Modified from this Allrecipes version.

• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh lavender, or 3 tsp dried lavender flowers
• 8 Tbsp butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• If, like me, you are a tool who has self-rising flour lying around, you can use that instead of the last three ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease two smallish loaf pans thoroughly–this bread likes to stick.

Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Raise to just barely a simmer–you are looking for tiny bubbles around the edges, but not a full boil–then remove from heat, and allow to cool some.

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy (I did this first with a spoon and did not achieve fluffiness, and it was sub-par. Use a mixer!)

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; alternate adding the dry ingredients and the lavender-milk to the creamed things until just blended. Pour/scrape into the prepared pans.

Bake for 35 minutes, or until a testing thing comes out clean. Cool pretty thoroughly in the pan before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack. When it’s cool, you can add a citrus glaze if you like. My last one was 1/4 cup powdered sugar / juice of about a third of a lemon / splash of vanilla, but this did not quite seem ideal.

You can find a pretty good transcript of the recipe here (but not quite complete, annoyingly), if you don’t have the cookbook. Note that you will also need her instructions on sauteing mushrooms (this one is a direct, complete copy) and brown-braising pearl onions (close enough), even if you think you know how to do these things.

Some notes:

• One of the best things about the original recipe is the detailed information on wine. It recommends pairing with “a fairly full-bodied, young red wine, such as Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux-St. Émilion, or Burgundy,” and using any of those or a Chianti to go into the stew.
• 3 cups of wine = 1 bottle. I doubled the recipe. Whoo!
• I bought pre-cut-up stew meat, some of which was cut a lot finer than the other, and on the whole big chunks worked a lot better for drying and browning.
• Conversely, I couldn’t find an unsliced chunk of bacon anywhere, and regular old thick-sliced seemed to work okay.
• I over-salted because I forgot, as always, to account for the massive amounts of salt in bouillon cubes. Use caution, or perhaps better beef stock.
• Blanching helps when you realize you have to peel 48 pearl onions.
• I couldn’t really get the sauce to thicken in the end, but it seemed to end up okay just letting it reduce a lot even if it never really reached light-spoon-coating consistency. =/

For extras, here is the rosemary bread recipe I have been fussing with of late. It’s sort of long but that’s because the procedure is the complicated part; sorry. Start this ~3 hrs before you want to eat it.

• 2 1/2 tsp yeast, which is~1 packet
• 2 c. warm water, ~110-115 F, which is warm but just shy of scalding
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 c. flour. Bread flour is nice if you can get it, and if you do not consider extra gluten cheating.
• 2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary plus more for topping. Fresh is important! You can sub out some for fresh thyme.
• olive oil, corn meal, sea salt

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. If it’s NOT instant/fast-acting/bread-machine yeast, give it <5 min to froth up. Otherwise, immediately add flour, salt, and 2 tsp rosemary and stir until blended. Do not knead! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size; bonus points for putting it someplace slightly warm and moist.

Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with corn meal. Perhaps try oiling your hands instead of flouring them, as the dough is super sticky, then divide it in half, shape each half quickly and loosely into a round by tucking the edges under, and place on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour. The stickiness is again a problem; cooking-sprayed plastic wrap is the only thing I’ve managed to use that DIDN’T stick horribly and make the top of my loaves lumpy.

With bread, some last-minute rising happens in the oven and for that you want things hot and steamy (har). Start heating your oven early, maybe half an hour into the second rise, to 450 or “lots.” My oven here has no numbers on the dial between 350 and 500 so I use my imagination, but I don’t think getting it too hot is a possibility. If you have a pizza stone, put it in now. Also put a cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven (or something else which can be raised to high temps empty, then have cool water thrown in it without exploding).

When bread is again about doubled in size, brush with olive oil and top with more rosemary and plentiful crushed sea salt. Get yourself some water, maybe 1/4 cup, on hand near your oven as now you must act quickly! Put the bread in (just stick the pan on the pizza stone if using one, unless you want to get fancy and try to slide the bread onto the stone directly), dump the water on your previously-heated skillet or whatever where it will send up exciting clouds of steam, and close the oven door quickly. Bake 10 min, adding more water for steam if it runs out. Then turn the oven down to 375 and bake another 20 min or so until it’s golden-browny.

