Green tomato pear crisp.

My grandmother went to play cards at a friend's home and was served a wonderful fruit crisp. When she inquired for the recipe she found it was a green tomato crisp! I had never heard of such a thing and neither had she. I altered the recipe slightly, as I'm allergic to some of the original ingredients, but it still came out amazing! I highly recommend this for using those frost-bitten green tomatoes we all have from the onset of fall!

Green Tomato Pear Crisp:

(recipe to follow)

Happy Birthday Uncle Matt~~

Albie and I wanted to make a FUN cake for our very fun uncle, Matt! Matt just moved into town and decided to have a birthday. He's a funny, childlike, silly guy who needed a cake that reflected that. We decided to make a monster cake. Albin helped a lot by putting in teeth and eyes and gummy worm hair.

We also managed to make a few cupcakes for pre-birthday consumption.

CAKES!

It's been months since I posted, but I have been cooking! Here are some cakes I've made recently!


My mom turned 50! She's a Chocolate fan, so here is one of the richest chocolate cakes ever. We served it with a choc. mousse.

Uncle and Aunt Williams celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary. The cake was so pretty, but was stored in the cellar where it was very damp, so the colors from the frosting bled a bit. Sad!
Albie turned 3! We had two birthday parties, one w/ cupcakes and another with cakes.

We also had a going away party for a girl from work. She is an amazing paerson, so I wanted to make her a great cake in her fav. colors!

No Bake Cookies

Chocolate No Bake Cookies are always a big hit... especially when you want something quick that won't heat up your house. My mother started making these after her younger brother was in college and used to eat them straight out of cooking pot. It became a great wheat-fee treat in my childhood home of no wheat or dairy. I used milk and butter in my recipe, but one can use water and vegi marg. just as easily to get dairy free!

Chocolate No Bake Cookies
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 cups instant

Directions:
Lay out wax paper BEFORE you make the cookies. Combine the sugar, cocoa, milk and butter in a saucepan. Bring to a heavy boil for exactly one minute. Remove from heat. Add the vanilla, peanut butter and oatmeal; stir well to mix up all the ingredients and make spoon sized amounts onto foil or wax paper. Let cool then serve.

Shortbread Cookies

Cookies again. I found a very simple short bread recipe that tastes great! Albin helped me mold the cookies into rough "natural looking" circles. It was all very cookie boutique of me, but I had to give it a go. They came out tasting great and we dipped our final product in chocolate. YUM!

Shortbread Cookies:

3/4 c butter, softened

1/4 c sugar

1t vanilla

2c flour

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add flour. Mix well. Roll dough and cut out with cookie cutters or mould into forms and turn out onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

I'm Back!

I took a month off due to some deep anti-food issues I was having. I love food! Sadly, for a short time food was not loving me. We had a talk... we worked things out. We've reached a compromise. So, I'm BACK!

To kick off this May I thought I would talk about the amazing thing that is the bread pudding made at a restaurant here in Boise called the 8th Street Grill. My husband and I ran a very difficult mountain race and as a surprise congrats my wonderful Aunt and Uncle decided to treat us to a sweet experience. They wanted to take us out for the bread pudding but our schedules never permitted, so it was brought to us. It was better in home anyhow, so that we could loudly ooooo and awwwe!

For eight dollars they make a huge brick of bread filled with everything you could think to put in bread.... chocolate, raisins, banana, nuts and all drizzled over with a rich caramel hard sauce. Yum! If ever in Boise I suggest this. This dessert is seasonal so it is on it's way out. Hopefully it will be back next fall!

Lemons!

Have you ever seen a lemon flower? When rambling down the cliffs of an Italian village I once had a lemon fall from the rocks outcropping above and roll to rest at my feet. It was sweet and beautiful and the smell was amazing. It grew from a scraggly tree forcing it's sparse foliage out from the rock. I believe that the lemon tree may have endured the harsh environment all of it's little life for the joy of being washed by the Mediterranean mist . And surely it's fruit spoke of that joy.

So today let's celebrate the sunny sweetness that is the lemon. As I sit surrounded by a snowy January I can think of nothing better than to make up a quart of lemonade and spike it with some lemoncella. Maybe even crank up the heat and chance the bill being high.

Lemons and the recipes that they grace:

Lemon Bars ( the perfect mid-winter snack. A lemon bar brings with it a memory of the bright heat of summer fun, but carries the weight and texture of a December snowstorm.)

2 sticks (8 ounces) butter
2 cups flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
4 beaten eggs
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon peel
sifted confectioners' sugar
Heat oven to 325°. Blend butter, 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar. Pat into ungreased 13x9x2-inch pan. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. For filling, blend together eggs, sugar, 4 tablespoons flour, lemon juice, and lemon peel.
Pour over first layer. Return to oven and bake at 325° for 20 minutes. Loosen around edges, cut into bars and sift confectioners' sugar over the top while warm.



Lemonade (my own concoction goes something like this... it's not perfect but I wing it every time)

Equal parts
Water
Raw Sugar
Freshly squeezed lemon juice (I retain the lemons to toss into the pitcher for extra lemon-goodness)

Bring to a simmer in a saucepan the water and raw sugar. Simmer until sugar is dissolved completely. Raw sugar will leave the syrup lightly off-color, a brown tint. This is just the caramelly/ molassesy goodness of using a raw sugar! Pour the simple syrup into a jar and refrigerate until cool. Pour chilled syrup and lemon juice into a large pitcher and add chilled water to taste. I usually add about equal the amount of water as the concoction... doubling the amount of liquid in the pitcher. Throw in your squished lemons and serve her up on ice! Yum. The flavor grows as it sits.

Christy has a birthday.

My friend at work decided to get a year older and so I decided to bake. We all cope in different ways. Christy getting a year "wiser" reminded me that my birthday is just two weeks away and, while looking forward to celebrating, it's never easy to admit I'm growing up.

For Christy's B-day I asked her what her fav. cake was. She is an honest, clean-living yellow cake with chocolate frosting kind of girl. That I could handle! I had a hard time deciding how to make a yellow cake and still add glamour. Unlike Christy I am not satisfied with the purity of the yellow cake. So I made a yellow pound cake with lots of sour cream and density and then added cream cheese and dark choc. ganache filling to her simple eden. I can't leave it alone..... have to eat the apple...

It was fun and it came out pretty. Pretty is the hard part for me so I'm glad I did it. She seemed happy and I was touched that she liked it so well.

Albie, in true 2 year old form, had a very hard time with the idea that all of the cake was walking out the door to go to mommy's work. So Albie got a little "scraps" cake of his own with left-over batter and cream cheese filling on top. He requested sprinkles and lo-and-behold! The cupboard provided!