Walking the Red Brick Road

A photographer's journal and life in rural America

Posts Tagged recipe

Packs a party punch

Jul 4

Posted by Roxie in art shows/craft fairs, beverage, food, recipe | No Comments

With my reception hostesses Avis and Krista

Krista made the cookies and I made the punch for my Artist’s Reception. I wanted red punch for the holiday season (and because red is my favorite color). I got out my mother’s Hall County (Neb.) Extension Cookbook and found this recipe from Mrs. Frederick Pfell. Of course, we amended it to suit ourselves.

Party Punch

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1 large can frozen orange juice concentrate
1 large can frozen pineapple juice concentrate
juice of 2 lemons
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 quarts water (less if using ice)
1 package cherry Kool-Aid
1/2 t. cherry flavoring
1 T. maraschino cherry juice
drops of red food coloring
maraschino cherries
orange slices

Add all but cherries and stir together. If possible, make frozen punch ring ahead of time. Float some maraschino cherries and orange slices in punch as garnish.

Enjoy! We did.

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Peach pie mashup

Apr 18

Posted by Roxie in baking, dessert, food, peaches, pie, recipe | No Comments

Sour Cream Peach Custard Pie

Hubby wanted a peach pie for supper last night, so I got out my Peach Custard Pie recipe. I was almost through making the filling when I realized that we had no milk. Hubby had no desire to make a milk run so I searched for Plan B.

I reached for my mother’s Hall County Extension Club Cookbook, which is full of tried-and-true recipes. One was Sour Cream Peach Pie. I was not about to start over, so we took pieces from that recipe and ended up with a delicious new pie.

Sour Cream Peach Custard Pie

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Ingredients:
! baked pie crust
3 C. sliced, peeled peaches or 1 qt. sliced canned peaches
2 beaten eggs
1 C. sour cream
1/2 C. sugar
3 T. baker’s patent flour
1 t. vanilla
1/2 t. peach flavoring
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. ginger
1/2 t. cinnamon

Method:
Layer peaches in baked pie crust. Combine all other ingredients and pour over peaches. Weave pie crust lattice over top and brush with egg wash. Cover pie crust edge with foil to prevent overbrowning. Bake at 400 degrees 15 mins. Remove foil and bake 350 degrees 15 mins. Pie is done when toothpick inserted into middle of filling comes out clean.


Mary’s Pie Crust


Ingredients:
2 C. flour
1 t. salt
2/3 C. plus 1-2 T. shortening
1-7 T. water

Method:
Stir together flour and salt. Cut in shortening until dough forms pea-size chunks. Add water a tablespoon at a time until dough clumps. Roll to desired size and put into pie plate. If pie recipe calls for baked shell, bake at 450º for 12-15 minutes.

Yield:
Makes 1 single-crust pie shell.

GHTime Code(s): nc nc nc 

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Irish soda bread

Mar 25

Posted by Roxie in baking, bread, food, quick bread, recipe | No Comments

Irish soda bread in cast iron pan

Hubby is part Irish and loves to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. This year we made Irish stew and Irish soda bread for our celebratory dinner. I thought about baking scones, but I didn’t much care for my recipe. I had heard of Irish soda bread and decided to try it.

Recipe came from SimplyRecipes.com. It cautions baker not to over-knead. I fear I did so. The dough was still “shaggy”, but Scooby-Doo was missing. (I think I kneaded it to a smoother consistency than I should have.)

If I make this again, I intend to substitute craisins for raisins. Currants would probably taste good, too.

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Plum delightful

Sep 8

Posted by Roxie in canning, garden, plums, recipe, trees | No Comments

jars of plum spread

Wendy’s plum tree produced fruit this year and she wasn’t available to pick them. So I picked them and made them into Plum Delight Spread. I obtained the recipe from Cooks.com. Their name says “preserves”, but we think it’s more of a spread. Recipe features more than just plums, where a regular preserve recipe would have plums only. Of course, I’m always tinkering with recipes. Friend Debbie says I “make recipes my own.”

Here is my own version:

Plum Delight Spread

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2 qts. plums
4 1/2 c. sugar
grated rind and juice of 1 1/2 lemons
3 c. raisins
grated rind of 1 1/2 oranges
1 1/2 c. finely chopped nuts
1 tsp. butter
1/2 package liquid fruit pectin

Wash plums, cover with water. Cook until tender. Remove blemishes, peel, seeds and cut up. Measure 6 cups pulp. Add sugar, lemon juice, raisins, grated orange and lemon peel. Cook until thick and clear. Add butter and nuts, then pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Boil 30 seconds. Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary. Pour into hot sterilized jars. Hot water bath for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude if necessary.

