Cranberry Apple Crisp

Mmm I love crisps, especially crisps with cranberries in them. A dollop of vanilla ice cream on top of warm crisp is SO luscious!! It’s a terrific comfort food, especially after a long, cold winter’s day at the office, or for the weary housewife who has been haggling over term life insurance comparisons all day. And crisps are easy and cheap! Here’s my absolutel favorite crisp, just in time for autumn’s apple and cranberry season!

Cranberry Apple Crisp
serve 6

2 cups fresh cranberries
4 cups apples, peeled and diced
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 packed cup Homemade brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup quick-cook oats
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons wheat germ or ground flax seed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 Tablespoons butter or margarine (but butter is better), at room temperature

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2-quart baking dish. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the cranberries, apples, granulated white sugar, and salt. Dump into your baking dish.

In the bowl that you just emptied, combine the brown sugar, oats, flour, wheat germ or flax seed, and cinnamon, and mix well. Cut in the butter until it looks like gravel. Dump this on top of your cranberries/apples mix in the dish.

Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until the fruit is tender and the kids start salivating heavily. Serve while warm, with fresh cream, or ice cream. OH MY WORD, this is SO GOOD!!! It’s great after a turkey dinner.

Oops! Quick Kitchen Fixes, Part 1

We all make mistakes in the kitchen. Some more than others *cough cough*. I have an entire book devoted to those “oops!” moments when I’ve added too much salt or have run out of sugar and the guests are here for tea. Here are a few handy-dandy tips for hearth and home that you may find useful:

• Added too much salt to the stew or soup? Add a cut raw potato to the pot. Once the potato is cooked, throw it out. If the recipe is still too salty (gee, how much salt did you add, anyway?!), add another potato.
• Is your salt in your salt shaker a little sticky? We get this whenever the humidity rises. Add 7-8 grains of uncooked rice in your salt shaker to absorb the moisture. Works wonders!
• Someone in the family get car sickness while traveling? Pack some ginger root candy, and/or some ginger tea. Ginger helps soothe the stomach. It’s not exactly rocket-science medical travel advice, and it may not help some serious cases of motion sickness… but it’s worth a try!
• Speaking of humidity– if your potato chips lose their freshness, place them on a cookie sheet and under your over broiler for a few minutes. Don’t let them brown! They will taste burnt, and I don’t have a Quick Fix for that.
• Is your brown sugar rock hard? If you need some sugar fast, grate it with a hand grate. If you can wait, place a slice or two of soft bread in the brown sugar package for a few hours. And if you want to make your own homemade and more nutritious brown sugar, check out my recipe! Easy!

Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs

I make these Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs every year about this time of year, and they are so easy it’s mind-boggling. I take them to meetings, and they are gobbled up very quickly. The only thing to know is that they do not keep well– serve them within a few hours of making them, or they will get soggy. They are absolutely scrumptious– I guarantee you will have no leftovers! Not exactly nutritious, not exactly suitable for colon cleansing or other delightful medical benefits…. but you will have gained some adoring fans along with your weight!

I recommend that you read these instructions completely in their entirety before undertaking the recipe. OK, here goes:

Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs
makes 12 eclairs or so

For the Eclairs:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup boiling water
1 cup white flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs

For the Bavarian Cream filling:
2 packages instant vanilla pudding
2 1/4 cups very cold milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Note: Do not make the pudding mix until ALL your eclairs are baked!
Note: Depending on how well you stuff your eclairs with Bavarian Cream, you may have some left over. I find it very yummy to eat from a spoon.

Optionals for the eclair topping:
Ready-made frosting
Sprinkles

Important tools you will need:
Wooden spoon
Two metal spoons
An empty condiment container or other kind of squeezing container with a long nose
A funnel

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Grease a karge cookie sheet and set it aside.

In a saucepan that has your boiling water, melt the butter into it. Add the flour and salt all at once, and stir vigorously. Cook and keep stirring until the dough forms a ball that does not separate. Remove from the heat and cool for a minute. Now add your eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously until the dough is smooth. The eggs are slippery and this requires some oomph– but be sure to stir well.

Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto your greased cookie sheet, about 3-4 inches apart (the dough will expand). Bake in your hot oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 325 degrees and bake for 25 more minutes. When the time is up, turn off the stove and open the door for a minute or two. Leave the cookie sheet in there. Close the over door and allow your eclairs to sit in the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes. This sounds odd, but the remaining heat in the oven will help to dry out your eclairs, so the dough will not be spongy.

When the eclairs are sufficiently dried and cooled, you can turn your attention to the Bavarian Cream: Pour your milk into a large bowl, and add the instant pudding and nutmeg. Quickly whisk the ingredients until the pudding powder is dissolved. Work quickly, as you don’t want the pudding to gel too quickly– you need the pudding to be somewhat watery so you can get it into the condiment container to squeeze it into the eclairs. I use a funnel and spoon the cream into the container. This task is a little messy, so be sure to wear an apron!

Once your condiment container is filled, gently work the long nose into a crack or hole in the puffy eclair. Squeeze some cream in, as much as you think is suitable. I sometimes tap the eclair on the counter to force the cream further back into the eclair’s cavity. Do not overfill! Otherwise, when your guest bites down into the eclair, he/she will have a lapful of cream.

Repeat this procedure until all eclairs are filled: fill the condiment container with cream, insert condiment nose into eclair and fill with cream, tap eclair to move cream inside.
Once all the eclairs are filled, spread frosting onto the eclairs and sprinkle with decorations.

Serve eclairs at once, or if you must wait, store them in the refrigerator and serve within a few hours. The cream will set into pudding (which I like), but the eclairs will be slightly soggy. I’ve never received any complaints about it, though.

Photo courtesy of Joe Pastry, who also has some great photos on how to fill the eclairs.

Basic Banana Bread

My pal Carole asked if anyone had any ideas for banana bread, and it reminded me that I’ve never posted my Banana Bread recipe here! I love banana bread, but banana bread seems pretty basic to me. You can add chocolate chips or nuts, yeah, but the recipe does not deviate all that much. Years ago, I experimented with adding vanilla yogurt, wheat germ, and diced apples. I like a moist bread, and those were OK and didn’t make the bread disgusting or anything, but I wasn’t going to win any recognition from bakers’ unions or New York accident lawyers. Besides, I’ve forgotten how much yogurt I used to add… :S

photo credit: seriouslygood1
Well, anyway, after years of experimenting, the best thing I found to make nice, moist banana bread is to double the amount of bananas the recipe calls for. Here’s my tried-and-true recipe.

Basic Banana Bread
makes one loaf

1/3 cup applesauce*
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs

1 3/4 cup white flour**
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups mashed over-ripe banana
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
optional: 1/2 cup broken nuts or 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Have a loaf pan prepared by thoroughly greasing the inside with margarine or butter.

In a large bowl, mix together your applesauce. sugar, and eggs.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add to your applesauce mixture in portions. In between your dry mix portions, add some of the mashed banana. Beat well after each addition. When everything is combined, add your vanilla extract and optional ingredients and mix quickly.

Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until done. (You can insert a toothpick in the loaf to test for doneness– if the toothpick comes out clean, the loaf is done).

Allow to cool for 10 minutes or so, then remove from loaf pan and allow to cool thoroughly.

Notes: *You can use shortening or butter or margarine in substitute of the applesauce, but I found applesauce a lot healthier and it makes the bread less greasy. And applesauce adds enough moisture to be a suitable substitute for the shortening.

**Be aware that if you use any wheat flour, it will make your loaf heavier and drier. You will need to adjust your liquids, too.

Enjoy!

This Blog is on Kindle!

I am in the process of adding all my blogs into Amazon’s Kindle, and I am happy to announce that Wow Chow Cooking is in! It’s really easy to enter your blog into the system, and you can make a little money on the side (and I mean a LITTLE– like, 30 cents for every subscriber). Still, money is money. And it’s a plus to be able to offer your content to as many people as possible. All blogs must be approved by the Kindle Powers That Be, so if you have a blog full of belly fat ads or something, I am not too sure you’d be accepted. If you are interested in adding your blog to Kindle, see here.

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