Thanksgiving Desserts

I usually make the same thing every year, although I might vary the apple dessert that I make.  It's part of our tradition that the pies are mostly the same, and it seems that this is what everyone wants.  So, rather than try and come up with something new,  I'm just going to make it easy for you to find the recipes in my blog.  Simply click on the name of the dessert to the recipe.



PUMPKIN PIE
I always make pumpkin pie.  It's one of my husband's favorites and I've tweaked it to where it is just the way he likes it! It was also my father-in-law's favorite, and when I make it, everyone has warm memories of him. It's a little firmer than standard with a very rich, spicy flavor.

CARAMEL PECAN PIE
This is my favorite, so I usually make two at Thanksgiving - one to bring  to our friend's dinner, and one to keep at home just for the family.  It's a little different from Southern-style pecan pie. It doesn't have that gelatinous bottom, has more pecans and is richly flavored like caramel.




THE BEST APPLE PIE
Everyone seems to love apple pie, and this one is my favorite.  You can tweak it to get it exactly the way you like it.







PEAR CRANBERRY TART
My daughter-in-law loves tart desserts, so when they are in for Thanksgiving, I like to plan on having one dessert with cranberries or rhubarb.    This one looks beautiful, and cuts nicely into neat slices.  It seems to be liked by even those who don't really like cranberries.






HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!

Fresh Heirloom Tomato Sauce, and More Ways to Use Ricotta

I guess until summer ends I'll still be in my Italian phase.  I just can't resist those fabulous heirloom tomatoes and wonderful fresh herbs.  Here is my fresh tomato sauce served over stuffed shells (with my homemade ricotta, but a good packaged ricotta works fine, too), but I also also love it spooned over angel hair or other pasta.    At the end of the recipes, I'll also have some more ideas for using homemade (or not) ricotta and tomatoes.

When I say fresh tomato sauce, I'm not talking about spaghetti sauce - you know the long-cooked type that you find in a jar.  No, this is a barely cooked sauce that tastes like fresh tomatoes.  To start, I use heirloom tomatoes (the big purply ones) that I buy from the Specialty Farmer at Cedar Walk Farmer's Market.  If you've been reading my blog, you know that I love their produce and buy from them all the time.

My friend thought they looked "dicey" - all purply and cracked.  Yup.  They do.  It's because the Specialty Farmer leaves them on the vine until they're practically bursting,  and picks them just before coming to market.  Do not be fooled by the looks.  This results in the most flavorful tomatoes that I've ever eaten in this country.  Head over there if you live in Charlotte!  It's open on Tuesdays from 4-7.

Fresh Tomato Sauce
Serves 4
The first time I made this sauce, I cooked the tomatoes for 10 minutes, as I had seen in so many recipes.  But heirloom tomatoes, especially these cherokee purples should not be cooked that long, unless you want a very mushy, watery sauce.  By grating half of the tomatoes, and leaving half diced and not cooked, you end up with the most flavorful and best textured fresh sauce.

3 pounds heirloom tomatoes (preferably cherokee purples)
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1 teaspoon olive oil, or more to taste
garlic or diced shallots, optional
2 tablespoons white wine
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar, or more to taste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (your choice - oregano, thyme, sage, lavender)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Cut off a slice from the bottom of half of the tomatoes.  Use your fingers to pull out the seeds from the little pockets in the tomato.

Using a box grater on the coarse side, gently grate the tomatoes into a colander, set over a bowl.  Grate until you get to the cracked upper part of the tomato, and then discard the rest.

 The remaining tomatoes need to be skinned.   If the tomatoes are not very ripe, you'll want to make an X- cut in the bottom of the tomato.  Very ripe and cracked ones don't need to be cut.

Boil a pot of water and immerse a few tomatoes at a time for 10-15 seconds.  Immediately dip them in cold water to stop the cooking.  The skins will now peel off easily.

