Season To Taste

2 ½ cups flour
½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

For me, December is cookie month! 

I recently made more batches of meringue cookies than I ever thought possible.  No, I am not a meringue fanatic, nor do I have an unhealthy obsession with egg whites.  I do, however, have a freelance job as a recipe developer, and my corporate client wanted meringues.  No problem, I thought.  Meringues are easy!  A few ingredients, a slow oven, and I could collect my paycheck.  Many, many batches of cookies later, I am now eating those words, and far too many meringues.

I quickly found that the egg whites are quicker to whip into voluminous, stiff peaks when they are at room temperature.  Straight-from-the-fridge egg whites just won’t whip.  I also found that regular, granulated sugar doesn’t incorporate easily into the meringue mixture, and the cookies will feel gritty.  Superfine or “castor” sugar is much better for creating  a smooth meringue.

Stiff peaks should stand tall!

The fun came when I had to figure out how to incorporate my client’s flavored, brewed tea into the cookies.  After a few batches that fell flat (literally), it became apparent that the tea was destabilizing the egg whites.   While they whipped up into perfect peaks, soon after coming out of the oven, they would collapse.  After trying varying amounts of tea, I finally was able to add just a teaspoon of super-concentrated brew to flavor the cookies without ruining them. 

It was a long road to achieve the final result, and my Pumpkin Spice Meringues with Pecans were a hit with my client.  The recipe below is a variation on my many meringue trials, and perfect for your holiday dessert table. 

Merry Mint Meringues

Makes 2 dozen cookies

2 oz egg whites (from  2 large eggs), at room temperature

½ cup superfine sugar

½ teaspoon Cream of Tartar

½ teaspoon mint extract

¼ cup crushed peppermint candies (or candy canes)

Parchment paper

Preheat oven to 275 degrees and place rack on middle setting.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Beat egg whites on medium-high speed with an electric mixer, until soft peaks form (about 2 minutes).  Add the cream of tartar, then the sugar, a little at a time, and raise the speed of the mixer to high. 

Add the mint extract and continue to beat on high until stiff peaks form (about 5 minutes).  To determine if you have achieved “stiff peaks”, dip a wire whisk into the mixture, pull it straight out and upward, and then turn the whisk right side up.  If the egg whites hold their peak (and they don’t bend over sideways), then you have stiff peaks.  The mixture should be very voluminous and look like fluffy whipped cream.  Don’t overbeat….the mixture should look glossy, not dry.

Using a 2 oz ice cream scoop (or 2 spoons), place rounded mounds of meringue (about 2 tablespoons per cookie) onto prepared baking sheet and sprinkle with crushed peppermint candies.  Bake for 45 minutes, until firm to the touch, turn oven off and allow the cookies to slowly cool as the oven cools (at least another hour).  They will be crisp on the outside, with a slightly soft center.  When they are finished, they will release from the parchment very easily.

Cool completely on a wire rack before storing in an airtight container on the countertop.

Note:  Superfine sugar is sometimes sold as “castor” or “caster” sugar and is available in the baking section of most supermarkets.  You can make your own superfine sugar by processing regular granulated sugar in a food processor for approximately 30 seconds.

Note:  High humidity can sometimes affect the results of this recipe.  Dry days are best to make meringues. 

I must really love my job.  Lately, I have begun dreaming up recipe ideas, literally.  Last night, I was dreaming of desserts, and in the middle of the dream, the idea came to me.  Whoopie pies!  Not your average whoopie pies– fall-inspired, pumpkinwhoopie pies! 

For those of you who follow my blogs, I don’t fancy myself a serious baker, but I definitely am down with confections.  Therefore, I do my fair share of baking, but I also have been known to cheat.  I love to make homemade cookies, but I have no problem with the pre-rolled sugar cookies ready for Christmas-shaped cutters (it is the frosting part of the process that everyone loves anyway).   I am truly appreciative of honest-to-goodness homemade brownies, but I have also made it my mission to find the best boxed brownie mix (I favor Ghiradelli and the Trader Joe’s Truffle Brownie mixes).  I also make a LOT of quick breads and muffins from scratch, but every now and then, I’m not ashamed to use a mix.  So, when I discovered a really yummy boxed pumpkin bread mix, I was ALL over it.

