Grandma Club

Maraschino Cherries

Oh hi...it's been a while, hasn't it? Well, Donovan and I finally found some time to resurrect Grandma Club for a sweet and boozey recipe. We decided to get together to make some maraschino cherries. We used the recipe from Cupcake Project, but there are plenty of others online.

    

There is very little that goes into this recipe and it is also one of the shortest tasks we've ever had. So short, in fact, that while we were waiting for things to cool, I ended up making some currant buns. If you don't have a cherry pitter, I would invest in one for this project. I got my semi-automatic one for around $30 and use it about 2 to 3 times a year. That to me is worth it, especially considering how fast I can de-stone cherries with this thing. Also, the splatter it creates is much fun.

  

What this recipe creates is not the neon pink confections that we are used to from the bar. No, these are dark red and rich with flavors like the best pie, flowers, and holiday time. We highly suggest you try this recipe out while cherries are still in season.

If you need any further convincing, these taste great on some ice cream, in a whiskey drink, or with some waffles!

Caramel Corn

This post is a very long time coming. Has it really been four months since our last post? Sheesh. Well, on the same day that we made candy apples, we also made caramel corn. Yes, it has taken us that long to write this post. We are very sorry and very busy ladies.

We bought a bag of corn kernels from the farmers market and I will admit Donovan & I stared at them for a few minutes wondering if we really could just "pop" them ont he stove top. Yes, you really can and there are no special tools needed. Just a pan with a lid and oil. It is best to use a larger pot so your kernels have more space to pop about.

Coat the bottom of the pot with a thin layer of oil, vegetable oil or sesame oil is best. Before adding the kernels, heat the oil on medium heat until it's hot. We ended up using up half of our bag, making them in batches, pouring in enough kernels to cover the pot bottom in a single layer. Cover the pot with a lid and after a minute gently shake the pot to move the kernels around. You should start hearing some popping within a few minutes.

 

We used the same rule as with microwave popcorn: if the popping slows down to 7 secs between pops, take it off the heat. The fact that my pots have glass lids made this process really fun, and I really haven't gone back to microwave popcorn since we did this. It is pretty quick and you can tailor the popcorn to your taste with butter, seasonings, and melted cheese. But, we aren't making savory popcorn, no...we are making caramel popcorn. So, instead of covering this batch with buttery goodness, we poured them into a bowl to let them cool. Donovan did some quality control, picking out the un-popped kernels and burnt ones while I started on the caramel.

We weren't sure what type of caramel to use. Do we have to look for a hard caramel coating recipe specifically, or can we just use a caramel sauce? We ended up just going with a caramel sauce recipe I had in my Art of Simple Food cookbook. We figured that even if it didn't harden when it cooled, it would still be freaking yummy. Luckily, this recipe totally worked out and the caramel cooled and dried very well. Before making the caramel, line a few pans with parchment paper.

  

Caramel Sauce
(Makes about 1 cup. From Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food.)

3/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
6 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Put sugar and water in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over medium heat, without stirring, until the sugar starts to caramelize. Swirl the pan gently if the sugar is browning unevenly.

When the caramel is uniformly golden brown, remove from heat. Stand back from pan and add 1/4 cup of the measured cream. Stir slowly with a wooden spoon, until combined. Add the rest of the cream along with the vanilla and salt.

- - -

After we made the caramel, we poured it while still hot over all the popcorn and fold to cover every little pop. We then spread the covered popcorn in a layer on the parchment-lined pans and let it cool. Every once in a while, we would break apart popcorn clumps and shift around the cooling caramel corn to dissuade the popcorn from sticking to each other.

These turned out really freaking delicious and was crazy easy. I wish I could tell you how long this keeps, but both Donovan and I gobbled our batches up with a week. After the popcorn has cooled, keep it in an airtight bag or container and enjoy each little morsel.

Candy Apples

Hi folks. We're sad grandmas now that Noel has gone off to Baltimore. Still, we do try to keep making things. Kathy and I got together last month {or maybe in October} and made caramel corn. There'll be a post up on that soon. In the meantime, I made some candy apples with the last of my Farmer's Market apples. I was astounded at how very easy they were. Food wise, you only needed apples, sugar, corn syrup, water and food coloring. Equipment wise, you need a candy thermometer, heavy bottomed sauce pan, and a greased, parchment lined raised-edge baking pan.

I think the hardest part {hardest being relative here} was selecting my apples. You don't want an enormous apple for candying. I was looking for a small, sweetart apple with a nice crunch. I picked up some Macintosh at the market, but decided they were too soft. I rejected the traditional Granny Smith since my boyfriend dislikes them. In the end, I went with a Gala apple.

