(First time I tried this recipe. Hope it’s good)
Pre-baked pie crust (This is a good excuse to buy ceramic pie weights if you don’t already have them)
3 large sweet potatoes (4 was too many) You’ll want ~2 cups cooked sweet potato.
1 cup evaporated milk (half and half should work)
1 cup sugar (I think I may try brown sugar next time)
4 eggs
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp molasses
2 to 4 tbsp bourbon
Fresh whipped cream

Bake pie crust ~20 minutes at 400 F. Parchment paper may be better under the pie weights than waxed paper.

Stab sweet potatoes repeatedly with sharp object, such as fork. Cook sweet potatoes in the microwave 5 minutes, turn potatoes, cook 5 minutes longer. Let sit at least 10 minutes.

Scoop innards out of sweet potatoes with spoon. Put into large mixing bowl. Mix ingredients. (I used electric mixer, for I am lazy.) Pour ingredients into pie crust. Bake 20 minutes at 400 F. Lower temperature to 325, and bake 20 more minutes. Serve warm with fresh whipped cream.

ADDENDUM the First:
Cook the potatoes a little longer, half the bourbon, and a dash more molasses.

ADDENDUM the Second:
31 Dec 2005
Potatoes cooked 6 minutes, 6 minutes, rest 10 minutes.
Brown sugar instead instead of white sugar
3 tbsp bourbon
1 tbsp maple syrup instead of molasses

120 grams (1 cup) all purpose flour
57 grams (1/2 cup) cake flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
8 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 tbsp cold shortening
4 to 8 tsp ice cold water

Cut butter and shortening into flour, sugar, and salt using food processor. Transfer into cold bowl, and stick in freezer for at least 10 minutes. Add water and mix together until just moistened. Stick in freezer for at least 10 minutes. Roll out between two floured sheets of plastic wrap, put into pan, trim and flute edges.

When making multiple pie crusts, start one crust, then while the first crust is cooling, start the second crust. Alternating steps AND working on the pie filling provides the crust sufficient time to cool between each step.

1 box Nilla wafers
OR
equivelent amount dried vanilla cake
2 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp espresso powder (Sanka is not an acceptable substitute)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup nuts
3 tbsp corn syrup
1/4 cup bourbon (More or less to taste)

Crush Nilla wafers. Chop nuts. Dump ingredients into mixer. Mix until everything is moist.
Roll into small balls. Roll in powdered sugar. Place in tin, separating layers with waxed paper. Wait 4 to 6 weeks (longer is better).

Summer Cheesecake from Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Lemon Desserts: YUM!

Let me say again: Yum! This may be the best lemon dessert ever.

Yum!

Made Lemon Mousse today. Good, but not precisely what I wanted. But worth making again I think. Next recipe to try will probably be the summer lemon cheesecake.

Also…

Addictive Ranch Dip
1/2 cup mayonaise
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tsp dried onion
2 tsp parsley
1 to 2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp garlic power
dash salt
dash pepper

Whisk together. Refrigerate overnight.
Try not to eat the entire bowl in a single sitting.

I’m still playing with the proportions, but this stuff is REALLY good.
Remember: Sour cream has calcium, so it can’t be all bad for you!

1 bag Irish Breakfast Tea
1 Clove
Small portion cinnamon stick
Boiling water
Steep 3 to 5 minutes
Remove teabag, clove cinnamon
3 tsp sugar
Cream, to taste

Secondly, I’m listening to The Splendid Table and she just had on Russian Anya Von Bremzen, to discuss blini, which are (I believe) a traditional Russian pancake, made from a sponge (no, not THAT type of sponge). What caught my fancy was something about traditional Russian blini made for Shrove Tuesday, and how Russian grandmothers would sneak their sponges out to the woods, to absorb th powers of the full moon.

Firstly, I was listening to the State of the State speech, followed by the Republican response. Can ANY West Virginian politicians speak normally? Everyone who spoke seemed to mumble or lisp or have some weird extra-strong accent.

For years, I thought that good soup came out of a can. I mean, my mother made soup, but… Let’s just say that my mother’s favorite soup involved meatballs and cheeze whiz.

Yuck.

So I grew up thinking that soup was difficult, and, to be honest, I wasn’t too fond of it either, except of course for tomato soup, served with the obligatory grilled cheese (which I still love), and the Deviled soup that my Dad makes. That’s delicious. But that was about it. Then a couple of years ago I started ordering soups at restaurants, and was surprised at how good they were. I mean really good. Of course I presumed this was something that you could only do in restaurants, but then I started to think about it, and realized that it probably wasn’t.

And so I’ve started making soups.

And they’re not that hard at all.

The potato soup I made a couple weeks ago was okay, but rather plain. A problem that was easily amended with cheddar cheese.