So, for my dreamed up pumpkin whoopie pies, I used a boxed pumpkin bread mix, which I doctor up a bit to get the consistency necessary for it to hold its cookie-shape on a baking sheet.  If you are feeling really adventurous, you could add raisins or walnuts to the mix, but for my whoopie pies, I like nothing textural to impede my soft, whoopie goodness.  The mix makes things go a little faster, so creating these does not have to be an afternoon-long project.

The filling is a simple mixture of confectioner’s sugar, butter, and cream cheese.  This is a bit of a departure from the usual  shortening- or marshmallow crème-based mixture, but since we’re going “maverick” on the whoopie pie, I decided an updated filling was also in order.  It whips up like a frosting, and gets mounded between the pumpkin cookies for a truly grown-up version of the original. 

And, Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!  

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Makes 12 sandwich cookies

1 - 18 oz box pumpkin bread/muffin mix + ingredients listed on box (usually a couple eggs, water, and oil)

1 cup flour

8 oz cream cheese

½ stick butter, softened

1 cup confectioners sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven.  Prepare 2 baking sheets by spraying with non-stick cooking spray.

Make the pumpkin bread batter according to package directions, and add an additional 1 cup flour to stiffen the mixture slightly.

Place mounds of batter (2 tablespoons each), about 1.5 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. 

Bake 12-15 minutes, rotating the pans half way through cycle.  Cookies should be firm to the touch with a little “bounce” to them.

Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

To make the filling, use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese, butter, and confectioner’s sugar (and optional vanilla). 

Spread a generous dollop of filling on the flat side of half the cakes, and top with remaining cakes. 

Note:  The whoopie pies I made and photographed are a larger version of what you are directed to make in this recipe.  Don’t use that as a guide for the size of yours! 

Fall is the season for apple picking, and we New Englanders love nothing better than an afternoon in the orchards!  I have wonderful childhood memories of apple picking with my family, and now it is something I look forward to doing each year with my own children.  I love walking around the orchard, comparing the different varieties of apples, conducting on-the-spot taste tests, and watching my children enjoy themselves as much as I did as a kid. 

The best part of apple picking is that the fun continues beyond the orchard.  On our most recent excursion we debated what we’d do with our huge harvest.  I wanted to make a big batch of applesauce to serve alongside pulled pork at an upcoming football party.  My four year old insisted that we make apple strudel (I didn’t even know she knew the word “strudel”).  My six year old with the sweet tooth suggested that we stick to apple pie and caramel apples.  It was an ambitious agenda, but then again, we had a lot of apples. 

In the end, we’ll end up making all of these things, and also a variation on my mother’s recipe for Apple Crisp.  In an effort to cut back on sugar, fat, and calories, I’ve lightened it up considerably by slashing the amounts of sugar and butter in the original recipe.  Keep in mind, this is certainly not health food, but it is much lower in sugar and fat than most desserts you’d purchase at a bakery or store.

One note about cooking with apples:  it is important not to use the super-sweet varieties you’d choose for eating (like Red Delicious).  According to The Cooks Thesaurus, the best apples for baking and pies are the firm, slightly tart varieties like  Northern Spy, Golden Delicious, Rhode Island Greening, Pippin, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Gravenstein, Rome, Jonagold, Gala, Braeburn, York Imperial, Cortland, or Winesap. Applesauce is best made with softer apples, like McIntosh, Elstar, Fuji, or Gala. Those of you who’d prefer just to crunch apples on their own should try Gala, Fuji, Mutsu, Jonathan, Cameo, Golden Delicious, Cortland, Empire, Red Delicious, McIntosh, Braeburn, Winesap, Pink Lady, and Sundowner, which are all great eating apples.

Apple picking is a great way to spend a day with your family or friends…and the possibilities in the kitchen are endless!  How do you like them apples?

Apple Crisp with Almonds

Serves  6-8                                                                         

7-8 apples, peeled and sliced    

1/3 cup sugar

1teaspoon cinnamon     

1 tablespoon lemon juice

For crumb topping:

3/4  cup quick oats

½ cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

3  tablespoons butter, melted         

3 tablespoons almonds       

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Toss together the filling ingredients in a bowl.

 Spray a 9×12 baking pan with non-stick cooking spray, and pour the contents of the bowl into it.

In a small bowl, mix together the ingredients for the topping with a fork and crumble on top of fruit. 

Bake for 35 minutes until filling is hot and bubbly and topping is golden brown.