Pecan Squares

Marta from the Pecan Blog contacted me recently and asked if I’d be interested in sampling Green Valley Pecan Company pecans. My husband is a huge pecan pie lover so I jumped at the chance.

I received a wonderful 1/2 lb. package of “the world's best, freshest, crunchiest, tastiest pecans” from the Pecan Store. So for week 6 of my 12 weeks of Christmas Cookies I went in search of a great cookie recipe that would highlight these beautiful pecans and I found a fabulous Pecan Squares recipe on MarthaStewart.com.

The pecan squares are a delightful mix of pecan pie and cookie. The pecans are baked in a luscious caramel filling atop a crisp brown sugar crust. My husband could not stop raving about these cookies. I couldn’t resist reorganizing the pecans on top after I took the cooked bars out of the oven and before the filling set. Okay, it was just an excuse to eat the carameled pecans, but they were so hard to resist!

This is a must try recipe if you’re a pecan lover. Thank you to the Pecan Store for sending me the delicious pecans. Visit their website and see all the fabulous products they sale that would make fabulous Christmas gifts. 



Pecan Squares 
from Martha Stewart.com

18 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup light-brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup light-brown sugar, firmly packed
6 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups (8 ounces) pecan halves
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

1. Place rack in center of oven. Heat oven to 375 degrees. To make the crust: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix butter and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add salt, and mix to combine. Add flour 1 cup at a time, on medium speed, mixing until fully incorporated after each addition. Continue mixing until the dough begins to come together in large clumps.
2. Press dough about 1/4-inch thick into a 9-by-13-by-1-inch baking pan. Prick the pastry with the tines of a fork. Chill until firm, about 20 minutes. Bake until golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack to cool completely.
3. Reduce oven to 325 degrees. To make the filling: Place butter, brown sugar, honey, granulated sugar, heavy cream, and salt in a medium saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until mixture coats the back of a spoon, about 1 minute. Remove pan from heat; stir in nuts and vanilla.
4. Pour filling onto the cooled crust. Bake until filling bubbles, 15 to 20 minutes. Carefully transfer pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Run a paring knife around edges of the pan, and invert onto cooling rack, leaving the pastry on the rack. Invert rack with pastry onto a cutting board, leaving the pastry on the board, filling side up. Use a sharp knife to cut into 1-by-3-inch bars. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

For more delicious 12 weeks of Christmas cookies visit:
Megan from Megan's Cookin
April from Abbys Sweets
Denise from Keeper Worthy Recipes 
Megan's from My Baking Adventures 
Kim from Stirring the Pot

Did you know?
- Pecan trees are native only to North America.
- Pecan trees can live for hundreds of years.
- 75% of the world’s pecan crop is grown in the sunbelt region of the U.S. (Southern/Southwest States).
- Pecans are cholesterol and sodium free. They are also a proven source for unsaturated fats that your body needs to stay healthy.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Many of you know Jenny and her terrific blog, Picky Palate. Jenny recently had a fun Nordicware giveaway including a Nordicware Pumpkin Patch Pan, a Nordicware Pumpkin Loaf Pan, and a Nordicware Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake Mix. The giveaway was courtesy of csnstores.com and I won!

That’s right I’m the lucky new owner of two fabulous Nordicware pumpkin pans! So what’s a girl to do. Get baking of course! So far I’ve tried three pumpkin chocolate chip bread recipes. (The pans are fabulous by the way! Nothing stuck and they look so fun!)

First I used the Nordicware Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake mix that I won, adding chocolate chips. The mix was convenient and you could smell the wonderful spices in the mixing bowl. It had a nice flavor but if I used it again I would add some pumpkin puree to add more moisture.

I often buy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread at Great Harvest Bread Company. Their pumpkin bread is fabulous! Moist and delicious with a perfect blend of spices. I’ve tried the last few years to find a recipe I liked as much, but haven’t been successful until now.

Amy at Streaming Gourmet posted a recipe for Ultimate Pumpkin Bread. Normally I would look at her recipe and say too much butter, too much sugar. But I decided maybe the reason I love the Great Harvest Bread so much is because of too much sugar, too much butter. So I decided to give it a try.

My son’s first comment after he took a bite was, “this tastes just like the pumpkin chocolate chip bread you buy.” I thought the recipe was fabulous, but it reminded me more of a delicious, moist pound cake with a wonderful sugary crust on the outside.

