub of potato salad on the way home, I have enough other stuff to make a duck potato salad.

Oops! Can't upload picture. But I can assure you that it's a good cake.

Might possibly be even better with whipped dream on it.

We bought fresh plums yesterday, so I'm making https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/gingery-plum-cake

Well, sort of. My brown sugar is not the dark stuff, so besides reducing it, I used a mixture if golden syrup, boiled cider and treacle for the golden syrup. Whole wheat, of course. I think my pan is about the right size. I threw a bunch of blueberries in on top of the plums. And on Friday I had picked up the spices for my version of King Arthur's gingerbread spice, which I used for the spices. My spice grinder is acting up, but I got the job done in the end, and it smells lovely. Getting them ground and mixed was part of why I chose this recipe. This has a fair amount of cinnamon mixed into the ginger, which I think we will prefer to the strong amount of ginger in the recipe.

It's in the oven, so so far I can only claim that the batter tastes good.

ETA The cake is very good, but the plums are rather overwhelmed. Another time I would reduce the sugar more.

Something a bit different today.


Anyway, I opened an (expired) package of puff pastry. I chopped and fried up an onion. I chopped some sage from the garden and mixed it into some grated cheddar cheese. I scattered the cheese over the dough, and then the onions. I rolled it up from a long side, and cut slices about 1 cm thick. Then off into the 220° oven for 15 minutes. Not earth-shattering, but good and very easy.

We've already eaten half of them.

BTW I made a batch of Uncle Loren's gingersnaps a few days ago, adding chopped walnuts. Good. Still several waiting to be eaten.

This is funny. I have a head infection, and the mouth/throat issues make it hard to eat. I found a recipe for maple oatmeal biscuits that looks like I might enjoy it. https://thewoodandspoon.com/maple-oatmeal-biscuits/ I will start by halving the recipe. Then leave out the sugar. For the oatmeal I have some with apricot and nuts mixed in that I will use.

Anyway, you may recall that my husband is diabetic. I was consulting with him, and he said that if I put in the maple syrup he will just raise his insulin a bit. So I was mumbling through the calculation: half of 1/3 cup is 1/6 of 240 ml, makes 40 ml or not quite 3T. He said, "by a male calculation, that's not enough." OK a bit extra liquid will be needed anyway for the wholegrain flour I use. I didn't even mention the cinnamon. That will not get halved.

One advantage of halving the recipe is that they will fit in my cast iron pan for baking. I find that workd really well for biscuits.

You are stellar! Cooking while you feel bad.

Well, whoops, I dumped too much oatmeal in, so I added extra butter, and liquid (ie maple) The dough tastes great, although it may be sweeter than the original.

I think I have orange cookies in the oven. https://preppykitchen.com/orange-cookies/

First problem: First I need to find a recipe. Hmm. I'm sure I plugged my iPad in last night, but this morning it is not plugged in, and running out of charge. So I plugged it in and left it on the bed to charge when I came downstairs. After a few hours I went up to get it. And there it is, on the bed, not plugged in and the charge still too low. Oh, dear.

OK charged up - at least a bit - and I found a good looking recipe.

Second problem: I need grated orange peel. The only oranges at home are not useable. I can pick one off my bitter orange tree, but not two. Let's see if the candied peel from last winter is still edible. It is! I bet I can chop some up in the sugar with the stick blender. No. The mixer does not like that. (Yes, I know it is over its use by date.) Maybe the new spice grinder? Hmm. First time using it. Hoe do I turn it on? Turns out it works better plugged in. Also turns out it works differently than I expected, and I make a bit of a mess emptying it. But it pretty much worked. That is done.

Next problem: Switch the blender for the beaters. They don't want to work either. OK, I insisted on buying a spare months ago. I even know where it is. Getting the box open anf the new mixer out with the whole cord proved difficult, but, it worked. Matches the old one so the old beaters with butter and sugar on them can just be plugged into the new motor block, and on I go.

I only used 100g sugar, and mixed in some dried fruit and nuts. The dough seems a bit dry, Should I open the next bottle of orange juice? Nah! let's put in a glug of Grand Marnier. Which would ne a good idea if it hadn't been a long time since I last used it. But even this I conquered! I finally got the cork unstuck.

Now lay out the baking sheets with baking paper. ... Well, first go down in the basement for a fresh box of the paper. That gets us down to two boxes, maybe pick up more when we go shopping.

