No bake, peanut-free cookies

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Almost Instant Chocolate Cookies
Class Treats Take-To-School Goodies For Every Occasion Copyright 2003

1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup butter or margarine
½ cup milk
½ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 ½ cups quick-cooking oats
1 cup shredded coconut

Line several baking sheets with wax paper or just place several long sheets on countertop.

Combine sugar, butter, milk and cocoa in saucepan over medium heat.

Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture begins to boil.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, oats and coconut.

Working quickly, drop rounded teaspoonsfuls of mixture onto wax paper. Let cool and enjoy.
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These no-bake cookies aren't pretty but don't let that fool you.  The peanut butter version of these are a favorite of many and quite popular but we don't do peanut butter in our house.  I've been looking for a good version without peanut butter for some time.  I've made a version with butterscotch pudding which were good but a little bit over-the-top sweet and I know many people are not a fan of that fake butterscotch flavor.

This recipe was a winner.  Most of my coworkers love coconut and so do I. They were fudgy and delicious and I would definitely make these again.  Of course I said that about the butterscotch version and I've yet to make another batch but now that I've been reminded of that recipe, I just might.

I didn't even realize it when I picked this book up but all of the recipes are nut-free. This is a photo-less book but I was still drawn to it. It seems to have a lot of recipes I haven't seen before (not very usual anymore).

More fun with ground chicken: Chicken Cakes with Teriyaki Sauce

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Chicken Cakes with Teriyaki Sauce
Around The World in 450 Recipes Copyright 2005, 2006

For the chicken cakes:
1 pound ground chicken
1 large egg
¼ cup grated onion
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
1 ½ teaspoons soy sauce
Cornstarch, for coating
½ bunch scallion, finely shredded, to garnish
1 tablespoon oil

For the teriyaki sauce:
2 tablespoons sake or dry white wine
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons soy sauce

1. Mix the ground chicken with the egg, grated onion, sugar and soy sauce until the ingredients are thoroughly combined and well bound. This process takes about 3 minutes, until the mixture is quite sticky, which makes for good texture. (I didn't quite go 3 minutes but I did get it pretty sticky.) Shape the mixture into 12 small, flat, round cakes and dust them lightly all over with cornstarch. (The mixture is very sticky. I dropped it into the cornstarch and then I was able to pat it out, once it was covered in cornstarch.)
2. Soak the scallions in cold water for 5 minutes and drain well.  (They used the white part and the water curls it - I just sliced the green part and skipped the soak.)
3. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Place the chicken cakes in a single layer, and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes. Turn the cakes and cook for 3 minutes longer.  (Mine took much longer - make sure they are cooked before adding the glaze.)
4. Mix the ingredients for the sauce and pour it into the pan. Turn the chicken cakes occasionally until they are evenly glazed. Move or gently shake the pan constantly to prevent the sauce from burning.
5. Arrange the chicken cakes on a plate and top with the scallions. Serve immediately.
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I was perusing through this cookbook on Saturday night and as soon as I saw this recipe I knew I was going to make it the next day. Honestly, I never go wrong with ground chicken! It's like magic LOL.

It was a bit tricky - the mixture was super sticky. I think I set a record for washing my hands while making a recipe with this one. The cornstarch is key here. You won't get them shaped without it. You could just drop the mixture in the pan and smoosh it down I guess if you don't have cornstarch but I don't know if they would brown as well.

This is a Japanese recipe. These little chicken meatballs in a soy glaze are called Tsukune.

I'd say this is one of my favorite ground chicken recipes but they are all my favorites! Check out all of my ground chicken recipes.

Something different: Fried Plantain & Spinach

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Fried Plantain & Spinach
The Book of Caribbean Cooking Copyright 2000

1 large plantain
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon oil
4 scallions, roughly chopped
8 oz small spinach leaves I only used about half this
Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Red chili slices, to garnish I omitted these

Cut ends off plantain. Slit skin lengthwise in several places then peel off the strips of skin. Cut plantain into cubes.

In a skillet, heat butter and oil. Add plantain cubes and fry for 3-4 minutes, turning frequently, until golden brown and cooked. Add scallions and cook for 1 more minutes.

