Candy Cane Kisses

Candy Cane Kisses

From Masala Farm by Suvir Saran, with gratitude to Suvir,
adapted by Blue Heron Kitchen

For Nancy

This recipe will make you look forward every year to the arrival of fresh candy canes in the market. I’ve tried substituting those “starlight mints”, the ones you get in bags at the pharmacy, but they're not as good. Candy Canes are a seasonal food choice.

Here’s a truc: Leave them in their wrappers and pound them with a heavy skillet. Snip them open. Ta-da!

I found Ghirardelli mini chips. They're inexpensive and they worked well. Of course, you can upgrade to higher end chocolate and chop it into small bits.

Meringues are child’s play if you’re careful meticulous when separating eggs. If any yolk gets into the white, make an omelet. If there's any trace of fat in the bowl you're using, on the wire whip or whisk or even on the dishtowel that you’ve used to wiped your mixing bowl, both you and your whites will weep.

Suvir Saran is a gifted chef, cookbook author and teacher, and several years ago, I had some great fun with him, socializing, traveling and eating. If you’re the tiniest bit interested about Indian cooking, buy his books. Even if you’re not interested in Indian cooking, buy this one, Masala Farm, which is a “farm to table” mélange of recipes that he and his partner, Charlie and collaborator, Raquel, published in 2011. Nominated for a James Beard Award, this gorgeous book is one you should consider owning. It’s Kindle-ready too!

These are fantastic, beautiful; and be advised, they're addictive. In a clear cellophane bag, tied with a ribbon or bakery twine, these make a great homemade gift!

Here are a couple of today’s, ready for their close-ups:

More recipes soon: 

Marshmallows! 

Updated graham crackers made with teff flour!

(just add a chocolate bar and what's that spell?) 

care, live well, work for peace (and gun control) and cook,

jane

Ingredients:

4 egg whites, size large, at room temperature (they whip up better at room temperature)

¼ tsp. cream of tartar

1/8 tsp. kosher salt

1 ½ c./300 g granulated sugar

3 Tbsp. crushed candy canes (8-9 minis)

8 oz./225 g semisweet mini chocolate chips (Ghirardelli or better, please)

            or fine quality chocolate, finely chopped

1 tsp. vanilla extract (I use Baldwins)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 240º F/120º C

Line three baking sheets with parchment. (If you don’t have three sheets, you must let the sheet cool before you use it again. If it's not your summer now, try putting it outside, or use it to prop open the window for five minutes.)

Using a Kitchen Aid or electric mixer fitted with the wire whip, or a hand mixer, beat the whites until foamy.

Add salt and cream of tartar and beat on medium speed until soft peaks form.

While the mixer is running, add the sugar, one tablespoon at a time. (Be patient and be careful. Today, the spoon hit the whisk and my reaction including some words I'm not printing.) You can crank it up to medium/high and beat the meringue until stiff, glossy peaks are formed.

Remove the bowl and fold in the remaining ingredients (crushed candy canes, chocolate and vanilla) using a rubber spatula.

Form dollops of meringue using a tablespoon or a small scoop (I used a small scoop and when it stopped releasing, I rinsed it with cold water.) Here, uniformity is cool.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, transferring sheets half way through the bake top to bottom, front to back. When the meringues are slightly cracked on the top, they’re ready to be fully cooled on wire racks.

These can be stored in airtight containers for about a week; and I've had success freezing them!

Yield: with the small cookie scoop, about 7 dozen. With a tablespoon, about 5 dozen.

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies (with variations!)

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies
(With Variations!)

Thumbprint variation!

This recipe came my way from a lovely blog I subscribe to called Goodness Is.

I chose to share this with you for several reasons. One was because I'd never baked cookies without eggs. Have you? The other, because having just had shoulder surgery, I don't have full range of use of my right wing now. This is a recipe I could produce without my right arm!

So, grateful to not have to crack an egg with one hand (yes, I can), and after reading the fine print on the pain pills, I've not only concluded that my Kitchen Aid isn't heavy machinery but that because its name is Kitchen Aid, it has been added as an adjunct to my physical therapy protocol.

With a skeletal crew, Blue Heron Kitchen is open operating!

