Pecan Powder Puffs

These are one of my dad's favorite cookies, and we'd always have them at Christmas. The recipe is very similar, except the nuts are much finer in Dorie's version. I was a little rushed, so they only chilled about a half hour, and they still held together and baked well. These were really nice and tender, they're great little cookies!

Thanks to Tianne of Buttercream Barbie for this week's pick!

TWD Citrus Sunshine Muffins

These were really nice muffins! I had to make some substitutions. Somehow I only had 1/2c of ap flour in house, so I decided to make a half batch and subbed white whole wheat for the other 1/2 c. Then I had purchased currants, but I think they got used for someone's oatmeal, so I subbed craisins in. These were really nice muffins, though. Even with the whole wheat, they had a great texture, very fine, and we always like craisins. I love Dorie's muffins, I think it's the butter :-)

Thanks to Lauryn for this week's pick!

Maple Syrup Snow Candy

I just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods with the kids, so when we got snow last week, we tried making maple syrup candy. Our approach kind of ended up being like Ma's earlier Christmas candy with the molasses, only using the maple syrup like Grandma during the sugar snow.

The Joy of Cooking said to bring maple syrup to 230-233 to turn it to sugar, which took about thirty minutes. While I was getting the syrup going, the kids went out and packed the cake pans with snow. When it got to 233, I took it off the heat and whisked it until it thickened some. Then, even though Laura and Mary get to pour the syrup on their snow, I decided I'd do the pouring.
















I was afraid if I poured too much in one spot, it would melt through the snow, so I ended up with lots of little strings. The syrup doesn't end up melting it, though, so next time I'd try making more little quarter-sized pours to make for easier eating. It turned out very soft and sticky. The little bits of syrup that were left in the pan did turn into maple sugar. If we do it again, it'd be fun to get little saucers for sugar like from the book - it'd be a little neater kid-eating, too!















The best picture I got of the actual candy - pretty unappealing, hm? It did taste much better than it looks :-)

TWD Chocolate Pots de Creme

I was very last-minute with this week's TWD, and being distracted I missed skimming the foam. And then the plastic wrap melted in the oven (why did I follow the recipe there?!). And yes, this photo is the best I could do.
Due to the melted plastic, we're not eating all of these, but I scraped the top off of one, and it was pretty incredible. For all the cream, it still felt light. Very chocolaty. These were very nice, and I'll have to try them again sans plastic wrap :-)

Thanks to Christine of Black Cat Cooking for this week's pick!

Meyer Lemon Granita

For the first time ever, I found Meyer lemons! I kept debating how I should use my precious four lemons, and finally decided to try a sorbet, and then still couldn't find my freezer insert, so I went with a granita instead. I found Steingarten's Meyer Lemon Granita.

It was nice - not too sweet, a little floral, very light. I hope to find them again and try everything I didn't get to - lemon curd, lemonade, candied, ice cream and maybe something savory.

TWD Toasted Almond Scones

These were not the overly sweet muffin-y type of scone. They felt a little oily with all of the ground almonds and butter, so I might cut some of either next time. These were great with jam, and the kids even liked them with peanut butter (I didn't try that myself).

Thanks to Mike of Living Out West for this week's pick!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Every Valentine's my mom would make my grandma's Waldorf Red Cake in the shape of a heart. We looked forward to this cake every year. The past few months, my husband's not been eating any meat, dairy or eggs, and I don't need a whole cake to myself, so I started looking at cupcakes to scale down and share. For cakes, I like butter better, but for cupcakes, it seems like oil helps it stay together a little better. They're so small, they dry out pretty quickly on their own, and less mess is always nice.















Then out of curiosity, I thought I'd compare a vegan recipe with a traditional one. I used the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and an adaptation of Bakerella's red velvet cake that looked so moist, it'd have to be good for cupcakes. The Crimson Velveteen are a vegan recipe, but I just used my standard pantry, so mine aren't actually vegan. I didn't have liquid food coloring, so for both I subbed about 1/4 tsp Wilton no-taste red gel paste. Clearly 1/4 tsp isn't enough color for either recipe!
















The vegan Crimson Velveteen had a
lot of cocoa for a red velvet recipe - 2Tb for 12 cupcakes - and a lot of vanilla - 2tsp. Most recipes I've seen for this scale would use 1/2-1TB cocoa. So even with more food coloring, I don't think these would ever be red. They had a great shape, not too domed. I'm always amazed with the vegan recipes that they can rise without any eggs. They were very vanilla and very moist. Almost too moist for me, but I usually like a little drier cake, I guess. Next time, I'll cut back the cocoa to probably 1/2TB and then also try cutting back the oil to maybe 1/4 c.
















I made a half batch of the traditional recipe and cut the oil back to 1/2 c (from 3/4c). The traditional had a finer crumb and had more body. They were also sweeter, which seemed strange since they had the same proportion of flour-sugar.

So I don't think either recipe was perfect, but with some variations, I'm sure I'll use both again!