Foodie Friday -- Ardsheal House Shortbread

This recipe is for my friend, Mary McLarty. She wanted a traditional Scottish shortbread cookie, and I told her that I had a great recipe. I don't know if this is traditional, but it is simple and easy. You do need a food processor to blend the butter to keep it from getting warm and mushy.

This is one of my old, old, old recipes that I typed on 3 X 5 index cards, which went out in the mid-80's. And since it was typed on the card, I can only assume that the recipe is originally from Bon Appetit. I have changed the recipe just a little (a touch more sugar, butter, and I made the pastry flour 1 cup vs. the original 3/4 cup, AND I'm using a more standard 9 x 9 inch glass pan instead of the 8 x 10 metal pan the recipe calls for).

Please read my tips and tricks at the end of the recipe.

Ardsheal House Shortbread

1 cup pastry flour

¾ cup flour

¼ cup sweet rice flour

½ cup superfine sugar

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) butter, chilled, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Blend sugar in food processor to make it superfine, mix in flours, pulsing until blended. Add butter, pulse until crumbly. The shortbread will be very crumbly (like chunky flour) and will not stick together.  

Press into 9 x 9 inch glass pan. Even the edges with a square spatula, and press the top evenly.

Bake until shortbread just begins to color, 30-32 minutes. Immediately cut into 1 ¼ x 2 – inch bars. Cool completely before serving.  

Tips & Tricks:

• ·         I couldn’t find pastry flour at the store, but it’s easy to make. 2 Tbls cornstarch in 1 cup measure, add all-purpose flour to fill the cup and level off with a knife. OR ½ cup all-purpose flour and ½ cup cake flour = 1 cup pastry flour
• ·         Rice flour is becoming more common in the baking aisle. I used Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flour
• ·         To make the superfine sugar, just blend the sugar in the food processor until grains are smaller
• ·         I cut the butter into cubes. Keep the butter chilled until ready to blend
• ·         There is NO liquid in this recipe. The butter will melt when the shortbread bakes. The texture is ‘sandy’ feeling when you take a bite. 

Enjoy!

Later Peeps!

Foodie Friday -- Apple Toffee Coffee Cake

I originally found this recipe on the Baker Mama blog. But I changed it a little bit. One of the ingredients I had wasn't exactly what was called for. AND, this is the biggie, I suspect my self-rising flour had exceeded it's ability to rise--I have no idea when I had bought this flour. My bad. This didn't make it as much of a coffee cake as a 'blondie' - type brownie texture.

Don't get me wrong. This was a wonderful recipe, but I think you need to be warned that your results might be different.

Apple Toffee Coffee Cake

2 cups sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups self-rising flour
2 cups peeled and diced tart apples
1 bag (8 ounces) chocolate toffee bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9 x 13 inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Stir in flour. The batter will be very thick at this point. Stir in apples and 1 cup toffee bits. Spread into prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with toffee bits.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool slightly before cutting.

Hints & Suggestions:

• I finely diced the apples, which made the apples a little less prominent
• I didn't have chocolate toffee bits, so used plain Heath toffee bits. And the package had been previously opened, so I just saved some to sprinkle on top
• Check your self-rising flour to make sure it's still viable. Sometimes the baking powder in the self-rising flour will lose it's 'umph'.

There were three of us and we managed to demolish the entire pan in less than twelve hours. Jus' sayin'.

Enjoy!

Foodie Friday--Congo Bars (cookies)

This last week, I've been swamped with trying to figure out Saturday's presentation and doing 'stuff'. No, I have no idea what stuff I've actually been doing, since I didn't bother to write anything down on my goal's calendar.

 . . . oh, yeah, I was making candy. Oops, sorry, totally forgot that. I used the fillings that I had frozen last year and made candy for the audience at my presentation, plus I volunteered to bring something to parent/teacher conference night.

So I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head until I thought, CONGO BARS!  This recipe is vastly reduced from the original. I was given this recipe by the cooks at St. Francis Hospital. See? Not all hospital food is nasty!  I guess it helps that it was the employee cafeteria, too.

I will mention that it's been YEARS since I've made this recipe, so you might want to keep an eye on it from about the 30 minute mark as it might need to cook for as long as 45 minutes.

