Chocolate Meringues

Yesterday, while cleaning up the kitchen, I decided that we needed dessert!  Not wanting to have to stand over something that needed constant attention - I really needed to load the dishwasher - I began to think about things that can be "forgotten" about.  I remembered recently pining over my urge to make meringues, and also remembered my reluctance to make them because they required quite a bit of time to make stiff peaks and bake - they were just what I was looking for!  It was not a recipe I had ready at my fingertips, so after some searching I found one that I liked.  I had heard complaints about meringues that do not call for Cream of Tartar.  Most of what I heard was that it was crucial for "binding" and that it would help the meringues last longer after I bake them.

The only problem I had with these was my lack of serving size judgment.  The recipe said that it made 10 meringues, and if I had read further I would have seen that the ones they made were 2 1/2 inches in diameter, while I made mine the size of a half dollar and doubled the recipe...whoops!    Thankfully my family DEVOURED them between last night and today!  The recipe below is my very slight adaptation, but the link to the actual recipe is below, too!

Chocolate Meringues 
Source: www.joyofcooking.com You can find the recipe on their website here!
Yields approximately 10 cookies that are 2 1/2 inches in diameter

Ingredients
3 large egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp cocoa powder

To Prepare the Meringues
1. Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees.
2. In a stand mixer, begin beating the egg whites on a medium speed.
3. When the egg whites begin to foam, add the cream of tartar.
4. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat the eggs.
5. When the eggs begin to stiffen, add the cocoa powder.
6. Beat the egg whites until the form stiff peaks.  A stiff peak is when you can dip a spoon into the egg, pull it out, flip it over, and it stays in a peak!
7. Pipe or spoon the meringues onto your cookie sheets (I baked mine on a silicone baking sheet, but parchment would help too!), and bake them for an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five. Mine were much smaller than the recipe called for, and only needed an hour and a quarter in the oven
8. When your meringues are done, turn off the heat of the oven, crack the door, and let them sit for at least an hour.  I left mine out on the oven over night and they were even better today!  The less moisture they are exposed to after baking, the better they are!

Christmas Cookies 2010

I will let my brother's beautiful photography and my baking/set design speak for themselves!  Enjoy!

Chocolate Holly

Kiffles

S'mores

 

Gingerbread

Sugar

Oatmeal Raisin

Peanut Butter Kisses

Peanut Butter

Chocolate Chip

Dark Chocolate and White Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Buckeyes

Lost Recipes

I have always had a deep interest in learning about my family origins, and to no one's surprise, about the food, too!  This afternoon we stopped at my Grandmom's house (my dad's mom, to be specific).  When the conversation made a turn for baked goods and me making my Christmas cookies this week, my Grandmom (Hoosie) started to wax nostalgic. 

Hoosie's family is from the Abruzzi region of Italy, in a mountainous area East of Rome.  They came from the actual town of Abruzzi (I believe it is Anversa degli Abruzzi).  Grandma Nardone (Hoosie's mother) barely spoke a lick of English, but I do remember her and that even though we could barely speak to each other, we still kinda understood each other when we would speak.  The only words I ever really learned were Bene Bene (Good Good), Buon Natale (Merry Christmas), and Bacala (a dried and salted cod).  Bacala was learned because Grandma Nardone yelled it when I was bad.  In the old country, they apparently would use the bacala to paddle bad kids tushes, mainly because it was stiff and would sting. I really enjoy hearing about Hoosie's great-grandparents, too.  They came from the same region of Italy, and were diplomats/ambassadors.  Our family crest and name actually still throws a little weight in the region, from what I understand and what family research I have done...exciting stuff!

To get back to the main point of this post, Hoosie started to talk about all of the baked goods Grandma Nardone would make this time of year.  Hoosie began to describe a cookie that sounded absolutely divine that I have never seen or heard of before.  She said that her family called them cuiznit (that was her guess on the spelling), and is pronounced like kuginit.  I found them online as caljunettis or cecilottala.  She said the dough was made and rolled out ravioli dough.  Grandma Nardone would then mix chocolate with garbanzo beans and some sort of nut.  This mixture would be put in the ravioli, the ravioli were cut, deep fried, and then sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Needless to say, I was immediately intrigued and asked for the recipe.  True to family form, NO ONE had thought to write down the recipe.  I find this a lot with my dad's side of the family.  I think it is just the cultures - no one wrote it down because it was learned by doing and passed down by teaching.  It would get made every year, and eventually you just learned it and remembered it.  There weren't recipe swaps because everyone made them, and you didn't get the recipes when you had your bridal shower.  Cookbooks didn't have the recipes because every family had their own variation, and the recipes were really only passed to the girls.  I wish I had thought to ask or had cared about this as much years ago, when maybe the memories and ingredients were more likely to be remembered.

I've tried searching for the recipe online, and there are soooooo many variations and a lack of consistency amongst the ingredients.  I'm going to try this Saturday to make the recipe that sounds the most authentic and close to what Hoosie described.  I am hoping she enjoys them and can confirm if they are close to what she remembers or not!

This is the closest recipe...

Has anyone ever heard of these or had them...maybe has a recipe they would be willing to share with a Great-Grand Daughter of Italy???

Pumpkin Cheesecake

We like to spend Thanksgiving at home, and then after dinner we go to a few relatives' houses for dessert and to visit.  So, when it comes time for leftovers, we are all itching for that taste of sweet pumpkin.  Normally I make a cold pumpkin pudding pie, but this year wanted to make a cheesecake.  I could not ignore pumpkin as a key ingredient!  This cheesecake was my family's favorite so far, and it was eaten VERY quickly!  I am looking forward to making it again around Christmas time!