The third version I made using our family favorite light banana bread recipe substituting pumpkin for the banana and adding different spices. These were a bit heavy and my husband said, “These aren’t as good as the last one’s you made.” Of course not, they had half the fat, sugar and calories!

So the clear winner was Amy’s Ultimate Pumpkin Bread. Thanks Amy for sharing your recipe! Also a huge thank you to Jenny and csnstores.com for the fabulous giveaway! Here’s my version of Amy's recipe:

Ultimate Pumpkin Bread
Yields 2 Medium Loaves
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup butter, really soft, half melted really
3 large eggs
1 16 oz can of pure pumpkin
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350˚F and spray two medium loaf pans with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, spices, salt, baking soda, and baking powder and set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the wire whisk attached, dump in the sugar. Take the butter and put it in the microwave for about 30 seconds, so that it is half melted. Dump it into the sugar. Add the eggs. Cream these three ingredients together on medium speed for about 2 minutes or until fluffy. Add the pumpkin and combine well.
4. In three batches, add the dry ingredients mix gently until each batch is just incorporated. Scrape the sides between each batch. Mix in chocolate chips.
5. Pour batter into prepared pans.  Bake side-by-side for about one hour or until an inserted knife comes out clean the top is golden. The mini pumpkins baked for about 25 min.

Cranberry Crumb Bars

Katie at goodLife {eats} (a fabulous blog with gorgeous pictures) posted this recipe for Cranberry Crumb bars last week declaring them practically perfect in every way. And I knew they would be perfect for week 5 of my 12 weeks of Christmas cookies. What could be more perfect than a cranberry bar cookie at Christmas time!

I bought all the ingredients I needed earlier in the week but ran out of time to make them until this morning. But I thought no problem. It’s an easy recipe I can just throw it together and I hurried to get them in the oven before I had to leave. When I looked in the fridge to grab an orange it was gone! No problem I thought I’ll just use frozen. But nope the frozen OJ was gone too.

Okay, I’ll just sub apple juice. Gone! So I was out of juice options and I substituted 1/4 cup water and some lemon zest. Let’s not even talk about the fact that I forgot to add the corn starch to the cranberries and had to stir it in after I put it on the bottom crust.

Put despite my misadventures in the kitchen, these bar are delicious and will make a nice addition to my Christmas cookie platter. A bit tart without the orange juice  but I may decided to drizzle a bit of icing on top before serving them. Thanks Katie for a wonderful holiday recipe!



Cranberry Crumb Bars
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup almond meal*
1 cup cold butter (2 sticks)
1 egg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
juice of 1/2 of an orange
4 cups fresh cranberries
2/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbs cornstarch
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 9×13 inch pan.

In a medium bowl, mix together 1 cup sugar, flour, almond flour, salt and baking powder. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg. The dough will be crumbly. Alternatively, you can pulse the dry ingredients in a food processor with the butter until pebbly, and then mix in the egg until it all comes together. Pat half of the dough into the buttered pan.

In another bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, and orange juice. Mix in the cranberries. Sprinkle the cranberry mixture evenly over the dough in the pan.

Add 1/4 tsp cinnamon to the remaining dough, then crumble dough over the berries. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until top is a light golden brown. Cool completely and chill in the refrigerator before cutting into squares. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.


*Just toss almonds (blanched or whole) in a food processor until finely ground to make almond meal.

If freezing: chill according to recipe, cut into serving size pieces. Place them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet to flash freeze, and then transfer to a labeled zip top freezer bag.


For more delicious 12 weeks of Christmas cookies visit:
Megan's Cookin
April from Abbys Sweets - Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies,
Denise from Keeper Worthy Recipes -  Cinnamon and Orange Cookies
Megan's from My Baking Adventures – Vanilla & Chocolate Sugar Cookies
Kim from Stirring the Pot – Chambord Crisps

Daring Bakers Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

This was not my first attempt at making macarons. In September Twitter was all abuzz about the finicky like pastry and I joined with others around the globe in a Mac Attack. Who knew that one little cookie could be so temperamental and difficult to master. My first attempts at macarons yielded a delicious but less than perfect macaron with tutus instead of feet.

In hopes of finally conquering the challenge of creating a perfect macaron, I read and reread all the tips and suggests for this month’s challenge. I aged my egg whites on the counter.  I weighed my ingredients. I sifted my almond meal. I whipped my whites until stiff peaks formed and the peak did not fall over. I used stacked cookie sheets. Although short of the perfection I was hoping for, my macarons have definitely come a long way baby.