Add spinach and cook for 1 minute until just wilted. Sprinkle with nutmeg and seasoning. Garnish with slices of red chili.

Serves 4.
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I am trying to break my habit of picking up ingredients without first having a use for them.  Having come of age at a time when unique ingredients were not easily available, anytime I see anything the least bit rare or different I feel I have to grab it.  I've come to realize that almost everything is pretty easy to obtain these days.  I have a new rule that if I don't have a particular recipe in mind for something, I don't buy it. I try to just make a mental note that the ingredient is available instead of throwing it in my cart these days.

Plantains caught my eye in Walmart the other day.  I've seen them before in stores but they looked particularly good. I was going to walk on by but then I noticed a plantain was only 48 cents.  So why not break my new rule and bring one home?

This is the first cookbook I looked in and as soon as I saw this recipe, I knew it was the one.  The plantain in the picture in the cookbook was ripe (not overly ripe) and mine was green so I had to wait a few days. When I finally made it I was not disappointed. It was simple but delicious. I could definitely see myself making this again. Sometimes it pays to break the rules!

A lamb (or Kacey) cake

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Renalde Lamb Cake Recipe

The Ugly Binder, from the internet

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
3 cups sifted cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream shortening and sugar until fluffy; add egg yolks one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one is added. Sift dry ingredients together 3 times and add alternately with milk and vanilla to creamed mixture, beating until smooth after each addition. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Grease cake mold thoroughly; fill face part of mold full of batter; cover with other half of mold and place in hot oven, face down, baking for 45 minutes. Cover with pans while baking to prevent burning. I didn't do this. I secured it with silicon baking bands. Bake at 450 degrees for first 15 minutes; finish baking at 350 degrees. I checked mine 11 minutes early and it was done.  Remove from oven; lay on back of mold for 15 minutes before loosening to take out.  I let it cool completely before trying to sit it upright.  This recipe makes sufficient batter for extra cupcakes.
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I've picked up many (many, many, many) kitchen items from yard sales over the years. Unfortunately most of them get stored away someplace where I can't see them, and I forget about them. This is especially a problem with holiday items - from yard sales or not - I forget that I had them until the holiday passed. By some miracle, when I was thinking about what to make for Easter, I remembered I had picked up this cake pan last summer.

This isn't one of the original cast iron molds, it's a Wilton. It has the advantage of not having the pointy ears that are prone to falling off. It's head is a bit sturdier too. I did use a recipe from one of the older model molds. Wilton didn't provide a recipe. It suggested boxed cake mix (which I feel might not be sturdier enough to support the lamb's head but I can't say for sure) or any sturdy cake recipe, like a pound cake. This recipe is definitely similar to a pound cake. It blew me away, to be honest. It was moist, it had a great crumb, it had that simple yet wonderful flavor you would expect from these ingredients.

I used my Easy Buttercream Frosting recipe, with white food coloring (the bomb!) to frost the lamb. You could use coconut but no one seemed too keen on that idea. I colored some coconut for the 'grass'. I also added some Cadbury mini chocolate eggs when I got to my sister's house on Easter.

I did the decorating at 10pm so it was shakey. I used my Pampered Chef cake decorator and just made little swirls. I was not as neat and attentive as I might have been had it not been 10pm. The ears were supposed to be pink but I forgot before I cleaning up all the frosting. I was going to make up a small bit of pink frosting but decided to leave well enough alone.

When I started looking at lamb cakes, I thought they looked like my sister's dog Kacey, a bichon frise. We started joking that this was a Kacey cake. Some people who came to Easter dinner, who were not familiar with lamb cakes, assumed it was a Kacey cake (my dad thought it was a butter sculpture lol). At one point, I came through the dining room door into the kitchen, catching a glimpse of the cake on the kitchen table and for a moment I thought Kacey (the real dog) had climbed onto the table.  That's pretty funny since he's 15 and he was never much of a climber, not even when he was a puppy - the dog has been carried up and down steps, up and down from furniture, etc all of his life!

