Alternative Ginger Persons
These are absolutely not gingerbread. They’re also not necessarily persons. They can be animals, vegetables or minerals, and a bad batch might make quite a good game of this.*
They are also what I would have made yesterday, if I’d either had the time or could afford the calories. Or both, of course, but to hope for such a concatenation would be greedy. The original recipe came out of a newspaper when I was a teenager, but I’ve copied it over at least twice since then, and even so the page is rather brown and spotty. It is however very easy to find in the sweet-baking notebook because there is a slimmish plastic bag slipped in next to it, containing the surviving highlights of forty years of ginger cookie templates. I’ve done horses, dogs, cats, birds, reindeer, hedgehogs, sailboats, convertibles (classics only), wedding cakes (sic), books, houses, ball gowns, washing machines . . . okay, sometimes my friends and I have celebrated some rather odd things. I’ve also done roses, but the stems are the very devil. You’re better off doing a bouquet, which you will have to sort with lines of frosting, but you still have to do a cut out thing with leaves and at the end you want to lacquer it and submit it to the Tate Modern, not have someone eat it in ten seconds, however many times they say ‘ooooh delicious.’** Stems, which is to say tails, is my excuse for never having essayed a sighthound of any variety. And all those long skinny legs. And the ears. Ugh. But now there’s only one dog birthday a year instead of three I may have to try it, some 17 August.
They taste delectable, they make excellent funny shapes***, people are usually thrilled with them† . . . and the dough is a sod to work with. But I like them so much I keep making them. Although not very often. When there’s something really important to celebrate.
1 c butter
1 ½ c white sugar
1 egg
Grated rind one orange
½ tsp orange essence
2 T molasses
3 c sifted all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger††
½ tsp cloves
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, beat fluffy. Add orange rind, essence, and molasses, and beat till fluffy again. Mix flour and spices, stir in thoroughly.
Chill dough at least two hours, four is better. If you can remember, make the dough the night before.††† Then slice bits off and roll them to about 1/8th inch–certainly less than a quarter inch. I roll it out on the cookie sheet (therefore you don’t want one with tall sides) to save wear and tear, and then plonk my patterns down, cut around them, and peel off the scraps. This dough is, as you will have noticed, very buttery, and your cookie sheet doesn’t need greasing, although I usually use parchment paper so later on in the process the new cookies aren’t picking up a thin veneer of old crumbs–it also means you can leave the cookies in situ on the paper till they cool enough to solidify and are safe to move, but can keep the cookie sheet in action. 10-12 minutes 350°–or possibly 8-15, depending on your oven and how crisp you like them. You don’t want them soft, or they’ll break (especially if you’ve done something foolhardy with a pattern), but I personally feel you don’t want them to brown either.
There’s also the question of adding more flour to make the dough easier to work. I don’t find that the second batch, made out of the first batch’s scraps, are noticeably tougher for having been smushed together and rolled out again, although I tend to save the third go out from any dramatic presentation, in case they’ve begun to feel a little tired and emotional by then. I also don’t think a little flour on your hands and your rolling pin ever dimmed any cookie’s brilliance, but if you find yourself having to coat everything with flour you might be better off to put the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator again to recongeal. It does get sticky as it warms up.
And you really should decorate these. My books, ball gowns and washing machines certainly would have been a lot harder to identify without a few piped icing pages, frills and control panels. I use a slightly thinned down basic vanilla buttercream frosting, and I try to use it fairly liberally because the frosting goes a treat with these cookies. Raisins are traditional, but I feel they’re superfluous in this case. Oh, and if you break any legs, stems or tails, you can sometimes glue them as it were gingerly back together with frosting. But treat any such wounded veterans tenderly.
* * *
* Is it a spider? Is it a chandelier? Is it the kid next door, who started his own punk/goth rock group recently?
