Apple, Feijoa and Ginger Crumble

Martha asked me for the recipe of this dessert which accomodates both of our food needs and preferences.

Two apples, peeled and chopped
flesh of 10 feijoas scooped
two tablespoons of finely chopped crystalised ginger
two tablepooons brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Toss these ingredients in a small casserole. Then prepare the topping and sprinkle over the fruit.

Topping
3/4 cup of finely ground grain eg millet/corn/oat/rice
1/4 cup dessicated coconut
1/4 cup chopped seeds eg sunflower/pumpkin
1/4 cup finely chopped nuts eg almonds/brazils/hazels
1 tsp each ground cinnmon and ginger
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup butter

Melt butter in a small pan over a low heat and stir in other ingredients. Stir over heat for a few minutes until thoroughtly mixed, then sprinke on top of fruit. Bake crumble uncovered for 30-40 minutes in 180 oven until brown and fragrant. Serve with icecream, custard or cream if desired.

Skillet Raspberry Jam

Hello everyone! Look who is standing!

So - I know it's been a long time...and who knows if anyone is still checking this - but I do have plans for a comeback of Nourish Us and much more. Stay tuned.

Tonight, I'm bringing to you my favorite homemade jam - a skillet raspberry jam. It is posted in celebration of summer and my friend Erin's beautiful raspberry bushes. The recipe originated in a beautiful issue of Gourmet from August 2004. Every time I think about this recipe - my mouth instantaneously waters. I am hoping this helps to bring forth this season's raspberries in Colorado...I've been waiting for them very patiently.

A couple notes: I have found that this jam does really nicely with raspberries or blackberries. It isn't a serious canning jam. I just put the jam in a nice air-tight jar in my fridge...I have found it can stay good for up to a month- if it lasts that long. It is very tasty as a spread on toast, topping on dessert...or on a spoon.

Skillet Raspberry Jam (try also Blackberry, Strawberry or Schnazzberry)

makes about 1 1/2 cups

1 lb raspberries (4 cups)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons powdered fruit pectin (not the liquid or low-sugar pectin)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

->Mash raspberries with a fork in a large bowl
->Stir together the berries, sugar, pectin and lemon juice in a 12-in nonstick skillet. Boil the mixture and stir occassionally, until slightly thickened - about 7 minutes
->Transfer jam to a large shallow bowl and chill. Cover the surface with wax paper. Let it rest until it is softly set - about 30 minutes. (Note: Jam will set further if it is chilled longer).
->Transfer jam to a jar...and try not to eat it with a spoon out of the jar. :)

Lev Gonick Fudge

Ethereal shoe leather

When I was little I thought Lev Gonick Fudge was a standard flavour like Russian or Whiskey Fudge. There were certainly lots of things that we ate at home that no-one else seemed to have heard of, but which I understood to be due to cultural differences between New Zealand and America.

I was quite old when I realised that, really, even in America no-one knew about Lev Gonick Fudge. That's because Lev Gonick was not actually a culturally exotic flavour but the name of the teenage boy who developed the recipe, one of my babysitters in Canada, where I lived until I was three.

This is such a simple recipe that I learned to make it when I was about 5 years old. It's also delicious, and quite robust, surviving pretty much any variation you can throw at it. But don't bake it too long, which is what I did yesterday, or goes rather on the tough end of the chewy spectrum. It's still yummy, but you have to work quite hard at it, and with fragile teeth like mine, that's not the kind of workout you necessarily need.

This week I've moved into a new share house, so a new kitchen with a bulging pantry of exotic delights and redundancies. I was determined to make Lev Gonick Fudge with whatever was available so used the following substitutions for the fudge pictured above:

• instead of vanilla I used almond marzipan flavouring
• instead of brown sugar I used up the last of a jar of sticky raw sugar, and topped it up to a cup with castor sugar
• instead of walnuts I used half a bag of slivered almonds of indeterminate age

The resulting version of Lev Gonick has a heavenly, ethereal quality from the marzipan flavouring. It smells divine but tastes delicately (rather than intensely) of marzipan which is a bit at odds with the shoe leather texture.

Here is the original recipe copied from my old recipe book, recently unearthed from storage with glad cries. It's an ideal sweet to make when you are craving brownies but want to bake with cocoa instead of solid chocolate.

