Quick Eggnog

A festive glass of eggnog goes perfectly with holiday cookies!

I look forward to the holidays every year, not least to drink my favorite winter treat: eggnog! And I love trying everyone’s Special Eggnog, or their uncle’s family recipe or whatever, but I always go back to this one that I learned as a kid, made without booze. Have no fear, though, just add your booze at the end and it is a perfect adult treat!

Now I know this recipe calls for a raw egg. However, the action of the blending does change the molecular structure a bit, so it is slightly less than raw… but if that freaks you out, go find a 50s recipe where you have to separate the eggs, beat the yolks separately, incorporate the egg mixture with milk over ice, and so on and so on. If not, get out your blender and whip this up in a snap! I guarantee (if you don’t die of salmonella) you will enjoy it ;)

I'm not kidding - all right in the blender!

Per serving:

·         1 egg

·         1 cup milk

·         2 Tbsp sugar

·         1 tbsp vanilla

·         1-2 ounces rum, whiskey or brandy (my Dad uses Myer’s Rum AND Brandy!)

Pour the first 4 ingredients into blender; blend for 30 seconds. Add booze and pulse one second to incorporate. Serve with grated nutmeg on top. 

If you're not lucky enough to have cookies given to you as a gift, make your own - here is a recipe for eggnog cookies!

Oh and Happy Holidays :)

Corn Pudding

This is a recipe we have traditionally eaten every year at Thanksgiving in my family, and when I was little, it was one of the first things I was allowed to make all by myself. I actually prefer it in summer with ham, but it makes a great side to just about anything, and you can add salsa or use pepper jack cheese to spice it up, or add scallions or caramelized onions or bell pepper for more flavor. You can also sneak in crumbled bacon, because, well… Bacon.

If I happen to have crème fraiche around, I will use that instead of sour cream. You can also play with the amounts of ingredients and this dish can vary between nearly corn-bread-like to more of a savory custard. It’s easy and tasty, so have fun with it!

2 cups frozen whole kernel corn (or drained canned corn)

1/3 cup butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup yellow corn meal

1 tsp salt

1 cup sour cream (substitute crème fraiche)

1 cup diced Monterey jack cheese

Optional: ¼ to ½ cup of: salsa, sliced scallions, crumbled bacon, diced bell pepper or caramelized onion.

Thaw corn. Place in large bowl and add melted butter, beaten egg, corn meal, salt, sour cream and cheese. Pour into buttered casserole (1 ½ quarts) and bake at 350 for 45-60 min or until set and golden brown.  6-8 servings

Mashed Potatoes for a Crowd

How to make mashed potatoes for a crowd:

One vat of mashed potatoes, coming up - WITH A SMILE!

Helper = the only way to do it!

Oooh yeah, look at all this compost!

MASH! 

An immersion blender may help...

1. Buy one russet potato per person and scrub them clean
2. Enlist your helper to peel them – having a “race” is great for motivation, plus you can surreptitiously check your phone while they work, which is just like management in real life!
3. Boil em up for about 30 min in the biggest pot you can find. Cauldron? Perhaps.
4. Let cool, or else OUCH! If this is Thanksgiving, this is a good time to schedule a fight with your ex. Plan for at least an hour. Drain.
5. Mash the heck out of the potatoes. Get your aggressions out!
6. Melt some butter – about 2 Tbsp per potato, but use your judgment. Less if you plan to eat them, more if you plan to induce heart failure in elderly relatives.
7. Combine melted butter and milk (about ¼ cup per potato, to taste and desired thickness) into the large pot. Incorporate with potatoes.
8. Salt and pepper to taste. Note: fresh ground pepper is really the ONLY way to get radical with mashed potatoes. OK that and maybe a parsley garnish, but please, no Sriracha sauce or truffle butter or foie gras! Leave the innovation to the TV cooking contests and nobody will get hurt. Well, that depends on step 4…
9. Serve with a smile and ENJOY!

Pop Corn Balls

Looking for something fun, cheap and colorful to serve at a party? I was, and I found this in my lovely box of McCall’s Great American Recipe Card Collection from 1973. So long as you don’t mind getting your hands DIRTY, you’ll have fun with these Popcorn Balls!

My daughter and I made them for a holiday party – they’re called Christmas Popcorn Balls – but we felt the subdued colors shown on the recipe card were WAY TOO SUBTLE! So we went heavy on the Jell-O (Jell-O used to provide sweetness and color to pop corn? Oh YEAH!!!) and added a lot (quite a lot actually) of food coloring. Usually I avoid the stuff, but come on – for the holidays? Go crazy. We did!

These balls are fun to make and they have that sweet-salty thing going on that just works, thanks to the aforementioned Jell-O as well as chopped peanuts. I think perhaps I preferred the other flavored popcorns I have made just because there was less mess and goo all over your hands (see recipe for Pink Party Pop Corn here) but they are fun and tasty, and we will make them again. Just plan on spending more time than you thought humanly possible trying to roll the damn stuff into balls, while at the same time scraping it off your hands… this without just giving up and eating handfuls. Actually, I discovered that if the stuff is mostly cooled off it is much easier to form into balls, and then you also don’t burn your flesh with boiling Jell-O.  Um yeah… popcorn balls. 

