Overnight cranberry eggnog coffee cake

 

Overnight coffee cakes are the best way to start a Christmas morning. Then fire up "Let's Ditch Christmas" to get in the mood to open presents. Lazy Christmases are the best.

Overnight Cranberry-Eggnog Coffee Cake
Adapted from a Taste of Home recipe submitted by Lisa Varner of El Paso, Texas, who was inspired to use up leftover holiday ingredients.

Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup eggnog
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
Zest of 1 orange
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup dried cranberries

Streusel ingredients:
⅔ cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter, softened
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup chopped pecans

Glaze
½ cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon eggnog

Method
Cream butter and 1 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, combine eggnog, sour cream and vanilla. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, orange zest, baking soda and salt. Add eggnog mixture and dry mixture to the butter-sugar mixture, alternating between the two. Stir in cranberries. Spread mixture into a greased 9- by 13-inch pan.

Combine ⅔ cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 tablespoons butter  and cinnamon in a small bowl. Stir in pecans. Sprinkle mixture over cake batter in pan. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Set pan out of the refrigerator while it heats up. Bake 35-40 minutes until it passed the toothpick test.

For glaze, combine powdered sugar and eggnog. Drizzle over slightly cooled cake and serve warm.

Rating: This makes a very soft, moist coffee cake. It's not super looky, since the cranberries don't show up on the top of the cake, but no one will mind. And you didn't have to scurry around in the morning to get it ready, plus the prep dishes are already done. You did do the dishes the night before, right? Best Christmas present to future self is a clean kitchen counter. Until they invent those magic elves.

Happy Solstice

 

We finally got the fireplace cleaned so we aren't too paranoid to use it. Time to light a fire against the darkness on this long dark day. And to open a bottle of Surly Darkness to toast to the approaching light. May there be brighter days ahead for all.

But sadness: I shipped all the cookies away. Only powdered sugar crumb prints left:

Mini pumpkin cheesecakes with maple whipped cream

 

Remember when Posh Spice drew more Google searches than pumpkin spice? Yes, this recipe involves pumpkin, and it involves spices. But I assure you, no coffee drinks were adulterated in the process.

 Mini pumpkin cheesecakes with maple whipped cream

Adapted from a recipe posted to the former recipezaar.com many years ago by Michele7. A search of the new food.com site does not turn up the identical recipe, although it does have another version that also purports to be the Cheesecake Factory version, as this one did. The two were noticeably different, both from each other, and from several other recipes alleged to be a copy of the restaurant’s version. I can’t weigh in on that, having never been to a Cheesecake Factory. 

The original recipe was for a full-size cheesecake that served 8. It would make 36 mini cheesecakes using a mini cheesecake pan. While I’ve mixed up the whole recipe and then baked it in three stages in the mini pan, that’s tedious, and generally speaking I don’t need 36 cheesecakes until it’s a big party. So this version is approximately a third of the original, designed to make one batch of 12. If you understandably don’t have a mini cheesecake pan (although they are super fun and make slick work of removing the cakelets), you could try it in muffin tins. I got my pan from King Arthur, but they don't seem to carry it any more. It is still available from Amazon, however.

 Ingredients
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
⅓ cup plus 2 teaspoon sugar, divided
1 (8-ounce package) cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla
⅓ cup canned pumpkin puree
1 egg
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon allspice
Maple whipped cream (see recipe)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cracker crumbs, melted butter and  2 teaspoons sugar in a medium-size bowl. Divide mixture among mini cheesecake pans. Tamp down crumb mixture to flatten. (Love my tart tamper I got from Mom for this purpose!) Place a layer of tinfoil under the pan and place in the oven, unless you really enjoy cleaning up oozed butter from your oven floor. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside to cool while you prepare the filling.

Combine cream cheese, vanilla and 1/3 cup sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth. Add pumpkin, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice and beat until smooth. Divide mixture evenly on top of cracker crusts, using about 2 tablespoons per cheesecake.

Bake for 20 minutes or until just set.  Set pan on a wire rack to cool at least 30 minutes. Run a butter knife around the cakes to carefully loosen them. Lift out and place on a serving plate (or storage box if you’re chilling them to serve later). These gain more structural integrity as they cool, so the tops are less likely to separate from the crust if you give them some chilling time before serving. The tops will sink slightly in the middle as they cool, but a garnish of whipped cream covers that nicely. Serves 12.

Rating: These are wonderfully light, not heavy like pumpkin pie or dense like some baked cheesecakes. Every time I take them to an event, they go over quite well, because, well, they’re cute, super small  and have a nice spice profile.

Maple whipped cream
From Berlyskitchen.com. This makes way more than you’d need for garnishing 12 mini cheesecakes, but as she points out, it can work for serving on pancakes, French toast, hot drinks or cupcakes, and it keeps fairly well made in advance without separating.

Ingredients
1 cup whipped cream
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Mix at low speed until foamy. Then increase speed to medium and beat until stiff peaks form.