Lev Gonick Fudge

Combine:

• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 tbsp cocoa (heaped)

Mix in a medium sized bowl:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup walnuts

Add the cocoa mix to the rest of the ingredients, mix well.
Bake in an 8" pan at 350 degrees for 25 mins (or just until firm).
Ice as soon as removed from the oven.

For the icing combine:
2 tbsp butter
1 1/4cup icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tbsp hot water
When smooth and glossy spread over hot fudge.

Wait until cool and firm before eating (if you can resist that long).

I find my favourite recipes by turning to the pages stained cocoa.

Give me pies, give me sweet little pies: Fudge Pie (Part 2)

This pie is from the other side of my family - the Southern side. 

 

In both name and location - my sweet Southern aunties have tasty many goodies!!  My auntie Valerie (Southern) Fulkerson shared this recipe with my mom Judy back in 1995.  It has since become a favorite of my brother Jeffrey, my mom and myself as well as my cousin Amy and, well, anyone who tries this pie!  The pie is very tasty and sinful.  It is good "naked" or with a meringue on top.  Whipped cream or ice cream will do in a pinch.  :)  Enjoy!

Fudge Pie

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoons corn starch
• 3 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 cups milk
• 3 egg yolks – beaten
• 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Pastry shell, baked (regular or graham crust)

Directions:

• Mix flour, sugar, cornstarch and cocoa in a medium saucepan.
  
• Gradually stir in milk.  Cook over moderate heat until mixture thickens and boils.  Boil 1 minute.
• Stir half of hot mixture into beaten yolks.  Add the yolk mixture back to the boiling mixture.
• Stirring constantly add butter and vanilla.
• Boil and stir constantly until very thick.  Remove from heat.
• Pour into pre-baked crust
• ENJOY!

(Kimberly & Amy enjoying Auntie Valerie's Fudge Pie, January 2009)

Kellerman Birthday Cakes

This memory is of a history of birthday cakes but, please,everyone add to this because my memory is not complete. Most of my memories of Kellerman family life end with Japan because that is when I started university and left home and only came back as a visitor.

When we were very small, at Scott Base, and quite young, at Paxton Illinois I remember Ada Ruth making rainbow cakes. There would be yellow, pink and blue layers which she put togeter with filling and then covered the whole cake with fluffy white frosting.* In Paxton we had a drafty old house with a coal furnace. One year the furnace blew up and coal dust sprinkled all over the colored layers cooling on the counter top. We were too poor to make another cake so mom vacuumed the coal dust off and covered it with a thick layer of frosting, No one at the party noticed.


Before Mom started making the Devils food cake, she made a rich chocolate cake which started with creaming the butter and sugar until fluffy. It may have been made with melted cooking chocolate rather than cocoa. I have a tactile memory of creaming the butter and sugar between my fingers squishing away until it was light and fluffy. When mom scraped the gritty mixture off my fingers with a spatula it wasn't such a nice feeling.


Mom got the recipe for devils food cake from her mom, Edna Taylor, in the mid fifties. Grandma Taylor learned to decorate elaborate cakes in California. One cake that I remember is that the cake was baked in a bowl and then turned over and a small doll was inserted to make a skirt and layers of ruffles were piped on. The devils food cake is sturdy and flexible enough for many variations. One birthday variation I remember is that the caked, baked in a sheet, was covered with a layer of marshmellow and a layer of fudge over that. For about a year many of us asked for that one before it seemed too disgustingly sweet.


At Camp Tadmor, where my parents met. and where the family lived after WW II and Jessie was born, later on we learned another recipe from Hulda Thorpe. Cherry Delight, a gooey sweetness made with cans of cherries. Does anyone have this recipe? that was a favourite birthday treat.


Sometimes we asked for marble cake, or angel cake, or golden layer cake. As a teenager, I always wanted lemon meringue pie. (Editor's Note: See the Lemon Meringe Pie post for the recipe!)

Everyone out there, why don't you post your favourite birthday cake?

Give me pie, give me sweet little pies: Lemon Meringue (Part 1)

Amy's recent visit to Kimberly's house inspired a ton of baking and eating.  Amy brought many lemons - so we decided to make lemonaide, lemon meringue pie, avglomeno soup and lemon bars.  Lemon must have been in the air - as Martha decided to post a lemon meringue pie at the same time!  We used the original recipe from the Original Betty Crocker Cookbook, a recipe Ada Ruth used, but had we only had this recipe as well we could have made both versions!!