Yield is about 7 half-pint jars.

Cooks.com’s recipe does not include hot water bath instructions, but I’m rather obsessive about canning food safely. I want no pathogenic bacteria in my canned goods.

I am so grateful for the opportunities God has given me to provide food for the winter.

GHTime Code(s): nc nc 

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I relish my relish

Sep 2

Posted by Roxie in canning, cucumbers, food, peppers, recipe | No Comments

Tasty Cucumber Relish ready to put in jars

I have never eaten any relish better than the one below. It requires a lot of work, but is worth every bit. We’ve put up around 50 pints this year. Hubby says we have enough for three years. Bring on the hamburgers and hot dogs!

We’ve been blessed with lovely rainy weather for two years running.  Rainy for the semi-arid High Plains, that is. Only God knows what kind of weather next year will bring. Let’s make relish while the rain continues.

Unfortunately, our peppers are late this year. They are still too small to use. Considering the massive amount of peppers needed in this recipe, we were very disappointed that our peppers were so slow. We started numerous peppers because we knew we needed to make relish this year. We’ll have to freeze whatever peppers we don’t use.

Tasty Cucumber Relish

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Vegetables
6 lbs. grated cucumbers, peeled
1 grated white onion
2 lbs. grated carrots
10 grated medium bell peppers (if possible, include some red, yellow and/or orange peppers for better color)

Mix together. Since we almost always have to double and triple this recipe, we use two large plastic storage containers with lids. We pour the vegetables straight into the container from the food processor.

Brine
1 T. turmeric
1/2 C. salt
8 C. water

Mix together. Turmeric is used in dyes and rapidly creates stains that are very hard to remove. Protect your surfaces!

Pour brine over vegetables. Stir well, cover and let sit for 3 hours. Drain. If you are using storage containers, do this in the bathtub. Scoop vegetables from one container into another with colander, pressing out liquid each time. Cover with water and lid, then let stand for 1 hour. Drain, using above process, refill with water and drain again.

Syrup
1 T. mustard seed
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. ground cloves
2 t. allspice
2 C. brown sugar
4 C. cider vinegar

Mix and bring to boil, then pour over vegetables. Let stand 10-12 hours.

Boil before filling prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space. Make sure liquid covers vegetable mix. Process in water bath for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude if necessary.

Makes about 7 pint jars. The number of peppers used in the recipe has a rough correlation to the amount of pints.

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Life is like a bowl of cherries

Jan 10

Posted by Roxie in baking, dessert, food, recipe | No Comments

cherry nut dessert

This is one of my favorite desserts but I haven’t made it in years. Hubby’s parents gave us some cherries they had frozen and we forgot to put them away when we got home. By the time we recognized our omission, they were thawed. When I was asked to make a dessert for a funeral dinner, I decided to make this one in order to use those cherries. Recipe comes from Kitchen-Klatter Cookbook, which sadly is now out of print. It is a wonderful cookbook. If you ever happen upon one, buy it.

Abigail’s Cherry Nut Dessert

Crust:
1 C. flour
5 T. powdered sugar
1/2 C. butter (DO NOT substitute)

Mix well together and pat down in well-greased 9×13-inch pan. Bake 15 mins. in 350-degree oven. This dough won’t look like enough to cover the pan, but it does. Keep thinning and spreading it until it covers the entire bottom of pan.

Filling:
2 eggs
3/4 C. Splenda
3/4 C. sugar
1/4 t. salt
1/4 C. flour
3/4 t. baking powder
1 t. vanilla flavoring
1/2 t. cherry flavoring
1 1-lb. can pie (sour) cherries, well-drained (reserve juice)
1/2 C. nuts, finely chopped
1/2 C. coconut

Beat eggs well, then add remaining ingredients. Mix all together, pour over baked crust and bake 30 mins. in a 350-degree oven.

Sauce:
1/4 C. sugar
1/4 C. Splenda
1 1/2 C. cherry juice (add water if necessary)
1/4 C. lemon juice
1 t. almond flavoring
1/4 t. cherry flavoring

Blend sugar and cornstarch, then add liquids. Cook over medium heat until thick and clear. Pour slowly over filling, covering the entire surface. Top with whipped cream if desired.

I tried making it with margarine and it didn’t taste quite as good. That wasn’t as bad as the time I tried butter-flavored Crisco instead of the butter. Usually, this dessert gets devoured. Not that time. I never did that again.

