Eat First

Kriemhild Kupboard, Hamilton

It’s not every day you visit a farm stand filled with butter and cheese instead of fruits and vegetables.

Kriemhild Kupboard is a self-serve stand on state Route 12B, three miles from the village of Hamilton. It’s owned and operated by Kriemhild Dairy Farms, which uses milk from its own grass-fed herd and other grass-fed milk suppliers in Central New York to produce its full-fat and cultured dairy products. The name is pronounced CREAM-hild, fittingly enough.

Kriemhild’s flagship product is meadow butter, which is made by slowly churning fresh sweet cream the old-fashioned way – in barrel churns. The end result is a rich, creamy, flavorful butter with a butterfat content of 85%, similar to high-end European butters like Kerrygold and President. (For comparison, supermarket butters are about 80% butterfat. Here’s a good guide to the world of butters.)

Several varieties of Kriemhild butter are available: meadow butter, cultured meadow butter and baker’s butter. All are available unsalted or salted, and the salt used comes from Seneca Lake. Kriemhild also produces creme fraiche, which is similar to sour cream but not as tangy, to my tastebuds, anyway.

If you’ve never tasted small-batch, grass-fed butter, you’re in for a treat. To know my other half is to know he loves butter, and he loves the Kriemhild salted meadow butter on toast, potatoes and other vegetables.

Looking ahead to the holidays and holiday baking, I splurged on a couple rolls of Kriemhild unsalted baker’s butter to use in cut-outs, sables and shortbread-style cookies. The more butter at the holidays, the merrier, right? I cut the one-pound rolls in halves or quarters and freeze them double-wrapped. It’s a premium product (about $10 per pound), but in baked goods where buttery flavor really stands out, I’m willing to make the investment. I might break some of that holiday butter out early and make a pound cake.

Kriemhild Kupboard also carries goods from other local producers, including bread from HeartStone Artisan Bakery, milk, cheeses and yogurt from Stoltzfus Family Dairy, sauerkraut and other fermented foods from Food and Ferments, dried mushrooms from Fruit of the Fungi, and gelato from Jones Family Farm, to name a few.

The Kupboard is open daily from dawn to dusk. It’s at 1093 state Route 12B, Hamilton, a couple miles south of Good Nature Farm Brewery. We made our trip double the fun by stopping at the brewery for a beer and a bite. The stand operates on the honor system. There’s pencil and paper to add up your purchases and a cash box to make change. There’s also a credit card reader, in case you go on a butter-buying binge.

Product photo courtesy of Kriemhild Dairy Farms, on Facebook.

All other photos © Margaret McCormick.

The Ultimate Fruitcake: Black Cat Cafe and Bakery

The handmade fruitcake baked by the thousands at the Black Cat Cafe and Bakery in Sharon Springs (Schoharie County) came to my attention on Facebook. They caught my eye because they are golden, studded with fruit and nuts and resemble my Mother's Lemon Extract Cake -- also known as fruitcake. I clicked like and shared the photo. Later, when Tony Daou, the restaurant's owner, asked if he could send me a sample, I said yes. I rarely accept or request food samples, but sometimes make exceptions for local products -- and this was an offer too good to turn down.

 

 

Two 10-ounce fruitcakes and a mini fruitcake arrived in the mail a couple days later. They were neatly wrapped in brown paper and also wrapped in cheesecloth. Stored at room temperature, the cakes will last for months, the package notes. I gave one to a fruitcake-loving friend who made several boozy Jamaican rum cakes at Christmastime, stashed one in the freezer and shared one with Robert.

 

Fruitcake gets a bum rap. I spent many years not eating it, before becoming a grown-up with an adventurous palate who also likes to bake. The fruitcake from the Black Cat is dense and buttery, like pound cake, and based on a British recipe handed down for generations. It's loaded with pecans and dried fruits, including figs, dates, pineapple, orange, apricots, dark and golden raisins. The cakes are made with brandy and Laird's Applejack (a blend of apple brandy and neutral spirits), but the booze is a really subtle note in the background -- unwrap the cheesecloth and brush on more liqueur if you like. Front and center is the sweet figs, which also add nice chew to the cake. The cake goes great with coffee and tea and I thought about having a slice or two of it with vanilla ice cream.