Dropping the cookies and baking them was actually easy.

They are good.

Sounds like gremlins in your house.

They had cranberries at the supermarket recently.

I found this recipe https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/maple-cranberry-butter-recipe/

First of all, my package of cranberries is 200 g (about 7 ounces), I am not about to use a whole cup of maple syrup at a time. It's easier to find now, but it is still a rare treat for me. And why would I want 4 cups of cranberry maple butter anyway?

So I pouter my cranberries into a saucepan, added about 1/3 maple syrup by weight, and boiled it up.

She indicates that she uses a super-duper high speed machine to get a velvety smooth texture. I have a stick blender, and it leaves some texture in the mix. Then I realized that cranberry cries for orange. So I picked two of my mini oranges, cut them up removing any seeds, added them to the batch and blended again.

This made oner a cup of lovely spread. Another time maybe three of the oranges added before cooking, rather than after.

I might just eat some on one of my orange cookies. No. I still have a Gü cheesecake in the refridgerator. This would be a very good topping.

See https://www.librarything.com/topic/367062#8992249

I also added a rolled out slab of marzipan. Gilding the lilyl

I just put an apple walnut bungt cake in the oven based on https://www.garlicandzest.com/super-moist-apple-walnut-cake/#recipe. My biggest problem was trying to remember that my bundt cake pan is half the size of hers. I think I may have put more spice in than I should have. (No glaze.)

I have made pumpkin soup, that just needs cream added and heating up. I had planned to served it with biscuits, but we have various breads, and after I put the cake in the oven my blood pressure was at 88/57, so I might not make the biscuits.

Yes. Please sit down!

The soup was good, and there is a portion in the freezer.

Since we didn't have a carb with the soup, we had to each eat multiple pieces of cake. Even Jerry thought there was enough cinnamon. Every now and again a bit of apple had caramelised on the pan. Good! If you want some, you'd better hurry. We ate over hualf of it already.

BTW Jerry served me cola and orange juice diluted enough that I could drink it, and that helped a lot.

And just think how healthy this was for us! Besides the whole spelt flour and the apples, there were nuts. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/nov/09/nuts-superfood-health-benefits-easy...

Eat lots of nuts. Actually, I made the cake because I recently bought apples and walnuts at different places where I source locally grown produce. The nuts particularly were beginning to burn a hole in the bag. If they are this healthy I'll just have to bake with them again soon. Don't you think?

I'll be making Delia's mincemeat slices this afternoon. To go with them I recommend heating up apple juice with a chai teabag for the spices. I find I need at least as much water as apple juice in the pan. I have three right now. One is based on black tea. One (Christmas blend) has both cocoa nubs and black tea, and the third is with Rooibos for when I want to avoid caffeine. Today I'm using the Christmas one. Note: the spices are much more apparent on the second day.

When we visited Lincoln several years ago, I went into a souvenir store to buy both Lincolnshire plum bread and a tea towel with the recipe. We had met up with a local that Jerry had met online, and he followed me in to inspect my purchases before I paid for them. He told me that too often in these decadent times, plum bread is sold that has no plums in it. The items I had picked up passed inspection. Not sure today's version would. I had prunes at home, but not enough, so I filled up the weight with dried cranberries. Whether it's authentic or not, it tastes good.

This is one of those traditional local loaves. Rich, sweet, yeasted, spiced and full of fruit. In this case mostly prunes, and the spices are allspice and cinnamon.

Just checked on line. Most don't have plums. Some are actually vegan. Bah, humbug! Mine includes milk, eggs, and butter. And, of course as many prunes as I had in the house.

>151 MarthaJeanne: how does one make plum cake without plums? That sounds quite like false advertising.

>153 PatrickMurtha: You would do well to read the topics before you post to them to ensure that what you say is related to the topic. This isn't. You are certainly welcome to post about your own baking/cooking, but I suspect that you are not planning on offering your dogs and cats as refreshments.

If you dump your chopped chocolate on top of your still warm plumped up fruit when making cookies you end up with chocolate cookies with fruit bits instead of cookies with fruit and chocolate bits. Not very different actually, but it was not my intention. Let's see if I can make the image thing work.

Nope. Can't upload to my gallery either.

Decided I do not like the chocolate cookies.

Think I've got it.

ETA Jerry says, "All the more for me!" They certainly aren't bad. I just don't want chocolate cookies.

>156 MarthaJeanne: Fortunate Jerry!