I started by washing the apples and then ramming a bamboo skewer through them. Skewers are what I had available, but you could use a popsicle stick or other stick-like object. Then I arranged them on a raised-edge baking sheet lined with parchment paper and sprayed with Pam. After that, I assembled all of my ingredients and put them in my sauce pan. Then I waited for the sugar to come to 310 degrees, or the hard crack candy stage.

It's important not to stir the sugar because that might cause it to crystallize in places you don't want it to. When the candy is ready, dip in your apples, swirling to coat and let dry on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. Tip the sauce pan so you have a deeper candy pool in which to submerge your apples.  I had A LOT of candy and not so many apples, so I poured the extra over the tops of the apples where they hadn't fully submerged in the syrup.

As you can see, each apple ended up in a puddle of candy at the base, but it was easy to snap off and good enough to eat all by itself. They are ready to eat as soon as the candy has hardened. It took all of maybe 15 minutes to do and 20 minutes for the apples to cool down. Super easy, tasty and fun.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup light corn syrup

3/4 cup water

2 cups sugar

1/2 tsp food coloring

8 - 12 apples

Preserving Tomatoes

 

August is the peak of tomato season. Those of your lucky enough to have gardens are probably rolling in the round, red globes, but some of us aren't as wealthy in the produce department. Fortunately, Kathy and I were able to finagle our way into some "seconds" at the Farmer's Market. "Seconds" is the term used for any fruit or vegetable deemed to be less attractive, and, consequentially, less expensive, but still perfectly good. We each scored over 10 pounds of tomatoes for $10.00.

The only other thing we needed for canning tomatoes was our canning supplies, lemon juice and optional salt. That's it. It was a really simple process and really economical. Far simpler than my original plan of canning actual tomato sauce. That was a lot more work and a lot more supplies {and a lot more expensive}. All told, the time we spent was mostly waiting for things to boil or process. If we do it again, we'll be sure to have a puzzle around to occupy our time.

After gathering the supplies and starting to sterilize the jars, the first step was to bring a pot of water to boil and set up a bowl full of ice water. Douse the tomatoes in the boiling water for 30 - 45 seconds and then put them into the ice water. This will make the skins of the tomatoes easy to remove. Next, core and quarter your newly naked tomatoes. 

For 20 pounds of tomatoes, you're going to need a lot of bowls to hold all of your cut-up tomatoes. Start cooking your tomatoes by crushing up enough tomatoes to equal two cups and bring that to a boil in your pan. The recipe we used is from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It says to slowly add tomatoes to the pot until all tomatoes were added. Well, having 20 pounds of tomatoes meant we did this in two batches. It also said you didn't have to crush the tomatoes you were adding because the heat would break them down, but some of our tomatoes were less ripe than others, so we crushed them anyway.

After the whole pot of tomatoes has boiled for 5 minutes, you can start ladling it into jars. It's recommended that you take the jars out of sterilization and fill them one at a time, minimizing the danger of contamination. To the hot jar, add 1 tablespoon lemon juice for each pint of tomatoes. You can also add 1/2 teaspoon salt if you wish. Unsurprisingly, I opted for salt in mine. Ladle in your tomatoes and wipe the rim of the jar. Then cover with a clean and sterilized lid. Process pint jars for 35 minutes. We also did quarts which should be processed for 45 minutes, take 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of salt. Our 20 pounds of tomatoes yielded 12 pints and 3 quarts of crushed tomatoes with about a quart left over we didn't have jar for. Kathy put that in a plastic container and put it in the freezer.

All told, it was a super easy project and, provided we did everything right, this will be a great way to get the feeling of fresh tomatoes in the upcoming Chicago winter.

P.S. Grandma Noel is off to Baltimore for some higher education. We will miss her greatly and are looking forward to her reports from afar. We think we can convince her to try to make her own beer.

Homemade Mozzarella

The Grandmas got together last month to make homemade mozzarella cheese. (Yes, it has taken me a month to actually create the post)! We came out of the experiment with homemade mozzarella and homemade ricotta... both equally delicious. We learned that finding the ingredients for making cheese can be a bit of a challenge. However, once you have your supplies, the cheese making is easy and the results are worthwhile. We experimented with three types of milk which each yielded unique results. I'll talk about the end product in a minute—but first, let's talk supplies.

