RECIPES OF EXQUISITE DELIGHT for the HOLIDAYS

thanks to: Anita Sands Hernandez

GOUGERES

  • 5 tbsp butter
  • l tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 cup grated cheese (gruyere)
  • 5 eggs, room temperature.
  • Boil butter, seasonings, add flour cook for 1 minute, add cheese, then eggs l at a time. reserving a little egg to add to water to brush on top of batter, which you drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake 425 deg for 15 min. Can be filled with savory fillings.

    MISS GEER'S LEMON BARS

    IF LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS (or YOU HAVE A LEMON TREE) make LEMON BARS.
  • 2 1/4 cup sifted flour
  • 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
  • 1 cup butter
  • 8 eggs
  • 3 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 4 tsp lemon zest
  • l tsp bk powder
  • 1 tbsp UNsifted flour
  • Sift flour, pow. sugar, cut in butter until it resembles crumbs. Pat into bottom of 13 x 9 baking pan, bake 350 deg. until brown. Beat eggs with gran. sugar, stir in juice, zest, bk powder, unsifted flour, mix well, pour over crust, bake 350 for 45 min. Cut into 32 bars. This recipe came from the daughter of Will Geer, that old man on the Walton Family, who was not only a good socialist, who knew about Poverty and the Great Depression 1st hand.

    PINATAS

    These are little paper wrapped collections of sweets which you store in a jar in fridge. Each colored paper cone is filled with ribbon-chopped dried cherries, apricots, peaches, raisins, and my all time favorite, dried pears, also home-blanched almonds. You can also make peanut brittle. Make hand-dipped chocolates (use a fruit center, for instance a red whole seedless grape..) all made w. no sugar. (Use brown sugar loafs and rice bran syrup to create a high Vitamin B brittle, or rice bran syrup in your dipping chocolate) You can also stuff larger dried fruits like dates, figs with nuts or homemade marzipan, (below) set in paper cups.

    HOMEMADE JUNGLE MARZIPAN

    SAVE OLD CANDY BOXES, FILL THE SLOTS with these organic fruit ball thingies. Requires dried fruit, lemons, coconut.

    HOW: Grind dates, walnuts, blanched almonds, lemon juice, lemon rind, coconut in blender, add almond extract.) Scoop into balls, wrap in square of plastic wrap, twist neck and tie.

    SESAME COOKIES

    Cream l stick butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar and l egg. Add almond flavoring or vanilla, spices, pumpkin pie spice is good, and 4 tbsp of pan-toasted litely browned sesame seeds, 1 tbsp orange rind. Add 1 cup brown flour or unbleached whole wheat w. a little *NON-aluminum baking powder, (only avail at HFS) salt, stir, add little liquid, (l tbsp, can be orange juice or milk) Raisins, oatmeal, dates, nuts would make them even better. Bake, being careful not to burn raisins which require a cool oven. (*note: Aluminum bk. powder may be one of the causes of Alzheimers. )

    THE BEST EVER TEA RECIPE

    Use any black tea and dried Mango, avail. at healthfood stores everywhere. Beside this great flavoring agent, mango, which combines with black tea like nobody's business... it apparently takes scientific knowledge to make great tea. Food authority gourmet writer, Amanda Mayer Stinchecum went to China to research tea, then wrote an amazing article for Saveur Mag in which she gives this method as the one recommended by 'tea engineers' at the Tea Institute in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province, China. Bring spring water --never tap water --to 150 degrees, halfway between body temp and boiling or 'bath and a boil' . Either drop tea bags/loose tea into your pot of hot water, put lid on pot and let it brew 5 min or put hot water over the bags in a pretty teapot, seal tea pot; let brew 5 min. A long way to travel to make good tea. My tip: If you're going to take several hours to drink it, wrap the teapot in any wool sweater the moths have decided to destroy. Best is your most fabulous, costly sweater that somehow got into the washing machine and shrunk to fit a pekineese. Never throw one of those out. Always save them for tea cozies. Looks a hoot, too. Add a tiny head and hands.

    THE HAVE IT ALL CAKE

    I can never decide which cake is my favorite, lemon, coconut, fruit cake or almond marzipan, so I have all FOUR COMBINED. Is this greedy or schizophrenic?