 

For 15 years, the Black Cat fruitcakes were known as Drunken Blonde Fruitcake. They've been rebranded as The Ultimate Fruitcake and that's fitting. Robert and I agreed we've never tasted a better fruitcake (aside from my Mother's). 

 

The Black Cat offers the cakes through March and they're on sale now for $22 each (with further discounts if you order two or more). So why not give your loved one or ones a fruitcake for Valentine's Day?

 

If your travels take you to Sharon Springs, the Black Cat Cafe and Bakery is at 195 Main St., across the street from the American Hotel. It's open seven days a week. Fruitcakes and other Black Cat products, like fig balsamic drizzle and Lebanese lemon dressing, can be ordered online. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION or call 518-284-2575.

Irish Soda Bread

I've been to Ireland several times and never had anything resembling what we in the States commonly call Irish Soda Bread. We did enjoy hearty brown soda bread everywhere we went -- with no raisins, no caraway seeds and, I'm guessing, no sugar. It's wonderful -- even more so slathered with that amazing Irish butter. So maybe this recipe should be called Irish-American Soda Bread.

Whatever you call it, this bread is easy to make and uses ingredients you are likely to already have on hand. There is no kneading and no need to run out and buy buttermilk, unless you want to. You can substitute sour milk, made with milk and white vinegar, a trick I learned from my Mother (see instructions below).

 

When she was still able to bake, my Mother made Irish Soda Bread every St. Patrick's Day -- and made multiple batches for sharing. It smells wonderful when it's baking, thanks to the caraway, which is similar to anise seed, but not quite as strong. It took me a while to make sense of this recipe, found in Mom's recipe file but not in her familiar, tidy script. Far from it.

 

"I wonder whose handwriting that is,'' my sister Anne said when I showed her the recipe. I keep studying the card and wondering the same thing. The mystery is part of the recipe's allure now, and makes it even more of a treasure. My interpretation/adaptation is below.

 

Irish Soda Bread

 

Adapted from a recipe in my Mother's recipe file (but not in her handwriting)

 

3 cups flour (including half-cup whole wheat flour, if you like)
Pinch of salt
3 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons caraway seeds, plus more for garnish (optional)
1.5 cups plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk or sour milk (divided use; see note)
1 cup or more raisins (mix of golden and dark)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a large loaf pan.

To make sour milk: Add 2 tablespoons white vinegar to glass measuring cup. Add milk to 2-cup line. Let rest for at least 5 minutes. Stir to combine. Recipe uses 1.5 cups. Save remaining sour milk to brush bread (you will not use all).

To make the bread: Combine dry ingredients (including caraway seeds) in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center. Add 1.5 cups plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk or sour milk; mix gently, scraping down sides of bowl, until just combined. Do not over mix. Toss raisins in a small amount of flour (they should be lightly dusted) and fold the raisins into bread dough.

Scrape dough into prepared pan, spreading it evenly. Pan should be about three-quarters full (see note on using extra dough, below). Using a pastry brush, gently brush/"mop" some buttermilk on top and sprinkle with a few caraway seeds.

Bake on middle rack in oven for 45-55 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. All ovens are different; to check for doneness insert cake tester or toothpick in center of loaf. It should come out mostly clean. The bread will be brown on the outside and pulled away from the sides of the pan. Cool bread in pan for about 15 minutes. Run a thin spatula around the edges and turn bread out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. Makes one large loaf.

Note: If you have extra dough, grease a custard cup and use dough to make a mini bread round. Check for doneness at 20 minutes.

 

The icing on the birthday cake

My mother used to make us chocolate cakes (and white cakes) with "boiled" frosting for our birthdays. I can see her making it, in a clear glass Pyrex double boiler on the stove. When the mixture of sugar and egg whites reached a certain consistency and temperature, she got out her hand mixer and whipped them until thick and frothy, sort of a cross between meringue and marshmallow.

Yum!