The most important element is having fresh milk... Let me say that again, YOU MUST HAVE FRESH MILK!!! If you can find raw milk, that's great. Otherwise, what you want is something that is pasteurized at the lowest possible temperature for a long amount of time. (I compare that concept to that of a slow cooker). I learned that most standard grocery store milk is "flash pasteurized" at a very high temperature for a short amount of time. The temperature is so hot that it wipes out all of that good bacteria that is needed to cultivate a large curd that will essentially form your mozzarella cheese.

 

Where we bought our milk:

• The Dill Pickle Food Coop carries fresh milk from Castle Rock Farms in Wisconsin

• The Jewel/Osco carries Farmer's All Natural Creamery

• 365 Whole Milk from Whole foods (not picture here, it WILL NOT WORK!)

If you don't live in Chicago, I suggest trying your local farmer's market or a specialty grocery store.

Where we bought our rennet and citric acid:

• The Spice House carries Citric Acid

• Whole Foods carries Liquid Rennet and Citric Acid (Check ahead, rennet is not available at all stores

• If you have time to wait, you can easily order these items at almost any online cheese supply store.

Ingredients:

1 gallon fresh

2 tsp. cirtric acid

1/2 teaspoon liquid rennett

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp salt (non-iodized, we used kosher salt)

Process:

Most of the recipes that we found on the internet were fairly consistent. We weeded through many sources. We're summarizing this process to keep it as simple as possible.

1. Pour milk and citric acid into a stainless steel pan, heat to 88º, stir occasionally.

2. Add rennett and salt, stir gently until temperature reaches 105º (Curds will begin to form!)

3. Remove from heat, let sit for 15 minutes.

4. Pour the curds into a cheese cloth or fine mesh sieve and reserve the whey.

5. Microwave the curds for a minute.

6. Form the melted curds into a mozzarella ball, work the cheese as you would dough.

7. Store mozzarella ball in a container with fresh water in the refrigerator.

TIP: Handling the mozzarella as little as possible in step 6 will yield a smoother and softer cheese. Handling the mozzarella more will yield a stringier and more dense cheese. I like it both ways!

 

Our Results:

Each gallon of milk created one large ball of fresh mozzarella. At the end of the day, each Grandma left with a large ball of Mozzarella, a container of miniature mozzarella balls, and a serving of fresh ricotta. We found that the Castle Rock Farms Milk and the Farmer's All Natural Creamery Milk produced similar results and turned out great. The color of the whey was slightly different, but the overall taste and texture of the cheese was similar. In the future, I might double the amount of salt we used. The last milk we used was the 365 Whole Milk from Whole Foods—this was a failed attempt. This milk is a pasteurized milk and it will not produce a curd that makes mozzarella. The curds form, but they are very small and this is essentially how we ended up with a few batches of homemade ricotta.

 

What To Do With The Leftover Whey:

Whatever you do, don't whey-ste it! Leftover whey can be used in baking and in many recipes that call for buttermilk. I've also read that whey makes an excellent plant food, and that if you have pets you can mix it in with their dry food and it is very nutritious. (I can't make promises with the plant/pet methods of using your whey. I don't have any pets and my plants are not well nurtured. I advise a cross-reference here).

Gingerbread Houses

Grandma Club was able to squeeze in one last meeting before the holidays. It was a week night meeting, so to save time, it was agreed that we would all prepare our basic gingerbread pieces at our homes, and then come together to decorate them.We all met at Grandma Kathy's kitchen with our pre-made gingerbreads and fixings. Grandma Kathy was cooking and decorating gingerbread cookies. Grandmas Noel & Denise were alternating between houses of gingerbread and ones of pretzel and graham. Grandma Donovan was using gluten-free gingerbread. The recipes will be at the bottom of this post.

Grandma Donovan chose to bake her gingerbread into house shaped pieces, while Grandma Denise opted to carve her gingerbread squares into the building blocks she wanted. It was recommended that you decorate the sides of your house with icing prior to assembling them. Ideally, you'd want to put the house together and then let it dry for a day before decorating, but we did not have time for that.