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups honey
• 2 tsp. lemon flavoring
• 5 ¼ cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. salt

Directions

1. Mix shortening, sugar, egg, honey and flavoring thoroughly. Measure flour and stir together with baking soda and salt. Blend in. Chill dough.
2. Heat oven to 375o. Roll dough out ¼” thick. Cut into desired shapes.
3. Place 1″ apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until no imprint remains when touched lightly.
4. When cool, ice and decorate as desired.

You can’t really see under the Santas here, but this year I debuted some new Hanukkah shapes as well: a menorah and a dreidel. We’ve also been making Stars of David for a while. Cookies for everyone!

You can make a ginger bread version by substituting brown sugar for granulated, molasses for honey, and 2 tsp. cinnamon plus 1 tsp. ginger for lemon flavoring.

I stole this tin from my mom because I thought it was pretty.

Next up: THE DECORATENING.

The Pioneer Woman’s pictures are much better than mine so you should go look at them, but here are some Things I Learned, or changed when I made it, or WOULD change were I to make it again (sadly, the rest of the apples are fated for apple butter so that cannot be just yet):

• It says 9-10″ cast-iron skillet. I used a 10″. It overflowed while baking, and the cake came out thicker, compared to the apple layer, than I would have liked. I should’ve used the 12″ skillet!
• Cut down the initial butter melting in the skillet to 10 Tbs (4 Tbs less) and this was PLENTY – although don’t get me wrong, the butter/caramelized sugar/apples slow-cooked in same are still the point of this thing.
• Also sliced the apples thinner, into twelfths not sixths. This was preferable, I think, as thin apples = fitting more in the pan = yes. Also, better distribution of apple-to-cake.
• The spices were a little blah even though I threw in more cinnamon. Could probably take some allspice, cloves, etc. – it’s super sweet and I think a little more of a kick would compliment that.
• My fatal error: put this on a baking sheet when you stick it in the oven! Slightly over-crowded 10″ skillet + bubbling-over caramelizing sugar and butter + floor of gas oven = smoke-filled kitchen.

In conclusion, you should probably be smarter than me when it comes to setting sugar on fire, but this cake is still delicious.

0. Take a cup of raisins, or a little less because they’ll expand. Soak them in some water. Dark spiced rum would be better. I used water spiked with vanilla but it wasn’t ultimately noticeable. Mine were sort of acceptable around 1 hour and deliciously gushy around 10 hours (I started baking in the morning but then there was Cream Fail and I couldn’t come back till much later – probably overkill though.) This is to prevent the raisins from soaking up lots of the scones’ moisture as they bake. Alternately, you could use golden raisins or special “baking raisins,” which are less dehydrated.

0b. No really, preheat the oven well in advance. I never remember but it is KEY, I’m increasingly sure, for baking.

1. Scone recipe, as per usual, but doubled, AND ALSO:

2. To the dry ingredients, add “some” cinnamon (maybe 1/2 tsp? I would try a full tsp though.)

3. After adding the cream , just as the dough is starting to come together, add the raisins, which you will have appropriately drained.

4. After scones are thoroughly cool, glaze lightly and let dry.

For the glaze: about 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar, maybe half a teaspoon of lemon zest, a teaspoon or two of lemon juice. Whisk furiously! It’s better if you start up with less lemon juice and add more slowly so as not to make it too runny. Also be sure not to use too much glaze because the stuff is really sweet. Enjoy!

Ciabatta - Fix a starter of 1 cup flour, 2/3 cup water and a pinch of yeast and chill for 12 hours. It will become turn bubbly and spounge-ish.  To begin making Christmas dough, add 2 cups flour, 1.5 teaspoons of salt, a measure of yeast in warm milk and about half a cup of water. For points, use a food processor to blend everything together. This sounds weird but works remarkably well! The processor makes every gluteney but if you don’t have one or enjoy being traditional: kneed, quarter turn, etc, until just prior to your arms falling off. Let rise for 90 minutes-ish. If you enjoy having larger bubbles in your bread, add a tablespoon of oil to the mixture. There were Experiments last night and we discovered this.

After rising, form two long, flat loaves. It shouldn’t need to be fooled with too much but punching it down helps. I also like to throw cornmeal on the tray before I transfer the loaves. Let rise for a slight bit more, then cook at 400′ F for 20 minutes.  You should get two well rounded ciabatta with a thin, golden crust and a fluffy interior.  Did you know ciabatta means ’slippers’? I did not!