>156 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne: Yum yum yum. I needed those.

I made bluebarry oatmeal muffins for bfeakfast this morning. They came out all right even though I set the oven to 180° instead of 177° like the recipe said. There are still 6 left for later.

Wow!

I made a ham feta and spinach strudel last night. Easy. Harvest ad cook the spinach with onion. Crumble feta in and check seasoning. (This was the end of my fall sowing.) Unwrap the purchased puff pastry. Unroll it onto baking paper. Cover the central area with sliced ham. I then slathered a good helping of Orange dill mustard. pile the spinach filling down the centre and fold in the sides, front an back. Cut into but not through the strudel to release steam. Put in a hot oven (220°C) for 20 minutes. I frequently do variations on this.

What was different last night was the amount of smoke that poured out of the oven every time I opened it. Oh, dear. I really ought to clean it. So this afternoon when Jerry indicated that he would do oven veggies with tonight's duck, I suggested that he might want to wipe down the roof of the oven before heating it up. Instead, he searched out the oven manual, and we are now "enjoying" the aromas of the oven on its cleaning cycle. And I didn't have to do anything.

I just hope it has finished before he wants to put dinner in. His problem.

Is it the oven smells? Is it having the oven unusable? Whivhever, I had to tell myself that neither cookies nor crackers were feasable. However, there is a lot of rhubarb in the garden, and my microwave has a hot air setting. So I cut rhubarb. I put it in my cake pan with some sugar and some blueberries, and set the microwavw to heat the oven - with the fruit in there.

Then I made the batter for the easy French yoghurt cake. Only one container of (brown) sugar. Melted butter insread of oil. I added lemon rind and juice and a generous amount of cardamom. Flour was my usual whole spelt. Spread that over the hot fruit and back in the oven. The batter tastes really good. No cinnamon today because Jerry is not fond of rhubarb, and doesn't need its effects. I am and I do.

>161 MarthaJeanne: Hmmm. Good, but the rhubarb is rather overwhemed. Use more next time.

Dear friends,
I have just read that there is a new dessert that everyone is going for called 'dot cakes'. If you were hoping that I would offer you my version of this, you will just have to be disappointed. These apparently consist of a layer of fluufy cake mix cake wirh a layer of buttercream, and then a solid layer of sprinkles.

To begin with, I have never seen the attraction of sprinles, even just sprinkled on a bit.

The one positive note is that the layer of frosting is supposed to be thin. Personally, I find even a thin layer of sugary frosting more than I want to deal with. It can, however, usually be peeled off and left on the plate.

Now a good substantial cake layer is nice, preferably whole grain, and with lots of fruit baked in and nicely spiced is always a pleasure. However when I read 'fluffy' and 'cake mix', I lose all interest.

So I fear dot cakes are not going to bke part of my repetoir.

Local fruit is again available. I made a French yoghurt cake. This time with one measure of almond flour (and two of whole wheat). I added spices and a glug of Amaretto. The pan was buttered and sprinkled with almond flour before I put in halved apricots and whole 'white' cherries. They are actually yellow-pink. Covered with the batter, it is now baking.

I'm making https://anitalianinmykitchen.com/blondies/.

Flour is 1/3 almond flour 2/3 whole wheat. I also used Amoretto instead of vanilla. I'm out of baking powder, so I used a bit of baking soda and added the juice of half a lemon.

I'm not in favour of pitting cherries. I used a chopped bar of chili chockolate for the chips. High time these cherries got used up. Half are white cherries. I'll tell you soon how it turns out.

A year or two ago I was rather unhappy with my bay tree. It did not look good at all, so when I saw a nice looking one on sale, I bought it. At the same time that I potted it, I also pruned the old one and gave it a bunch of fertilizer. The result is that I now have two good looking bay trees.

I found a recipe for bay syrup. Very easy. Put 1 cup ofsugar and one cup of water in a small pan with 5 or 6 bay leaves. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes. The recipe kept repeating that bay can vary a lot, so I decided to experiment. I made two batches. Each had 6 leaves and was simmered for 6 minutes. The one from the old tree was quite good. The one from the new tree was WOW!

Suppossed to keep this in thr fridge. The old tree jar has a white lid. The new tree jar has a black lid. I'm mixing the leftovers into one measuring cup to be used up first. Partly in drinks, but also in stewed fruit or as a glaze.

Right now I am enjoying a glass of bay lemonade.