** And reindeer antlers made me wish I’d stuck to Christmas trees.
*** This may not be immediately obvious to anyone who hasn’t tortured herself with cut-out cookies, but not every rolled cookie dough takes fancy designs well.
† People had better be thrilled with them
†† Hmmph. They should be Alternative Cinnamon Persons
††† But don’t put it in the coldest part of your fridge, or you will not have rigorous and exhaustively chilled dough, you will have a glacier.
In honour
. . . of a reissue of SUNSHINE we should certainly have a disgraceful recipe or twelve. So, here’s one.
The obvious answer to everything is chocolate so this is something that isn’t chocolate. It is, however, one of the recipes that haunts my dreams even when it’s getting on for two decades of dairy-free* since I last made it**. (I used to have a lot of cheesecake recipes. Sigh.) Note that while it calls for cranberry sauce, proper Seville orange marmalade also works a treat. But you do need something with a little bite and a little texture–not applesauce, for example, although apple chutney using a good crunchy sour cooking apple like Bramleys would probably perform handsomely.***
Hatbox Pie
So called because if you use a hatbox, there may be enough room. The original recipe tells you to make it in a 9″ pie plate. They are out of their tiny minds. Try a 9- or 10″ springform pan.
1 c all-purpose flour
1 c jumbo oats (ie large flakes uncooked oatmeal: the stuff goes by a lot of different names)
2/3 c dark brown sugar
½ tsp baking powder
½ c soft slightly salted butter
Mix together till crumbly. Reserve 1 cup, press the rest on bottom and sides of springform pan. Spread a generous 1 c cranberry sauce over crust; sprinkle the 1 cup crumbs over sauce and pat gently. 350° 20-25 minutes. Cool thoroughly.
½ c confectioner’s/icing sugar
2 T milk
1 ½ tsp GENUINE vanilla EXTRACT, no ersatz flavouring
3 oz soft cream cheese
2c sweetened whipped cream (so you use about 1 T sugar per cup when you beat it)
Blend all but whipped cream with electric mixer; fold cream in gently last. Spoon carefully over crust. Store in refrigerator. Have lots of friends over when you make it, because the crust will go soggy after a few days.
* * *
* Except when my idiot husband buys cheese and I idiotically eat it, which happens at least twice a decade, plus an ice-cream blow-out about once a year. I generally try to hold the latter on a night that Peter is playing bridge. When I say blow-out I mean blow-out and Peter gets a look on his face similar, I imagine, to the expression of a man who, looking out the window at the full moon, happens to glance back indoors again in time to see his wife dropping to all fours and growing fur. It’s only once a year! Not once a month!
** There are quite a few of these I admit. I used to lead a depraved life. But they should be good for some years’ worth of occasional blog entries anyway.
*** And there are some very good commercial Seville orange marmalades out there but if you’re going to use cranberry sauce, make your own. This is the recipe I use:
Cranberry-orange sauce
2 T cornstarch/corn flour
½ c water
½ c sugar
¾ c fresh orange juice–oranges never come in ¾ c size.^ So you can either eat the rest of the second one, or fill up the first with water to make ¾ c. If you do the latter however you must use the orange oil/essence. So if you haven’t got it, you’re going to have to steel yourself and open another orange. You can also experiment with using un- or less-diluted oj concentrate, but beware, if you use too much of it your sauce will be very liable to stick and burn.
The original recipe calls for 2T orange rind. When I’m making Hatbox Pie with it, I use more.
¼ tsp orange oil/essence NOT ‘flavouring’
2 c fresh or frozen cranberries. If frozen, use them frozen: don’t defrost first.
Combine cornstarch and ¼ c water in a pot big enough to hold everything, stir smooth. Then add sugar, orange juice^^, the rest of the water. Bring to boil, cook till thickened, stir in rind, oil, and cranberries. Cook just until cranberry skins pop. Cool.
I make this every year for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. It’s good hot or cold. It’s also good at the bottom of a hatbox with whipped cream piled on top.
