Cranberry Apple Raisin Crisp

It's holiday season! This dessert looked so festive I had to snap a picture of it before I added the crumb topping. This is intensely tangy, so there's no fear of falling asleep after dinner.

Recipe from Food and Wine Herbs and Spices Cookbook: (serves 4)

1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
5 1/2 Tbsp cold butter, cut into 1/4" pieces
1 12oz pkg cranberries (about 3 cups)
2 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2" pieces
1/2 cup raisins
3/4 cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 tsp ground clove (I reduced this to a pinch)

1. Heat oven to 375. Combine oats, 1/2 cup flour, brown sugar. Add butter and rub into flour till small crumbs form.
2. In another bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Transfer to 8" square baking dish. Top with crumb mixture. Bake 45 min. Let cool at least 15 min before serving

Strawberry Meringue Stars

I've never made meringues before, so I'm pretty excited about these results. They're probably the prettiest looking edible items I've ever made. They definitely should be thought of more as candy than cookie, because they are blindingly sweet and are closer to marshmallow in consistency.

Recipe from Better Homes and Gardens magazine:

3 egg whites
1 tsp white vinegar
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 of a 3oz package (3 Tbsp) strawberry flavor gelatin
6 oz bittersweet chocolate and/or white chocolate melted

1. Place egg whites in bowl, let stand for 30 min till room temperature. Line cookie sheet with parchment or foil, set aside
2. Preheat oven to 300. Add vinegar and salt to egg whites. Beat with electric mixer on high till soft peaks form (tips curl). Gradually add sugar and dry gelatin, beating till stiff peaks form (tips stand straight). Spoon mixture into pastry bag, fitted with large star tip. Pipe about 1 inch wide and tall onto cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 18-20 minutes.
This is where I will add my 2 cents: Do ONE TRAY AT A TIME if possible. I burned my second tray which was below my first. Watch them closely, because you don't want them to brown! Turn off oven and let dry inside for another 15 minutes. I didn't listen to this part and some of them started collapsing, so keep them warm while they set.
4.Dip in melted chocolate, or sprinkle with powdered sugar.

*These get tough and chewy really quick, so eat within a day or two, and don't refrigerate!

Applesauce

Based on the Joy of Cooking Recipe:

3 lbs of assorted apples, (peeled, cored and sliced into chunks)
1/2 to 3/4 cup apple cider or apple juice (depends on the juiciness of your apples)
1 to 1.5 Tbsp of lemon juice
1 large cinnamon stick

Cover and simmer, stirring often over low heat till tender (roughly 20 min). Stir in the following:

1/4 cup maple syrup (or 1/2 cup sugar or 6 Tbsp honey)
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Cook for another minute. Remove from heat. Discard cinnamon stick. Blend to desired thickness.

French Lentil Casserole

This is my very favourite recipe, found via google by Jeremy a few years back. Only yesterday did we successfully retrace his googling steps and locate it. I'm posting it for safe-keeping. It is extremely flavourful, hearty, and delicious, and it fills your apartment with the most delightful aroma...

Here's the original link (thanks to the original blogger, Cecily, whom I don't know personally).

Cecily's French Lentil Casserole
2 cups white wine
1 t thyme
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 T white sugar
1 t salt
1 tsp Herbes de Provence (see below)
1 cup water
1 cup red, green, or French lentils
1 bunch chopped swiss chard
8 small carrots, diced
1 leek, cut into small rounds
1 cup loosely chopped walnuts
1/4 cup butter
olive oil

For Croutons
5 slices country bread, cut into 1 inch cubes
4 T olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
2 t Herbes de Provence
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425.

Make casserole
Mix wine, thyme, bay leaves, sugar, salt, Herbes de Provence, and water in sauce pan. Add lentils for 40 minutes on medium high. Saute vegetables in olive oil. Mix all ingredients in casserole dish (can also do individual casserole dishes) and bake for 15 minutes at 375, covered with foil.

