Adventures in Thyme

Our adventures in food

The Fudge Factor

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Chocolate Fudge

Chocolate Fudge

 

Familiar with the old saying, “Families are like fudge, a little sweet with a few nuts”?  This is also true about our fudge (and our family BTW, okay TMI, back to the fudge…).

This is an old family recipe, going back at least 50 years, and each Christmas the faded index card comes out and fudge is made, and handed out to friends and family.

So our gift to you, the super secret family recipe.  Happy Holidays!

2 Cups Sugar
12-14 Large Marshmallows
2/3 cup evaporated milk (1 small can, not sweetened condensed milk)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (you can substitute butter scotch, mint chocolate, etc., it takes longer to set up though)
1 cup chopped pecans (you can substitute walnuts)
1/4 pound butter (1 stick)
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Combine sugar, marshmallows and canned milk in a large cast iron or stainless steel skillet.  (Do not use non-stick, you will scratch it.)  Bring mixture to a boil over medium to medium high heat, stirring constantly with a wire spring whisk.  (The spring whisk will stir to the bottom of the pan and keep the mixture from sticking and burning.)_  Boil for 2 minutes.

Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate chips, nuts and butter.  Add the vanilla.  Beat by hand with a wooden spoon until it is of a spreading consistency (it will be relatively cool by that point, butter scotch and some other flavors won’t get as think and may need to be refrigerated to set up completely.)  DO NOT use an electric mixer, you will get a very good chocolate sauce but it will never set up.

Pour the fudge into a greased 8×8 or 9×9 inch square pan.  Let set over night.  Cut into 3/4 to 1 inch squares and remove from pan.

Pumpkin Goat-Cheesecake

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Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Cheesecake

For those willing to broaden their culinary horizon, we present to you a cheesecake made from goat cheese.    Indeed, some turn up their noses at the thought of goat cheese, but that earthy tang so often found in goat milk products is not so pronounced when blended into this delicious cheesecake.  Oh, and we have gingersnaps, did we mention that?

Here is the recipe we served at Thanksgiving.

Crust

10 oz. gingersnap cookies (I like the ones from World Market)
2-4 T softened butter
2 or 3 T sugar for pan

Filling

3/4 cup sugar
12 ounces mild, soft, white goat cheese (10 oz logs from Costco, 4 oz from the grocery store.)
1 t Vanilla extract
1/2 T cinnamon
1/2 T nutmeg
1/2 t ginger
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups pumpkin
4 egg yolks
6 egg whites

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter a 9-10 inch spingform pan and dust with sugar (like you normally would flour a pan for baking).

Process the gingersnaps in a food processor until they are a course powder.  Add in the butter and process until well blended.  Press the mixture into the bottom of your springform pan and bake for 10 to 15 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool while you finish your filling.

Combine the sugar, cheese, vanilla, flour, pumpkin, spices and egg yolks in a large mixing bowl and blend together until smooth.  Set aside.

In a clean mixing bowl, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Be sure the bowl and beater are clean and dry or the eggs won’t beat properly.

Gently fold 1/4 to 1/3 of the beaten egg whites into your filling mixture, by hand with a rubber spatula.  Add another 1/4 to 1/3 and fold in, then fold in the remaining egg whites.  This should make a relatively light batter.  Be sure to fold in the egg whites, do not beat or mix.

Pour your filling into your springform pan and place on the center rack of your oven.  Bake for approximately an hour or until the batter is mostly set.  It will still be a little jiggly in the middle.  Remove from the oven and gently run a butter knife around the edge of the cheesecake to loosen it from the edge of the pan.

Cool and serve with whipped cream.

Try it out and let us know how you did, or better yet, if you were able to trick your family into trying something new.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

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Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Ah the humble pumpkin, the  herald of the “holidays” – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.  When Starbucks updates their Fall menu to “Pumpkin Spice Latte” we know its time to kiss our diets a fond farewell and dive into pumpkiny indulgence in all its many forms.  Gather together pilgrims, it’s time to sing the praises of squash.  Can we get an amen!   Our ode to the season is this delicious Pumpkin Bread Pudding.  So easy, so delicious, you’ll love it as much as we do.

2 loaves pumpkin bread (we used the Krusteaz mix you can get in the store for the holidays)
8 eggs
4 cups goat milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1.2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Cut the pumpkin bread into 3/4 to 1 inch cubes and place into the 9 x 13 baking dish.

Lightly beat the 8 eggs and whisk together with the 4 cups of milk, the spices and vanilla.  Carefully ladle or spoon the mixture over the bread.  Let the bread and custard mixture stand for 1/2 to 1 hour.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Place the bread pudding into your oven on the middle rack and back for 1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes, until the custard is done.  Place on a wire rack to cool.  Serve warm or place it in your refrigerator to serve tomorrow.  You can warm it or serve it cold.

To serve, cut into portions and drizzle with caramel sauce and top with whipped cream.  There is a good, easy caramel sauce on the Food Network website, here.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving, may you see the many blessings of this life everywhere you look.

Stroganoff Shmoganoff

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Beef Stroganoff

Beef Stroganoff

 

To quote the Bard “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet”.  I would argue the same could be said of well known recipes.

History pegs this dish as either hitting the culinary scene in the late 1800’s or later in the 1900’s.  It’s made with sour cream (or not), onions or mushrooms (or not), and sometime tomato paste – not!

Our humble version has little in common with the modern version and more akin to the one noted in a Russian cookbook of 1861.  With an eye towards not inflaming the delicate constitution of our home’s inhabitants, our stroganoff began with strips of beef lightly fried (no flour) and then placed into a crockpot set on low for six hours.  The beef was then left to have a “spa day” in a mixture of Burgundy wine and beef stock, one packet of Beefy Onion soup and a tub of Tofutti imitation Sour Cream.  The herbs we used were Rosemary, Thyme and some Savory, all crushed into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle.

It’s up to you what carbohydrate delivers the creamy goodness to your tastebuds – rice, pasta, baked potato or a humble slice of buttered bread.  On a lazy Fall day, this is the perfect recipe to kick back and enjoy a slow cooked meal.

Ice Cream Bread

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Ice Cream Bread

Ice Cream Bread

 

“Did you say Ice Cream Bread?  Seriously, I can have my cake and ice cream in one baked bite?!”  Yes siree Bob!  Three ingredients is all it takes.

Our baking normally involves the consideration of a bovine-dairy free and wheat/gluten free restricted diet.  So this adventure began with a pint of LaLoo’s Vanilla Snowflake Goat Milk Ice Cream, 1.5 cups of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour (now available at Costco!) and approximately 2 tsp of baking powder.

Set the pint out on the kitchen counter to melt, once it’s runny add the flour and baking powder.  Pour this into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees F. until a test toothpick comes out clean.  Approximately 20-30 mins.  Set the loaf out to cool for a few minutes before turning it out onto a rack to finish cooling to yummy perfection.

Now, you may be looking at the photo above and saying “3 ingredients huh? I see fruit chunkies in that bread.”  You would be correct.  At the time we took this photo I had added a homegrown diced peach into the mix.  It added a wonderful peachy undertone and made for a fond farewell to the riches of our peach harvest.

So next time your ice cream melts, don’t worry – make bread!