December 22, 2011: New Mexican Brunch Cake Recipe

Are you looking for something to serve the troops while they eagerly wait for Christmas dinner to be done? This brunch cake just might fit the bill. It’s very filling (okay, not so nutritious, but calorie counting can wait until after the New Year) and makes a very elegant presentation. I like the fact that it uses piñon nuts, which can be found throughout New Mexico and Arizona in the fall. And if you're looking for a unique dish, rest assured that this is a recipe you aren't likely to find anywhere else.

Tip: Look for piñon nuts in a specialty store or next to the other nuts in a grocery store. You may have to order them online.

New Mexican Brunch Cake

2 cups flour

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

¼ t. salt

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 t. vanilla

1 cup sour cream

½ cup piñon nuts, roasted

½ cup sugar

1 t. cinnamon

1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup white chocolate (chips or bar)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together dry ingredients. Cream together butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs, one at a time, beating with an electric mixer after each addition. Blend in vanilla. Alternately add dry ingredients and sour cream, beating well.

Spread half o batter in greased 9-inch Bundt pan. Combine nuts, ½ cup sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Sprinkle mixture over batter. Carefully spread remaining batter on top.

Bake for 45 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Remove from pan, cool on rack. Melt chocolate and white chocolate separately in the microwave. Drizzle each from the tip of a spoon to decorate top of cake.

Serves 10

November 5, 2011: Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball Recipe

My lovely DDIL is a creature of habit. Once she tastes a food she loves, she’ll ask you to make it over and over again. Such is the case with this dessert cheese ball that her mother, Lori, makes. It’s Tracy’s favorite and she asks her mom to make it for every party (what does she ask me to make for parties? Tortilla rollups).

Honestly, I’m glad she does because I love it, too! Here’s the recipe, which would make a nice pre-dinner sweet on Thanksgiving Day.

Lori made this cheese ball not in the shape of a ball - but it still tasted just as good!

Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup (4 T.) butter, softened

1/4 t. Vanilla

3/4 cup Powdered sugar

2 T. Brown sugar

3/4 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup finely chopped pecans, optional (Tracy doesn’t like them so we eat our cheese ball without)

1 package honey graham cracker sticks

Beat together cream cheese, butter and vanilla until fluffy. Gradually add sugars until combined. Stir in chips and nuts. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours. Roll into a ball. To serve, place on a serving platter and surround with honey graham sticks for dipping.

Tip: For a festive presentation, add food coloring and shape the cheese into an appropriate holiday shape, such as an orange pumpkin for Halloween or Thanksgiving.

November 3, 2011: M&M Crunch Bars Recipe

This is an easy recipe I made for a dessert at my son’s Halloween party. It was a big hit – there wasn’t a crumb leftover! Rather than making the traditional Rice Krispies bars you might be used to, try this recipe for a chocolate and peanut butter infusion.

M&M Crunch Bars

3 T. butter

3 T. creamy peanut butter

30 large marshmallows (or one 7-ounce jar marshmallow crème)

6 cups Cap’n Crunch cereal

1 cup M&Ms

In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Add the peanut butter and marshmallows and cook, stirring constantly, until marshmallows melt. Stir in cereal and M&Ms. With greased fingers, spread into a greased 13x9” pan. Cool; cut into squares.

Tip: If you want these bars to look extra festive, sort the M&Ms into colors; for instance you can use just orange and brown for Halloween, or green, orange, and brown for Thanksgiving, red and white for Valentine’s Day, etc.

October 23, 2011: Mini Vanilla Cheesecakes Recipe

The other dessert recipe I made for our women’s tea yesterday were these little mini cheesecakes. I started out with a package of Vanilla Latte seasoning I’d bought at The Gingerbread Cottage in Pinetop on sale and created this recipe from there. 

Note: Normally I don’t share recipes that require some odd ingredient but I included this one because you can substitute ½ cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla for the seasoning mix, if desired.

Mini Vanilla Cheesecakes

12 ounces cream cheese (1 ½ boxes), softened

2 eggs

1 package Old World Spices and Seasonings Company Vanilla Latte seasoning packet

32 vanilla wafers

Muffin cup liners

Heath bar toffee crunch bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using an electric or stand mixer, whip together cream cheese, eggs, and seasoning packet.

Line 2 muffin tins with 16 liners. Place 2 vanilla wafers in the bottom of each (use one whole and break the other into halves). Pour cream cheese mixture into each cup, filling almost to the top.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until cream cheese mixture is set.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with toffee bits. Note: If you can’t find a package of Heath bar toffee bits, simple crush one candy bar into tiny pieces.

Makes 16 mini cheesecakes

October 12, 2011: French Apple Pie Recipe

What’s National Apple Month without a recipe for that favorite American staple, apple pie? Although my husband isn’t big on desserts or sweets of any kind, he absolutely adores apple pie. This is one time he didn’t mind me cooking for my blog – he couldn’t wait until I got to apple pie!

Apple pie is really one of the simplest desserts you can make. There are very few ways you can go wrong, other than under-baking or perhaps not using enough flour so that the filling is too runny. If you don't care for the streusel topping in this recipe, simply substitute with a top crust; brush it with a bit of milk and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

I did invest in an apple peeler/corer machine a few years ago and it certainly makes apple pie preparation much, much easier. If you plan on baking a lot with apples, I highly recommend these simple devices. In addition, baking weights and pie crust protector rings are very handy gadgets for the pie baker.