For my mother's and sister's birthday in March, I decided to make a somewhat froufrou devil's food cake with "boiled" frosting. Lacking Mom's recipe, I turned to the recipe for Fluffy White Icing in Nick Malgieri's book, "Perfect Cakes." I leveled each cake layer and saved the crumbs to use as a garnish.

Fluffy White Icing is just like the name suggests -- fluffy, not as dense as a buttercream. I spread each cake layer with a thin coating of seedless raspberry jam, which added a hint of flavor and also gives the icing a stick surface to cling to. The hint of raspberry in each bite was unexpected and earned compliments.

You no doubt have a favorite chocolate cake, devil's food cake, or white/yellow cake that would wear this Fluffy White Icing well. The frosting is thick enough to allow decorative flourishes made with the tip of an offset spatula or knife.

 

To celebrate another birthday the following weekend, I wanted to make a cake -- but nothing too outrageous, because we were having a very rich supper (pasta with Bolognese sause).

 

Nothing beats a classic Bundt. This one is really simple, with a hint of almond flavor and great texture texture from the addition of almond paste and mini chocolate chips. You're likely to have all the ingredients on hand, with the exception, perhaps, of the almond paste.

 

Happy baking!

 

 

FLUFFY WHITE ICING
Adapted from "Perfect Cakes," by Nick Malgieri

4 large egg whites
Large pinch salt
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the icing, half fill a saucepan with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Combine the egg whites, salt, sugar, corn syrup and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and whisk by hand, just to mix together.

Regulate the heat under the pan of water so that it boils gently and place the bowl on the pan. Whisk gently just to keep the mixture moving until it is hot (about 140 degrees) and all the sugar is dissolved. Place bowl on mixer with the whisk attachment and whip the icing until it has cooled and becomes white and fluffy, about five to seven minutes.

Makes enough to frost one 9-inch, two layer cake.

 

Almond-Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

Adapted from "Bundt Classics'' (NordicWare)

 

1 3/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup butter, softened

3 ounces almond paste, cut in small pieces

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/3 cups milk

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup mini chocolate chips

Powdered sugar, for garnish

 

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan.

 

In a large mixing bowl, mix sugar, butter, almond paste, eggs, vanilla and almond extract until light and fluffy. Add remaining dry ingredients, alternating with milk, and mix to combine well. Add chocolate chips and mix gently.

 

Spoon batter in to prepared pan. Bake at 325 for 55 to 65 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan and cool completely. Before serving, sprinkle cake with sifted powdered sugar. Makes 16 servings.

 

 

Madeleines: Oh la la! A cookie with a dual personality

Are they a cookie? Or are they a mini cake?

Madeleines are techically a cookie, but the batter is cakelike and they also have a spongy, cakelike texture. My baking guru, Dorie Greenspan, calls them "side of the saucer cookies,'' perfect with a cup of coffee or tea, or a flute of Champagne. Bubbly gets my vote.  I love their rounded and scalloped shape -- and call them delicious!

I got the bug to bake madeleines last year, after a birthday dinner at Moro's Table in Auburn. One of the desserts offered that evening was a plate of just-baked mini madeleines, dusted with powdered sugar. Our order would take about 15 minutes, our waiter said. No problem, we lingered over wine and ordered coffee. The madeleines were served fresh out of the oven.

 

A couple days later, I spotted a madeleine pan at Marshalls. It set me back less than $10, so it was meant to be.

Madeleines look fancy, but they're really easy to make. They call for ingredients that most people have in their kitchens right now -- flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder, vanilla extract, confectioners sugar -- and lemon zest. You might not have a lemon on hand (which is why it's a good idea to always keep some lemon zest in the freezer). The recipe is made in stages, which makes it less formidable. Refrigeration of the dough, for at least three hours or up to two days, is essential to giving the madeleines their signature, slightly domed shape, Greenspan says.

Madeleines aren't cookies for mass production and holiday gift-giving. They're best eaten the day they are made and the recipe makes just a dozen, or three dozen mini madeleines. But they would make a great dessert for a holiday dinner, served with a seasonal ice cream from Gannon's Isle or Arctic Island or a scoop of Mercer's Wine Ice Cream. That's how we served them for a recent dinner party, for friends who had never had madeleines or wine ice cream.