Ingredients - yes, Jell-O!!!

 Hot Jell-O with food coloring - how can you go wrong???

Here we are at the Christmas party with the Pop Corn Balls! Happy Holidays :)

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie – it’s just not Thanksgiving without it, but once you realize how easy it is to make, you might want it more often. Like for breakfast!

I have to admit to using an old standby, the recipe from a can of Libby’s 100% Pure (canned) Pumpkin (see below) which never fails, though I swap out the evap milk for the same quantity ½ and ½. It’s fast, easy, yummy and familiar. However, one year I decided to do a taste test with one “traditional” pie versus one Bourbon Pumpkin Pie which I saw in Gourmet Magazine. Which one won? The Gourmet version did, and you can say because it has fewer eggs and ads sour cream for a little tang, or is more heavily spiced, or is creamier… or you can just say BOURBON.

First of all, you need to make a crust. Click here for my FAMOUS three minute Cuisinart “no roll” crust and thank me forever. If you’re in a rush, fine. Go ahead and use frozen dough. I will avert my eyes. (Below: my pie crust, right out of the Cuisinart. No rolling! Trust me.)

After you blind bake your crust, let it cool while you prepare the filling, as follows:

BOURBON PUMPKIN PIE

1 (15 oz) can pure pumpkin

1 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup sour cream

2 large eggs

¾ cup sugar

3 ½ Tbsp. bourbon

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

¾ tsp. ground ginger

¼ tsp. ground allspice

¼ tsp. salt

·         Whisk together ingredients and pour into cooled shell.

·         Bake until edge of filling is set but center trembles slightly, about 45 minutes (filling will continue to set as it cools). Cool completely.

·         Serve at room temperature. For added depth of flavor, add bourbon to the whipped cream you dollop on top of each slice!

going into the oven - and out of it! (Note in photo below the filling is puffed up. It will settle.)

Frosted Eggnog Logs

Not that I don’t eat cookies nearly constantly all year round, but the Holidays really seem made for them, and each year I delight in finding new and different recipes to make and share with my friends – I mean, to eat till I feel sick. This year my dear friend Lauryl sent me a link to an adaptation of a recipe she’s been making for years, and by coincidence, my dad’s wife also sent me a Xerox of an old recipe for the same thing! It was fate – I *had* to make them!

They really are the same recipe, the only difference being in the old recipe, you are advised to “shape the pieces of dough on sugared board into long rolls ½” in diameter.” Now I’m sure I could figure this out, but I don’t have a big board to use, and I’m not actually familiar with this technique, so I just hand-rolled little log shapes. The results are OK, but I think 1960 had something there, so I’m going to do them that way next time. SEE? The old ways are the best, people!

Below I’ve copied the new version, but see the image of the old page straight from some unknown magazine, dated December 1960. I don’t care which recipe you use, but you’ll be happy you tried these rummy delights! Make up a batch and share them – or keep them all to yourself!




Frosted Eggnog Logs

From Lauryl Berg (adapted from Cooks.com)



Cookies:



3 c. flour

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 c. butter

¾ c. sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp rum



Frosting:

3 Tbsp butter, softened

½ tsp rum

½ tsp vanilla

2 ½ c. powdered sugar

2-3 Tbsp cream or milk

Food coloring (optional)



Cookies: in a mixing bowl, stir together flour and nutmeg. In a large bowl, bear butter for 30 seconds. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and rum until combined. Add dry ingredients and beat well. Shape dough into 3 inch logs, about ½ inch wide. Arrange on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 15 to 17 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on racks.

Meanwhile, prepare the rum frosting. Frost tops of the cooked cookies. Mark frosting lengthwise with fork to resemble bark. Sprinkle with additional nutmeg if desired. Makes 4 ½ dozen.

Frosting: Beat together softened butter, rum and vanilla. Beat in ½ cup sifted powdered sugar. Gradually add more sifted powdered sugar (about 2 cups) and cream or milk. Beat until frosting spreads easily. Tint with green food coloring if desired.

Holiday Spiced Wine / Wassail

When it gets cold out, there is just nothing like a hot drink, and I don’t mean coffee! I was looking to make something Dickensian (preparing for the annual celebration of Christmas past that is San Francisco’s Dickens Fair) and thought of Wassail (traditionally more of a spiced cider, but modern recipes include wine or ale). I had a modern recipe for Cranberry Wassail, and doesn’t that sound festive? The problem was, the organic unsweetened cranberry juice I used made it so tart as to be nearly unbearable! Finally, with the addition or fresh squeezed orange juice, sparkling lemonade, agave syrup AND about 2 cups of brandy, it was quite tasty.

For a tried-and-true regular spiced wine, though, you can’t go wrong with this delight from a 1967 guide to “California Wine Cookery and Drinks” so kindly furnished by the Wine Advisory Board with an office on Market Street in San Francisco. (This board was extremely prolific with cook books and pamphlets throughout the 50s and 60s, but seems to have been supplanted by the more scientific California Winegrape Inspection Advisory Board – BoooooRing.)