French Apple Pie

Topping:

4 ounces (1/2 stick) butter

½ cup flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

½ t. cinnamon

Filling:

3 cups peeled, sliced baking apples, such as Granny Smith (about 4-5 medium)

2/3 cup sugar

¼ cup flour

½ t. cinnamon

½ t. nutmeg

2 T. butter

Pastry for one 9” pie crust (find my pie crust recipe here)

Combine all topping ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly.

For filling, mix together sugar, flour, cinnamon and butter in a large bowl. Add apple slices and toss to combine. Place in pie shell (if you want it to look professional, carefully place overlapping slices in concentric circles). Cut butter into small pieces and distribute evenly over top of apples. Sprinkle topping over pie filling.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 50 minutes, or until apples are tender (check with tip of a knife in center of pie).

Tip: Your apple pie filling may overflow; place a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil on the bottom rack of your oven before baking to catch drips.

October 11, 2011: Streusel Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Are you starting to think about your Thanksgiving dinner menu yet? It might be early for some of you, but I start planning weeks in advance for my favorite holiday of the year! Of course it’s my favorite because I enjoy cooking and Thanksgiving is a great excuse to spend two solid days in the kitchen preparing yummy food my family loves eating.

Since I had lots of pumpkin after canning three large ones at the beginning of this year, I decided to try a new recipe with some of my pureed pumpkin stash. This one came out quite nice, but did take a long time to bake. Will this be the pumpkin pie that makes it onto my Thanksgiving table this year? Hmm…I’ve got a few more recipes to try out before making the final decision.

Streusel Pumpkin Pie - I used white sugar in the streusel topping because I ran out of brown; that's why the topping is very light colored here.

Streusel Pumpkin Pie

One pie crust (find my pie crust recipe here).

Filling:

¾ cup packed brown sugar

½ t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1 t. ginger

¼ t. allspice

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1 t. grated orange rind

2 cups pureed pumpkin (or one small can pumpkin)

1 can evaporated milk

Note: You can also use 2 t. pumpkin pie spice in place of the other spices listed.

Blind bake the pie crust in a 9” pie pan as directed in my pie crust recipe.

Combine all filling ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk well. Pour into prepared pie shell. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking 30 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with topping:

Topping:

4 ounces (1/2 stick) butter

½ cup flour

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

½ t. cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly. After sprinkling topping on pie, return to oven and bake another 15 – 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in center of pie comes out clean. Note: The recipe called for only 15 final minutes of baking but it took a full 30 minutes for my pie to be fully cooked.

October 10, 2011: Pie Crust Recipe

Over the weekend I made a couple of different pies and of course I made the pie crusts for them from scratch. I’ve used several different recipes for crusts but found this one to be the best for support heavy fillings. It’s a bit denser than you might expect but it is easy to roll out and doesn’t tend to break apart so it’s a good recipe for the beginner pie maker.

Pie Crust

3 cups flour

1 t. salt

8 ounces butter flavored Crisco (half stick)

1 egg

1 T. sugar

1 t. vodka

Cold water

Combine flour and salt. Add shortening and cut into flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives, uncles mixture resembles coarse meal. The smaller the particles of shortening, the more tender your crust.

Combine egg, sugar, vinegar and enough cold water to make one cup of liquid. Pour over flour mixture. Mix with a fork just until combined. You may have to add more water to get the mixture to hold together; it will still be somewhat crumbly, however.

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface. Turn a pie plate upside down over dough and trim edges to one inch larger than the rim of the pie plate. Fold dough in half and gently ease it into the pie plate. Use your fingers to crimp the edges.

Tip: If your recipe calls for blind baking, place a piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the crust. Add baking weights or dried beans and bake at 425 degrees for about 10 – 15 minutes. The parchment paper makes it easy to remove the weights when you take the crust out of the oven.

Makes enough for two 9” pie crusts.

October 4, 2011: Apple Bars Recipe

As I mentioned, October is National Apple Month and right now there are lots of varieties available at the grocery store. I’m doing my best to focus on the all the types of food that October is known for (cookies, pasta, desserts, bologna – in addition to apples) so let’s start with a simple recipe sure to please everyone in your family. These bars are a great after school snack or casual get-together fare.

Make sure you use a sweet apple for this recipe - I used gala apples. Since there's no sugar directly on the apple slices, a Granny Smith or other type of tart apple wouldn't work well.

Apple Bars

½ cup butter, softened (or butter flavored Crisco)

½ cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 t. vanilla

1 ½ cups granola cereal (any variety - your choice)

1 cup flour

½ t. baking powder

¼ t. salt

¾ t. pumpkin pie spice (or equal amounts cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger)

1 large or 2 small apples, peeled, cored and sliced thinly (about 1 ½ cups)

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat well. Mix together dry ingredients and add to butter mixture. Blend just until mixture is crumbly. Reserve one cup.

Press remaining dough into bottom of greased 8 x 8” square pan with your fingers. Top with apple slices. Drop remaining dough by teaspoonfuls evenly across top of the apple slices.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Makes 9 – 12 bars 

Note: it’s easy to double the recipe to feed more people; just use a 13 x 9” pan.