Kids' Picks

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Curry

Serve this piping hot over rice.

My boys love curry, and since they’ve been pretty nice to me this week I decided to make it for them—from scratch. The last time I made curry, however,  was from a bar of curry which came in a small green box, purchased from the Japanese grocery store.  The bar came segmented into squares, and resembled a large, yellow bar of chocolate; the instructions were to melt a quantity of segments into a pan to instantly create a curry sauce. Since I have recently become morally opposed to instant anything, I decided to plunge ahead and recreate the dish that I’ve eaten countless times. My boys are very happy to report that I got it exactly right—rich, thick and spicy.

Curry

  • 4 T. olive oil
  • 3 large cloves garlic, pressed
  • 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 cups chicken stock*
  • 1-1/2 c. cubed chicken
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • 3 carrots, chunked
  • 3 potatoes, chunked
  • 4 T. curry powder, or to taste
  • 2 T. ground cumin seed, or to taste (click here to see how to grind your own)
  • salt
  • 1 c. frozen peas

– other optional ingredients could include: cauliflower florets, pineapple chunks, peppers cut into 1/2″ squares

– to make this a vegetarian curry, simply omit the chicken, boost the quantity of vegies, and use a vegetable stock

In a large saucepan (one with a lid), saute the onion in the oil. Stir in 2 tablespoons curry powder, 1 tablespoon of the ground cumin seed, the garlic and the bay leaf. Stir until well mixed, then add the chicken and continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through. Add the carrots and potatoes and 1 cup of the chicken stock. Cover and simmer over a low heat for about 45 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked through. Add more stock as needed, to maintain a sauce-like consistency. Taste and add more curry powder and cumin, and salt to taste.

*To make your own stock:

  • 6 chicken legs
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • salt

Before you begin the curry, trim off meat from the chicken legs, leaving a little meat on the bones. Place the 6 bones in a small sauce pan and cover with about 4 cups of water. Add the bay leaf and about a teaspoon of salt. Cover, bring to a boil, and then lower to a simmer. By the time you have cut up the vegetables and meat for the curry, and sauteed the onions and chicken, your stock will be ready to use.

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Donna’s Black Bottom Cupcakes

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

My daughter told me that I see the world with my stomach, and I think she has a point. I connect food with people and experiences. That’s the case with these unusual cupcakes. Whenever I eat these I think about my exceptional friend, Donna, who first made them for me and Doug, in her kitchen in Alaska.

Doug and I had been married for six months when we moved from Chicago to Colorado. Doug had lived there before and with his long connection to wilderness adventures he was anxious to show me the sites he had loved. Once in Ft. Collins, we quickly unpacked our boxes and then got on a plane to Alaska. This would be our last grand vacation before the arduous years of Doug’s PhD work. We chose Alaska, where I had lived and worked for two summers, so I could show Doug the places I had loved.

Donna and I had both graduated together on June 6, 1980, and the day after graduation we were both on a plane for Anchorage. I spent two summers living and working there and then returned to my familiar world in Chicago. Donna never left Alaska. She and her family had a home just outside of Denali Park, and that’s where Doug and I headed for our vacation. We stayed in their friend’s cabin down the road, and joined Donna’s family each night for dinner. It was there that she made us these cupcakes. After growing up eating all of my mother’s delicious baked goods, it was unusual for me to be surprised by a dessert, but after the first amazing taste I wondered why in the world no one had told me about these before! I’d never tasted a cupcake that used two different batters—one like a chocolate cake, and the other like chocolate chip cheesecake. I seem to remember that Donna whipped up two more batches of these during the week.

Now when I make these, I am transported to Donna’s kitchen, her drawer filled with large bags of baking supplies, the snow in the woods, and I remember what an exceptional person she is and what a wonderful friend she has been.