Make croutons
toss all crouton ingredients together until evenly coated with oil. Bake at 425 for 7-10 minutes.

After baking each - the casserole and the croutons separately - add croutons to top of lentil mixture. Add melted butter over croutons. Bake for 20 minutes at 425.

Serves 4-6. Serve with another vegetable side dish. (Greenbeans, potatoes...)

*If you don't have premixed Herbes de Provence, mix the following:
1 T thyme
1 T chervil (I didn't have this, so I skipped it)
1 T rosemary
1 T savoury
1 t lavender
1 t tarragon
1 t marjoram
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t mint
2 powdered or chopped bay leaves

Raspberry Bars

Here's another really easy dessert that doesn't use a lot of ingredients and is extremely quick to make:

(taken from Land O Lakes Treasury of Country Recipes)

2 and 1/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup butter, softened
1 egg
10 oz (3/4 cup) raspberry preserves (feel free to use any other flavor)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine everything except for the preserves in a bowl. Mix till well combined. Reserve 1 and 1/2 cups of the mixture and set it aside. Press the remaining mixture into a greased 8" square baking pan. Spread jam over pressed mixture, but stay away from the edges, or it tends to burn. Crumble the rest of the mixture over the preserves (this part takes the longest because the dough itself isn't very crumbly, so you'll have to pull it off into little pieces). Bake for 40-50 min until lightly browned. Cool and cut into bars.

Cookshop

My friend's sister, Emily, is a pastry chef, so once a year, we make it point to visit whichever fancy restaurant she happens to be working at. For the past couple of years, she's been the executive pastry chef at Cookshop, located on 20th and 10th Ave.

The first time we visited, we were given samplers of some of their "snacks," which included deviled eggs (where I had my first taste of smoked paprika and was hooked) and fried hominy. The scallops were recommended to me as an entree and I wasn't disappointed. Dessert was of course our main focus. I think we sampled just about everything on the menu, plus more. The Cookshop Candy Bar is a complex, compact little dessert that everyone must try. I attended a workshop where Emily demonstrated how to make these, so I now appreciate all the work that goes into the process. She also makes amazing bread puddings and has had plenty of write-ups on her ice cream and sorbets.

I'm dedicating a paragraph just for the sorbets, because they're one of the main reasons I keep going back. I've never eaten anything that captured the natural flavor of something as well as these sorbets. The apple sorbet is my all-time favorite, because it tastes exactly like fresh frozen apple. Unfortunately, it wasn't on the menu when my husband and I went last night, so I tried a scoop of concord grape, grapefruit-campari and hazelnut. Having grown up with a concord vine in the backyard, I'm perfectly familiar with the way they taste, but this sorbet tasted (and looked) like it was made from slightly younger light-purple grapes and was delicious. The grapefruit campari was fresh and zingy and the hazelnut was so intense in flavor it almost felt like eating a cookie or pie crust. If you want to experiment with less typical flavors, try the the basil sorbet. It wasn't quite my cup of tea, but most of the ladies I was with really enjoyed it.

Their menu is based on seasonal ingredients, so it changes frequently. I've been back 4 times now, 3x for dinner and once for brunch. My husband has tried the sturgeon and eggplant parmesan and loved both. Last night we tried their fried green tomatoes, which had a sweet relish on top, but were too full to finish them. Their dishes can be a little heavy on the salt at times and the variation in quantities depending on the entree can be pretty drastic, but other than that, I have no gripes. Being as popular as it is, it's a pretty noisy, crowded restaurant, so if you're looking for a quiet romantic spot, it might not be the place to go.

Also, if you go during the day, be sure to walk on the Highline (raised subway track turned into garden) The entrance is right across the street.

Upside Down Pear Cake

There's nothing more "organic" than the gnarled, dimpled and slightly grotesque looking pears my parents brought back from their garden in VT. I pointed and laughed at them the first time I saw them. But they're sugar sweet and make great Upside-Down cake.

The pears were so unique looking my mom decided to paint them as well. Visit her website!