Lemon Meringue Pie

Prepare a baked pie shell.

Combine in the top of a double boiler:

1 cup sugar

5-6tablesp0ons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

Add very gradually:

2 cups water or milk

Stir and cook these ingredients over (not in) hot water for about 8 to 12 minutes until the mixture thickens.  Cover and cook for 10 minutes more.  Stir occasionally.  Remove the mixture from the heat.

pour a little of it over

3 beaten egg yolks

Beat this and return it to the mixture in the double boiler. Cook and stir gently, stillover boiling water, ab out 5 minutes more. Remove from heat.

Beat in:

3 Tablespoons butter

1/3 cup lemon juice

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind

Note: If you want a more lemony flavor add more rind--not more juice. Cool the custard by stirring very, very gently to relase any steam whch might thin the filling. Pour it cool into the cold pie shell

Cover with a meringue made with the 3 egg whites.

Meringue

Preheat oven to 325 -350 degrees

Whip until they are frothy:

3 egg whites

Add:

1/4 cream

Marshmallow Interlude

There is a TV series on the Food Network called "Good Eats."  I really like this show - mostly because it does a great job of describing the science and history behind recipies and how food works.  So....there was a show that inspired me to make a basic pantry staple - something I'd never considered making before - marshmallows!!  I have since talked about them to quite a few people...and shared them with anyone who visits us.  They are goooood.

It wasn't very difficult and the result is VERY tasty.  (It was worth the 15 minutes of noise from the KitchenAide and the strange gelatin smell...) I'm considering a batch with peppermint flavoring for use in hot chocolate...mmmmm.  And when I think about color and cutting out shapes - possibilities are endless!  

Here is the recipe - but if you see above I have linked to the original recipe on Foodtv.com.  I have included my personal modifications below.  Let me know if you try this out!  (It is messy...just be forewarned) Enjoy!

Homemade Marshmallows

3 packages unflavored gelatin 1 cup ice cold water, divided 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 1 cup light corn syrup 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar 1/4 cup cornstarch Nonstick spray

• Place the gelatin into the bowl of a stand mixer along with 1/2 cup of the water. Have the whisk attachment standing by.
  
• In a small saucepan combine the remaining 1/2 cup water, granulated sugar, corn syrup and salt. Place over medium high heat, cover and allow to cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Uncover, clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F, approximately 7 to 8 minutes. Once the mixture reaches this temperature, immediately remove from the heat.
  
• Turn the mixer on low speed and, while running, slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the gelatin mixture. Once you have added all of the syrup, increase the speed to high. Continue to whip until the mixture becomes very thick and is lukewarm, approximately 12 to 15 minutes. Add the vanilla during the last minute of whipping. While the mixture is whipping prepare the pans as follows.
  

For regular marshmallows:

Combine the confectioners' sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. Lightly spray a 13 by 9-inch metal baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add the sugar and cornstarch mixture and move around to completely coat the bottom and sides of the pan. Return the remaining mixture to the bowl for later use.When ready, pour the mixture into the prepared pan, spread this mixture with a lightly oiled spatula and spread evenly in the pan (Kimberly's Note: This will be messy and sticky - and I found it easiest to spread as much as I could, then I poured the remaining confectioners' sugar mixture over the marshmellows and spread to the edges.) Dust the top with enough of the remaining sugar and cornstarch mixture to lightly cover. Reserve the rest for later. Allow the marshmallows to sit uncovered for at least 4 hours and up to overnight. (Kimberly's Note: I let this sit for about 6 hours before cutting.)

Turn the marshmallows out onto a cutting board and cut into 1-inch squares using a pizza wheel dusted with the confectioners' sugar mixture. (Kimberly's Note: I made more confectioners' sugar mixture. I put it into a ziploc bag and put cut marshmellows into the bag and shook so the marshmallows wouldn't stick to one another.). Once cut, lightly dust all sides of each marshmallow with the remaining mixture, using additional if necessary. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

Christmas Stollen

Every Saturday morning, while Jess supervised the cleaning chores we all were assigned, Ada Ruth would set a big bowl of yeast dough to raise. She did not seem to measure, but the bowl itself and the feel of the dough told her she had the right amount of yeast flour, eggs, milk and butter. For she wasn't making daily bread but the dough for sweet rolls, coffee cakes, caramel rolls. Every Saturday morning airmen would come to the house just about the time rolls were coming from the oven, the smells of cleaning products wiped out by cinnamon, hot raisins, lemon glaze and the heavenly smell of rich yeast bread. Not only sweet, rolls, but cakes, and pies were made every Saturday morning.

