Patti's Grace Notes

Nonna Grace's Memorial Bake-off~Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake

 

Ingredients:

1 (14-ounce) package caramels

1 (5-ounce) can evaporated milk

1¼ cups chopped pecans, divided

1 (9-inch) chocolate crumb piecrust*

1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

½ cup sour cream

¼ cup milk

1 (3.9) package chocolate instant pudding mix

½ cup fudge topping

1.Place caramels and evaporated milk in a heavy saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring continually, until smooth, about 5 min. Stir in 1 cup chopped pecans. (If you use a double boiler this is very easy and doesn't need constant stirring.) Pour into piecrust.

2. Combine cream cheese, sour cream and milk in a blender. Process until smooth. Add pudding mix; process for about 30 secs longer.

3. Pour pudding mixture over caramel layer, covering evenly. Chill loosely covered until set, about 15 min.

4. Drizzle fudge topping over pudding layer in a decorative pattern. Sprinkle top of cake with the remaining pecans. Chill loosely covered until serving time. Serves 12 (not at my house). Very rich, so small pieces to start.

*Create a homemade crust with chocolate wafer cookies. Mix 1½ cups cookie crumbs with 3 tablespoons melted butter. Press into a 9in pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees F for 6-8 mins.

Personal notes:

First off I’d like it to be known that I have given up ALL sweets for Lent (as in 40 days & 40 nights) and I didn’t so much as lick a spoon. This fact, forget bragging about it, doesn’t entitle me a guaranteed entrance through the Pearly Gates – I’m just sayin’.

I did some quick math, both in cost and time, and quickly decided I had nothing to prove by making my own crust (unlike my famous water-whipped crust [click]) so I went with a store-bought chocolate crumb piecrust. (At least I’m honest!)

This recipe is super easy and I made it BEFORE mass last Sunday for our family lunch – and still I messed it up! sigh~

Caution – read the recipe! I think I do worse with the easy ones because I pay better attention when it’s challenging. I bought the large instant pudding instead of the 3.9 oz package. When I put it in the blender, of course there wasn’t enough liquid to make it smooth. It was like one giant chocolate booger! There’s a visual for you while you prepare this (sorry, but I wasn’t going to eat it anyway, lol). I then added more milk to help remedy the situation and it never really worked, but those who ate it didn’t complain. I did not share my figure of speech with them, mercifully.

Don’t forget to save some pecans for the top – the fudge drizzle is a bit over kill. 

Nonna Grace's Memorial Bake-off~Truly Delicious Baked Apples

I wanted a dessert the other night that was not too rich and somewhat healthy for our Sunday dinner with the kids. I’m on a high fiber kick (rather I’ve been ordered to by my doctor) and an apple is about as pure a source as you can get. This easy recipe has a lot of flexibility and can even be done in the microwave if you want. I’m not big on microwave cooking so I baked mine the old fashioned way.

You’ll need an apple per person and my recipe recommended Rome Beauty apples, but as luck would have it there weren’t any at my store. I asked for a worthy substitute by the produce manager and he suggested Gala or Braeburn. I went with the Gala and it was a good choice. It has a mild sweet flavor that doesn’t compete with the spices you add, plus it is firm enough to take some baking without getting all mushy. The skin is thin so if you choose to only peel part of it off or wish to leave it all on, it’s tender.

You also need the following:

·      ½ cup orange or apple juice (or really any fruit juice you want, I used diluted sweetened lemon juice).

·      ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

·      Freshly grated nutmeg 

1. Peel apples 1/3 (more if you want) of the way down an core them.

2. Place in a non-metal casserole

3. Spoon juice over the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg.

4. Cover and bake @ 375 for 30 – 40 minutes. 
     It depends how big yourapples are and how tender or crisp you want them.

(to microwave cover and bake on high 9-11 mins)

Serves 4   If you wish to microwave a single serving-high for 2 mins)

* You can add whatever you want- stuff with raisins, craisins, dates, nuts etc. You can top with a light cream sauce, whipping cream or do as I did and stuff them with vanilla ice cream…..yummy! The crowd went wild, and so easy!!

  Apple Pie in the palm of your hand!

Charlie Brown Christmas Cookies

If the earth shook a little on December 23^rd it was probably my Nona Grace turning over in her grave. Don’t worry if you didn’t feel it – she’s located over on the east coast.