 

Without further ado, here is the recipe:

 

Traditional Madeleines

From "Baking: From My Home to Yours,'' by Dorie Greenspan

 

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup sugar

Grated zest of one lemon

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

 

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

 

Working in a mixer bowl, or in a large bowl, rubs the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and fragrant (I used a pastry cutter for this). Add the eggs to the bowl. Working with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed until pale, thick and light, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the vanilla. With a rubber spatula, very gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the batter and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours, or for up to 2 days. This long chill period will help the batter form the hump that is characteristic of madeleines.

 

Getting ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter 12-full size madeleine molds, or up to 36 mini madeleine molds, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Or, if you have a nonstick pan, give it a light coating of cooking spray. If you have a silicone pan, no prep is needed.

 

Spoon the batter into the molds, filling each one almost to the top. Don't worry about spreading the batter evenly; the oven's heat will take care of that. Bake large madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes and minis for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they are golden and the tops spring back when touched. Remove the pan(s) from the oven and release the madeleines from the molds by rapping the edge of the pan against the counter. Gently pry any recalcitrant madeleines from the pan using your fingers or a butter knife. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature.

 

If you are making minis and have more batter, bake the next batch(es), making certain that you cool, then properly prepare the pan(s), before baking.

 

Just before serving, dust the madeleines with confectioners sugar. Makes 12 large or 36 mini madeleines. Store any leftovers in an airtight container (they are not as good the next day).

 

 

It's December! Time to bake!

Flour? Check. Sugar? Check. Eggs? Check. Butter? The more, the merrier. Check!

I love holiday baking and baking for gift-giving. It's the best time of the year. It's cold outside but the kitchen is warm because the oven is in use A LOT! And the aroma of cookies fills the air all the time. What's not to like?

My goal is for baking time to be productive, satisfying and free of mishaps and "cookie fails." There is a strategy to baking in quantity, over time. It doesn't just happen. So I decided to make a list and share some tips.

 

1. First and foremost: Get organized!  Take stock of ingredients, decorations, tools and baking sheets and make sure you have everything you need. You don't want to be making Lemon Extract Cake and find you have no lemon extract or have your heart set on World Peace Cookies and find you have no cocoa powder.

2. Is your oven used as extra storage space? Can't remember the last time you turned it on -- or when you last purchased baking powder and baking soda? Do yourself a favor: Toss the old and buy new. Baking powder and baking soda are key ingredients that are essential to baking success. And they don't cost very much. So put them on your shopping list.

3. Don't use lack of time as an excuse not to bake. Make efficient use of the time you have. Measure/prep your dry ingredients the night before you plan to bake. Set your butter and eggs out, too, and wake up to perfect room temperature ingredients and get baking.

 

4. Get to know refrigerator cookies. Refrigerator cookies are slice and bake cookies, but a major step up from the storebought variety. The dough is made ahead and usually shaped/rolled into a log or logs. Refrigerator cookies are easy, elegant, convenient and indispensable. Add a couple of them to your repertoire.

 

5. Speaking of chilling: Many cookies are freezer friendly -- so make room for precious cargo in your freezer and bake ahead.

 

6. Christmas is all about traditions, but branch out and try something new, too. New can be a roll of the dice and there is not always time for a test run, so turn to a reliable baking source. One of my favorites is Dorie Greenspan, baking goddess and author of "Baking: From My Home to Yours.'' I like the way she writes her recipes, with precise explanations and descriptions. Example: "The cookies won't look done, nor will they look firm, which is exactly as they should be.'' Descriptions like that help you feel confident in what you're doing.

 

 

7. Make your trickiest, most challenging and/or time-consuming cookie or cookies first. Everything you make after that will seem like a cakewalk.

 

8. Host or get yourself invited to a cookie exchange. You get to hang out with friends, share your cookie creations with an appreciative audience and come home with an array of different cookies to share (or horde). Think of it as a cookie swap -- win-win!