For my first batch I used vanilla sugar and made Audax's two egg version of the Daring Bakers recipe, but I doubled the granulated sugar. They were a bit undercooked and sticky, even after trying to dry them in a warm oven, but still delicious! Both macarons are filled with dulce de leche.

The second batch was David Lebovitz chocolate macarons. The chocolate macarons were a bit too ruffly, but tasted divine! Sort of like a chocolate caramel brownie.

Visit the Daring Bakers’ Blogroll to see macarons in lots of wonderful flavors and all the colors of the rainbow.

Lime Meltaways

There is a little shop in Key West, Florida, Kermits’s Key West Lime Shoppe, that sells Frozen Key Lime Pie on a stick dipped in Belgian Chocolate. It may sound like an over the top combination, but it’s fabulous and I fell in love with it one hot day in June while visiting Key West on a cruise stop. I’ve been back to Key West several times since then and always head straight to Kermit’s for this tart but refreshing treat.

Another fun thing about visiting Kermit’s is they always have out samples of their delicious key lime treats. My favorite is a cookie called Key Lime Coolers with “refreshing tropical tartness sprinkled on every cookie.” They are little bite size cookies covered with powdered sugar. A wonderful combination of sweet, tart, buttery and crunchy.

I’d been wanting to try a similar cookie recipe Martha Stewart’s Lime Meltaways since I bought Martha Stewart Cookies earlier this year and when I saw a beautiful bag of key limes at the store, I knew which cookie I wanted to make for week 4 of 12 weeks of Christmas cookies.

These Lime Meltaways aren’t quite as tart as Kermit’s, but they have the same crunchy/sandy texture and sweet/tart taste that I love. I’ll definitely be making these again!



Lime Meltaways
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar (divided)
Grated zest of 2 limes
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, cream butter and 1/3 cup sugar until fluffy. Add lime zest, juice, and vanilla; beat until fluffy.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Add to butter mixture, and beat on low speed until combined.
3. Between two 8-by-12-inch pieces of parchment paper, roll dough into two 1 1/4-inch-diameter logs. Chill at least 1 hour.
4. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Place remaining 2/3 cup sugar in a resealable plastic bag. Remove parchment from logs; slice dough into 1/8-inch-thick rounds. Place rounds on baking sheets, spaced 1 inch apart.
5. Bake cookies until barely golden, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. While still warm, place cookies in the sugar-filled bag; toss to coat. Bake or freeze remaining dough. Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

I didn’t read the recipe correctly when making these cookies and added all the powdered sugar with the butter instead of 1/3 cup and I didn’t think they were too sweet and would probably do it again next time I make them.

I also made my cookies a bit bigger and thicker than the recipe suggests as suggested by reviews.

More delicious 12 weeks of Christmas cookies Megan's Buttermilk Cookies With Nutmeg, April's Chewy Chocolate Cookies, Denise's Lemon Luscious Snowcap Cookies, Megan's, and Kim's.

Crockpot Applesauce

Dara at Cookin’ Canuck recently posted her secret Family Crockpot Applesauce recipe. I’m not really an applesauce lover. Well, I didn’t use to be an applesauce lover until I tried this homemade applesauce!

This applesauce is so appley sweet with chunks of apples, just a bit of tartness and a touch of cinnamon. Nothing like the watery applesauce you buy at the store.

I had been given some apples from a neighbor and needed to use them up, so I decided to try this easy recipe and made half a batch. It didn’t even have time to cool before it was gone. (Yes, I did eat more than my fair share!)

I loved it so much that a few days later I went to my local farmer’s market and bought apples, came home and made a double batch of it. Sadly, it’s gone again. But I did manage to put a little bit in a jar and take some to my mom, who is my biggest fan.

If you haven’t tried homemade applesauce, you don’t know what you’re missing. Thanks Dara for sharing your secret family recipe. Hopefully, millions of people across the country will be enjoying it soon.

Crockpot Applesauce
5 medium-sized Gala apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
5 medium-sized Golden Yellow Delicious apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup water or apple juice
Place all of the apple pieces in a large bowl and stir in sugar and ground cinnamon. Pour water or apple juice into the bottom of a large crockpot (slow cooker) and add the apple mixture. Cover, turn the crockpot setting to Low, and cook for about 8 hours (or on High for 5 hours), stirring occasionally.
Serve warm or room temperature.