 

 

 

Tiny herb spiral bread

 

They get you hooked young, and then you’ve got a lifetime habit. At least if you were in 4-H many moons ago where they distributed their alluring wares, pushing use of their product through glossy promotional materials distributed free to susceptible – and hungry – young minds.

I see you can now buy one of those Fleischmann’s yeast promotional cookbooks for $20 on Etsy, labeled as vintage. (Perhaps I’ll start referring to myself as vintage.) That one looks in much better shape than my well-used version with the cover in tatters.

This booklet is the source of many go-to recipes that date to the time when I was still a teenager astounding my parents with their luck as they stuffed their mouths with caraway rye rolls, the second yeast bread product I’d made in a day. I guess there were worse obsessions to have at that age than to produce excellent carriers for butter.

Despite the fact that I’ve owned this booklet for many years and made tons of tasty treats, somehow I had always meant to get around to this recipe and hadn’t. With a patio filled with herbs that I just had to bring inside for the season, this seemed as good a time as any to try it.

It called for just chives and parsley, but that might be because few cooks had access to a variety of fresh herbs when this book first came out. At any rate, I made it with half of the herbs being a mix of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, so thus, Simon and Garfunkel bread. (Yes, I am vintage, but it was a good year.)

Tiny herb loaves
Adapted from “Fleishmann’s Bake-it-easy Yeast Book.”
Note: If your kitchen doesn’t have a naturally warm place (a “cold” gas oven with just the pilot light on is perfect), turn on your electric oven to the lowest setting before you start assembling the dough and turn it off the minute it comes up to temperature. By the time you get the dough assembled it will have cooled down to warm instead of hot. Another trick: Heat water to boiling in a microwave right before you put the bowl of rising dough in. It will cool down, of course, but the initial warmth gets the dough off to the good start it needs and it’s a draft-free location. Otherwise, add more time to each estimated rising time to make up for the fact that it’s going to take longer.

Ingredients
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons butter, divided
1½ cups warm water (105 to 115, it should pass the baby bottle test on your wrist)
A scant tablespoon active dry yeast (1 package for those who don’t buy in bulk)
5½ to 6½ cups flour
1 cup chopped  fresh chives
1 cup chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme or whatever suits your fancy

Method
Scald milk. Stir in sugar, salt and 3 tablespoons butter. Cool to lukewarm.

Pour the warm water into a large bowl. Sprinkle in yeast and stir to dissolve. Let sit while the milk mixture cools.

Add lukewarm milk mixture and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough additional flour a half cup at a time until it’s formed a stiff dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead 8 to 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Place dough in a greased bowl, cover loosely and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, about an hour. Punch dough down, cover and let rest for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop up herbs and melt remaining 3 tablespoons of butter.

Divide dough into 6 parts. Roll each part on a lightly floured board into an 8- by 12-inch rectangle. Brush with butter and sprinkle with about ⅓ cup herbs. Roll up tightly to form 12-inch loaves, pinching ends to seal. Place on a greased half sheet pan or two smaller pans if you don’t have one or can’t fit a half sheet in your oven. Repeat with remaining dough. Cover loaves loosely and place in a warm place to rise until doubled, about an hour.

Preheat oven to 375. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until done.

Rating: These are fun. Good carriers for butter (what yeast bread isn’t?) and they look nice on a cheese board array.I could see adding garlic and/or grated Parmesan if you wanted something more savory, but they don't really require it.

Make ahead? I initially baked off 5 of the shaped 6 dough rolls, putting one in the freezer before it had risen, testing to see if that was a viable make-ahead option. I would label it as not a success; that mini loaf is now destined to be a tasty addition to a future strata. But freezing some of the baked loaves, thawing them at room temperature and then popping them in the oven briefly to warm them before serving worked perfectly fine.

Blueberry brioche French toast

 

Brioche French toast with blueberry quick jam
From “Half Baked Harvest Super Simple” by Tieghan Gerard

Ingredients
¼ cup maple syrup, please more for serving
2 tablespoons brown sugar, divided
4 tablespoons melted butter
8 large eggs, beaten
1 (14-ounce) can unsweetened coconut milk
3 tablespoons bourbon
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon, divided
½ teaspoon salt
1 brioche loaf, cut into slices
2 tablespoons room temperature butter
Blueberry fruit jam for garnish
White cream, for optional garnish

Method
Grease a 13-by-9 baking dish. In the pan, mix syrup, 1 tablespoon  brown sugar and the melted butter.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs, coconut milk, bourbon, vanilla, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and the salt until well blended. Put brioche slices in the mixture one at a time, letting them soak up some of the mixture. Arrange bread in prepared pan and pour remaining mixture over the top.

Combine the 2 tablespoons softened butter, 1 tablespoon brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Dot mixture over the top of bread slices in the pan. Cover pan and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 375. Uncover pan and bake until golden and crisp, 40 to 45 minutes, covering with tin foil partway through if it starts to get to dark. Serve warm, topped with blueberry jam and whipped cream if desired.