Got a holiday baking tip or tips to share? I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment in the Comments section, below. Happy Baking!

Not quite bread, not quite rolls: Popovers

Bread: It's the staff of life. But I wanted something a little out of the ordinary to go with our Roasted Squash Soup.

Organic multi-grain baguette? Nope. Cornbread? Not the right partner. Homemade yeast bread? That would be lovely, but not on a weeknight. Popovers? Yesssss! Into the Recipe Vault we go.

There’s something old-fashioned and comforting about popovers.

In the realm of breads, popovers are peculiar: brown and crisp on the outside, moist and eggy on the inside. Think of them as hollow, free-form rolls. As their name suggests, they "pop over'' the pan they're baked in and tend not to stand upright without toppling over.

Anyone who has dined at the Lincklaen House in Cazenovia has feasted on their signature popovers, baked fresh and served warm, with honey butter on the side.

My Aunt Dorothy (Sarvay), who lives in Cortland and has made many pans of popovers in her life, gave me her recipe some years back. The typewritten paper stapled to a recipe card is a treasure in itself, with its instructions to start with a COLD OVEN and DON'T PEEK for the duration of baking, no matter how tempted you might be to open the oven door. Somewhere along the line, at our house, no doubt, the recipe card came into contact with a splash of coffee or tea, from the looks of it.

The recipe calls for four simple ingredients -- flour, eggs, milk and salt. No special gear is required, just a muffin tin or custard cups.

The finished product is impressive. Give popovers a try when you're looking to serve something special, without a major time investment.

NO-BEAT POPOVERS 

(Makes 6 large popovers)

Recipe from Dorothy Sarvay

2 eggs (room temperature)

1 cup whole milk (room temperature)

1 cup sifted flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Generously grease or butter a muffin tin (six compartments).

Break eggs into bowl and add milk. Blend lightly. Add flour and salt, sifted together, and stir to combine. Batter will be thin and have lumps. Spoon batter into six muffin cups. They should be three-quarters full.

THE SECRET -- start with a COLD OVEN. Set oven to 450 degrees. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Popovers will be brown on the outside and will collapse slightly when removed from the oven. Serve with butter. Leftovers (if there are any) can be reheated in a low oven until hot. Enjoy for breakfast with honey butter or butter and jam.

Time to make the cookies!

A classic Dunkin’ Donuts commercial shows Fred the Baker rolling out of bed and trudging to work, sleepy-eyed, in pre-dawn darkness.  “Time to make the donuts, time to make the donuts,’’ he mumbles as he suits up for the day.

It’s been like that for the few weeks here, except the baked goods in question are cookies – Christmas cookies of all shapes, sizes and persuasions. Cookies that keep us up late at night and get us up early in the morning.

We say “Time to make the cookies’’ with enthusiasm -- most of the time. Making cookies isn’t a chore, unless you erroneously add an extra stick of butter to a recipe and have to make the cookies all over again.

Or the cookies don’t come out quite as you imagined they would, and you start questioning your baking skills and whether you should share said cookies. 

But I digress.

I received a copy of “The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Cookie Recipe Each Year, 1941-2009,’’ from my sister, Anne, for Christmas last year, and that little book has been my constant companion this baking season.

I’ve read it front to back, like a novel, and made several recipes from it for gift-giving, interspersed with a couple of old favorites.

These are Kourambiedes, a Greek butter cookie made with (gulp!) an entire pound of butter.

I would make them again, adding more ground nuts (almonds), more booze (Grand Marnier), a splash of almond extract and more powdered sugar on top. The cookies themselves contain just a half-cup of powdered sugar.

They’re pretty Plain Jane, a cookie to be savored with coffee or tea. Prepare to brush powdered sugar off your clothes as you bite into them.

These are Speculaas (Saint Nicholas Cookies), a traditional Dutch cookie loaded with spices – ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ground anise seed – with slivered almonds pressed into their tops before baking. I cut them in rectangles, as prescribed in the recipe, but you can use any small cutter. A robust ginger cookie is a must-have at Christmastime, and these are a keeper.

