Beyond Rivalry

People keep asking me for this recipe, so here it is, from Pioneer Press (MN) Christmas Cookie Database, with my notes and additions:

Jeweled Mix Nut Bars

submitted by: KathyZieman of St. Paul, MN. Kathy got the recipe from her mother, who used salted peanuts, which I also used in half the batches I made. They taste great, too. (Photo shows the peanut bars, not the mixed nut bars.)

Serves 24 (or however many you want depending on how big you cut the squares)

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter

2 cups deluxe mixed nuts (salted)

2 Tbsp butter
1/2 pkg. (6 oz) butterscotch chips
1/2 cup white corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour, salt, and brown sugar. Cut in butter thoroughly, dump into greased 9x13 pan, and press down into pan. Bake 350 degrees for 10 minutes. [I just line the pan with parchment paper to make cutting and removal easier.]

While baking crust, melt over low heat or microwave for one minute or until melted: butterscotch chips, 2 Tablespoons butter, vanilla, and corn syrup.

To Bake: Spread mixed nuts over crust and pour melted topping evenly over the nuts. The topping may not cover every inch of nuts, but when it melts, it will. Bake this for 10 minutes -- press the nuts down with a spatula halfway through -- or until sides start to bubble. Cool thoroughly, then cut into squares. If using parchment paper, lift the whole thing out of the pan at once, move it to a cutting board, and cut squares.

I made all the components for a festive Gingerbread Pear Trifle ahead of time for a bookgroup meeting on Thursday, which was cancelled due to the weather (more on that in next post). Since it won't save until the rescheduled bookgroup meeting next week, my spouse and I are compelled to eat it. The dog even got a few licks.

Components are:

• gingerbread
• custard (very fun to make, when it suddenly comes together after 10 mins. of steady whisking over heat)
• whipped cream (more whisking, but not over heat and only for 2-3 mins.)
• cooked Bosc pears

It's very ginger-y.

Recipe here.

Photos:

I remembered to photo the cappuccino star cookies (I also made them in Christmas tree shapes) and the four loaves of orange-poppyseed bread I made yesterday.

Below is the grey squirrel who's been hanging out in this tree for months, taken a few moments ago in our light falling snow.

Yesterday I made apricot crescents and jeweled peanut bars (photo shows them uncut).

The day before, 4 little loaves of orange poppyseed pound cake (photo shows cross-sections on part of one loaf).

In the last few days, I've made:

the dratted Windmill cookies (which actually baked up nicely)

Almond Macaroons drizzled with dark chocolate

Elaine's Famous Sugar Cookies

Neapolitan cookies

Jeweled Mixed-Nut Bars

Cranberry and Fig Rugalach

and

Holiday Biscotti with Cranberries and Pistachios, dipped in Ghirardelli white chocolate

I only remembered to photograph the biscotti (on parchment paper), which I made today. Doh.

Had Thanksgiving leftovers tonight for dinner. Served the crab au gratin on English muffin, the last of the Pommes Anna alongside them, and a fresh batch of baby spinach sauteed with garlic in olive oil. With the rest of the Beringer's chenin blanc. And more pumpkin pie. Mmm.

Our Thanksgiving was leisurely. Watched the Macy's parade and football and Miracle on 34th Street (the new version, which I much prefer to the old one, though I know most people don't), took a walk with the dog, and then commenced prepping and cooking the dinner, which took about an hour total (the Pommes Anna bakes for about 45 mins.).

The Crab au Gratin seems to have been improperly named. Technically, it's true, it was crab with browned breadcrumbs and cheese on it. But a more accurate name would be Crab in Sherried Cream Sauce. It was a Mornay sauce, with crab, sherry, Worcestershire sauce and Old Bay added to it, and so even after its 20 minutes of baking at 400F (with Ritz cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese atop), it remained more a bisque or a dip than a solid mass. Still, it held its own on the plate along with the spinach sauteed with pine nuts and garlic and the Pommes Anna. And it tasted luscious.

Of course, I forgot to take photos of any of the prep or the finished products, until we were halfway through with them. In fact, we had eaten all the spinach already when I remembered. So below are photos of the remnants of our meal, including the Waldorf Salad and the Beringer chenin blanc, which we drank instead of the Riesling that we bought for the event and then forgot to chill.

I'm a pesce-vegetarian, so for Turkey Day we mostly we have either visited friends (our old neighbours) who are vegetarians and partake of the Tofurkey with all the trimmings, or we have bought take-out Indian or Chinese food (ditto for Christmas), or we've gone out to eat someplace where I can get fish. This year, though, despite a couple of wonderful Thanksgiving invitations, we're staying home and I'm making a mini-feast. I don't know why.

Yesterday, I made the pumpkin pie, the Libby's standard with my own pie crust. [I also made the dough yesterday for Windmill cookies, a supposedly easy thing I'll never do again. It nearly ended in tears.]

Today, I'll buy the crabmeat from the local seafood place to make either Diane's Crab Casserole, Crabmeat au Gratin, or a crab meat souffle that I found in a book first published in 1958, Recipes, Party Plans, and Garnishes, by Sadie Le Sueur ("Le Sueur" like those little canned peas). Or very possibly some melange of the three recipes. I want Old Bay and sherry!

Thursday, I'll make and bake the crabmeat thingy after the Macy's Day parade (as we always called it), assemble and bake some Pommes Anna, and saute fresh baby spinach in olive oil with garlic and pine nuts, and we'll say thanks for all that bounty, plus a slice of pie, and maybe later a piece of the Gethsemani fruitcake that arrived on the doorstep today, just in time, with some lovely tawny port from last Christmas.  Mmm.

I clipped a recipe for Chocolate Sambuca cookies from a Jan. 1995 issue of Gourmet magazine; apparently it's a cookie that was served at a restaurant called Mirabelle in Boston, which doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd never made it but this year when I was flipping through my recipes looking for potential holiday cookies, it caught my eye, in part because it claimed to make 64 cookies, without doubling. (It actually made about 80.)

The dough -- really more of a batter consistency -- has to chill overnight, so I made the dough last night and baked the cookies today. It's not a quick or easy recipe; the dough is pretty easy to make, though the grinding of the almonds and the melting of the chocolate and butter in a double-boiler took a bit of time and created some mess, but the baking prep requires forming the chilled but still sticky dough into balls, which is hard to do unless you wet your fingers under the faucet about every fourth cookie, and then the balls are rolled first in granulated sugar and then in confectioner's sugar. Not sure why both are needed; the confectioner's would probably be sufficient for the appearance of the cookie, which resembles a snow-capped chocolate krinkle.

The recipe I used is similar to this one, found several places online, but instead of 2/3 cup flour, the Gourmet recipe called for 1/2 cup plus 2 T flour; and instead of 1/3 cup Sambuca, the Gourmet recipe called for 1/4 cup plus 2 T.  Nit-picky Gourmet. (I think 1/3 cup Sambuca would be better. Maybe a little almond flavouring, too.)

Anyway, they taste great: light, moist, chocolatey with a hint of anise and almond.

Today, I made a Julekage, or Danish Christmas bread (some sources say it's Norwegian), as a test drive for when I make it for my bookgroup meeting in mid-December. Needed about 2 hours for the first rising and an hour for the second, then a half-hour to bake. It tastes great, almost exactly like an Italian Panettone, very light, airy and fruity. I used a recipe from About.com's Southern Food section, which doesn't call for scalding the milk like many other recipes do. Here's what it looks like from the top:

Now how did Laa-laa get in that picture? ...