* * *
^ It’s a Communist plot. Hey, remember the Communists? In today’s world Senator Joseph McCarthy almost looks like a nice guy.+
+ Did you know the first time he ran for office he ran as a Democrat? (I’ve just been reading up on him on Wiki, because I can never remember whether it’s the senator or the baseball player who is Joe, not Joseph.) And lost. That was just before he joined the army so he would have a war record he could lie about. I did say almost a nice guy.
^^ As I’m proofing this I discover I typed ‘justice’. Orange justice. I like it. Especially after Joseph McCarthy.
Celebratory Food
Anyone who just conceivably might be feeling a trifle dry and sardonic about my poor neglected web site . . . we’re working on it. Blogmom–Sitemom?–only got the CHALICE cover art jpeg today because I only got it today so you see Blog/sitemom has been faster than a speeding dangerous laser ray getting the thumbnail changed here. And the site . . . well there have been various obstacles, not least trying to find a site design that is plain in the right way.* This too as of today has been accomplished. So keep watching this space.
Meanwhile, I think what we need is some Celebratory Food.
Vikkik has sent us:
White Choc and Apricot Brownies
2oz white choc (1)
2 eggs
3oz flour
2&1/2oz butter/margarine
8oz sugar
1/2 level tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
4oz dried apricots (chopped)
Heat oven to 350F/Gas Mark 4/ 180C.
Grease and flour an 8inch square cake tin
Melt choc and butter together
Whisk eggs and sugar together until light
Add the choc mixture
Sift in flour, baking powder and salt (2)and stir in
Add the apricots
Pour into cake tin and bake for around 30 mins (3)
(1) This is one case where I’d advise against using Green and Blacks - The only time I’ve ever had a disaster with this recipe (and this is my standard brownie recipe with white choc substituted for dark and apricots substituted for raisins) was earlier this year when I used C&B white choc, and it came out as a complete flat failure which I had to throw away…
(2) or just throw in without sifting, this works too ;-)
(3) my oven is fan assisted and they generally cook in about 20 mins
I do use Green and Blacks when I want white chocolate but I think white chocolate is tricky stuff anyway and maybe that day the weather was really heavy and humid and the chocolate was sulking and didn’t mix with the butter right, or maybe it took exception to your stirring, which in my experience needs to be very gentle and very thorough–far more of either than you need bother with with good old mellow black chocolate. I don’t know if anyone out there has more experience of white chocolate, or can recommend a reliably good-natured brand of the stuff.
Anyway this put me in mind of my white chocolate brownie . . . er . . . chocolate whiteys recipe. The original is from a cookbook you’ve heard from before: Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg. I am, however, shameless, and I wanted even more chocolate in mine, so that’s what I did. These aren’t even cake any more: they’re very squodgy.
8 T (1 stick) slightly salted butter
8 oz white chocolate
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla (maybe a scrap more. This does vary with your brand of chocolate, but you don’t know till you’ve tried. With Green and Blacks I use about 1 ¼ tsp)
1 c all-purpose white flour
Butter and flour a 9 inch square pan.
Melt butter in the top of a double boiler over simmering water. Break up the chocolate in small pieces and add gradually as the butter melts. Stir gently and thoroughly. It should be perfectly homogenous when you take it off the heat. If it shows signs of separating, stir it some more (gently).
Beat eggs vigorously. You can do it by hand but this is one of those cases where an electric mixer is probably better. Beat till frothy and then add sugar in a slow stream, beating like mad the whole time. Scrape down the sides of your bowl a lot too. Rosie says the whole process should take about two minutes. I never count, but it takes a while. But the result should ‘ribbon’ if you pour it off a spoon. Add the chocolate mixture in a very slow stream, with your electric mixer on low, if you’re using one. Once it’s all incorporated I take the mixer out and use a spoon for about ten seconds to sort of reassure myself it’s all gone together neatly.
Then mix in the flour. I stick to the spoon. You can use your electric mixer if you want.