Vinaigrette- Add freshly pressed garlic, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, sugar, mustard and slight amounts of olive oil together. The consistency should be thick & syrupy. The secret is more sugar and less wet ingredients compared to one you’d make for a salad. I suggest making lots of this and keeping it about the house . By about the house, I really mean Securely in the Refrigerator.

Slice a loaf in two and drizze the vinaigrette on both sides, add lots of pepper, a little bit of salt and chopped basil. If it smells good, you’re doing it right! Add prosciutto, a soft mozzarella and if you both wish to be traditional and enjoy tomatoes, which I do not, slice & add one!

You now have a sandwich! You win! There’s a particular name for the vinaigrette, mozzarella, tomato & basil combination but it eludes be just now. Carefully piling the Tomato/mozzarella/basil together without bread or prosciutto will create a simple & elegant appetizer-salad thing.

I have the cookies for you.  Unrequited loves will contact you.  You’ll look prettier.  You will see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I am much beloved and have friends who like me for my cookies. The first batch was halved, and the cookies barely made it out the door before Gloria and I devoured most of them. When I made this recipe the second time, I came up with about 4 dozen cookies with the Platonic ideal size of a cookie–maybe, 3.5″ diameter? You can make them smaller and more plentiful, or halve the recipe. Moral: only halve the recipe if you have no friends. And be prepared, with the power of these cookies, to make more friends than you ever desired.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• Rum
• 1 1/2 cups of raisins
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt (you can use less salt, but then we can’t be friends.)
• 3 cups rolled oats

Step 0. You don’t have to do this, and the second time I made these, I certainly didn’t wish to expend the rum. But if you want, soak the raisins for at least 30 minutes in some rum (I used Cap’n Morgan’s Spiced Rum.) I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but it does lend a layer of mystique and beauty to the cookie. I’m not even joking. If not, drink the rum, and leave your raisins the hell alone. They’ll still be good, just not sell-your-children-for-raw-c0okie-materials good.

Step 1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Doing this by hand is a drag, so make sure you have a mostly gooey base. The lumps of butter will come out a lot easier when you do step 2, but put something on the television and make sure the whole concoction is mostly free of giant lmps.

• FYI: no one ever has the right brown sugar when they need it. If you were a dunce and could only find dark brown sugar, substitute in about a 1/3 of a cup with white sugar.

Step 2. Whisk (or if you don’t want to wash a damn whisk, fork) together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then, little by little, pour and stir it into the goop from step 1. You should have a beautiful, smooth cookie dough by the end of this step, with a caramel color.

Step 3. Roll up them sleeves and stir in the oats and the raisins.

Step 4. Don’t skip this step. Cover your cookie dough in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. Leave it, like one Miss Britney Spears, alone. The dough needs to rest for at least an hour, until it’s pretty well chilled through. Why? Because it won’t get to be round but also thick and chewy if it the dough has time to run all over the place. Then you’ll have flacid cookies, and your friends will all call me wondering why.

Step 5. Okay, I know. It’s hard to be patient. But look, after a while, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Here is some motivation for waiting:

These cookies are beautiful.

Step 6. Put cookies on some parchment paper (the baker’s choice for cookies!). I use two large spoons and fill one with a heaping spoonful, then scrape it off with another one. You can shape your cookies to be a little more circular. They’ll expand by about an inch each, so put them a couple inches apart. A dozen per normal cookie tray is good. Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. I’d say do a batch, and see how they look at 8. They should look golden brown around the outside and still a leeeeettle bit raw in the middle. If they’re gooey in the middle, put them back in for a minute. If you overbake them by a leeeetle, then they’ll just turn out browner, but still delicious.

Step 7. After you remove each batch, let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to a plate where your friends will devour them.

Step 8. JUST BURY YOUR FACE IN THAT BUSINESS.

***

Bonus material: Here are some rousing endorsements of these cookies:

Donnie C.: “10 out of 10.”

Paul L.: “The secret ingredient is crack.”

Q.R.Murphy: Imagine a husk of a man trapped in the vice grip of a diabetic coma, but still giving a thumbs up as if to say, “Totally worth it.” Oh, wait, I think he just said, “These are good.”