These are Anise-Scented Fig and Date Swirls.  They’re a little bit fussy to make, but the return on investment is that they are a refrigerator cookie: Roll up the dough smeared with luscious, fragrant fruit into a big, fat log and refrigerate it until you a ready to slice and bake. The triple-wrapped dough cylinder was in the freezer for more than three weeks and suffered no ill consequences. I’m delighted with the final product and know I will be making this recipe again – and again.

As for the Classics: It wouldn’t be Christmas without All-Occasion Cut-Outs (recipe here) and World Peace Cookies (recipe here).

Gotta go now. Time to make the cookies!

 

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake: the second time’s the charm

Every Christmas season has its misadventures: the gift thoughtfully purchased in July that can’t be located when you're ready to wrap it. The string of bulbs that worked when you tested them but won’t light on the tree. The cookies that crumble as you’re lifting them from the baking sheet.

The Guinness Stout Ginger Cake that fails to rise properly. Ah, yes. Robert was excited to make this dessert for Christmas dinner last year, but inadvertently omitted the baking powder when assembling the cake’s dry ingredients. The result was a short Stout cake rather than a tall one.

He re-baked it in the wee small hours of Christmas morning, bless his heart. But not before a shopping expedition for Guinness Stout in Bridgeport, NY – a one-stoplight and three-convenience store village -- on Christmas Eve.

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake is a grand dessert, as memorable for its flavor and presentation as it is for the story behind it. It’s full-bodied in texture and a little outspoken in taste, thanks to molasses, fresh ginger, ground ginger, cloves and cardamom.

Looking for a festive finish to a holiday dinner party? This is it. Don't forget the baking powder!

While the cake bakes, prepare a big bowl of lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Grammercy Tavern Guinness Stout Ginger Cake

You will need:

1 cup Guinness Stout

1 cup molasses

½ teaspoon baking soda

3 large eggs

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

¾ cup vegetable oil

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1½ teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 tablespoon grated, peeled fresh gingerroot

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan.

In a large saucepan over high heat, combine the stout and molasses and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the baking soda. Allow to sit until the foam dissipates.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk together the eggs and both sugars. Whisk in the oil.

In a separate bowl, which together the flour, ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom.

Combine the stout mixture with the egg mixture, then whisk the liquid into the flour mixture, half at a time. Add the fresh ginger and stir to combine.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour, or until the top springs back when gently pressed. Do not open the oven until the gingerbread is almost done or the center will fall slightly. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Serve with sweetened whipped cream. Makes 12 servings.

 

Let's Go Orange -- Clap-Clap-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!

It's March Madness and Central New York is bleeding Orange.

If the closest you get to orange food in your diet is the sauce on your chicken wings or the Cheez Doodles in your snack bowl, here's some orange food that's more pure and natural:

Pumpkin-Maple Scones.

The pale orange and utterly delicious scones were the first in a three-game streak of going orange in the kitchen.

 

 
To get out of a winter cooking rut, I turned to some magazines for inspiration and found plenty in the autumn issue of Edible Finger Lakes magazine, which contained a recipe for Winter Squash Scones and Roasted Delicata Squash Stuffed With White Beans, Greens and Sage.

I made the scones with organic pumpkin puree (canned) in the interest of convenience and the main course with butternut squash because delicata was not available.

 

The extra pumpkin puree was used to make a couple Pumpkin-Apple-Maple Smoothies, a healthy way to go orange for breakfast.

To make one, combine a half-cup of low-fat vanilla yogurt, a quarter-cup of pumpkin puree (or to taste), a couple spoonfuls of applesauce, a splash of milk and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup in a blender. Blend until smooth. To thicken the mixture, add a couple ice cubes. Serve in a tall glass, garnished with a sprinkle of cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg.

If you care about your body and what you put into it, you know that it's important to eat a rainbow of foods, including red, green, yellow, blue, purple, brown and ORANGE. The color of pumpkin, squash and other vegetables comes from beta carotene, which plays a role in maintaining healthy vision. Beta carotene is believed to delay cognitive aging, help the heart function properly and protect skin from sun damage.