Cut off the craggy top of the tomato, remove the seeds and cut out any hard core, and then dice the tomatoes into 1/4-inch dice.  Add the chopped tomatoes to the grated ones in the colander.  If there are any hardish bits of tomato,  add these to the juice in the pot under the colander.  Sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon salt over the chopped tomatoes and let them drain for 15 minutes.  You'll now have a potful of chopped tomatoes and a rather large quantity of tomato juice.

If you like garlic or onions in your sauce, add the olive oil to a pot and saute the onions until soft, or the garlic for a minute (I never use either in this sauce).  If not using the garlic and onions, pour the juice and hard bits of tomato into the pot along with the olive oil, wine, vinegar and chopped mixed herbs.  Heat the juice on medium-high heat until simmering.  Cook until the juice is reduced and thickened to a puree-type thickness (a matter of taste as to how thick it should be, but when you add the chopped tomatoes the sauce is going to get thinner as the tomatoes lose some of their liquid), about 10-15 minutes.  Remove the pot from the heat and add the chopped tomatoes.  Stir in sugar and remaining salt.  Taste, and adjust the sugar, salt and vinegar to get the taste you like.  Stir in the chopped basil (or you can add the chopped basil directly to the pasta).  Use immediately over pasta.

For Stuffed Shells
Makes 16 shells

16 large pasta shells
2 cups homemade or Polly-o Full-Fat Ricotta
2 cups shredded mozzarella, divided
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, or a mixture of Parmesan, Asiago and Romano
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs
1 large egg
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.  Line a baking dish with heavy-duty foil, and then place a sheet of nonstick foil in the bottom (NO Cleanup!).

Put a very large pot of water up to boil, mixing in 1 teaspoon of salt.
Add the pasta shells and cook for 1-2 minutes less than the box calls for.  Immediately rinse them in cold water to stop the cooking.  Sprinkle on a little oil to keep them from sticking.

While the shells are cooking, combine all of the filling, except for 1 cup of mozzarella cheese, in a bowl, and stir to mix well.

Spoon 1 well-rounded tablespoonful of filling into each shell.

When all of the shells have been filled, spoon on the sauce, and top with the remaining mozzarella.

You can leave the shells uncovered, or cover with foil and bake for 15-20 minutes, just until the filling is hot.  If the shells were covered, you might want to low-broil them briefly to slightly brown the cheese.  Watch carefully, however.  If you don't like any part of the pasta crusty, don't broil at all.

Tip
Fresh herbs are really hard to cut when they're wet.  I like to chop them first, then put them in a small strainer, wash them and then dump them onto a paper towel to dry thoroughly before adding to my dish.

Heirloom Tomato Sauce with Spaghetti and Mixed Italian Cheeses

Becca's Baby Shower Bear Cake

After making marshmallow fondant for my last baby shower event, I was excited to try covering a cake with fondant.  I had been hesitant before, because commercial fondant doesn't taste very good, but marshmallow fondant tastes pretty good and doesn't have a lot of artificial ingredients in it.  The second drawback came when I saw that fondant shouldn't be refrigerated.  That doesn't work for me, because I usually use buttercream made with egg whites and butter.  I decided to use Marshmallow Fluff instead of egg whites, but I wouldn't sacrifice the butter.  Somewhere along the road, I read that if the cake were kept at 45 degrees, the fondant would be okay.  Since I have a second refrigerator, it was easy to make that adjustment, and as you can see from the picture, the fondant came out beautifully.  The lettering is done with Wilton Sugar Sheets, and I didn't know how they would do refrigerated either, but they seemed to be fine as well.

I made the bear a week in advance to give it time to firm up so that I could easily move it to the cake.  It took an entire recipe of marshmallow fondant, and I added the green while the marshmallows were melted. This way I didn't have the arduous and messy task of kneading in the green.  (I needed some black and pink fondant, which came from the white batch that I made to cover the cake). Work on a piece of waxed paper, so that you can move the bear after it has been made.

Start with the legs.  They need to be fatter at the top (the hip/thigh part) and taper to the foot.  Just bend the bottom of this piece to make the foot, which you can perfect after the bear is assembled.

The legs are going to attached midway, or slightly farther back from the center of the body.

