Holiday Update (with recipe for apple cake!)

Happy New Year!  I think there's going to be a lot of good cooking this year, but first, some reflections on holiday baking.

My childhood friend Jessica's grandmother makes the absolute best Christmas Cookies in the whole-wide world, and following her recipe, I went a little crazy churning out dozens of Christmas trees, reindeer and little bells.  I used all the tricks, using only really cold dough, rolling out with powdered sugar, refrigerating again before going into the oven.  They came out beautifully!  They were so good with just a really simple milk and sugar glaze.

Perfect for a little snacking while opening presents, watching Harry Potter in pajamas, you know, the usual holiday activities.

I also went upscale with a champagne cocktail made with the elderberry cordial I made this summer.  So delicious (and classy!) with light, airy gougères!

Gougères are savory puffs, usually made with a hard cheese added to the dough.  I made them twice according to Dorie Greenspan's directions.  I followed the recipe exactly, except without the cheese.  On the second attempt, I forgot to turn down the oven, and baked them at 425 degrees for 24 minutes (turning the baking sheets half way through).  They turned out airier and crisper than the first attempt.

There was so much eating and cooking with friends and family!  I'll post just one more dish and include the recipe.  I made a vegan apple cake modeled on a delicious Italian apple tart that we had recently.  I looked into several recipes, but ultimately threw together my own.  It was so good!  And made the lactose-intolerant quite happy while the rest of us enjoyed a ridiculously indulgent trifle (or both!).

  

Apple Cake

Makes 10 servings

Takes 2 hours

3 medium apples
1 lemon, juiced
1 stick vegan shortening (or nut oil)

2/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 cup grand marnier (I think bourbon would also be pretty good, or juice works too)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup coarsely crushed walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Peel, core and slice the apples, toss with lemon juice.

Melt 6 tablespoons of shortening in a large pyrex measuring cup.  Use the remaining two tablespooons to butter a 9 inch cake pan or springform pan.  What's left of that, put into a skillet to fry the apples.

On medium heat, saute the apples until they are golden and cooked, about ten minutes.  Set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

To the melted shortening, add alcohol, honey, and vanilla.  Stir until honey is melted and everything is well combined.

Pour the wet and the walnuts into the dry and mix until combined.  Pour into the greased pan.  Arrange the apples in a pretty pattern on top.

Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours.  Cake will be done when cake tester comes out mostly clean.  It will be dense and a little chewy!

This cake tasted even better the next day and was great with a cup of tea.  I hope you enjoy it this winter.

Stay tuned!  Vegetarian Pho, homemade pasta, pepper stew with dumplings, orange bitters, ginger cake and more to come!

Happy New Year!

Elderberry Cordial--The Fatigue Destroyer!

The elderflowers have gone, ripening into little black berries.

Some internet research has revealed that the tree in MB's garden is a Blue Elder, distinctive for the dusty bloom on each little berry.  I have been wanting to make a cordial with the berries since we gave MB the tree two summers ago.  It sounds so old-fashioned, like something Anne would intoxicate Diana with, and also healthy--this past winter, I drank a few drops of Neal's Yards Remedies Echinacea and Elderflower tincture every night to ward off H1N1 and other sicknesses.

After preserving the peaches, we had quite a bit of leftover sugar syrup (hopefully you won't!  I adjusted the recipe after our trials), so, I figured the time had come to make my own elderberry cordial.  There are many recipes to be found for elderberries--wines, syrups, cordials.  All involve sugar and elderberries, some involve alcohol as a preservative.  Google Books has many nineteenth and twentieth century cook books, and all text searchable.  With so many varieties of recipes, I was not sure which to choose.

In The Art and Mystery of Making British Wines &c of 1865, the author offers three recipes for Elderberry wine, the third method seemed the best.

Admired by the best judges of wine!  But I don't really want to make wine, so elderberry syrup it would be.






A quick search of more recent recipes revealed that the basics have not changed much since Sir Thomas Browne set out to debunk the myth that elderberries were poisonous in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or, Enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths.

Ok, here's just one last old recipe (I can't help myself!  I am a historian after all).
 

From Mary Kettlilby's A Collection of above three hundred receipts in cookery, physick, and surgery: for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses from 1734. 


















Good-wife and careful nurse that I am, I want to have my elderberry cordial on hand for all cases of the gout (caused by my cooking I have no doubt).

So, as I was saying, elderberry cordial is some combination of elderberries, sugar and alcohol (either added or created by fermentation).  Here's my recipe.

Elderberry cordial
Makes approximately 2 quarts
Takes 1 hour

10 cups elderberries, carefully removed from stems and rinsed
2 cups sugar syrup (or 2 cups sugar and 2 cups water)
4 cups best quality brandy (I don't really know what that is--I used Paul Masson Brandy)

In a medium saucepan on medium heat, cook elderberries for 20 minutes.  Strain through a fine mesh sieve or cheese cloth to squeeze out all juices.  Should yield 2 cups of elderberry juice.  Bring to a simmer with sugar syrup or the sugar and water (if sugar and water, cook until slightly reduced, 10 minutes).  When cool add brandy.  Store in clean bottles.

For vim and vigour, drink 2 ounces dissolved in one glass water each night daily.  Also good with gin, or on its own over ice.

Update: Over Christmas, we drank the elderberry cordial with champagne.  Delicious! (HiH) 

Oh go a'wassailing

Over the holidays I made wassail, not once, but twice!  You may remember wassail from the Christmas carol, but you may be confused as to what a wassail or to wassail is.  You are not alone.

The OED lets me know that wassail is a greeting and a wish for good health and also the drink proffered to wish good health and cheer at holiday times.  I love these connections between food and feeling!  Not everyone does, for instance that party pooper Milton: "That men should bee..push't forward to gaming, jigging, wassailing, and mixt dancing is a horror to think."

300 years later in our puritan country, wassail was considered too debauched for children's music: both the Chipmunk and Muppet versions of the song are called "Here we come a'caroling!"

Horrors!  My holiday was filled with games, jigs and wassails, I hope yours was too!

Inspired by a Martha Stewart recipe, I had to improvise when on Christmas I didn't have the magazine and the website did not have the recipe.  All I knew was the recipe called for roasted apple slices, apple brandy, apple cider, and 2 bottles of brown ale.  At another holiday party, I made the wassail again, this time sticking to Martha's recipe, which has a larger beer to cider ratio.  It was also well-received, but on comparison, I like my improvised recipe better.  This wassail was so delicious, warm, not too sweet, but still very apple-y and spicy.

Wassail

Makes 6 to 8 servings

Takes 30 minutes

1 apple, sliced

1 teaspoon maple syrup

1 quart apple cider

3 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

2 bottles Anchor Christmas Ale, room temperature (Martha suggests a brown ale, like Newcastle)

1 cup Apple Brandy (I used Clear Creek once and Laird's Apple Jack once, both are delicious)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Place apple slices on a buttered baking tray and drizzle maple syrup over them, tossing to coat.

Roast for 10 to 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large pot, simmer cider with spices on medium heat for about 10 minutes.  Lower heat and add ale.  Be careful!  It will foam up.  When it is heated, add the brandy and warm until it is steaming.

Place 2 apple slices in each heatproof glass.  Cover with wassail and love and joy come to you!