Black Bottom Cupcakes

For the chocolate batter:

Mix together:

  • 1-1/2 c. flour
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/4 c. cocoa
  • 1/2 tsp. salt

Mix together:

  • 3/4 c. water
  • 1/3 c. oil
  • 1 Tsp. vinegar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla

Add the liquid mixture to the dry, stir until blended. Using a 1/3 c. measure, spoon this batter into cupcake pans lined with paper cups.

For the cheese filling:

Beat together:

  • 8 oz. cream cheese
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 c. sugar
  • 1/8 tsp. salt

Stir in:

  • 1 c. chocolate chips

Top the chocolate batter with a generous spoonful of the cheese mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 mins., or until the tops are just touched with a tiny bit of golden brown.

This is what they look like before baking.

Cautionary note: this is one recipe where you really must use paper liners.

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Hamantaschen Dough II — cookie dough

Rae Spooner and I, along with our kitchen sisters and teens, had our annual hamantaschen baking at temple this morning. We were assigned the task of making enough hamantaschen to feed the kids and parents at the Purim carnival, with no specific instructions as to the quantity needed. So Rae and I arrived at the temple kitchen with nine batches of dough pre-made and ready to do some production baking.  Lisa and Pat joined us, then Molly and little Helen, and then the teens in the baking class. We rolled, cut, filled, shaped and baked. We filled an industrial-sized tray with hamantaschen and every once in a while we’d wonder if we had enough. How many did we make? Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. Something my mother passed down to me kicked in—my mother who would count each piece of gefilte fish as they plopped into the yuch, every matzo ball as it hit the soup, every cabbage roll… you get the idea. I had to know the numbers. So Rae and I transferred all of the hamantaschen to a new pan, taking turns counting off by tens, scribbling numbers on a pad. I even opened the oven to count how many were baking. Our grand total: 555 pieces, and a very good morning.

This dough is something like a sugar cookie, but easier to handle and not quite as sweet. These are filled with canned Solo Cake and Pastry Filling, but you can also use a thick jam dusted with a little flour.

Ingredients

  • 3 c. flour
  • 2½ tsp. baking powder
  • 1 c. butter
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 Tbs. orange juice

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder.
  2. Cream together butter and sugar.
  3. Add eggs, one at a time.
  4. Stir in half of the orange juice, then half of the flour; remainder of orange juice and remainder of flour.
  5. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.
  6. On a liberally floured board, roll out dough to about 1/8˝ thickness. Cut into approx. 2½” circles. Fill with jam or pie filling, form and bake at 350° for 10–12 minutes.

We made about a dozen sheets like this.

Dry Coffee promo

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

 

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10-minute Chunky Apple Sauce

Make this while your dinner is cooking and serve it warm, or with some vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I’ve had some heirloom apples in my fruit drawer since mid-December (that’s 3 months taking up prime real estate in the fruit drawer). They were a gorgeous deep purplish-red and tasted like something just this side of cardboard. But what a waste to throw them away! Today I peeled and cored them, put them in a pot with just a little water, sprinkled on some cinnamon, and for about 10 minutes of effort I have a bowl of fresh apple sauce. Surprisingly, the apple sauce tastes good as is—I didn’t add any sugar.

Chunky Apple Sauce

  • 8 apples, peeled, cored and cut into quarters or eighths
  • 1/2-1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 3/4 c. water

Put everything in a pot, cover and let simmer until the apples are very soft, about 45 minutes. Mash the apples using a potato masher. That’s all.

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Poppy Seed Filling for Hamantaschen (mohn)

Hamantaschen sitting on my Grandmother’s Civil War era plate.

I saw the can of poppy seed filling in the baking aisle last week, and wondered, “how horrible must that be?” Yes, I am a snob. I won’t go near a jar of gefilte fish either, for I was blessed to have a mother who made all of the Jewish delicacies from scratch. So every year she would send someone down to Devon Avenue, to the Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, to get a bag of ground poppy seeds for the Purim hamantaschen. She cooked up this magical concoction with honey, raspberry jam, ground almonds… once a year we got to taste this creation. If you enjoy cooking, then you know that the act of creating the dish is as good as enjoying the taste. What a pleasure to grate in the fresh lemon zest (I’ve been enjoying the lingering aroma on my fingers), and to stir in the dollop of jam, and watch as the pats of butter melt and the mixture thickens. Of course the best part will be rolling out the hamantaschen with the kids later today, and watching their pleasure as they taste one hot from the oven.