Since I’ve made this for a funeral dinner, we won’t get to eat it. Not to worry: I’ll make it for Wednesday night’s potluck. If you’re coming to that, then you have this to look forward to.

GHTime Code(s): 0f3ec nc 

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Hubby’s Famous Pizza

Jan 8

Posted by Roxie in cooking, decor, food, interior, Italian, recipe, recycle, Repurpose | No Comments

Chef Hubby spreads pesto on pizza crust

My husband makes absolutely wonderful pizza. It’s often called the best a person has ever eaten.

The best pizza starts with a good crust. We found a great recipe in a cookbook Stef gave us: Best Bread Machine Recipes: For 1 1/2- and 2-pound loaves (Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen). This cookbook is wonderful for all types of breads. Of course, he made a few emendations.

Cornmeal-Parmesan Pizza Dough


Ingredients:
1 1/3 C. water
3 T. olive oil
3 1/3 C. bread flour (we use 2 C. all-purpose flour and 1 1/3 C. high-gluten flour)
2/3 C. cornmeal
2/3 C. grated Parmesan cheese
1 t. salt
1 1/4 t. active dry or bread machine yeast
1 t. basil
1 t. oregano
1/2 t. red pepper flakes

Method:
Add all ingredients except cornmeal to machine according to manufacturer’s directions. Select the “dough” cycle. When the cycle is complete, remove the dough from the machine. Punch down. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. Roll dough to 1/8″ thick. With spoon, spread olive oil over the top of crust, giving it a heavy coat. Then spread freshly-minced garlic and pesto over oil. Top with desired pizza toppings. Bake at 475 degrees for 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown and cheese is melted. Makes approximately 3 crusts.

We buy our high-gluten flour from our friends at Heartland Mill. Search for “strong bread flour”.

We like to use lots of vegetables on our pizzas. In the summer, we add our fresh herbs, like basil and Italian parsley.

Friend Kevin can hardly wait to eat this pizza!

Friend Kevin can hardly wait to eat this pizza.

Since we’re into decoration big time, we have to have some appropriate decoration for our dinner. I had literally fished some atlases out of the trash. I framed and am now matting maps of the country whose cuisine we are eating that night.

map of Italy

I matted Italy in green in honor of the Italian flag’s colors of green, white and red. This map definitely predates the 1990s. Look at the land across the Adriatic Sea. Yugoslavia was still a country when this map was published, instead of the hodgepodge of countries that divide the Balkan Peninsula now. Too bad such terrible loss of life accompanies redrawing of lines.

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Peppernuts

Dec 25

Posted by Roxie in baking, food, holiday | No Comments

A mound of freshly-baked peppernut cookies

In our family, Christmas just is not Christmas without peppernut cookies. I don’t know when Mother started baking them; I don’t remember a Christmas without peppernuts — at least peppernut dough.

I’ll tell a couple stories about these cookies, but first the recipe:

Peppernuts

Cream together:
3 C. dark brown sugar
3/4 C. butter (do not substitute)
1 1/2 C. sugar
1 1/2 C. Splenda
1/4 C. shortening

Add and beat in:
2 eggs
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. salt
1 C. chopped nuts
1 1/2 C. water
2 t. ground anise
1 t. ginger
1 t. ground cloves
2 t. baking powder

Mix in 10 C. flour, adding gradually.

Place on well-floured board and knead in 2 C. more flour.

CHILL THOROUGHLY.

To bake:
Take small amount of dough and roll into long snake about 1/2 to 3/4″ (about as big as your index finger).

Peppernut dough snake

dough prepared for baking

dough prepared for baking

Cut into pieces about 1/2″ long and place onto lightly-greased cookie sheet, leaving a small space between each cookie.

rows of unbaked peppernut cookies

Bake 10 mins. at 400 degrees. For best flavor, let them rest overnight before eating them.

Recipe says that entire operation requires 4 1/2 hours. I wouldn’t know. We’ve never made them all at once.

I align those cookies in neat rows and columns, just as the picture shows. Until I was in college, I didn’t know why I was/am so meticulous about how I placed the cookies. One year when I was home for Christmas, Mother invited a friend, Maria, to help us bake. As usual, I neatly placed the cookies.

“Why are you so careful to place them so precisely?” Maria asked.

I had no idea; I’d just done it that way as long as I could remember.

Mother said, “When she was a little girl, I told her she had to line them up carefully so I could keep track of how many cookies we had made.”

My brother and I love cookie dough and peppernut dough is the best! We’d eat big chunks of peppernut dough, carving them out of the thick mass of dough in the large Tupperware mixing bowl she always used for that recipe. The recipe makes such a vast amount that we generally had plenty of cookies left over for whatever purposes my mother had in mind. She often used them as filler in Christmas gifts. One year, she gave my aunt a knitting needle container filled with peppernuts.