Pour into the pan. 350° for about half an hour. The original recipe calls for 325°, which I find too low, but you certainly don’t want it more than 350°, so if you have an iffy oven, err on the low side. It’s not going to rise a lot, and it’ll probably be slightly hollow in the middle, but it will set and look done, and it shouldn’t be a solidified puddle in the bottom of the pan either. On the other hand, maybe I’m just strange, and I really like heavy dense things. Well, yes, I do, since you mention it. But feel free to experiment, and maybe raise the flour and lower the chocolate and make it a cake again.
And since I didn’t use it last time, and for any of the rest of you who saw the original, frowned in puzzlement, finally said ‘oops’ and passed on:
Melanie
I can’t believe it, but Jennie pointed out that my recipe for Pine nut rosemary shortbread that I posted under “Let them eat cake” didn’t include either pine nuts or rosemary. So fussy. ** So here’s the corrected ingredients list:
My Family Nearly Lynched Me For Making Something Fattening They Can’t Resist Pine Nut Rosemary Shortbread
1 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter (the good stuff)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
zest of one lemon
I was originally going to post my chocolate-layer shortbread too, as additionally celebratory, but I’ve decided I’m fat enough for one evening. I’ll post it some other day. . . .
* Who invented the virtual dog-eared page corner as a cute design feature?
** Gods help you if you misidentify a plant. They send out the army, these guys.
Calories
There’s a disadvantage* to going for a lovely long** hack*** on this mare that you’re now so droolingly fond of that when Jenny told you that someone really badly wanted to buy her you almost had a heart attack†. It’s that you come home again all mellowed out†† and at peace with the world and fail to plunge instantly into Hyperactive Catch Up It’s the Middle of the Afternoon Already Mode. So it’s past 11 o’clock at night and I’m eating dinner.
But I figured after yesterday I should give you a Sunshiney recipe. I was going to give you my/our maple cornbread, but on my way there my eye was caught by:
I’m Sorry, I Had One for Tea and I Don’t Have Room for Dinner Bars
Rich Short Crust:
¾ c slightly salted soft butter
¼ c maple syrup
¼ c brown sugar
2 rounded c all-purpose flour: so, say, 2 c plus 2 T
Most of the time you can get away with unsoft butter for creaming–you just need to use a little more muscle–but to cream it successfully with maple syrup you really want your butter soft. So, cream the butter, maple syrup, and brown sugar together, and then add the flour a little at a time for the first cup; you can add the second cup faster. (I start with a wooden spoon and end up with my hands. You can use an electric mixer. Feh.) Pat this over the bottom of a 13 x 9 inch pan. The original recipe tells you to chill it till you’re going to use it. Chill it? Are you crazy? And then have to let it get back to room temperature so your glass pan won’t crack? Maybe he uses aluminium. Aluminium doesn’t cross my threshold. Furthermore, I am not big on thinking ahead. I’ll be slamming the crust together because I’m running out of time to get the filling made. I have also been known to pre-cook the base–oh, ten minutes or so at 350, not long–the filling is pretty wet.
Filling:
2 eggs
1 c maple syrup
1 ½ tsp vanilla
¼ c flour [sic]
½ tsp baking powder
1 c chopped nuts (original recipe merely says: not peanuts, too pedestrian. I use either mixed, or hazelnuts. I have at least two maple syrup and pecan recipes, so I don’t use pecans), or a little more
1 c chopped dates, or raisins, or mixed, depending on how you’re feeling about chopping dates today (we’ve had this conversation: I don’t think using scissors with or without water or oil works all that well: I think chopping dates is just one of those penances of being human and having a sweet tooth), or a little more. I like one third golden raisins, one third sultanas or currants, and one third dates, when I happen to have all of these on hand at the same time.
1 c chocolate chips, or a little more. . . .