I used a recipe recommended by these fine people, Grandma Opel’s apple pie. It’s somewhat nontraditional in that you make fill the pie just with apples and add the latice crust, then pour a syrup over the whole thing. The recipe claims it’s for 1 9″ pie, which I doubled, and then made 3 pie shells (in slightly small pans but they claimed to be 9″), but, slicing the apples very thinly and mounding them as high as I could in the pie shells, I only used 10 (out of a prescribed 14-16) apples. Granny Smiths are the best of course. Peeling, coring, and slicing them takes way longer than I thought – add some lemon juice to the sliced apples to prevent them browning before you’re done cutting up all the rest.

Bonus: a pie crust recipe. This nominally makes two 11″ (um, I think?) crusts with a little left over (which you will naturally cut into strips, butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, roll up, bake, and consume with great rejoicing), but remember for each apple pie you need a double crust. I doubled the recipe and it worked just about perfectly for my three 9″ pies.

2 c flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 c chilled butter cut into 1/2″ bits
3 Tbs chilled vegetable shortening
5 Tbs cold water

At this point my ancestral recipe says, “Mix as for pie crust.” The point of the operation is to mix in the butter without melting it, so that when you bake it, delicious flakes result, which is why you want to avoid handling the dough and make it using ice water. Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in half the butter till it has the texture of cornmeal. Cut in the other half of the butter and the shortening until the size of small peas. Then make 5 small wells in the dry ingredients. Pour 1 Tbs of cold water into a well and mix it into the surrounding dry ingredients; repeat for each well/Tbs of water. Stir or squash with hands till all is just incorporated, divide according to the number of pie crusts you wish to produce, then roll out, handling as little as possible, to about 1/8″ thick (but if you can get it this thin you have my eternal admiration). Fold into quarters to transfer to the pie pan.

rosemary bread yet again

First I baked rosemary bread yet again, for a dinner party, following this recipe for an unkneaded peasant bread. This time it came out much much lighter, fluffier, and more delicious. Basically I followed the directions more carefully and this worked (who knew!) although I also stuck my roommate’s pizza stone in the oven while it was preheating, then stuck the bread pan right on top of it to while baking, which may have helped.

I infused some olive oil with garlic and left-over fresh rosemary while it was baking, too, for dipping purposes. This was a good idea.

mm breakfast!

Hungry grad students ate all my bread at once, so the next day I made scones, using my current favorite recipe (via Smitten Kitchen, with modifications here), only lemon-zest-and-cranberry this time (I had no oranges). A nice thing I’d forgotten about this recipe is it involves no eggs, except for the glaze, so licking the spoon is completely acceptable.

Finally, I made tomatoes filled with rice again (for the third time!) and yet again, they were devoured before photographic evidence could be acquired. You’ll just have to trust me on them.

Here's the bread rising, looking bizarre

The first is for a strawberry shake (from the “Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home” cookbook):

Ingredients:

• 1 pint fresh strawberries (cleaned and stemmed)
• 1 cup plain, vanilla or lemon nonfat yogurt (I’ve used vanilla each time I’ve made this)
• 3-4 tablespoons of orange juice, apple juice or apple-strawberry juice
• 2-3 tablespoons of maple syrup

Put it all in a blender until smooth. I’d recommend chilling it a little bit before serving so it’s nice and cold, but it still tastes good right out of the blender.

Second recipe is for egg-free chocolate chip cookies (from allrecipes.com). They may be just as bad (calorie wise) as other cookies, but for some reason using yogurt makes them seem healthier to me.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar (you can reduce the amount of sugar a little bit and it will still taste plenty sweet)
• 1/4 cup margarine or butter
• 1/4 cup shortening (I actually just used a little bit more butter instead of shortening)
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets.

In a medium bowl, cream together the sugars, butter and shortening until light and fluffy. Stir in yogurt and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture, then mix in chocolate chips. Drop teaspoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. (Recipe, in theory, makes 36 cookies)

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Cool for a minute on the cookie sheets before moving to wire racks to cool completely.

When I made these cookies, the consistency was more muffin-like than cookie-like, but they still tasted delicious. I think next time I am going to divide the batch in half – one half of the dough for making cookies and the other half for eating raw. That’s one of the major perks of cookie dough without raw eggs!