Instead of Royal Icing, because the intention was to make edible houses, Donovan whipped up some Almost Buttercream {recipe at the end of the post} as her cement. Noel & Denise used some fudge icing. Both seemed to hold everything together pretty well...  Some of the items used in decoration were:

• chocolate-covered, candy-coated sesame seeds {excellent Christmas lights}
• spice drops in assorted colors {Denise made the green ones into tiny wreaths}
• candy canes {tree trunks, roof rafters}
• mini meringue drops {perfect little snow puffs, or steam clouds, or the whip on a tiny cupcake}
• mini peanut butter cups {base of said cupcake, stumps}
• After 8 mints {roof shingles, paving stones}
• peppermint Livesavers {wreaths, snow rings around "tree" trunks}
• pretzel sticks {logs}
• caramels {bricks}

Donovan built a cardboard base and covered it with foil as a lot for her house which was then given a candy landscape by Kathy, while Denise & Noel created free standing structures. Denise has so much fun making her cabin that she built another one entirely of pretzel logs. By the end of the night, we had an entire little gingerbread/baked good village.{See Denise all hyped up on sugar and a job well done at left.}

We all had a great time, even when Donovan's roof collapsed her entire house during the placement of her last chimney piece {which is why you should let them dry before decorating}. A last minute fix of some ric-rac cut parchment paper piped with icing details saved the day! And it looked even better than before and even stayed standing the whole way home.

RECIPES________________________________________________________________________________________

Gluten-Free Gingerbread

INGREDIENTS
1 cup brown rice flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
pinch of baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons soft light brown sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

PREPARATION
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Place the butter, sugar, and corn syrup in a small saucepan and heat gently until melted, then stir into the flour mixture and bring together to form a ball.

2. Place the dough onto a surface dusted lightly with rice flour and roll it out to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Cut out shapes, then place on a baking sheet and place in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown.

{From The Daily Green}

Almost Buttercream Frosting

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup white shortening
3-1/2 cups powered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3-4 tablespoons milk or hot water

PREPARATION

Beat shortening and flavoring for about one minute, then slowly add half of the sugar, mixing in well. Add half of the milk or water and mix well. Gradually beat in the rest of the sugar and just enough milk or water to reach the desired consistency, whether for piping or spreading.

{From Celebrating Christmas}

Apple Sauce

I'd love to tell the story of the Grannie apple picking day-trip to Earth First Farms in Michigan:

...the Sunday afternoon that we hit the road Thelma and Louise style, grabbed some ice coffees, popped in an old mix cd, rolled down the windows and let the crisp fall air mess up our hair en route to the orchard... (record skips)

Unfortunately the much anticipated apple picking trip to Michigan is going to have to wait until next season. 2 out of 3 of grannies were down with the flu on the date that we planned our picking — which of course led to cancellation. The following week, our immune systems were strong but apple picking season was over.

We had been resisting apples at the Farmer's Market for the last three weeks in an effort to save our apple-tites for those extra special ones picked from the trees. That said, we knew we couldn't let November pass without making something delicious with apples. And that's when apple sauce made its way into our schedules. 

Last Sunday, we gathered for some brunch — coffee, quiche, scones, mimosas + good conversation. After brunch, we made apple sauce. For the most part, we followed Elise's recipe found via The Arugula Files. We used a combination of Honey Crisp and Fuji apples. We cut down the white sugar to 1/8 of a cup and increased the amount of apples to 6 pounds. We made two batches of this recipe and it yielded 10 pints of delicious, cinnamon-ee, not-too-sweet apple sauce. Photos are up on Flickr.

PS:
If you don't have a produce scale, you can use Donovan's inventive method of weighing herself, weighing herself holding the apples, and then subtracting her body weight. *Disclosure: We can't promise anything precise!

Ice Cream Social, Missing Recipes + Downloads

Here are the missing recipes and free downloads of not only some recipe cards, but blank ice cream social invites. The ice cream scoop and speech bubble on the recipe cards are left bank so you or your guests can color the scoop to relate to their ice cream and the speech bubble is where the flavor goes. Donovan did a great job making these. For the recipes, she watched the Good Eats episodes on ice cream many, many times. You can download them directly by following the following links:

Ice Cream Social blank recipe cards, 460kb [download pdf]
Ice Cream Social blank invites, 544kb [download pdf]

Mint Chocolate Chip Recipe
3 cups half & half
1 cup heavy cream
9 ounces sugar
8 egg yolks
2 teaspoons mint extract
20 Andes mints, chopped

Bring the half & half and cream up to 170 degrees in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally.Whisk the egg yolks until lightened. Slowly add in the sugar while whisking. Your sugar and egg mixture should reach a very light and creamy consistency, and should make thick strings when you lift the whisk out of the bowl. Add the warmed cream mixture a little bit at a time to the eggs, stirring constantly. When the eggs are up to the temperature of the cream, you may put it all together back in the medium saucepan and return to 170 degrees. Remove from heat and add the mint. Let the mixture rest for at least 4 hours in the refrigerator in a covered container before churning. Add the mints when mostly frozen in the churn.

