So last month Slashfood had candy day and somehow I was living in a cave and missed it. This month they are featuring nuts, and I was determined to participate this time. There are lots of foods that have nuts but I really wanted to do something where the main focus was the nuts. I dragged out my Book of Tarts and sure enough there was a recipe for a nut tart….showcasing the nuts in all their nut glory. I have to say that I have a love/hate relationship with this cookbook. I love every recipe that I make from it, yet the directions are pretty vauge in some areas(yet extreme detail in making tart dough) and some recipes don’t even tell you what temperature to bake them at. But I stick with it since it has simple flavors that always turn out lovely, this tart being no exception to that. It is sweet, crunchy and buttery(they have good tart dough).

The recipe suggest using walnuts, peanuts and/or almonds. I chose to use cashews(because I love them…they are right up there with bacon), almonds and pecans. I really think you could use just about any nut your heart desired and this would turn out wonderful. In writing this I can’t help but think of my poor friend who is allergic to nuts. I can’t even imagine. My uncle developed an allergy to macadamia nuts, almost over night. One of my biggest fears is the wake up one day, eat a nut and have to go to the ER. Yikes. I will just pray that never happens to me…or any of you.

A Bunch of Nuts in a Tart

Standard Tart Dough

13 TBSP unsalted butter, cut into 13 pieces
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 TBSP heavy cream

1. Let the butter sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together, until the sugar is no longer visible. Scrape down the sides of the bowl again. Add half the flour and beat until the dough becomes crumbly. Stop mixing, add the remaining flour and then cream, and beat until the dough forms a sticky mass.
3. I chose not to roll out the tart dough and just press it into the mold so I did not refrigerate mine. If you want to roll it out you are going to want to chill for at least 2 hours.
4. Bake at 375F for 10 minutes for a partial bake. They will continue to bake when filled.
Filling

1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 TBSP butter
3 cups assorted nuts
1/2 cup raisins(optional…I did not use)
6 partial baked tart shells

1. Combine the cream, honey, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan and bring just to a boil over medium heat. Simmer, stirring gently, for exactly 1 minute. Remove from the heat, add the nuts and raisins(if using), and stir to coat.
2. Divide the nut mixture evenly among the tart shells(recipe below), mounding it in the centers.
3. Bake for 20-25 minutes(I just had to assume at 375F), until the filling is caramelized and bubbling around the edges. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Remove tart from tart pan.

Source: Book of Tarts by Maury Rubin 1995

Anyone who knows me would call me non-traditional or unconventional….my high school voted me most likely to be odd(and most humorous senior female). One exception being Christmas. If I am visiting my parents or they are visiting us for Christmas, I must have the Christmas of my childhood. The same exact dinner every time(with no deviation-I get cranky). The same cookies. The same way we open gifts…and so on. Ironically when they aren’t here I make very non-traditional filet mignon stuffed with crab and garlic mashed potatoes. I only make frosted sugar cookies….although we do follow all the other traditions. If you are sitting there saying, your poor husband doesn’t get any of his traditions….yeah…he doesn’t have any…for any holiday(kind of freaked me out to be honest).

So every year my mom makes the same Christmas cookies but adds one that she hasn’t made before just for variety. Every year she has frosted sugar cookies, date-nut pinwheels(which no one eats but her), russian tea cakes, red and green butter cookies with sprinkles and jam thumbprint cookies. Everyone of these coming from teh Betty Crocker cookbook….the one printed in 1950. Come to find out 90% of everything I ate as a kid came from this book. I of course did not realize this until I bought a reprint of the original a few years back. It makes sense since my grandmother was not a good cook, I guess she had to learn somewhere.

I wanted to start baking cookies and blog about them so that people would have some options in case they were going to a cookie exchange. Most everyone has this recipe but I wanted to start with a cookie that was traditonal to my Christmas. I have to say I have already eaten 3 and I feel like the tree should be up and cocoa should be in my hand…not just yet. The recipe is rather vague, as are most in the Crocker cookbook of yester-year. It said it made 2 dozen, I got 11 cookies. Look for lots more cookie recipes in the coming weeks.

Thumbprint Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, seperated
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup nuts(I used walnuts), chopped

Preheat oven to 375F
Mix together the butter, sugar, vanilla and egg yolk. Stir in flour and salt.
Roll into 1″ balls. Dip in slightly beaten egg whites. Roll in finely chopped nuts. Place about 1″ apart on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 5 minutes. Remove from oven. Quickly press thumb gently on top of each cookie(if you are whimpy use the back of a melon baller). Return to oven and bake 8 minutes longer. Cool.
Place in thumbprints a bit of jelly(I used homemade raspberry).
Feel free to add whatever to your thumbprint. Ganache, icing, chopped up fruit…etc.

