Recipe Index

Gentle readers,

I hope you enjoy perusing the In a Pickle index as much as I enjoyed creating it. May your forays in the kitchen always turn into adventures.

xoxo,

Kate

Breakfast foods
Pumpkin cream cheese muffins
Chocolate coconut flax granola

College Hill Coffee blueberry muffins

Lunch/Dinner
Farfalle pasta with walnuts in a mushroom cream sauce
Swiss, onion, and chard panade
Chickpea salad
The OMFG pizza
Kefir pasta with sausage
Creamy Swiss and pepper sandwiches
Asparagus quiche
Beans and Maters
Rice and Beans (and cheese)
Spaghetti with roasted tomato cream sauce
Cajun shrimp and rice

Fruits
Cranberry peach salad with g.i.n.g.e.r
Candied orange peel with almond
Slow-roasted tomatoes

Vegetables
Fried potatoes

Kicky coleslaw with brown sugar dressing

Polenta fries
New potatoes with onions and chard
Slow-roasted tomatoes with cardamom and caraway
Butternut Squash Gratin

Breads
English seed bread

Soups
Butternut squash soup

Snacks and tiny treats
Quickie pumpkin seeds
Vanilla mint French meringues

Chocolate love
Chocolate champagne truffles
Dark chocolate cookies with espresso
Rocky road brownies

Cookies
Sesame coconut cookies

Chocolate chip biscotti with orange

Cashew macadamia butter cookies

Hazelnut cookies for Karen
Chocolate chip walnut cookies
Cherry chili chocolate chip cookies


Other dreamy desserts
Coconut macaroons
Snow ice cream
Maple buttermilk pie
Double lemon, double poppy seed cake
French pear cake with brandied glaze

Beverages
Lemon-ginger syrup
Cherry vanilla cola
Spearmint lemonade with rosewater
Espresso con panna

Karen's Hazelnut Cookies

Below is a picture of my Grandma Mickey, my grandmother on my mom's side. Mickey is famous in our family for her perfect pies and crescent rolls.

She made snickerdoodles, ranger cookies, and more

She's a neat lady, and I think that's evident in this photo. Just look at her and you'll see it: she's strong, majestic, and a little silly. I snapped this photo at a party she threw last year for our family. When my Aunt Clair and her Jim, who live in Florida, came to visit Kansas, Mickey made dozens, dozens, and dozens of cookies, called everyone on the Helm/McClure side of the family, and we all had a dandy time.

Next weekend, she's throwing another "Calling All Cousins Cookie Party," and I can't wait. In fact, I'm not waiting at all. In fact, I made hazelnut cookies this afternoon to celebrate, and the event is almost a week away.

Karen, my friend who lives a mere 5 hours away in Texas, loves these hazelnut cookies with all her heart. She's their number-one fan. I brought some to her once on road trip, and though Karen is one of the healthiest, most fit people I know, she ate three cookies in one sitting. Such is their power. A fellow blogger on livejournal first shared this recipe with me, and now, I share it with you. Behold, hazelnut cookies with chocolate ganache:

Craggy, unassuming, and delectable

Hazelnut Cookies with Chocolate Centers
by Pamwheatfree @ livejournal.com

• 1 1/3 cup hazelnut flour (ground hazelnuts) or ground almonds
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup cane sugar
  
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon cream
  

Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Beat egg slightly in bowl then add ground nuts and sugar. Incorporate the egg fully into the dry ingredients until you have a sticky/pasty dough. To make the cookies, roll pieces of dough into 1" balls, then create a small dent in the top of each sphere with your finger.

Melt the chocolate chips and cream together, 10 seconds at a time, using a microwave. Stir the chocolate and cream after every 10-second session until the chips are completely melted. Fill each cookie with a 1/2 tsp of chocolate ganache.*

Place the cookies on greased cookie sheet or parchment paper-covered sheet. Bake for approximately 15 minutes, but watch the cookies closely; they have a tendency to burn on the bottoms.

Makes 12 to 15 tasty, gluten-free cookies.


* Karen likes to call these treats "Nutella cookies," and you can certainly up the hazelnut ante by using Nutella instead of chocolate ganache to top the cookies.

Vanilla and mint clouds

Yesterday was lazy in the way that Sundays ought to be. My husband and I slept in, petted the kitties, and I baked bread. Our friend, Tree, came over to visit in the afternoon, and the three of us sat around the kitchen table talking while the vanilla peppermint meringues baked.

The best of 12 meringue photos I took

The whole afternoon had a relaxed air about it, as if the day were pulled from that 1930s Billie Holiday song, "Pennies From Heaven." I kept imagining six-year-old Molly Singer from Corina, Corina floating on a pool raft, crooning, "Don't you know each time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven?" We must have munched through over a half-dozen meringues before Tree and I left for a walk downtown.

Clotilde's recipe for French meringues forms the base of this recipe. I've made her plain meringues several times before using a stout vanilla and unrefined turbinado sugar. The complex flavor of the turbinado lends a caramel flavor to the vanilla that I enjoy. But yesterday, I tweaked the classic recipe to incorporate leftover Andes peppermint candies. I was inspired by the seasonal Mrs. Meyers candle we'd been burning at home. There's nothing quite as comforting as vanilla and mint together.

Vanilla mint French meringues

• 4 egg whites at room temperature
  
• 3/4 cup + 1 Tb. turbinado sugar
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp spearmint sauce
• 1/3 cup Andes peppermint baking chips or pillow mints, chopped finely

Preheat the oven to 285 degrees Fahrenheit and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place the egg whites in a large, very clean bowl and whisk the dickens out of them, until soft peaks form. Keep whisking continuously and add the sugar, one tablespoon at a time. My turbinado comes in rather large crystals and this process was lengthy for me; however, stay the course and make sure each round of sugar is fully dissolved before adding another spoonful.

Once the sugar is incorporated, the mixture should be glossy and gorgeous and ready for the vanilla and spearmint sauce. Incorporate them fully before very gently folding in the baking chips.

Using a piping bag or two spoons, drop half-tangerine-sized blobs of meringue on the baking sheets, about 2 or 3 inches apart. They will expand as they cook. Bake the meringues for 45 minutes if you like chewy centers (as I do) or 60 minutes for a thoroughly crunchy cookie. However you prefer your centers, make sure the meringues cool completely before storing them in an air-tight container.

Makes 2 dozen small meringues.


"Pennies from Heaven"
by Arthur Johnston

A long time ago
A million years BC
The best things in life
Were absolutely free.
But no one appreciated
A sky that was always blue.
And no one congratulated
A moon that was always new.
So it was planned that they would vanish now and then
And you must pay before you get them back again.
That's what storms were made for
And you shouldn't be afraid for
Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven.
You'll find your fortune falling
All over town.
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.
Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers.
If you want the things you love
You must have showers.
So when you hear it thunder
Don't run under a tree.
There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me.