  • 3 cups whole grain or unbleached flour
  • 2 cups Succanet sugar or real sugar
  • 2 cubes room temp butter, or 1 cup cold clarified butter which is called ghee
  • 4 or 5 eggs depending on size
  • a can of coconut milk
  • extracts
  • spices
  • nuts
  • dried fruit
  • TO START: SOAK your dried fruit in lemon juice to reconstitute. NEXT: Cream 2 cubes butter, four yolks, (reserve whites to make a meringue to help 'lift' the cake.) Succanet to taste (actually, this IS real sugar with all the vitamins), add MULTIPLE extracts: coconut, almond and vanilla flavoring, plus plenty of orange & lemon zest, beat until creamy. To make a birthday type cake, I use canned or real coconut milk as liquid in the cake. To make a FRUITCAKE style, I use orange juice and milk as liquids. SIFT DRY INGREDIENTS. We are going to slowly add them to butter, ALTERNATING with the liquid. You need 2-3 cups sifted whole grain flour (throw away the bran) or Kamut flour (one of those wheat free jobs) but mix first with 3 tsp aluminum free baking powder. WHEN YOU put flour in, add a dose of flour followed by a dose of the liquids. You will now take the LIQUID THAT DRIED FRUIT WAS ReCONSTITUTED IN, and add orange juice or milk or coconut milk straight out of coconut or can. Add liquid, stir a little bit, then another 1/2 cup dry ingred, then another dose of the juice/lemon/coconut milk liquids, stirring until batter feels right. For a light cake, the minimum of flour is used. If you feel it's OK at 2 cups dry ingred, quit there.

    SEPARATELY,BEAT EGGWHITES TO peaks. Fold stiff whites into the cake batter, then put a lot of pecans in batter using a dusting of flour on them.THEN ADD DRIED FRUIT/NUTS: (Now, take that batter and add all dried fruit that you soaked in lemon juice several hours before but to do this, pat fruit dry, flour lightly) and fold into the batter. We used the juice they were soaked in, in the LIQUID section of the cake. BAKE: Turn into buttered, floured or paper lined pans, put in very hot oven for the initial 4 minutes. It solidifies from the heat. But this is too fast an oven to cook the thing through so then you open door slightly, turn oven down to 325, finish to deep golden brown color, turn off oven, remove gently. COOL.FROST- with 1/2 cube butter beaten with a lot of lemon rind, then a whole box of powdered sugar added 1/3 at a time with lemon juice after each dry addition. As we want several different but clear flavors, we will put real almond paste between the layers, either the imported kind or homemade.

    PRIMARY FLAVOR WHEN YOU EAT THIS CAKE is LEMON. It's the frosting, made of the REAL THING. A box of powdered sugar, a cube of butter, mash them stir them, reduce to frosting texture. Then add 1 tbsp lemon zest and all the nice, fresh sour lemon juice you need to bring it to the right consistency. Set aside

    SECOND FLAVOR is this chewy ALMOND PASTE between the layers.: grind a 1/2 lb of blanched almonds (cover wi. boiling water, one minute later peel) with some boiled sugar syrup and almond extract. Make it several weeks before holidays, let it sit in pantry to ripen. This is used between the layers when you assemble it.

    The third, LAST clear flavor is coconut. You will note lots of cocomilk in cake itself, and coco extract, but you can't make a dough really taste CLEARLY coconutty So go crazy. Cover the entire exterior _frosted _ cake with shredded sweetened coconut. Soak dried pineapple in lemon juice, decorate outside of cake with these pieces. Put garden flowers on top. In LA We have tropical Hawaiian flowers like Ginger, Frangipani or gardenias are nice, make edible leaves of honey dipped kiwi slices or use scented geranium leaves. At Xmas I fill the same cake batter with unsulphured dried fruit, dates, raisins, dried pineapple, cherries, pecans, walnuts. I bake it in loaf shape, no frosting. I'm betting you could wrap it in cheesecloth soaked in brandy and mail them to China, and when the fruitcake gets given away to several thousand people who mail it to another friend, it will come back in a thousand years and it would still be edible!


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