Congo Bars

1 box yellow cake mix
4 oz. butter, room temperature
3/4 cup pecans, chopped
1 large egg

ICING:
1 tsp. vanilla
1 lb. powdered sugar
1 egg
16 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Coat 9 X 11 pan with spray vegetable oil. Mix first 4 ingredients, place in pan. Mix icing incredients and spread over first layer. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until inserted knife comes out clean.

FOODIE FRIDAY-- Lemon Krackles (cookies)

I have been busy baking over the last three days. I made a pumpkin cheesecake that I cooked as a custard and spooned in little plastic shot glasses over a gingersnap crust, and then placed a layer of sweetened sour cream on top. It still had too much of a bite, but when I nuked it in the microwave, my plastic cups started to collapse. I'll work on it in a week or so. I know enough about what I want to do to make it work.

Thursday, I wanted to make lemon cookies (new recipe) that I could glaze and draw a witch on a broom--it didn't work out. The cookies were lemon crackle cookies. Hmm. The cookies are for a Halloween party Friday night.

What to do?

I nixed the original idea, for now.

And decided to call the lemon cookies, Goblin Brains. Goblins aren't known for their intelligence and they are cowards, which explains the yellow brain . . . right? So then my thoughts morphed to Brownie Snot, Faerie Poop, Elf Guts and Banshee Heart. On Thursday, I made all the dough and started baking. Goblin (lemon), Faerie (pink and purple mint) and Brownie (chocolate, of course!) cookies are done. Today, I'll make Elf (snickerdoodle cinnamon) and Banshee (ginger spice).

Here's the recipe for Goblin Brains, okay, you can just call them Lemon Krackles.

Lemon Krackles

1 pkg. lemon cake mix

2 cups Cool Whip
1 large egg, beaten
½ cup powdered sugar, to roll cookie dough

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine dry cake mix, Cool Whip, and beaten egg in large bowl. Stir until it’s well mixed. It will be very sticky.
Drop by teaspoonful’s (I use a small cookie scoop) into bowl of powdered sugar and roll to coat the cookie dough. Place the coated cookie drops on greased cookie sheet, 12 cookies per sheet.
Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes, before moving to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Yield: 4-5 dozen. Store in airtight container.

Enjoy your Goblin Brains . . . er, Lemon Krackles!

Later, Peeps!

FOODIE FRIDAY--Blueberry Oat Bars

I love this recipe. It came in a PSO (electric) bill. I don’t make it very often since the family isn’t into oats. But now that I’ve pulled it out again, I just might make it--I do have a bunch of frozen blueberries, yanno.

Blueberry Oat Bars

1 ¾ cups Quaker Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
1 ½ cups flour
¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup nuts, chopped
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
¾ cup butter, melted
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
½ cup sugar
3 Tbls. water
2 Tbls. cornstarch
2 tsp. lemon juice

Heat oven to 350° F. Grease 11 x 7-inch glass baking dish. Combine oats, flour, brown sugar, nuts, baking soda and salt. Add butter, mixing until crumbly--reserve ¾ cup mixture. Press remaining mixture onto bottom of prepared dish. Bake 10 minutes. Meanwhile, combine blueberries, sugar and 2 Tbls water. Bring to a boil; simmer 2 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Combine remaining 1 Tbls. water, cornstarch and lemon juice; mix well. Gradually stir into blueberry mixture; cook and stir about 30 seconds or until thickened. Spread over partially baked base to within ¼-inch of edge; sprinkle with reserved oat mixture. Bake 18-20 minutes or until topping is golden brown. Cool on wire rack; cut into bars Store tightly covered.

Enjoy!
Later, Peeps!

Foodie Friday--Banana Bars

I needed a recipe that used overripe bananas, but I didn’t want to make a banana nut bread, so one of my writer friends sent me this:

Bonnie's Frosted Banana Bars

1/2 cup butter, softened

1-1/2 cups sugar

1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2 medium ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, sour cream and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Stir in bananas. Spread into a greased 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean (do not overbake). Cool. 

FROSTING:

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3-3/4 to 4 cups confectioners' sugar

For frosting, in a bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla until fluffy. Gradually beat in enough confectioners' sugar to achieve desired consistency. Frost bars. Store in the refrigerator. Yield: 3-4 doz.