Michael made bourbon balls this weekend (I helped). The thing about bourbon balls is you need to make them ahead of time and let them sit. We usually make them around Thanksgiving, but that didn’t work out this year.

Bourbon Balls
1 box Vanilla wafers
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 cup chopped nuts
3 tbsp corn syrup
1/2 cup bourbon
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp espresso powder
Confectioners powder and/or cocoa powder

Crush the vanilla wafers.

Dump all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Mix until you have a dark brown gooey mass.

Allow mixture to stand for several minutes. This is a good time to make the second batch of “dough”.

Form dough into small balls. Roll balls in powdered sugar. Place bourbon balls into waxed paper lined tin, placing a layer of waxed paper between each layer.

Place tins aside for several weeks.

In theory, you can use stale/toasted cake instead of vanilla wafers, but I never have stale cake on hand.

I’m serious about setting them aside for several weeks. They’ll be much much better if you wait.

I love this recipe. It’s from one of my favorite books, no longer in publication. Which is really too bad.

I usually substitute peanut butter chips, because Michael loves peanut butter.

She suggests refrigerating this dough before baking, but I can never wait that long, because once I make these cookies I want to eat them NOW!

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup flour
1/2 cup dutch process cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
8 tbsp butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Beat butter and sugars until creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add egg and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture until just incorporated. Stir in nuts and chips.

Scoop 1 tsp balls onto prepared cookie sheets.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through.

Once you have pulled the cookies out of the oven, go pour yourself a glass of milk, because you are going to burn your mouth eating these cookies immediately.

For the cookies you don’t eat immediately, cool them on a rack.

From: Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies

I love nutmeg.

For a long time, nutmeg simply met pumpkin pie, which is a good thing. But then I discovered fresh nutmeg, and feel in love.

If you have a container of ground nutmeg in your spice rack, and have no idea when you got it, then you have absolutely no idea what nutmeg truly is, and you have no idea what you have been missing.

All spices should be replaced once a year, as once they are exposed to air, they lose their flavor. Makes me wonder why most spices are sold in such large containers, since few people can go through that much spice in a year. But if you care about food it is worth your while to replace our spices every year. Unsurprisingly, I replace mine around this time of the year, right before the Christmas baking frenzy.

But back to nutmeg.

You should be able to find whole nutmegs in most any grocery store now, and although a box grater is fine, I cannot recommend highly enough a Microplane grater. The spice grater is perfect for nutmeg, although the zester grater works just as well.

Once you grate nutmeg, you’ll notice it’s fabulous smell.

The other thing you’ll eventually notice is that a nutmeg looks slightly different when it is fresh grated than after it’s been sitting in the jar for awhile. That visual difference I think gives you an idea of how much flavor is lost when it is pre-ground.

So what is nutmeg good in? First and foremost, pumpkin pie. But I also like to add a little to my apple pie, and it’s fabulous in bread pudding, and even better in the whiskey sauce that goes with the bread pudding. I also have a recipe for nutmeg cookies that everyone loves–think of sugar cookies with a little extra something.

But this week, of course, nutmeg will be staring in pumpkin pie.

Mmmmmmm!

Since I have this new stove to try out, I need to make lots of different thing. Just to test it out of course. Since Grandmom can eat oatmeal cookies, I decided to riff on one of the recipes I’ve used before.

I’m not sure how I feel about the spices. I might drop the cloves next time, since they’re a very strong flavor.

Oatmeal Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg
6 tbsp corn syrup
2 tbsp half & half
3 cups old fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups flour
2 cups coconut
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Cream butter and shortening. Add sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and spices, salt and baking soda and beat until well incorporated.

Add egg, corn syrup, and milk.

Add oats and flour, mixing well. Incorporate coconut and chocolate chips.

Spoon onto greased cookie sheets (or silicone sheets).

Bake 11 minutes.

Cool. Eat.

The first time I made this recipe I screwed it up. I didn’t allow the toasted coconut and pecans to cool before adding them to the batter. The chocolate chunks ended up melting into the batter so I had more of a chocolate cookie than a chocolate chunk cookie.

This time I made sure to allow the toasted items time to cool. But I think I actually liked the cookie a little better the other way.

On the other hand, my office mate loved them, as did Michael’s co-workers. So it could just be that I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate chips, and I’d always rather have chocolate, instead.

Chocolate Chunk Coconut Pecan Chews
2 1/2 cups sweetened coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
3 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour + 2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 oz bittersweet chocolate chunks (I measured out 3 ounces, and then just dumped in the rest)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Toast the coconut and the pecans for 9 to 12 minutes (recipe says 9 minutes, but mine needed 12), stirring frequently.

Set aside toasted coconut and pecans to cool.

In mixer bowl, stir together milk, sugar, butter, egg, salt, egg, and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and baking soda.

Add the flour mixture to the batter.

Remove 1 cup of the toasted coconut and pecan mixture.

Mix in coconut pecan mixture and chocolate. The recipe said to refrigerate the mixture for ten minutes, but the batter was not at all thin, so I moved right along.