My mom would make about as many hamantaschen as she could stand, and then would roll out the rest of the filling into an elegant coffee cake, with tender layers of pastry and thin layers of filling, this was her little secret: the coffee cake is better than the hamantaschen.

Yeast Dough

Ingredients

  • 1 c. milk, warmed
  • 1 Tbs. yeast
  • pinch of sugar
  • 2 sticks butter, softened
  • ½ c. sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 4 c. flour
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. grated lemon rind

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, stir together the warm milk, the yeast and the pinch of sugar. Set aside to proof.
  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.
  3. Add the eggs, one at a time, mix together (it will be lumpy), then add the salt and lemon rind.
  4. Stir in half the flour, then the milk/yeast mixture, then the rest of the flour. Mix well.
  5. Refrigerate the dough for one hour or overnight.
  6. On a liberally floured board, roll out dough to about 1/8˝ thickness. Cut into approx. 2½” circles. Fill with poppy seed filling (next page) or jam, form and bake at 350° for 12–15 minutes.

 

Poppy Seed Filling (Mohn)

Ingredients

  • 1 c. poppy seed (plus a little extra to clean out your coffee grinder)
  • 1 c. milk
  • 2 Tbs. butter
  • 2 Tbs. honey
  • ½ c. chopped almonds
  • grated rind of 1 lemon
  • ¼ c. golden raisins
  • ¼ c. sugar
  • 1 tart apple, peeled and grated
  • ¼ c. raspberry jam

Directions

  1. Wipe out your coffee grinder, grind about a tablespoon of poppy seeds, then throw that away.
  2. Grind the cup of poppy seeds, and put them in a saucepan with all of the ingredients except for the apple and jam. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.
  3. Let it cool, then stir in the apple and jam.

This coffee cake baked up a little flat (very sticky dough today). I made the side on the left with the swirls turned to face in to each other; the side on the right with them all turned the same direction. It is sitting on my mother’s monogrammed cake plate.

This one baked the way I like it, and held its shape beautifully. The dough had a little more flour and wasn’t so sticky to work with.

Here’s a detail showing the pretty layers.

Roll out the dough, cut into circles, put on a dollop of filling, then pinch up and around the filling to form a triangular shape.

Roll out a large rectangle of dough and spread on a thin layer of filling, being careful not to tear the dough, then roll it all up.

Form the roll into a U-shape and cut slices all the way through.

Slip a knife under each section, gently lift it up and twist it 90 degrees.

 

 

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Love Mom’s soup

I road my bicycle to work today. It was quite pleasant but at 33 degrees and the wind in my face, I wanted to make soup as soon as I got home. Over the past few years, I’ve taken some liberties with my mother’s classic vegetable soup by adding a can of black beans, some basil, garlic, some kale or maybe some sweet potato. It’s almost always delicious, but it hasn’t been tasting right to me. The best part about making Mom’s recipes is that they evoke such strong memories of family. It’s not quite like having my mother in the house, but it certainly works on many levels. So I thought I’d post this recipe again (first posted last March 25), with its original directions.

Ruth Gordon’s Vegetable Soup

  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 Tbs. olive oil
  • 2 carrots, diced
  • 1 stalk celery, sliced thin
  • 1/3 c. chopped parsley (or a whole parsley root if you can find one)
  • 1 14 oz. can tomatoes, chopped
  • 2/3 c. frozen peas
  • 2/3 c. frozen beans
  • 1 medium potato, diced
  • a small handful of oats
  • a small handful of rice
  • a small handful of barley
  • salt to taste

In a large soup pot, saute the onion in the oil, add all of the rest of the ingredients and cover with water. If you’re lucky enough to find a parsley root, peel the root, leave on any greens, and throw the whole thing into the pot. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for at least 1-1/2 hours, keeping over a low heat until serving, and cooking all afternoon if you like. Remove and discard the parsley root before serving the soup.