When I was in high school, Mother didn’t get around to baking any peppernuts for quite a long time after she’d made the dough. Kevin and I kept nibbling away at the dough while we awaited its inevitable conversion to baked goods. By the time she opened the bowl to bake them, the vast majority of the dough was gone. Oh, were we in trouble! We told her we’d make another batch, but she would have none of that idea. Not many peppernuts were baked that year and we remained in my mother’s doghouse for quite a long time.

Neither of us have been cured of eating cookie dough, though. When I told Stef, my sister-in-love, that we’d made peppernuts last night, she said, “It’s a good thing Kevin wasn’t there; you wouldn’t have had much dough left.”

If you want to know the truth, the peppernuts in the above photos weren’t baked either. I ate them. Yum, yum!

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Instant cookie tradition

Dec 24

Posted by Roxie in baking, crafts, food, holiday, recipe | No Comments

The oatmeal-raisin cookie recipe that I recently made for Hubby started with Basic Cookie Mix. Since we wanted no more of that recipe, I had to use up the mix somewhere else. I tried the recipes that used that mix and found one that was absolutely delicious, so delicious that Hubby said I should make it more times a year than at Christmas time. Of course, I doctored the recipe. It didn’t have enough sources of orange flavoring.

I made them again today.

Orange-Coconut Drop Cookies

Basic Cookie Mix

4 C. all-purpose flour
1 C. sugar
1 C. Splenda
2 t. baking powder
1 1/2 t. salt
1 1/3 C. shortening that does not require refrigeration (if you intend to store it)

In large bowl, thoroughly stir together all ingredients except shortening. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Store in covered container up to 6 weeks at room temperature. For longer storage, place in freezer. Makes about 8 1/2 cups.

Orange-Coconut Drops

2 1/4 C. Basic Cookie Mix
1/4 C. orange marmalade
1 beaten egg
3 T. orange juice, preferably fresh-squeezed
1/2 t. orange peel, preferably freshly-grated
1/2 t. orange flavoring
1 C. flaked coconut; use unsweetened if possible

In mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except coconut. Beat well. Stir in coconut. Drop from teaspoon 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cookies are done when edge is slightly brown. Makes 30. Keep refrigerated.

Once I was done with squeezing and grating the orange, I put its remains into the garbage disposal to make it smell better.

This cookie jar is precious to me. I got it for my mother when I was in high school. When she passed, it returned to me. I feel my mother’s loss at Christmastime, especially since so many of our Christmas decorations came from her.

Because of the Child whose birth we are celebrating, I will see my mother again. Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

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Sticking to the tried and true

Dec 11

Posted by Roxie in baking, food, recipe | No Comments

"Don't Make!"

"Don't Make!"

I wanted to bake cookies. I asked Hubby what he wanted. He said oatmeal-raisin, so I found a new recipe to try.

I should have known better.

When he ate those cookies this morning, he wasn’t all that thrilled. “Where’s the oatmeal?”

I compared new recipe to old one. New one only called for one cup of oatmeal. Old one called for three. New recipe will be labeled the dreaded “Don’t make!”

So, once I’ve finished baking this new recipe, I’ll make the old one. After all, that recipe did send me to the Nebraska State Fair when I was in 4-H.

Any recipe that has all kinds of notes has to be a good one. What you can't see is that the page is about to fall out of the book and it has stains on it. These are all good signs of a delicious recipe.

Any recipe that has all kinds of notes has to be a good one. What you can't see is that the page is about to fall out of the book and it has stains on it. These are all good signs of a delicious recipe. Handwriting in red is my mother's. Mine is in blue. Thanks, Mrs. Russell Rehder, whoever you are.

Six-in-One Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 C. shortening
1 C. brown sugar
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. Splenda
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 1/2 C. sifted flour
1 t. salt
1 t. soda
3 C. quick-cooking oatmeal
Optional – 1/2 C. chopped nuts, 1 pkg. semisweet chocolate chips, 1 C. cut-up gumdrops (omit black ones), 1 T. orange peel, 1 C. raisins, 1 C. dates or 1 C. coconut

Method:

Cream shortening and sweeteners thoroughly. Add eggs and vanilla and beat well. Sift together flour, salt and soda. Add to creamed mixture. Add oatmeal and one of the optional ingredients. If desired, divide the dough into several parts, adding something different to each one. Form dough into small balls or drop by teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees 12-15 mins. or until lightly browned.

Pictures of food:

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