Scoop 1 tbsp of dough onto parchment paper covered baking sheets. (You can substitute foil.)

Sprinkle remaining coconut and pecan mixture over the cookies.

Bake, one sheet at a time, 12 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

Recipe is from
The All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett, which is one of my favorite cookbooks.

Why yes, I did marry a mutant. Michael reads the instruction manuals on EVERYTHING.

I’m the one that refuses to read instructions or ask directions.

But who cares about instructions? I’ve got cinnamon bread rising right now!

Let’s change things up a little shall we?

I read two articles in less than a week on cinnamon (in Body & Soul and Cooks Illustrated), and that made me realize that I may have something to say about ingredients as well as food.

There are actually two types of cinnamon. American cinnamon, or cassia cinnamon, and Ceylon cinnamon, or the cinnamon the rest of the world uses. There is also Saigon cinnamon, which is closely related to cassia.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever had Ceylon cinnamon, but apparently cassia is a more vibrant spice than Ceylon, so it’s possible I might find it disappointing.

What makes cinnamon such an interesting (to me anyway) spice, is that it actually has health benefits. Some studies have found that cassia cinnamon may help some diabetics maintain their blood sugar levels, and may also have an affect upon blood cholesterol.

Please note, however, that in large doses cinnamon can cause liver damage in some people, and you should probably limit your intake to about 1/3 teaspoon a day. (Which as far as I am concerned is a lot of cinnamon.)

Most people are familiar with cinnamon in baked goods as a sweet spice, but it can also be used as a savory spice.

I of course use it most frequently in baking. I love cinnamon rolls and cinnamon bread, and I can’t think of an apple dish that doesn’t have cinnamon.

I also put cinnamon in our morning oatmeal and my morning tea.

Regarding cinnamon and any other spice, if it’s been in your cupboard for more than a year, throw it away. Spices are volatile, which means the compounds that give the spices their flavor disappear relatively quickly. So check your spice cupboard and if you don’t remember buying your cinnamon, throw away the container and buy a new one. Then write the date on the bottom with a sharpie, so you’ll know next time.

Me? I tend to replace spices around Christmas, which is when I do the most baking.

I love cinnamon rolls. Of course, I love them with walnuts and cream cheese icing, which are Right Out for Grandmom, so we I made plain ones.

Which are still really good.

Cinnamon Rolls
Dough:
3 1/2 cups white wheat flour
2 tsp yeast
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp dry milk
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg plus water to make one cup liquid
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp softened butter
Filling:
1/4 cup softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon (3 tsp if you tbsp doesn’t fit in the jar)
Icing:
2 tbsp half and half
1 cup confectioners sugar

I wasn’t thrilled with the way the dough was made. If I make it again I believe I’d proof the yeast as part of the process. As it was the directions had you simply mix everything together to form a smooth soft dough. Next time I’d proof the yeast in part of the water, then add in the remainder of the ingredients together.

Place the dough in a large greased bowl, over, and then allow to rise for at least an hour. Mine rose for closer to two hours, since I had other things going on.

Make the filling. I didn’t follow the directions at all here. Instead, I beat the butter, sugar, and cinnamon with the paddle attachment of my mixer, until I had a soft uniform spread.

Once the dough has risen, roll it out into a rectangle.

Spread the filling over the rolled out dough, leaving a strip of dough on the far end uncovered.

Roll the dough to make a log.

Move the dough to a cutting board (I destroyed a rolling mat once when I forgot to do this) and then slice the dough with a serrated knife.

Place the rolls in a greased pan. I used a stoneware pan here and made the full batch, however, I usually grease two 8″ round cake pans, and place one in the freezer for later.

Since I wanted to rolls for breakfast, I then covered the rolls in plastic wrap and then foil, and placed them in the refrigerator overnight.

Place the rolls in a warm oven that is off to allow them to rise for about an hour, or longer, as needed.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Cool for about ten minutes, than cover with icing.

Eat!

Recipe is modified from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion

I’m a big fan of pumpkin, and pumpkin pie is probably Michael favorite food, although it may be tied with peanut butter, so every year, I get pie pumpkins and cook them down for pies and various pumpkin goodies throughout the year

I picked up pumpkins several weeks ago, but didn’t get to cook them down until today, which meant that one of them had gone bad in the interim. Luckily, it’s still early, so I can pick up more pumpkins next week if need be.

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But tomorrow? Tomorrow starts the relaxing.

We’ve got apples, but I just didn’t feel up to making a pie or a crumble or anything like that, so I looked up a recipe for apple cookies. I had to make several adjustments, some for Grandmom’s diet and some for what ingredients I had available, but all in all, they turned out pretty well.
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It’s a beautiful day here right now. Morning looked stormy, but then it cleared up. Temperatures are in the upper 50s and low 60s, which are pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned.

Even better, today at the Farmer’s Market, we put down a deposit for our Thanksgiving turkey. And checked with another farmer about getting tongue for Grandmom (she is SO cooking that herself).

I’ve got pumpkins to cook down, and apples to make into pies…. I love fall.