Any fruit jam
From “Half Baked Harvest Super Simple”

Ingredients
6 cups fresh fruit
¼ cup maple syrup or honey
Juice of a lemon
Bring fruit, syrup and lemon juice to a boil over high heat in a large saucepan. Break down the fruit with a fork. Continue cooking until jam thickens and has been reduced by a third. Store refrigerated.

Rating: It was perfectly fine  Not as decadent-tasting as some French toasts, despite its lavish ingredient list, so you may well want either additional syrup or the optional whipped cream if you're looking for something that tastes truly indulgent. The blueberry jam was OK, I'm not sure but what I wouldn't rather just serve this with some real blueberry jam from my supplier of fantastic blueberries, Hazelwood Creek Farm.

Marinated roasted mushrooms with onions

 

Tangy roasted mushrooms
From “Nothing Fancy” by Alison Roman

Ingredients
1 pounds assorted fresh mushrooms, turn or chopped into bite-size pieces
¼ cup olive oil
1 small onion or shallot, thinly sliced into rings
¼ cup white wine vinegar
Fresh herbs for optional garnish (I used chives)

Method
Preheat oven to 425. Toss mushrooms with olive oil on a large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper. Roast, stirring occasionally until browned and starting to crisp, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove from oven and transfer to a large bowl. Toss with onion and vinegar. Let stand for at least 20 minutes to marinate. Serve garnished with herbs of choice. Can be made ahead, bring closer to room temperature before serving and adding herbs right before serving.

Rating: Very tangy and tasty. Roasting the mushrooms really helps deepen the flavor. Not the best choice for an appetizer buffet, which is how I first used it, but much more useful as a flatbread topping (straining out the wonderful marinade for other uses) or served over broiled slices of polenta as a sit-down appetizer. Honestly, it would be good for anything that soaks up moisture, from a salad/grain bowl to smashed potatoes.

Lemon chicken with cherry tomatoes, and cider vinegar chicken with bacon and cherry tomatoes

 

Right now we're in the mode where I never bring out a bowl quite big enough to pick all the cherry and pear tomatoes. For some reason I always think there won't be that many that will have ripened in the space of the day, and that surely we're near the end of the season. Not quite yet.

In the meantime, here are two takes on chicken that make good use of all those cheery cherry tomatoes.

Lemon chicken with burst cherry tomato sauce
Adapted from “Half Baked Harvest Super Simple” by Tieghan Gerard

Ingredients
1½ pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1½ lemons, divided
⅜ cup flour
3 tablespoons butter
3 cups cherry tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, smashed
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
Crushed red pepper flakes
½ cup white wine
1 large handful fresh basil leaves, roughly torn

Method
Zest and juice one lemon. Rub 1 tablespoon of olive oil and lemon zest over the chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sprinkle chicken evenly with flour.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat. When the oil is hot, add chicken and brown on both sides until golden. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.

Cut the remaining lemon half into slices. Add butter to the skillet. When melted, add lemon slices and cook until caramelized, about 30 seconds a side. Remove lemon slices and reserve.

Add tomatoes, garlic, thyme leaves and a pinch each of salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes. Cook until the tomatoes begin to burst about 5 minutes or so.

Reduce heat to medium low and add white wine and lemon juice to deglaze the pan. Return chicken to the pan. Cook until the chicken is cooked through and tomatoes have formed a sauce. Serve topped with lemon slices and basil leaves.

Rating: Tasty, very tasty. While technically breaded, the main way the flour seems to come into play is by helping the sauce thicken a bit. We used some lemon thyme leaves and lemon basil as part of the herb mixture, which probably also didn't hurt. Definitely would make this again. 

 

 

Cider chicken with bacon and tomatoes
Adapted from Meredith Deeds as published in the Star Tribune Taste section.
Note: It calls for apple cider vinegar, but while reaching for that in the cupboard I realized I was reaching past some really excellent maple vinegar and grabbed that instead. I suspect the optimal vinegar choice for this recipe is whatever the best vinegar is you have in the house. I tried it again a few weeks later with a good tarragon wine vinegar and liked that as well.

Ingredients
Four bone-in chicken thighs
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons olive oil
3 slices bacon, chopped
1 cup chopped red onion
3 cloves garlic, chopped
⅓ cup apple cider vinegar 
1 cup cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon (or parsley, if you prefer)

Method
Pat the chicken dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large, deep skillet.Add chicken and cook, undisturbed, until well browned. Flip over and brown the other side. (Make sure you get a really good browning at this stage because when you cover it and braise it later, you start to lose a bit of the golden color.) Remove chicken from pan and drain any excess fat. 

Add bacon to pan and cook over medium heat until it starts to render its fat. Reduce heat to medium low. Add onion and garlic and cook until softened. Stir in the vinegar. Return chicken to the pan and add tomatoes. Cover and cook until chicken is cooked through and tomatoes have burst, about 25 minutes. Serve topped with tarragon.

Rating: This is one of those recipes that was so good the first time I made it that I tried it again a few weeks later. Yep, still mighty tasty.