If you read my last post you know that I had great intentions the last couple of days of this busy Christmas season, but...well there were a couple of glitches. My youngest and I were going to bake, gosh darn it, no matter what! And this is how desperate we got…
 

NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE Christmas Shapes Sugar Cookies! That’s right, and I’m not proud of it! They come with their own icing packets so all you need to do is peel, bake, and decorate. We do have some standards, however and included butter-creamed white frosting (okay, okay – also store bought!) I did say “no promises” way back in October when I started my bake-off challenge. Hey, we did bake them ourselves. Actually when you peel these sugar cookies out of the packaging there is a lot of wasted dough so I did roll out the extra and cut a few more cookies. My little kitchen helper only lasted part way through the frosting process, so I got stuck finishing. The house smelled nice and they didn’t taste half bad either, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say half good, sigh. As I said, poor Nona, is probably still spinning. I’ll try harder next year…..

Nonna Grace's Memorial Bake-off~10/18/09

In my first post about my Italian grandmother I confessed my relief when I learned that she loved to bake more than cook, as I do. I mentioned that Lemon Meringue Pie was her favorite. It’s also one of mine, so for my 2nd endeavor my choice was easy. I wish I had her recipe, but I don’t-so here goes. My girlfriend, Sharon, makes a good one, but she was away on a much-needed R & R so I used the one that I’ve tried in the past. It has some issues, as I’ll explain so I’ll be on the look out for a new one.

Lemon Meringue Pie~

You need a baked (9-inch) pie shell so I’ll use the tried and true recipe that my mom and I always made. She said that I gave it to her and I always thought it was the other way around. Whenever it turned out well – I took the credit. I LOVE this pie dough so don’t try to seduce me with another recipe!

Water Whipped Pie Crust~

¾ cup shortening

¼ cup boiling water

1-tablespoon milk

2 cups sifted flour

1-teaspoon salt  

Put the shortening in a medium size bowl. Add water & milk. Break up the shortening with a fork. Whip the mixture with a fork until smooth (comes to a peak) Sift in flour and salt. Mix by hand until a dough ball is formed. (I used my KitchenAid to do the mixing. I highly recommend slowing down the mixer before adding the flour. It snowed in my kitchen in October!) Bake @ 450F for about 10 mins or until golden brown. It's moist and easy to roll.

Ingredients:

1-2/3 cups sugar, divided

        3 tablespoons cornstarch

    1/8-teaspoon salt

    1/3 cup lemon juice

        3 egg yolks, beaten

        1-tablespoon butter or margarine

1-1/2 cup boiling water

        3 egg whites

Directions:

·         Mix 1-1/3 cups sugar, cornstarch and salt in top of a double boiler. Stir in lemon juice, egg yolks and butter. Preheat oven to 350F. (Remember you just browned your pie shell so turn down the oven.)

·         Add boiling water to sugar mixture. Cook, stirring continually, over medium heat for 10 mins or until thickened. Pour into pie shell.

·         Beat egg whites in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer set a high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining sugar, beating continually until stiff peaks form.

·        Top the pie with the meringue, spreading to edges. Bake for 10 minutes or until meringue is lightly browned.

·         Again, I cut the salt in half for my cardiac-compromised husband and it didn’t seem to hurt anything. The end result was quite satisfactory except for a couple of things. I didn’t prick the bottom of the piecrust enough before baking it and when I peaked in on it the bottom had ballooned up like hot air under Marilyn’s skirt! I quickly tried to correct my error but it was a little late. One side of the crust sagged lower than the rest, but I just covered it with meringue and no one was the wiser. The only other thing was that it took a LOT longer than 10 mins to thicken the lemon filling. Maybe I didn’t have enough water in the bottom of my double boiler or I could have added a bit more cornstarch. The meringue however was my best yet!

·        There was a note on the recipe about how to minimize the “weeping” or moisture that seeps from the meringue: combine 1-teaspoon cornstarch with the sugar before beating it into the egg whites. There was NO way I was messing with the success of those egg whites, besides my pie didn’t last long enough to even think about weeping. Not that it was that good – we’re just a bunch of savages over here!

 

Nonna Grace's Memorial Bake-off!

I don’t really like to cook; I’ll be the first to admit it. I feel a little guilty about this since I do, in fact, have my Italian ancestors' blood flowing through my veins. Unlike many in my family, I do not live to eat. I am grateful that my husband prepares almost all of our meals. I do, however, adore sweets. I try to be healthy, but in truth I’d have pie every morning for breakfast if I didn’t know better.