Beat the wet stuff together thoroughly. Mix the flour and the baking powder in with the dry stuff; then add to wet stuff and stir. Pour into your shortcrust pan and bake 425°F about 10-12 minutes, then reduce heat to 350° and bake about another 20-30 minutes. Cool thoroughly before cutting.
The original recipe for these, the maple cornbread, and quite a few other things you may see here over time, are in The Maple Syrup Baking and Dessert Cookbook by Ken Haedrich, c 1985, which is a slender little, I think self-published, paperback with about thirty recipes in it. You can, I discover, now buy:
http://www.amazon.com/Maple-Syrup-Cookbook-Recipes-Breakfast/dp/1580174043/ref=pd_sim_b_6
. . . which is still Haedrich but two or three times bigger and fatter and . . . loooonging . . . but there is no POINT because I live in ENGLAND where maple syrup is sold in thimble-sized bottles for £10 per. When I first moved over here you could barely find it in thimbles. Have I done my maple syrup rant here yet? Maple syrup stopped being cheap decades ago, but when you live where it grows (so to speak) you can still get great sloshing vats of it for reasonable, and furthermore, you can get it in grades. Haedrich even says you want the dark amber because it costs the least and has the strongest flavour. This is true. I prefer the dark amber anyway, but in baking you really want it or the flavour is overwhelmed and then it gets really stupid, buying the stuff to not be able to taste it . . . but the thimble-sized bottles with the quaint sealing-waxed stoppers are always the pale stuff which if I’m desperate I’ll eat on waffles but there’s no point in cooking with it. *sob*
I was originally going to give you the maple cornbread partly because it’s something from SUNSHINE that I actually still eat. How does Mrs Bialosky or Maud do it? Mrs B is a bit squarish but Maud is a skinny little thing. However, I’ve had a couple of friends tell me that when menopause is over your metabolism may wake back up out of its torpor and begin to function again. I live in hope. At which point I’ll start bringing maple syrup back with me in my suitcase, supposing the hellhounds’ digestion ever chills out and I ever go to America again. Hey, I wonder if what they need is maple syrup??
* * *
* No! I don’t believe it!
** Although part of why it was so long is that the footing stank. Or sank. There was barely anywhere you wanted to risk trotting, let alone a gallop. And even aside from questions of slipperiness some of us riders are conscious of what shod hooves can do to sodden ground, and don’t do it.^
^ Some of us worry about galloping hellhound feet. Those cannonball starts are hard on the landscape.
*** With, as it happens, the woman Whose Fault It All Is. This is the woman I met on that historic day what, maybe two months ago now, she out hand-walking her convalescent horse, and I restraining hellhounds with difficulty,^ and whom I lingered to talk to long enough that it meant I then met Jenny for the crucial conversation about the Connemara mare. I’d've missed her if I hadn’t stopped.
^ After the initial burst of irrepressible enthusiasm they usually remember that they’re under the heavy aegis of the Least Fun Human on the planet and subside, although Darkness does a very good line in Protest Wails. Chaos is the one who has retained the mmmm, mmmm, mmmm puppy whine, most often heard when I have been so cruel as to go upstairs and close the gate so he can’t follow, but Darkness is obviously saying, I am a dignified, grown-up dog and you are impeding my individual expression. –True.
† No, I won’t sell her, said Jenny. We’re all too fond of her.
†† Even my knees seem to be planning to forgive me for an hour and forty minutes in the saddle. I think. But ask me tomorrow morning. When I’m running to the tower.
