Category Archives: Food and Cooking

Because food is interesting and recipes are good.

Gingerbread–the cake, not the cookie

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Gingerbread with whipped cream

I was recently reminded how tasty gingerbread can be. While looking at other people’s posts on cookie houses, I ran into a post by Come July about gingerbread–the cake, not the cookie–which showed a photo of one of MY COOKBOOKS. Well, not the very cookbook on my shelf, obviously, but the page looked just like mine, only with some water damage.

Better Homes and Gardens, c. 1981, printed 1987

That got me thinking about gingerbread. And whipped cream, because whipped cream is what really makes gingerbread good, in my opinion. My husband really liked a gingerbread with lemon sauce that he had at a restaurant, so adding some warmed lemon curd sounded like a good idea too.

The recipe I’ve used is actually from a different cookbook, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. It may or may not be the same recipe my mom used. I made a gingerbread last weekend (the version with extra spices), and it was good, but now I’m thinking about trying a different recipe, just to see how it compares.

The All-New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook, c. 1959, printed ?
Fannie Farmer, continued.

The other thing I realized is that while lemon curd is good with gingerbread, I actually like it better with just whipped cream. Some combinations are like that. Some people like apple pie with vanilla ice cream. I like both pie and ice cream, but I prefer to eat them separately. Same for apple pie and cheddar cheese, which some people like together. I don’t think the combination is as good as either of its components.

The serving suggestions in Fannie Farmer (seen above) just go to show the variety of ways in which people apparently enjoy their gingerbread. Applesauce sounds possibly familiar, but grated cheese folded into whipped cream??

I have no particular point to make in this post. I’m just enjoying the world of traditional desserts.

Till next post.

Gingerbread with whipped cream and lemon curd

Cookie Houses–smaller is better

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There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are more interested in the appearance of food, and those who are more interested in the taste. (Joke–there are two kinds of people in the world–those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and…)

Okay, it’s really more of a spectrum, but by way of illustration, every year I see magazines in the checkout showing clever ways to create cupcakes that look like spiders for Halloween, cookies that look like nests of eggs for Easter, and so forth. These are ingenious and very attractive comestibles, and I appreciate them as such, but I also can’t help thinking–do licorice whips really taste good with chocolate cake? Will the marshmallows work with pretzel sticks?

Partly for that reason, I’ve never been all that excited about making gingerbread houses, even though I love baking. I’ve always seen them as purely decorative–after all, surely pretzel logs and Necco wafers don’t taste as good combined with gingerbread. My husband, on the other hand, sees gingerbread houses as edible as well as decorative. His position is that one should enjoy it for a few days, then start picking candies off, then eat the cookie before it gets stale.

Still, I do like to decorate sweets, and I do like constructing things. This year, I had an urge to make a cookie house, possibly as a result of watching too many episodes of The Great British Baking Show. But did it have to be made of construction gingerbread? What other flavors might there be?

In looking up recipes, I found some blogs with pictures of miniature cookie houses: Pretty Petunias and For the love of butter, among others.

Brilliant! Not only were the little houses cute, but they had the following advantages over full-size cookie houses.

–I could make cookie houses and still enjoy fresh cookies from the rest of the dough.

–Each person could decorate their own house.

–It would be easier to cover the finished houses (to protect them from our cat who has been known to lick at them.)

–The cookies would not need to be quite so sturdy as the pieces would be smaller and subject to less tension and compression. (Thank you, Stephen Ressler of The Great Courses for the engineering vocabulary!)

–And finally, we could eat one while still enjoying the appearance of the remaining ones.

I tried two different doughs, and I tried cutting out my own small pattern (which was a bit of a pain) and then bought some ready-made cookie cutters for mini cookie houses. Photos below.

Cookie houses made from my own pattern.
Cookie houses made using purchased cookie cutters.

I’m not going to provide links to recipes, as the recipes I tried were okay but not thrilling. Better that you should scout around for recipes you find exciting and try those. (And then let me know, please, if you find a recipe you think is especially good.)

I will provide links to some of the cookie cutters, however, because they make it much easier. I didn’t recut my pieces after they were baked, which probably would have improved the results, but they stuck together all right anyway.

These are the cookie cutters I bought:

Fox Run Christmas Village

and this mini set which seems to come from several different sources. There is also one that cuts out all the pieces at once, which I didn’t try.

Till next post.

Variations on a Banana Muffin

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One of the things I really appreciate about basic recipes, such as a basic banana muffin recipe, is that I can mess with the flavoring and see if I like the result.

I don’t add nuts to banana muffins. As a kid, I didn’t like nuts in baked goods. For that matter, I didn’t really like any nuts besides peanuts, period. That’s changed. I now really like nuts with chocolate–not just hazelnut, but pecan, almond, and even walnut. I even like almonds with green beans, and walnuts in spinach salad with craisins, just like a real grown-up. And chocolate-pecan torte is now my preferred birthday cake (the pecans are ground, not chopped). But I still don’t like chopped nuts in most baked goods.

On the other hand, I have always been enthusiastic about chocolate, so I frequently add chocolate chips to banana muffins (and to oatmeal cookies, and to oatmeal, for that matter.) Sometimes I add orange zest as well as chocolate chips, or by itself. Banana and orange is a good combo. Banana and orange and chocolate are great.

I had four overripe bananas, just enough for two batches of basic banana muffins, and some leftover peanut-butter chips in the pantry. So, in the spirit of experimentation (and because bananas and peanut butter go together so well), I made one batch with chocolate chips and the other batch with peanut-butter chips.

Here you probably expect me to rave about how delicious peanut-butter chip banana muffins are. And they did taste good, but I didn’t think they were anything to get excited about. My husband actually liked them more than I did. I thought they were… subtle. Good, but I could barely identify the added flavor as peanut. That surprised me.

And that’s why it’s fun to try adding flavors to basic recipes. You just don’t know for sure how you’ll like the result till you try it. I really expected the peanut flavor to jump out more. But now I’m eager to try something different the next time I make banana muffins–vanilla. There’s no vanilla in my basic banana muffin recipe, and vanilla is delicious in a banana milkshake. But I’m not going to stop there. I’m going to add spices as well, probably nutmeg, maybe cinnamon, maybe even cardamom. No idea how the cardamom will turn out.

You don’t really need my banana muffin recipe, since you can find a perfectly good one with no trouble at all, and maybe a better one than mine. But I’ll copy it here anyway, in case you’re curious. It’s from the 11th edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (the one with the plaid cover.)

Banana Muffins

Preheat oven to 400.

Grease or line 12 standard size muffin cups. (That is to say, neither jumbo nor mini size. I like foil liners because they peel right off without stealing any of your muffin.)

Mix dry ingredients in a big bowl.

  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Squash two very ripe bananas with a fork, hopefully resulting in 3/4 cup well-mashed banana. Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl or large measuring cup. I suggest this order:

  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 3/4 cup mashed banana
  • 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

Add the wet to the dry, along with

  • 1/2 cup nuts (except I would never add nuts–I’d rather add 1/2 cup chocolate chips)

Mix gently with a spoon till all combined. Scoop into muffin pan and bake about 20 min till golden (or 18 in my oven, which tends to run hot.)