Cinnamon Ice Cream
3 cups half & half
1 cup heavy cream
9 ounces sugar
8 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons cinnamon

Bring the half & half and cream up to 170 degrees in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally.Whisk the egg yolks until lightened. Slowly add in the sugar while whisking. Your sugar and egg mixture should reach a very light and creamy consistency, and should make thick strings when you lift the whisk out of the bowl. Add the warmed cream mixture a little bit at a time to the eggs, stirring constantly. When the eggs are up to the temperature of the cream, you may put it all together back in the medium saucepan and return to 170 degrees. Remove from heat and add the cinnamon and vanilla. Let the mixture rest for at least 4 hours in the refrigerator in a covered container before churning according to your maker’s instructions.

Ice Cream Social

 

So, I am still waiting on some recipes, but I figured I should post what we have now and not keep you all waiting. I will post the lagging recipes later, promise! [Edit later: The free downloads and missing recipes are now available here.]

Our social was a similar arrangement to our liquor making party, where we made our ice creams before hand and met-up to eat them all together. Here is what was on the menu (recipes are linked by ice cream name):

• Noel brought coffee ice cream (and even brought it in a coffee container!)
• Donovan was an over achiever and brought mint chocolate chip and cinnamon ice cream (recipe link at end of post)
• I used the strawberries I froze from the fruit picking GC excursion and made strawberry ice cream from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. You can find it on their website, but you need to sign in.
• Honorary granny Betsy (who you might remember from the vanilla extract meeting) made PB & J ice cream. (recipe at end of post)
• Honorary granny Isabel and Liz made caramel and hot fudge syrups at the social. Nothing like fresh fudge.

 

Noel used an entry level ice cream maker and said that it did the job just fine. Donovan and I used an ice cream maker attachment for our Kitchen Aid mixers which we both liked. We grannies found making ice cream really simple and quick. There are ways to make ice cream without a machine, but none of us tried this time around. It seems that to get great success without a machine, you must use a custard-based recipe.

I made sure to have some non-dairy, non-sweet finger food around in case anyone needed a break from all the sweetness. Since we had five ice creams to sample I used my smallest bowls and spoons so that people would only take little bits and have enough room to try everything. If you host an ice cream social, make sure you have a large enough freezer or ask for people to bring small quantities; homemade ice cream tends to melt faster than store-bought. We really wanted someone to make ice cream cones, but that requires a machine. If you want to lower your level of dirty dishes, it may be a good idea to just buy some cones or waffles cups.

 

Make sure to have plenty of water around because ice cream makes you thirsty. It will also be good to have a bowl with some warm water to rinse the ice cream scoop in when switching flavors. We also offered some toppings like dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, and red hots. (They were also good for snaking while we waited for the syrups to be ready.) Other good topping ideas are granola, chocolate chips, or some fresh fruit. I had big dreams to make ice cream sandwiches out of my ice cream, but instead I just offered some chocolate cookies for people to make their own (or just crumble over their ice cream). Donovan brought some macaroons that went well with the ice creams.

  

Donovan also made some awesome recipe cards as little favors for everyone. We will have these as a free download over on this post. She also made awesome little signs to identify the different flavors.

Because everyone came equipped with coolers to bring their respective flavors, we separated some of the flavors into small containers and gave everyone some to take home. You come with one flavor, you leave with many. Thanks to our past canning projects, we also had enough small jars around to give everyone a bit of the tasty caramel and chocolate syrups.

OK, so for the recipes that were not linked in the "what we brought" section, here they are:

Betsy's Easy Peasy PB+J
1 carton vanilla ice cream
1/2 jar jam (strawberry is my favorite, but you may be a grape gal/guy)
1/2 jar creamy peanut butter (I used the new Jif PB+Honey variety)

Scoop entire container of ice cream into large mixing bowl. Gradually mix in jam. Once ice cream has turned a nice consistent pink or lavender, peanut butter is mixed in by the spoonful. Mix in until you're happy with the pb streaks. Refreeze for a few hours until it hardens and enjoy!

Donovan's mint chocolate chip ice cream
[available here]

Donovan's cinnamon ice cream
[available here]

With all that, I leave you to your own ice cream churning!

Ice Cream Social, teaser

The grannies hosted an Ice Cream Social this weekend. The social had five ice creams, two honorary grannies, and two yummy sauces. We are still getting all the photos and recipes together, so this is just a little teaser post. We will be making a proper project post very soon, complete with some free downloads! It will be worth the wait, promise.