Lemon Bars
I realise that after yesterday the last thing I should be thinking about is more sugar-shock specials, but the fact is that I keep thinking about my lemon bars. Other times I’ve been to the Ritz for tea* there has usually been a little lemon tartlet with a raspberry or a mint leaf on top among the dazzling pastry selection. Yesterday there wasn’t. And I missed it. But the awful, awful, the ludicrous and dishonourable truth is that I prefer my shortbread crust.**
2 c basic all purpose white flour
½ c confectioner’s/icing sugar
½ lb butter [sic]
Grated rind one lemon (do you have to be warned about ONLY grating the yellow part and NOT the white part? You also want unwaxed lemons if you’re going to eat the peel, and if I were you I’d want organic unwaxed lemons)
Mix flour and sugar; cut in butter and rind. Press in 13 x 9 inch pan (or reasonable equivalent. This is not a rocket-science, every 1/8th tsp counts, don’t slam the door while it’s baking, recipe). Bake 350° F 20 minutes, till light brown.
3 eggs, beaten till thoroughly mixed, but they should still be fluffy and foamy
2 c granulated sugar [sic]
½ c lemon juice (FRESH lemon juice. Anyone who uses Realemon or whatever ersatz rubbish they’re producing at the moment, is FOREVER BANNED from this blog)
1/3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
Beat sugar, flour and baking powder into eggs, then lemon juice. (The original recipe told you to beat in the lemon juice first, which is perverse, because the result is so thin the flour and baking powder will lump. Maybe I’m missing some rockety-sciency chemical reaction doing it my way, but almost everybody I’ve fed these to has wanted the recipe so I guess I can live with my shortcomings as a chemist.) Pour over baked crust. Bake 350° 25 minutes. It should be obviously set but only very faintly brown in the corners. Sprinkle with icing sugar, let cool. Let cool THOROUGHLY before you try to cut it into bars or you will be very sorry–in fact I recommend you let your refrigerator help you. It cuts better if it’s been refrigerated but it tastes better if you let it warm back up to room temperature.
And by all means put a raspberry or a mint leaf on top. Or both. I know there are a lot of lemon-meringue-pie-without-the-meringue cookies/bars/tarts out there (and indeed there are lemon-meringue-with-the-meringue cookies, bars and tarts out there too) but this is the one I use. A lot of them don’t have enough lemon juice in them. This one didn’t either in its original incarnation. Have I mentioned lately I’m an extremist?
* * *
* If you concentrate on having a Favourite Thing sometimes you can kind of create plausibility. Visiting Americans will also usually go for the tea at the Ritz plan–although Merrilee is jaded^, she knows me.
^ She was telling me about this amazing publishing party she’d been to while she was here, where they take over one of the big museums and you stroll around the priceless artefacts or go admire the view of London with your glass of wine and your canapés and your party frock+ and your exclusive company including no loud tourists or whining children. Yeep. I hope tea at the Ritz wasn’t too downmarket for her.
+ Although we were very well dressed yesterday. Merrilee was wearing a fabulous black lace dress and I was wearing a somewhat less fabulous twirly black skirt with lace insets but I was also wearing a very fabulous belt that Peter gave me for Christmas quite a few years ago now, with a big round black-and-clear-crystal rhinestone buckle as big as the palm of your hand. Well, as big as the palm of my hand, and I have big hands.
** Don’t tell them, or I’ll never get a booking again. The story I didn’t tell you about yesterday is that I’d done it by email and had a Confirmation Email with a Booking Reference Number which is eight letters, six numbers and a slash mark long^. It doesn’t say anywhere ‘print this out and take it with you’ but I was going to. And then it was on the wrong computer and I didn’t have time to go fetch it off the right computer so I went without it. And I therefore spent a not inconsiderable part of the journey up worrying that they’d have lost the booking and refuse to seat us and we’d be out on the street in our black lace and rhinestones and have to have tea out a Styrofoam cup at McDonald’s.^^
^ How do they come up with a system that creates Booking Reference Numbers that are eight letters, six numbers and a slash mark long?
^^ I wouldn’t cross the threshold of McDonald’s if I were dying of thirst/hunger/melting in the rain.+ Okay, tea out of a kiosk in Green Park. Actually that sounds kind of nice. Although the lace and rhinestones might have been a trifle superfluous.
+ I lie. Once a decade or so I use their restrooms. Although I think I missed this decade.