My friend Rick (of Rick's Chrain fame), took one bite of these and said they'd be great without the chocolate chips. The cookie part, he thought was great. My neighbors, who have been helping me out during this needy time, and who have a toddler, really loved them, and immediately asked for the recipe. They loved the chocolate chips. What I'm not crazy about is the 'look' of these. The finish is a little anemic. Maybe if you dip them in something like toasted coconut or ground nuts, they'd look prettier. (I suppose an egg wash is out of the question.)

By now, you've probably figured out that I'm not a vegan. I wouldn't publish this recipe if they weren't seriously delicious. They're knockouts.

Don't be discouraged by the oat flour or spelt flour ingredients. First, you can buy these products easily at any good health conscious market. Bob's Red Mill sells these flours online, you can buy them at Fairway markets if you live in the NY metro area, or go to a good health food store. I'm turning to markets other than Whole Foods. My local Whole Foods is gross. It's crowded, poorly stocked, prices are stupid, staff is friendly and mostly vapid and basically unknowledgeable. Whole Foods should act their pricetag, not their preservative size.

What's important is that you understand the gluten profile of these flours: Oat flour is low in gluten. Spelt is fairly low in gluten. So, you can substitute, if necessary. Try other low gluten flours: cake flour can be a good substitute for the oat flour. Try whole wheat pastry flour and white cake flour if these less common flours aren't readily available or you just don't want to purchase them. The nice thing about the Bob's Red Mill flours is that they come in small bags. You keep them in the fridge and you don't feel like you've got five pounds of something you'll never use again.

Nut butters: I used almond butter because I had more in the house than peanut butter. I ground it myself at the supermarket. You don't have much choice over the texture, but you know what's in it and that it's fresh. If you use peanut butter, they'll taste more of peanut butter, which isn't a bad thing. Smooth will give you a different (my preference) product than chunky. Salty  butters would be fun. I'd omit the salt in the recipe and add a little more chocolate to balance the salt. Yum. A great variation on this are thumbprint cookies! For these, I use peanut butter and my favorite jam. 

If you're allergic to nuts, try sunflower seed butter or tahini. But if you use tahini, the tahini taste may dominate. If you do, please let me know!

I wrote about coconut oil in my plain cake recipe. I'm still not entirely sure about this fat, but I still have a jar of it. It's sweet and very delicious; and if you like the scent and taste of coconut, you'll like using it. For years, coconut oil was slammed and buried as one of the worst possible fats - it would dig you an early grave. I'm waiting for fois gras to be released from prison.

Vegan Nut Butter Cookies
(With variations)

Adapted from Goodness Is by Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

3/4 cup whole-wheat spelt flour

3/4 cup of oat flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup peanut or almond butter (or nut or 'not nut' butter of choice), smooth or chunky, but smooth will give you a better 'bound' cookie

1/3  cup pure maple syrup, or treacle (Lyle's Golden), or a combination or the two

2 tablespoons of coconut oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

optional: 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips (or chopped dark chocolate)

here are a few variations: 

PB & J!: make them into thumbprints! (I would omit the chocolate chips, but you can leave them in and have an pb/j and chocolate orgy!) Roll them into balls and make an indentation in the center of each one. Place about 1/8 of a tsp. of your favorite jam in the center. 

omit chips and substitute chopped nuts of the same variety of the nut butter you used 

play around with extracts and decrease vanilla and add a small amount (1/4 tsp. almond extract)

add some chopped up dried fruit, such as apricots or dried cherries!

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. and line a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with parchment paper, silpat , or oil the pan (remember, these are vegan, so don't cheat and use butter)

2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt and set aside.

3. In another bowl (or in the bowl of your electric mixer), combine nut butter, coconut oil, maple syrup (or treacle - I mixed the two and loved the result. You could probably use brown rice syrup too. I haven't tried honey.), extract and mix for several minutes until well-combined.

4. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until just incorporated. Dump in chocolate chips (or other additions) and fold in by hand.

5. Using rounds teaspoons or a small cookie scoop, space them about an inch apart on the cookie sheet. Flatten slightly with your hand (just a little bit!)

6. Bake for about 10-12 minutes (I baked them for 10 minutes). If you bake them longer, they'll be dry.

7. Transfer to a rack to cool. 

Yield 16-20 cookies.

Warm, with a glass of milk, these will make your eyes roll into your head. Wrapped, they'll stay moist for several days. You can freeze them, but they probably won't make it to the freezer.

My "leftie" vegan cookies