I’m just as addicted to cooking magazines as I am to cookbooks. From time to time I must go through them all and figure out what to save and what to toss since my magazine collection would run us out of the apartment if I let it. I bought a Betty Crocker Cakes, Bars, and Cookies one back in February and at the time I said I would make the root beer cake that was featured in there. Never did of course. Found it again last night.  One thing I like about the Betty Crocker food magazine special editions is that they have a photo of every recipe and I appreciate that. They had cute little root beer flavored candy sticks which I could not find anywhere. I then tried to find those little root beer barrels I used to eat as a kid, no such luck. So I used gummy colas, which are not root beer flavored, but they are in the same family.

I was picky about the root beer I used(shocking I know). I chose Sprecher Root Beer Soda. I love that root beer. It comes from Wisconsin and they use raw honey in the brew and it has a nice creamy flavor. The original recipe calls for whipped topping(like Cool Whip) but I chose to make real whipped cream with a little sugar. If I wasn’t making the cupcakes, I would have chopped up the cake and made a trifle out of it with the cake whipped cream and I would have boiled down the rest of the root beer to make a syrup to drizzle over it. I also would have put it in beer mugs(preferably clear ones) to make it extra special.

The cupcakes really do have the flavor of root beer but it not over-powering by any means. I think this would be a fun cake to make for a kids birthday party or if you have a root beer lover in the house, make it for them. To say these are easy to make is putting it mildly, so if you are not a big baker, these would be a great thing to practice on and build your confidence with.

Root Beer Float Cake

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup rootbeer
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 egg

Heat oven to 350F. Grease bottom and side of 8-inch round pan with shortening, lightly floured. I chose to make mini cupcakes.
Beat all the ingredient in a large bowl with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping the bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pan.
Bake 30-35 minutes(cupcakes took me 17). Cool 10 minutes, remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours…cupcakes cooled within 15.
Cut cake horizontally to make 2 layers. Spread whipped topping(or sweetened whipped cream) over bottom layer of cake. Add top of cake. Top remaining whipped topping. Store covered in fridge.

Source: Betty Crocker Cakes, Bars and Cookies, Volume 6, Number 1

P.S. Thank goodness we got more light today in Seattle, I was having a hissy fit yesterday with the bad lighting.

When my dad was still working(he is retired now) my parents would go to a convention every year, each year being held in a different city. To combat their guilt of getting to go and do something fun my mom would always ask what would I like for her to bring back. Every year it was the same answer: a sweatshirt from the local college and a regional cookbook, preferably from the local junior league. I have quite the collection of both. So in keeping with my Southern theme I was kind of on I went rummaging through all the Southern Junior League books I had. Several of them had a recipe for graham cracker cake. I had never heard that in all my life, so of course I had to make it. The original recipe was a mocha one but hubby doesn’t like coffee flavor so I omitted the 1 TBSP of powdered coffee, fill free to add it if you like. Such an odd cake, no flour but doesn’t taste like a flourless cake since the graham cracker crumbs take on the roll of flour. It definitely had a distinct graham cracker taste which I liked since I liked graham crackers. It was also chocolaty. Hubby did not like the cake at all he though it just tasted like mushy graham crackers and proceeded to tell me that he only likes graham crackers because of their crunch. But he is weird and hardly eats anything normal including veggies, fruit, beans and soup.

It had a frosting, which was more of a glaze, but I chose to put chocolate sauce on it instead. You will have to excuse the bad photos. Today was super dark. We got a ton of rain, and though Seattle is known for it’s rain, we rarely get the down pouring that we had today. So working with natural light was rough since I didn’t get any. Sigh.

Chocolate Graham Cracker Cake 

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, seperated
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 TBSP baking powder
3 TBSP cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 375F. Cream butter and add sugar and egg yolks, mixing until well combined. Add graham craker crumbs, baking powder, cocoa, salt, milk, vanilla extract, and nuts; mix well. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into mixture. pour batter into two greased and floured 9 inch round pans. Bake 25-30 minutes. Cool slightly. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Chocolate Sauce

1 cup Whipping cream
2 tablespoons Sugar
4 ounces Bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon Unsalted butter

Combine the cream and sugar in a small saucepan and heat to a boil. Pour the hot mixture over the chocolate and butter in a medium bowl. Stir until completely melted and smooth.

Strain through a fine wire mesh strainer into a serving bowl. Serve warm.

Source: Atlanta Cooknotes by the Junior League of Atlanta, Inc 1993