To Make the Filling
1. Leave out 2 blocks of cream cheese to soften.  Once they are soft (usually in about an hour), blend them with 3/4 cup of sugar.

2. Beat in 3 eggs one at a time.  Add the eggs one at a time and make sure they are well incorporated into the filling so your batter does not become a slimy mess!

3. Beat in 8 oz of sour cream and mix well.

4. Add 8 oz of pumpkin puree, a 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon of nutmeg.
5. Blend everything together!

To Make the Crust
1. Pulverize ginger snap or spice cookies until you have two cups worth that are the consistency of sand, and put it in a bowl.
2. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter (either on the stove or in the microwave), and mix it into the crumbs using a fork.  It will take a minute before the butter evenly spreads amongst the cookie crumbs.
3. Time to prepare your baking pan!  I like using a spring form pan when I make cheesecake, mainly because it is easy to present, and also cut and serve.  A spring form pan has a latch on the side of it that allows it to open by approximately an extra half inch around the entire circumference around the pan.  I bought mine as a set of 3 from Ross for $9.99, but they can also be found at Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Target, etc.  If you do not have a spring form pan, you can use a cake pan.  You will need to wrap your pan in aluminum foil.  This helps prevent the crust from burning, and also helps the cheesecake cook more evenly!

Inside spring form pan

The buckle - aka business end - of the spring form pan

4. Spray the inside of your aluminum wrapped pan with Pam or another type of non-stick spray.
5. Pour your cookie crumbs into the pan.  (If you are using a shallow cake pan you will only need about half of the crumbs you prepared).  Press them into the bottom and sides of the pan to create a layer of crust.

6. Put the pan in the fridge for 15 minutes or longer so the buttered crumbs have time to set and hold the shape of the pan.

To Bake the Cheesecake
1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.  
2. Get your pan out of the fridge and pour the filling into the crust gently.  Again, if you are using a shallow pan, you will not need all of the filling.  You will only need to fill the pan about half way with the filling.

3. Bake your cheesecake for just over 1 hour.  You will need to keep an eye on it...if you open the oven and it has risen and no longer jiggles, your cheesecake is done.  Bring it out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature before putting it in the fridge! Don't panic, as it cools it will shrink down to half the height it was when you pulled it out of the oven!

An example of a cheesecake fresh out of the oven!

An example of after the cheesecake cools!

The finished pumpkin cheesecake!  It cracked a little bit more than the cheesecakes normally do, but it was still delicious!

S'more Cookies

I don't remember why I came up with this recipe, but nonetheless it came to be during Christmas 2008.  I wanna say I had an extra cookie tin and nothing to fill it with, and also had some graham cracker crumbs, mini marshmallows, and left over chocolate chips left from my holiday baking and decided to put them to good use!  After some fine tuning and tweeking last Christmas, I finally got them right.  They are definitely a favorite when I put out the cookie tray, and are usually the first ones to go!


S'more Cookies
Yields approximately 30 cookies

To Prepare the Cookies
1. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a large bowl blend 3/4 cup of softened butter (1 1/2 sticks, or 12 tablespoons worth) with 1/2 a cup of brown sugar, and 1/2 a cup of granulated sugar. 
3. Once the sugars and butter are creamed together, add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
4. Add 1 1/4 cups of flour.  Use half bleached flour and half graham flour.  I like to use a brand of graham flour called Bob's Red Mill.  It can be found at most grocery stores in the baking aisle! The graham flour gives the cookies that graham cracker texture we all love when we eat s'mores!
5. Add 1 cup of graham crackers crumbs.
6. Add 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. 
7. Blend everything together well. 
8. Add an 11.5 ounce bag of chocolate chunks to the batter and fold them in.  The chocolate chunks add a great texture to the batter and make it a little more unique than a chocolate chip cookie! 
9. Roll the batter into 1 inch balls and spread them evenly on a cookie sheet.  The batter does spread a little bit, so be sure to give them some space. 
10. Bake them for approximately 7 minutes, and pull them out of the oven.  They will not be done baking yet!
11.  Press 4 or 5 mini marshmallows into the top of each cookie, and put them back in the oven. 
12. Bake for 2 or 3 more minutes, or until the marshmallows are starting to turn golden brown and beginning to melt. 
13. Let them cool and enjoy!

If you don't want to bake the marshmallows into the cookies, you can bake the cookies without them. When they are done cooling, spread some marshmallow fluff between two cookies and make a s'more sandwich! 

Iced Pumpkin Spice Cookies

This isn't a recipe I can take credit for, but it is very yummy!  It is chock full of fall flavor with pumpkin, walnuts, raisins, spices, butter, and brown sugar. I've served them both iced and un-iced, and they are delicious either way!  I only make them between October and then end of November, so they are a welcomed treat when they come out of the oven!

Iced Pumpkin Spice Cookies 
Source: The Great American Cookie Cookbook
Yields 30 cookies

To Prepare the Cookies
1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Blend 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) with 1 cup of packed brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of granulated sugar.
3. Once the above ingredients are blended well, mix in 1 1/2 cups of canned pumpkin, 1 egg, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
4. Mix in 2 1/4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.
5. Once all of the dry ingredients are well incorporated, add 1 cup of chopped walnuts and 3/4 cup of raisins.
6. Spoon the batter onto cookie sheets and bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until firm.

To Prepare the Icing
1. Mix 1 cup of powdered sugar with 2 tablespoons of milk while your cookies are cooling.
2. After the cookies have cooled, drizzle a thin stream of icing over the top of them with a spoon.