For an orange recipe using carrots, see my first-ever Eat First blog post, Orange Comfort in a Bowl (2009).

Pumpkin-Maple Scones
Adapted from Edible Finger Lakes magazine

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
½ cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg beaten and mixed with a little water to make an egg wash
Maple sugar for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Add chilled butter to flour mixture and combine using a pastry cutter until you have pea-sized chunks.

In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, cream, maple syrup and vanilla until smooth. Add to the flour mixture, mixing lightly with a fork until the liquid is just incorporated. Do not over mix.

Knead the dough several times in the bowl, then turn it out onto a floured work surface. Cut the dough in half and pat each half into a disk, roughly 1 inch high and 5 inches in diameter. Cut each disk into six wedge-shaped scones, and place the scones on the baking sheet, spacing about 1 inch apart.

Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash and sprinkle with maple sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned. Cool on a rack.  Stir together the confectioner’s sugar and syrup until smooth. Makes 12 scones.

Chocolate chip cookies: Double(tree) the pleasure

There's nothing better than a homemade chocolate chip cookie, just baked, still soft and warm and oozing chocolate goodness.  Except for a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are a hallmark of the Doubletree hotel experience. Talk about your warm welcome: Guests checking in are handed their room entry card and a warm chocolate chip cookie. The cookies are so popular they're sold online and shipped all over the world.

I had never had a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie until recently. My friend Scott Severance received a tin of them from the Doubletree Syracuse hotel and shared one with me. It was not warm, but it didn't really matter. The rich, buttery cookie was fully loaded with chips, nuts and oatmeal.

This is the ULTIMATE chocolate chip cookie (sorry, Wegmans), I thought to myself as I inhaled it while walking to my car.

Then I had occasion to meet Kevin Magdon, business travel manager at the Doubletree Syracuse and I told him how much I enjoyed the cookie from Scott. Kevin said he enjoyed the cookies so much when he was new in his job at the Doubletree that he gained 15 pounds. Now, he says, he limits his intake to about one cookie a month.

That's willpower!

Kevin sent me off from our meeting with a warm cookie in a brown paper sleeve. It was gone -- here's a news flash -- before I reached the Thompson Road South turn-off from Carrier Circle. And that got me thinking about trying to duplicate the Doubletree cookie at home.

I usually make chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of whatever brand of chocolate chips I have on hand, adding extra vanilla extract, a smidgen of cinnamon or maybe some finely minced orange zest or finely minced fresh mint for something a little bit different.

The Doubletree recipe is a closely guarded secret, but there are plenty of copycat recipes online, including a so-called Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from Choc-chip-cookie-Recipe.com.

I baked a batch of them for dinner with friends, following the recipe to the letter, including its instructions to refrigerate the batter overnight and use a quarter-cup of batter for each cookie. They were a big hit (pun intended). I also reserved six portions of batter and put them in the freezer for later use.

Last week, I brought a half-dozen of my faux Doubletree cookies to the Syracuse Doubletree, where they were warmed in a microwave oven and served alongside a plate of real-deal Doubletree chocolate chip cookies in a "blind tasting" hosted by Kevin Magdon.

Also in attendance were a group of Central New York cookie lovers: Scott Severance, Jenn Pedde, Mitch Mitchell and Bill Gambino.

The copycat cookies were more crisp and lacked the consistency in color and texture of the real Doubletree cookies. Even so, they were  pronounced "very, very close'' to the original. If they were a more soft and gooey and a little more light in color, it would have been really hard to tell them apart.

Two things I learned in this experiment:

1. All chocolate chips are NOT created equal. The chocolate chips used in the copycat cookies (Price Chopper brand) didn't melt on heating like those in the original Doubletree cookies. Doubletree uses Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips in its cookies and they are definitely of superior quality. I'm going to switch to them in my baking projects -- no more cutting corners.

2. Remove cookies from the oven when they are a little bit UNDERBAKED, especially if you like a soft chocolate chip cookie. Leave them in the oven a little longer if your resident cookie taste-tester, like mine, prefers cookies with crispy edges.

But either way, watch them disappear!