Once the legs are made, the body can be shaped.  It needs to be pear-shaped so that it comes down between the legs.  Make the body taller and thinner than it needs to be.  The head is going to weigh it down so that the finished bear will be shorter and fatter than you started. Attach the legs with a little water.







The arms get fashioned in the same manner as the legs with the top shoulder/bicep fatter than the hand.  If you have the arms too long, you can always pinch off some to get them right once you have the bear all assembled.

For the head, start with a round ball about 1/3 the size of the body.  Put a toothpick or stick of spaghetti into the body and then stick the round ball on.  Once you have the ball stuck onto the body, you'll be able to see if it is proportioned right.  If it isn't right, you get something that looks more like a pig, so just keep playing with it until it looks right.  The snout, nose and eyes, though will really start making it look like a bear.

Some directions for teddy bears have the snout be flat and oval, but mine just didn't look bearlike until I made the snout stick out and be more triangular.  Once you have it the shape you like, attach it with water.

Color a small bit of fondant with either dark brown or black coloring.  Make the nose a reverse triangle from the snout.  My bear has a substantial nose!  I think it could be smaller and still be very bearish.  The eyes, on the other hand, need to be pretty small to be right, and to me they seem to look best if they are touching the snout rather than farther up on the head.  The mouth is easiest made with an edible marker.

For the ears I flattened a very small ball of green fondant, and then made them slightly concave.  I used a fondant ball tool to make the indentation for the pink fondant.

To add the final touches. put on the pink foot pad with a small brown pad at the bottom.  For the toes use the edible marker.  The toes can either be on the pad like I did, or off the pad on the green part (these are the claws, so they can even be right at the edge of the green part of the foot).




To make the fur, use a small scissor to make tiny clips into the fondant, which will stick up and look like fur.  Lastly, score the head/snout area so that it looks like the head has been stitched.  I used a flat toothpick, but there is a fondant tool for this purpose, if you have one.

Slide the waxed paper and bear onto a cardboard round and set aside to dry for 5-7 days at least. Once the bear has dried out, you'll be able to lift him off of the paper and onto the blanket, or wherever else you like.

For the blocks:
The blocks came from a Wilton design, which you can find at http://www.wilton.com/idea/Baby-Block-Cake.  For the round cake, I had to proportion the blocks smaller, but you'll  have to adjust them to the size cake you make (mine was 12-inches).   To see if the proportions would work, I cut the blocks out of paper and laid them on an upside down cake pan.  Once I had the right size block, I printed out letters on my computer, testing out different fonts and sizes to get the one I liked best, and the size that looked good on the block size I had chosen.  After you do that, you can use the Wilton instructions for cutting out the Sugar Sheets and applying the sanding sugar.  A word of caution - you can't pipe and sprinkle all of the blocks with the sanding sugar, and then hope to transfer them to the cake.  If any of the piping gel has gone onto the back or off the sides of the block, the blocks will adhere to the surface you have them on.  Instead, cut out all of the blocks, attach the letters and only  apply the edge gel and sugar just before placing them on the cake.  To get the spacing nice, I put my little paper mockups on the cake, and then replaced each one with the Sugar Sheet block.  That way it was easy to see which block went where.

Making the blanket:

I used the blanket to hide the little cardboard round that the bear was on.  I was afraid that the bear might sink into the cake, so I put 3 straws into the cake (cut even to the top of the cake) to support him, and then the bear was on a 3-inch round cardboard that I found at Michael's Craft Store.



To get the correct size, I just kept adding strips to the blanket until it covered the cardboard.




To begin making the blanket, sprinkle a work surface with powdered sugar and roll a piece of fondant to  just thicker than 1/16-inch.  Cut out strips, about 1/8-inch wide.

Lay the strips horizontally, and  weave 1 strip through the others so that one horizontal is on top and one on bottom, alternating until the whole strip has been woven.

Fold back the strips that are underneath the vertical strip.

Place on another vertical strip, close to the first one.