I include both recipes here because there are enough cold winter nights for both – and I’m also sharing a more traditional Wassail recipe (courtesy of Betty Crocker’s 1960 “Party Book”) that does not contain alcohol, if you just want a hot drink without all the merriment. Though I could see adding rum to it… Cheers!



Cranberry Wassail


6 whole cloves

6 whole allspice

1 (48-oz) bottle cranberry juice cocktail

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ tsp nutmeg

1 (750 ml) bottle dry red wine


Tie whole spices in 2 layers of cheesecloth or place in tea ball. In large saucepan, combine cranberry juice cocktail, brown sugar and nutmeg; mix well. Add spices. Cook over medium heat until sugar dissolves, stirring occationally. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 10 minutes. Add wine; cook until thoroughly heated. Remove spices.

12 (3/4 cup) servings (note: this was increased because of all the things I added to the concoction, but still made only about 8 slightly larger servings)




Holiday Spiced Wine



1 quart water

3 cups sugar

12 whole cloves

4 inches stick cinnamon

6 whole allspice

½ teaspoon powdered ginger

Rind of 1 orange

Rind of 1 lemon

2 cups orange juice

1 cup lemon juice

1 (4/5-qt) bottle California Burgundy or Claret



Combine water, sugar, spices, orange rind and lemon rind in saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved; simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand 1 hour. Strain. Add orange juice, lemon juice and wine, heat gently. DO NOT BOIL. Serve hot in mugs.

20 servings, 3 oz size (note: that makes about 8 servings of “my size”)




Wassail Bowl


Spiced Oranges: Stud 3 oranges with whole cloves (1/2” apart); place in baking pan with a little water, and bake in slow mod. Oven (325 degrees) for 30 min.


Wassail:

3 qt. apple cider

2 sticks cinnamon, 3’ long

½ tsp. nutmeg

½ cup honey

1/3 cup lemon juice

2 tsp. lemon rind

2 no. 2 cans pineapple juice (5 cups)


Heat cider and cinnamon sticks in large saucepan. Bring to boil; simmer covered 5 min. Add remaining ingredients and simmer uncovered 5 min longer. Pour into punch bowl and float Spiced Oranges on top, using cinnamon sticks for stirring.

40 punch cup servings (Note: punch cups are TINY!)

Jell-O Pretzel Salad

I am sure you’re all SHOCKED to read yet ANOTHER post from me on Jell-O, right? Well this one is quite possibly the most important of all. Not only was it taught to me by my dear friend Kim Mejia as an indispensable element of every 4th of July, but it is one of those dishes that sounds horrible but is actually delicious. OK let’s be honest – it is rather obscene, but take one bite and you’ll grab the whole tray and a fork and run off for some Alone Time. Honest.

The other fantastic thing about this dish is that I found it in my 1986 [comedy] gem of a cookbook, “Cooking with Country Music Stars”, as given by none other than the Oak Ridge Boys! Come on, do you mean to tell me they really fixed this up and brought it to a pot luck? THAT is something I’d pay to see (note 1973 photo of them looking smooooth!) “Elvira – hey guys, get in here and help me with this cream cheese!” Umm, yeahhhhh…..

I must point out that the version Kim makes is the one I used, so compared to the one below, you make a few changes, as follows: use whole pretzels and melt an entire cup of butter over them as the first layer (no sugar needed). Bake for 10 min at 400 degrees, then cool. DO NOT add the cool whip to the sugar and cream cheese mixture – these are two separate layers under the Jell-O! Finally, just mix up the Jell-O as you would normally, no pineapple juice needed. You can add fruit, but it isn’t necessary. Finally, you won’t be able to serve this in nice little squares – just let people scoop blobs out for themselves, and forget the lettuce leaves. Like this is a salad, oh PLEASE!

Don’t forget that if this is for an Independence Day Party, you need to work the canned whipped cream into stripes over the red Jell-O base, and you can use blueberries for the blue part with the stars. Or just go crazy and spray the whipped cream everywhere. Heck, it’s a party, right?


The Oak Ridge Boys’ Pretzel Salad

2 cups crushed pretzels
¾ cup butter, melted
1 Tbsp sugar
1 8-oz package cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 8-oz carton Cool Whip
2 cups pineapple juice
2 3-oz packages strawberry Jell-O
2 10-oz packages frozen strawberries
Lettuce leaves (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix pretzels, melted butter and sugar and press firmly into 9 by 13-inch baking pan. Bake 6 to 10 minutes. Cool completely.

Blend cream cheese and sugar in bowl. Add Cool Whip. Spread mixture over cooled pretzel crust.

In saucepan, heat pineapple juice to boiling. Add Jell-O. Stir until dissolved. Add frozen berries. Stir. Pour over cheese mixture and let set in refrigerator. Cut into squares. Serve on bed of lettuce if desired.

Makes 12 servings.