But for Christmas, stollen was made. The dough was richer and filled with candied fruit. Ada would roll a portion of the dough into a square, spread it with melted butter, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar, raisins, dried fruit and roll into a long pinwheel. Then Ada would form it into a circle and carefully slash only part way into the ring. Each segment would be turned on its side, the top decorated with perfect half pecans or walnuts and green and red glace cherries and left to rise again and then baked until golden. Finally the top would be glazed with lemon jice and powdered sugar glaze while the stollen was still hot. A perfectly beautiful flower or a wreath for Christmas breakfast.

Every Christmas I make stollen for my family and special friends. I use the recipe that Ada used throughout my childhood. When she went to Arizona she learned a great many shortcuts but they weren't part of my memories, so I use the one that I watched her make. Only I have to measure the ingredients.

Christmas Stollen

Have all ingredients at about 75 degrees

Sift before measuring 6 to 8 cups of all-purpose flour (or bread flour).

Crumble 1 1/2 to 2 caakes of compressed yeast

or 3 tablespoons of dried yeast into 1 1/2 cups 85 degree scalded, cooled milk until dissolved. Add one cup of the sifted flour. Let this sponge rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.

While it is rising sift your sugar.

Beat until soft 1 1/2 cups butter. Add the sugar gradually as you beat the butter. until it is light and creamy. Beat in one at a time 3 eggs

Add

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind

Add the raised sponge and the five cups flour and knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Add the larger amount of flour if it is too soft and sticky. Let it rise until almost double in bulk.

While it is rising prepare your fillings.

Candied fruit with chopped pecans or

Chopped hazelnut with grated orange peel and cinnamon or

Chopped almonds with cherry preserves or

Poppy seeds ground with raisins, sugar, sour cream and cinnamon

Variations are part of the fun.

Toss the raised dough onto a floured board. I divide it into three parts and prepare each portion a different way. Usually I make a stollen, a caramel coffee cake, and a braided apple and raisin loaf. the braided loaf, alled Vanocka is supposed to represent the swaddled Christ Child.

I used the measurements from the stollen recipe in the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer et al, but modify the procedure to do it as my mother did.

Ada's Devil's Food Cake

Grandma Ada Ruth gave this Devil's Food Cake recipe to Martha, who made it as her signature cake through most of my life. It is one of my most valued family heirlooms. I don't know where Ada got this recipe, does anyone else? Does anyone remember her baking this one?

This cake is virtually fool proof, responds well to an apparent infinite number of variations, stays moist for over a week if not entirely consumed sooner and is super easy to make. The secret is the sour milk (1 tbsp of vinegar in a cup then fill it up with milk and leave in a warm place til it starts looking like runny yoghurt) and I suspect this is responsible for the slightly reddish tone of the dark chocolate and the amazing, unique smell when you stir in a cup of hot water right at the end.

The cake is so moist it is delicious without being iced/frosted: just a sprinkle of icing/confectioners sugar makes it look elegant. And a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla icecream on the side for extra indulgence. However, any good chocolate icing turns this into a special occasion cake.

Extra-sinful variations I have tried and enjoyed have included:
- stirring cherries into the batter at the end
- replacing vanilla with brandy
- making in a bundt (tube) pan, or as cupcakes, and then hollowing out the middle and filling with chocolate mousse (there are still people who remember that version fondly from some 20 years ago!)


Grandma Ada Ruth's Devil's Food Cake

3 cups plain flour
2 cups white sugar*
6 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup cocoa
2 eggs (beaten)
1 cup sour milk
1 cup cooking oil
1 tsp vanilla

Sift the dry ingredients into a big bowl.
Mix the wet ingredients together.
Stir wet into dry until completely combined.
Stir in 1 cup of hot water.
Bake at 190/375 degrees until the top springs back (about one hour).

*I use half a cup less which stops the top of the cake from cracking, and is still sweet enough for my taste.

This portrait of Ada Ruth Taylor was sent to Jess when he was in France. At the same time portraits of ther first two babies ,Ruth Jean and Martha Taylor, and her Mother-in- law were taken and they were combined on a single card , small enough to fit in a breast pocket. I seem to remember the card said, ' Greetings from Home'