Fold down the strips that were up, so you now have two strips that are woven.  Fold up the strips that are underneath, and repeat the whole process.  Move the strips close to each other after they are woven in.

When the blanket is the size you want, press down on it to mesh it all together nicely.

Cut the tails to an even length.  To make the fringe, make small cuts into the tails with a knife.  Slide the blanket onto a small round or square cardboard so that you can move it, and so that it provides a nice base for whatever will go on top of it.

For the cake I used the chocolate cake recipe from my wedding cake (http://amazingdessertrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/06/tales-of-tiered-cake-final-recipes.html) . I used a nail rose in the center of each to make sure that the cake cooked evenly in the middle (don't forget to remove it when you flip the cake out of the pan!).  It worked beautifully.  A center cone would also work, but then you have to put in a plug, so I prefer the nail method.  The frosting was an easy marshmallow meringue buttercream- see http://amazingdessertrecipes.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentines-day-layer-cake.html.  Leave out the cassis and use the powdered sugar and corn syrup sparingly, to taste.  Don't forget that you'll have the sweet fondant on the outside, so you don't want the frosting too sweet.  Some people won't eat the fondant, though, so it should be sweet enough.  You'll need a double recipe (3 pounds Marshmallow Fluff).

Filled Fudge Cookies Revisited

I originally published this recipe in December 2010, and recently cooked them again, with a friend. Just for experience, she made them at her house before our baking session, and found that she had some difficulties with the dough.  I could tell immediately that she had overcooked the cookies, but when she described how dry her dough was, I knew that there was probably another problem.  We made them again, using the ingredients she had brought and found that the dough was way too dry.  The culprit seemed to be the flour.  The recipe called for unbleached flour, and that is what she had brought, but it was Gold Metal - Better For Bread, unbleached, and this flour has too much protein in it  for the dough to work (we know this because we made them again with Pillsbury unbleached and it worked fine).  I have changed the recipe to reflect this - it now calls for all-purpose flour - either unbleached or bleached will work fine, and will be less confusing to those who can only find unbleached bread flour.  The other issue was with the 1/2 can of condensed milk.  I, of course, did this by weight, using 7 ounces of the condensed milk - which actually turns out to be more than half of the can - even though the can says that it is 14 ounces.  The recipe now has a more precise measurement for this.  Lastly, we wanted the cookies to look more elegant so we drizzled them with dark and white chocolate.  I don't have a picture of the result, but they really looked wonderful.

This recipe is based upon a 1995 $50,000 Pillsbury Bake-off winner called Fudgy Bonbons.  It was a really good  confection, but not a great one, because the dough was kind of greasy and the filling bland.  The original recipe called for using chocolate chips, which got melted together with some butter and then mixed together with condensed milk and flour.  Because there was not a very large amount of butter, every time I made the cookies, the chocolate mixture seized - that is, it got stiff and grainy very quickly.  The quick fix to this was to melt the chocolate and butter separately, and then to combine the chocolate with the very large quantity of condensed milk, which worked beautifully (as long as the milk is at room temperature!).  I also thought that the dough would be smoother  and less greasy with less butter in it.  In addition to these problems, the original recipe called for using milk chocolate kisses in the center.  So here you had a rather sweet wrapping around a mediocre piece of chocolate candy, rather than having a contrast between the two and a superb chocolate candy center.  The last problem with the bon bons was that, although they tasted good the first day, after that the candy center hardened and then it was more like eating a wrapped candy, rather than a cookie.  All of these objections were easy to fix as you'll see in the following recipe.  In my opinion, I've turned a $50,000 bonbon into a $100,000 cookie!  Love to have your opinions!

Filled Fudge Cookies
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped ( I used Ghirardelli)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
7 ounces (2/3cup) sweetened condensed milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour, measured by fluffing, scooping and levelling

30 Dove Promise candies, Caramel or Peanut Butter (or solid)

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, for decorating
2 ounces white chocolate, optional (to get it to melt thinly, you need  white chocolate with more than 31% cocoa butter (more than 15g/40g chocolate)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. with a rack in the center of the oven.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Place the chocolate in a large microwave-safe bowl, and heat it on medium power (5) for 1-1/2 minutes.  If the chocolate isn't yet melting, heat it for another 30 seconds.  Stir, and see if the mixture needs more heating or if it can rest and continue melting on its own.  Continue, heating, stirring and resting until the chocolate is melted and smooth.  Set aside to cool briefly.