My changes: (I mixed the sugar, cinnamon and apple juice in the bottom of the crockpot and added the apples as I was cutting them, so I didn’t have to dirty an extra bowl. I used an immersion blender in the crockpot to blend half of it and left half of it chunky.)
Makes approximately 4 cups of applesauce.

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook and Awards!

The past month has been a fun one for me and I owe some  terrific food bloggers lots of sincere thank yous!

First I need to thank Jamie of Mom’s Cooking Club. I was the winner of her first cookbook giveaway, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook! Jamie has a great blog and she usually ends her posts with a fun Mom's Cooking Club Lesson tip. Thanks Jamie!

I was really excited to receive this cookbook because I am really lousy at serving my family delicious vegetable dishes. I’d much rather be baking a cake or whipping up a nice meaty lasagna. The veggies and side dishes are usually an after thought for me. One nice thing about this cookbook is it incorporates lots of healthy veggies into hearty one dish meals so I don’t even need to worry about what veggies to serve.


The first meal I made from the cookbook was Cincinnati Chili Mac. This may be familiar to many of you, but it’s a great idea that I hadn’t heard of before. Basically you serve homemade chili over spaghetti and spice it up with a little cinnamon. I took it one step further and served it over spaghetti squash from my garden. 

Also, I feel so honored to have received three blogging awards recently. It’s always so much fun to be recognized by wonderful food bloggers.

My favorite French blogger and my Twitter buddy, Jamie of Life’s a Feast presented me with a Meme Award. Jamie has a terrific sense of humor and is a wonderful writer. Her  recipes are always fabulous and she is the Mac Queen!.

The requirement for this award is to list 7 things about your personality and then pass the award on to 7 other bloggers. It was fun to learn more about Jamie, so here’s a little bit about me:

1. I’m a bit of a perfectionist.
2. Unlike Jamie, I’m not a procrastinator. I usually arrive early and well prepared. I’m a list maker like my mom.
3. I’m an optimist and not too much of a worrier. I always assume things will work out for the best.
4. I like to shop. Groceries, clothes, Christmas, most any type of shopping. I once thought that I should do it for a career.
5. Breakfast is my favorite meal. I love breakfast foods! It’s a great reason to get up in the morning and start baking!
6. I’m a morning person.
7. I love to travel even more than baking. I’m always planning at least one trip.

Thanks Jamie for passing the Meme on to me. I am passing the Meme on to the following terrific bloggers:

1. Janet of LaDue & Crew
2. April of Abby Sweets
3. Megan of Megan’s Cookin’
4. Cathy of The Tortefeasor
5. Maria of Two Peas and Their Pod
6. Gaby of What’s Gaby Cooking
7. Dara of Cookin’ Canuck
   
   

The Inspiration Award was given to me by Petite Nyonya who blogs from Singapore. I’m always amazed at how small the internet has made the world and I’m always inspired when I visit her blog. Her blog is filled with delicious, exotic dishes and I always learn something new. Thanks Petite Nyonya – I’m so honored that you find my blog inspirational too!

I am passing this award on to the following inspirational bloggers:

1. Deeba of Passionate about Baking
2. Jamie of Life’s a Feast
3. Sara and Kate of Our Best Bites 

The Neno Award was given to me by the wonderfully sweet Sweet and Savory. Her post about the reasons she loves blogging is wonderful. In addition to eating a healthier diet she says, “Thanks to the kindness and caring of bloggers, I have had a world open to me.”

I couldn’t agree more. I have made so many wonderful friends through blogging. Tweeting in the morning helps me start the day with a smile. I love all the comments, suggestions and advice fellow bloggers leave on my blog. I am a better, more adventurous cook because of blogging.
  
Neno’s Award—-Rules and Regulations
1. As a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging.
2. To seek the reasons why we all love blogging.
3. Put the award in one post as soon as you receive it.
4. Don’t forget to mention the person who gives you the award.
5. Answer the award’s question by writing the reason why you love blogging.
6. Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.
7. Don’t forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.

I’m passing the Neno award on to a just few of my wonderful blogging friends who are kind enough to stop by often and leave sweet comments on my blog.

1. Katy of Food for a Hungry Soul
2. Coleen of Coleen's Recipes
3. Teresa of A Blog About Food
4. Shelby of Grumpy’s Honeybunch