This weekend I decided to venture further afield, and made broccoli cheddar soup, which shockingly, Michael liked. (When we got married, the only vegetables Michael would eat were corn and iceburg lettuce. His repoitoire has since expanded.) And then just for Michael, I made cream of mushroom soup.

Both took under an hour, and were quite good.

Because there’s really nothing like soup when it’s cold and you’re feeling under the weather.

Thirty-five cookbooks and not a single recipe for nut rolls. Do they have some other name that I don’t know? Is there something blindingly obvious that I’m missing?

I love nut rolls, but have never made them before. I’ve got nuts in the freezer, so all I need is a recipe.

Grrr…

Okay, it’s the 22nd and I haven’t made a single Christmas baked good yet.

This means:
1) I have no time to post
2) If you’re in town, you shouldn’t stop by until tomorrow if you want any cookies. After that, however…

What am I planning on making?
Lemon bars, amaretto cake, pumpkin cookies, peanut butter blossoms, sugar cookies, m&m cookies, pumpkin roll, rugelach, and whatever else looks good.

Michael wants to make more bourbon balls. Apparently the fact that our kitchen cart is groaning under the weight of their alcoholic goodness isn’t enough. He needs MORE!

So I needed to pick up corn syrup. I walked up and down the baking aisle three time, and couldn’t find it. I found honey and white sugar and brown sugar and artificial sweetener, but no corn syrup. And I couldn’t come up with a plausible alternative. I don’t think honey would work very well, and I don’t feel like cooking down sugar water into a syrup, because I don’t think standing over a stove stirring sugar water sounds like a lot of fun.

So I walked back to the fruit and juice aisle. Nothing. Nor was it in the cookie and milk aisle.

So I walked back to the only aisle I hadn’t traversed, the bread and cereal aisle. There it was, next to pancake syrup, which confused me until I realized that there must be people out there who eat corn syrup on pancakes and such.

(shudder)

It was then that I realized that I’m becoming a food snob.

If I’m going to have pancakes, I’m going to make them from scratch, and if I’m going to go to all that trouble, I want maple syrup. If I’m going to bake something then I want fresh ingredients, good chocolate, and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla.

Now if only I felt the same way about making dinner…

Sorry about the virtual silence yesterday. I went through two complete drafts of my paper, and made a batch of cookies.

The original receipe is double chocolate cookies, but for Michael I substituted peanut butter chips for chocolate chips. They’re really good, but I only baked half the batch–froze the rest. They’re best the first day or so, then they’re not as good. So, at some point I can with minimal work, have fresh cookies.

Yummy.

Ahhhh…. Break.

Still have to work, but with the students gone, there’s hardly anyone here to ask questions, and I’m sure that will be even more so as the week continues. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot done this week, although I may end up being distracted by the bright shiny object that is the Internet.

Michael and I both enjoyed doing as little as possible this weekend, although we’ll have to get in gear and get our papers written/projects done/studying for the end of the semester. Luckily, the only thing I have left to do it write a ten to fifteen page paper–and keep it down to fifteen pages. :)

We watched ‘Master & Commander’ again this weekend–much better with subtitles on, as it was really difficult to understand most of the dialogue. Despite that, it really is a good movie, and I highly recommend it if you haven’t already seen it.

I still like the doctor the best.

We made bourbon balls this weekend. Three batches. One to give away as a gift, and two batches for us. Yum! One year we’ll remember to make them before Thanksgiving, but that won’t be this year. But the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has worked well for us in previous years, so they’ll still be quite delicious–assuming that I can get any this year, before Michael eats them all.

Never send a non-baker to the store to pick up one ingredient. Bourbon balls need coffee/espresso powder, and I can’t find espresso power, so we just use instant coffee. Which I forgot to pick up. So Michael ran out to pick some up. And came home with individual serving packs of Sanka.

(sigh)

Lastly, I’m looking for another cookie scoop. I have a very nice Pampered Chef one, but I’d like one that’s a little larger–cookies should be just a tad bit larger than mine have been coming out. I’ll have to make a decision soon, as holiday baking time is almost upon us. And I have to decide what to make this year. I’m still looking for a sweet potato pie reciepe if anyone has one.

I think Hardees qualifies as public health enemy number one.

1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat.

Who on earth would buy and eat something like that? Makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

And the rest of their menu isn’t much better:

Big Country Breakfast Platter with Country Steak: 1150 calories
Big Country Breakfast Platter with Chicken: 1140 calories
Six Dollar Burger: 1120 calories
Double Thickburger: 1230 calories
Double Bacon Cheese Thickburger: 1300 calories

For comparison, my calorie intake is around 2200 calories per day.

Apparently their goal is to kill off all their customers and then go out of business in 20 years.