Meanwhile, place the butter in a small microwave-safe bowl and heat it on 10 seconds to melt the butter.  Stir the condensed milk and vanilla into the chocolate and  then stir in the melted butter.

Add the flour and stir, and then knead the dough until all of the flour has been incorporated.

     

Keep the dough covered as you are making the cookies, and if it starts to crack a lot as you are making the cookies, drizzle  and knead in a little more condensed milk.

To make the cookies, pull off a small ball of dough, and flatten it in the palm of your hand or on a board until it is a scant 1/8-inch thick.  There are a few different shapes that you can make, and I use them to differentiate cookies that have different fillings.  This time, I used round shapes for cookies filled with solid chocolate ( I didn't like those for the reasons mentioned above), square shapes for the caramel filled cookies and triangles for the peanut butter filled cookies. 

For round or square shapes, set the Dove Promise square in the center of the dough you have just flattened, and then bring the sides up over the dough to encase the chocolate.



Once the dough is encased, you can squeeze and pat it in our hand and use your thumb and forefinger to shape the round.

 

For square shapes, tamp the cookie on its ends.

For triangles, I like to cut the Dove Promises in half.  If using the caramel filled ones, they will need to be frozen first.  I usually start with the same piece of dough as in the above examples, but I square it up on the work board and then turn it so that the pointed side is up.  I put the piece of candy in, wrap the top edges around the candy, estimate the amount of dough needed to finish the wrap, and then cut off the excess dough at the bottom. (When I try to cut it into the triangle shape first, I always seem to end up with too little dough, but you can do it anyway that gets the job done). 

The last thing to do is to seal the final edge, and I usually do that with a decorative rim.

Set the cookies on the prepared cookie sheet and bake them for 4-6 minutes.  DO NOT OVERBAKE. Cookies will be soft and appear shiny, but the bottoms will just be showing signs of being cooked and will look like barely-cooked brownies. Slide the parchment onto a cooling rack and let the cookies cool.  

The cookies aren't that attractive without some sort of decoration, and cookies that don't look great won't be perceived as great, even if they are! I usually just melt the 2 ounces of semisweet chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl for about 1 minute on power 5 or until melted.  I then make a little cone out of a plastic bag, snip off the tip and pipe some horizontal lines on the top to cover up the cookie blemishes. You can repeat the process with the white chocolate.

How long to let the cookies cool is definitely a matter of preference. After about 2 hours, the cookies will be cool, but the centers will still be totally liquid .  I prefer them after about 6 hours when the chocolate has firmed up a bit, but isn't yet hard.  By the next day, the centers will have firmed back to their original state.  You can put them back onto a cookie sheet and set them in a 100 or 200 degree oven for a minute or two to re-soften the centers slightly.

The cookies do freeze, although they are always much better when freshly made. Set the frozen cookies in a 300 degree oven for 5 minutes to defrost the dough and soften the centers.

Makes about 30 cookies

Passover Chocolate Cherry Cake

THIS RECIPE IS PART OF THE DOWNLOADABLE PDF, AMAZING PASSOVER DESSERTS

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I wanted to make a non-dairy Black Forest-type cake, but the only non-dairy whipping liquid I could find, locally, was Ungers.  Because I don't think it's the tastiest product, I thought it would be different and flavorful to use a chocolate whipped cream-type frosting instead of the Unger's alone.  In addition, I wanted something easier to make.  I was able to find 778 (fabulous) preserves in my kosher market, and voila!