My parents owned three Italian restaurants while we were growing up and one of my brothers maintains the family business. My Irish mother learned to cook from Italian relatives on the east coast many years ago and I have early memories of my aunt making homemade pasta.  Pop Pop would buy live crab from the Italian market and let them terrorize my cousin and I as they clip-clopped around the cellar floor. His whole back yard was a tomato garden – he looked like he was in a scene from the Godfather when he was out there watering or picking them. I loved how he rationalized hooking the hose up to the water spigot from his neighbor’s house because, “they eat my tomatoes don’t they?” Aunt Gloria made thick, spicy sauce from them to put over her pasta and Pop Pop’s crab. I have never recreated that meal, but thankfully my brother has.

Last summer my brothers, sisters, and I went back to the solid, compact brick house that my grandfather built near “little Italy” in Wilmington, Delaware for a family reunion. While I was down in the cellar reminiscing about those sacrificial crabs with my 85 yr old aunt I asked about my grandmother - my namesake. She died relatively young, shortly before I was born. I’ve been likened to her so often and I wanted to learn more about her. I asked my aunt if she’d learned to be such a good cook from her? She looked wistful for a moment and said, “yes, but she really didn’t like to cook – she loved to bake!” Well! A wave of relief and recognition swept over me as I realized that I must channel my Nonna Grace.

Nonna Grace - She loved Lemon Meringue pies AND dogs too!

I have no plans of trying to recreate the now famous blog known as “Julie & Julia”, nor do I have a baking cookbook and a deadline. If anything, I am inspired by the section of recipes that my friend and mentor, Nathalie, includes in her web-log, “Nathalie’s Notes” (click). She creates a meatless menu about once a week for her young family and shares these with her readers. It reveals another side of her as she “writes in the margins of her life.” I am a late-bloomer attempting to identify and experience all the things I truly love in this life. I don’t want to look back and snivel over all my “shoulda/coulda’s” just because I acknowledged them later then I meant to. 

Our son walked in to our kitchen yesterday prepared to help us make plum dumplings from our, now famous, plum harvest and stated that he was really in the mood for fresh baked ginger snaps. I resisted my first response of, “the hell you say!” and thought – why not! I already had all of the ingredients. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s the main pain about cooking….thinking about what to make, then having to go face the super market madness – where is everything, do you want plastic or paper, check, cash or card, check out or express??? It’s enough to make you curl up into a ball. SO! The golden child requested ginger damn cookies and that’s just what he got. The inspiration for “Nonna Grace’s Memorial Bake-off” is what I got. We all know that a bake-off is some kind of contest, but in this case I’ll only be competing with myself. As I used to tell my kids during their swim or long distance competitions, “just do your personal best.” I’m not promising any amazing, mouth watering, eye-popping recipes, but I’ll gladly accept them. I will try to bake more often. Once I got past the fact that I don’t personally have to eat everything – I can give leftovers away. My human garbage can does now live on this side of the pond since his return from Europe so that’s a comfort. Here’s the first installment of "no promises and lots of mistakes" I am sure.

Big Soft Ginger Cookies

If you are a fan of crispy, hard ginger snaps these are probably not for you. You can make them smaller and bake them longer to achieve that affect, but you’re on your own.

Also my husband is on severe low sodium restriction so I’ll always post the actual recipe, but let you know how I adjusted the sodium and whether it affected the recipe or not. Salt certainly plays an important role in baking besides adding flavor, especially in dough recipes, so I’ll always add a little, but not sure yet how little is enough. Stay tuned.

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2-teaspoons ground ginger

1-teaspoon baking soda

¾-teaspoon ground cinnamon

½-teaspoon ground cloves

¼-teaspoon salt

¾-cup margarine, softened (I’m with Julia, I use butter)

1-cup white sugar

1-egg

1-tablespoon water

¼-cup molasses

2-tablespoons white sugar (yep – more white sugar)

Directions: (makes about 3 dozen)

·      Preheat oven to 350 F

·      Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt – set aside.

·      In a large bowl, cream together the margarine (butter) and 1 cup of sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, and then stir in the water and molasses. Gradually stir the sifted ingredients into the molasses mixture.

·      Shape the dough into walnut sized balls and roll them into the remaining tablespoons of sugar. Place the cookies 2 in. apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet, and flatten slightly.

·      Bake for 8-10 minutes @ the 350 degrees. Allow cooling on the baking sheet for 5 min. before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Note: I cut the salt in half and used half of my husband’s “no salt” which is mostly potassium chloride. I did need to add about a half cup more flour to get a doughy consistency but I’m not sure if that was due to the salt substitution or something else. I also needed a bit more sugar to roll the balls in. They required the full 10 minute baking time and maybe even a minute or two more (depends on the size I think) but test your own oven. I think fresh ginger might be good. Again, nothing award winning here, but they were pretty damn good if I do say so myself!

Mmm-m-m! The sugar on top makes them all sparkly in a subtle sort of way~