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Breakfast Parfaits

Use any of your favorite fruits. Berries are especially good. These have sliced clementines and bananas with blueberry yogurt.

Here’s something different for breakfast, loaded with delicious nutrition, and the kids will love it. You can use any kind of clear glass—it doesn’t have to be as fancy as my mother’s crystal parfait glasses. When the kids were little I’d use a plain drinking glass.

For the yogurt I blended some blueberry sauce that I had made* with some plain yogurt. Choose any fruits that your family enjoys, and add raisins and nuts if you like.

Breakfast Parfait

  • yogurt
  • granola
  • fresh fruit

Layer the ingredients into a clear glass. Serve with a long spoon, if you have one.

Click here for an easy granola recipe.

*The blueberry sauce began as an attempt to make blueberry syrup. I cooked up blueberries with a little sugar, but then make the “mistake” of putting it all through a Foley food mill, which turned it all into a thick sauce. I canned it all, but didn’t know what to do with it until my friend Ann said that yogurt was the place for it. The blueberry sauce turns plain yogurt into superb fruit yogurt.

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Valentine cookies

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

These are plain sugar cookies with pretty icing and a variety of sprinkle-like toppings. Last year we discovered that with different sized heart cutters we could add depth to the cookies by cutting out little hearts from big ones, then sandwiching or stacking the shapes.

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Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

DSCN0352pumpkin muffin sm

During our blizzard the other day, while rummaging around in my pantry, I found an abandoned can of pumpkin. (Do you have this can on your shelf?) This was the pumpkin that I obligingly purchase every November just in case I decide to make a pumpkin pie. On year’s such as this when pumpkin doesn’t win the majority of votes, I’ll wait until spring and put it in a paper bag outside the front door for the letter carriers’ food drive, because aside for an occasional pie I have never had any use for a can of pumpkin. I’m not a fan of spiced quick breads or muffins, but when later in the day of the blizzard Steph posted her friend Sharon’s “Super Awesome Pumpkin Muffins” recipe on Facebook, I took it as a sign.

Starting from Sharon’s recipe, I took out the nutmeg (in honor of my sister who hates nutmeg) and threw in a handful of chocolate chips and— very surprisingly—I love these! The oats and whole wheat flour are delicious, and the spices are just right. I think I’ll buy another can of pumpkin before next November!

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins (adapted from Sharon)
Makes 16 muffins.

Mix well:

  • 1-1/2 c. brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 15-oz. can pumpkin

Add all at once and stir just until mixed:

  • 1-1/2 c. whole wheat flour
  • 1-1/2 c. quick oats
  • 4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
  • 1/2 c. mini chocolate chips

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 mins.

Variation: Omit chocolate chips. Add 1/2 c. coconut, 1/2 c. pecans, 1/4 c. currants

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Banana Streusel Muffins

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

I’m not a fan of muffin papers and have good luck spraying the pans with a light coating of oil.

These muffins aren’t too sweet, and the topping adds just the right amount of balance. I usually add some amount of whole wheat flour to muffins because I like the added nutrition and also enjoy biting into something which is more substantial than fluffy white bread. However, if you prefer the muffins either lighter or grainier, you can either use all white flour or all whole wheat pastry flour.

Banana Streusel Muffins

For the batter:

  • 1/3 c. butter
  • 3/4 c. sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
  • 1 c. white flour
  • 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. baking powder

For the topping, mix together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter until crumbly:

  • 1/3 c. brown sugar
  • 2 Tbs. flour
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 Tbs. butter

Cream butter and sugar, add egg and then bananas. Mix together the dry ingredients and stir all together. Spoon into greased muffin pan. Sprinkle on the topping. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.