Pareve or Dairy
SERVES 8 - 10

Chocolate Nut Cake
pecans (available  from http://www.ohnuts.com/ )

matzo cake meal
non-dairy Passover semisweet chocolate, chopped (see below for websites)
boiling water

large eggs, room temperature
sugar

Cherry Chocolate Filling
kosher for Passover non-dairy chocolate, chopped (local or mailorder: http://www.choclat.com/ or http://www.ohnuts.com/.)

warm water
 kosher for Passover Non-dairy Topping liquid, thawed (such as Haddar or Unger')
kosher for Passover powdered sugar* see note
Cherry Preserves (I love 778 brand)


For the cake
1. PREHEAT the OVEN TO 350-degrees F. with a shelf in the middle of the oven. Grease two 9-inch round metal cake pans, and place parchment paper in the bottom of each.

Tip:Cutting the parchment is easy.  Put your hand in the pan to hold it steady and then with the other hand, cut around the pan with a kitchen-only box cutter, or a knife. 




Place the pecans and the matzo cake meal in the bowl of a processor. Pulse on and off until the nuts are finely ground, about 10 five-second pulses.

Place the chocolate in a small bowl. Pour the boiling water over the chocolate and let it sit for 30 seconds. Stir, or whisk the chocolate until it is melted. The mixture does not have to be smooth.

In a large mixing bowl beat the eggs just to blend. Gradually beat in the sugar. Increase the speed to high and beat until the eggs are thick, pale, and tripled in volume , about 5 minutes.

Sprinkle half of the matzo-nut mixture over the eggs and gently fold into the eggs. Repeat with the remaining matzo nut mix.

Stir 1/4 of the egg mixture into the chocolate, and then gently fold this into the remainder of the egg mixture.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pour the batter into the prepared pans. BAKE FOR 18-25 MINUTES or until a tester comes out with no crumbs attached. Place the pans on a cooling rack

 

Loosen the sides of the cakes with a small metal spatula and then let them cool in the pans. Place a piece of waxed paper on a cake, and then a rack or board, and invert the two together.

 Remove the parchment paper, and reinvert so that the cakes are right side up.  The cakes will have sunk just slightly in the center.  Do not try to level the cakes, as they are very tender and will fall apart if you try to level them.  Freeze the top cake for 1 hour to make it easier to handle.

For the Filling
Place the chocolate and warm water in a large microwave-safe bowl.  Microwave on power 4 for 1 minute.  Stir and allow to stand until the chocolate and water are well mixed.  Reheat if necessary, but don't let the chocolate get too hot or it will burn (no higher than 120-degrees F.).  Let the chocolate cool while you whip the creamer.  The chocolate must still be liquidy and slightly warm when you add it to the whipped topping. (If you have a thermometer, 100 degrees F. is a good temperature for blending chocolate).

Pour the whipped topping into a large mixer bowl and add the powdered sugar.  Whip the topping until it forms stiff peaks.  Spoon a large dollup (1-2 cups) of the whipped topping into the chocolate, and stir rapidly to combine (the object is to add just enough so that the chocolate doesn't cool enough to cause the chocolate to harden, but not so little that the chocolate melts the cream).

Stir this mixture into the remaining whipped topping.

Assembly 
Onto the bottom layer of your cake spread the preserves.  I like to use a very thin layer of the jelly and then spread the cherries around.  If you are using the 778 preserves there will be a lot of cherries.  Although the recipe calls for 2 jars, this is so that you have enough cherries.  You will have almost a whole jar of the jellied part left.

So that the cherries and filling do not get mixed up together, spoon on big globs of the filling before spreading it.  The amount to use is personal - we like about 1/2-1-inch of chocolate filling.

Set the frozen layer on top of the spread frosting.

For a rustic looking cake, just add the cherries and filling on top, or for a more polished look, finish the cake by frosting the sides and adding borders.

The cake can be made several days ahead, or can be frozen for up to 1 month.  Defrost in the refrigerator overnight. 

Serve the cake directly from the refrigerator, if possible.

*Note:  If  you cannot find Kosher for Passover powdered sugar, grind granulated sugar in a food processor to get it a little finer.  Add it to the whipped topping liquid, and refrigerate the mixture at least 15 minutes so that the sugar can dissolve.

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