A classic: White Dropped Amish Church Sugar Cookies

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White Dropped Amish Church Sugar Cookies 
New Recipes from Quilt Country Copyright 1997

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) margarine (not butter or they will be crispy, not soft, according to the author - I always bake with Land-O-Lakes margarine) 
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour creamsugar and raisins for garnish

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. In a large mixer bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar for 3 minutes. Add the eggs and extracts and beat until well combined. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and salt. Add to the creamed mixture and combine until the mixture is moistened. Stir in the sour cream by hand and blend well.

Using a 1 1/2-inch cookie scoop or a tablespoon, drop the dough onto a parchment-lined or nonstick baking sheet, then top each one with sugar and a raisin or two or three. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly browned. (I used a larger cookie scoop so I used 5 raisins for the cookies I made with raisins and I might have baked them a little longer.) Remove the cookies to a rack to cool. Store in airtight containers or freeze.
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Annie from Haphazard Homestead very generously passed some of her unwanted cookbooks to me. This gem was among them. I love Amish recipes and this book is very well done.  I remember watching Marcia Adams on PBS years ago.  This book is more than just recipes -  it has lots of information about the Amish.  It's a very good read.

This recipe was one of the best recipes I've made, honestly. Nothing fancy but everyone loved them, including my picky older son. I started making them without raisins because I thought I was out of raisins but then I realized I did have raisins. They were good both ways. They were soft and tender and very flavorful. I will definitely make these again!

Homemade Apple Butter

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     If fall had a taste, I think it would taste like apple butter.  Apple butter might seem old fashioned to some people, and I know it's definitely not as popular as strawberry jam or grape jelly.  But there are times when you want something your grandmother used to make. That's how I felt last week when I brought home a bag of apples from a neighbor's tree.  Making apple butter is so easy to do especially if you put it in a crock pot.  Apple butter is made from applesauce, and so last week I canned both applesauce and some apple butter.   The recipe I used was from the Joy of Cooking. 

HOMEMADE APPLE BUTTER   -  For 8 jars

1.  Prepare apples:  Fill your sink with water or use a plastic tub and wash 4 pounds of apples.  Then  core them by using a knife and quartering them or use a stainless apple corer.  

2.  Make apple sauce: 
(1)  Put apples in a stock pot or large pot with 1-2 cups of water depending on how full your stock pot is and cook the apples on medium heat until they are tender.
(2)  This takes between 20-30 minutes.  You can stir them occasionally and check and make sure there is enough water so that the sauce doesn't become scorched on the bottom of the pan.


3.   Make applesauce using a food mill:   
(1) Get out a large glass bowl and put the food mill on the edge of it. 
(2)  Fill the food mill about three-fourths full and start turning the crank. Turn the crank in both directions in order to get as much sauce out of your apples that you can. 
(3) Dump the skins, core, and seeds into a compost bucket. 
(4)  Continue doing this until you have processed all of the apples.  

Note:  If you don't have a food mill, you can press the apples through a sieve. 





4.  Transfer the applesauce to a crock pot: Measure 8 cups of applesauce into a crockpot.   

5.  The Joy of Cooking says for each cup of apple butter add the following:
(1)  1/2 cup of brown sugar
(2)  1 t cinnamon
(3)  1/2 t cloves  (next time I will do less cloves)
(4)  1/4 t allspice

6.  Cook the apple butter on low for 6 hours.  I checked mine a few times and stirred it.


7.  Clean canning jars: About an hour before the apple butter is done,  put your canning jars into the dishwasher or use hot soapy water and rinse them in hot water to sterilize them.  Fill the jars with hot water and let them sit in this  hot  water until they are ready to be filled up.  This will keep the jars from cracking when you put the apple butter inside of them.

8.  Fill water bath canner with 4-5" of water:  I use my Better Homes & Garden Cookbook for canning, and it says to fill your canner with enough water to cover the jars when they're put in for processing. The box on the Ball jars says to heat this water until it is simmering (180 F).  It takes about 15-20 minutes for all of this water to get at this temperature.  
9.  Preparing the canning lids:  Put about 2 cups of water into a small saucepan and turn it on medium heat. Don't let this water boil, or it can ruin the seals. When it gets hot, set your lids into it and keep them there until you need each of them. 
10.  Fill one jar at a time with apple butter:  Put a large canning funnel onto the mouth of the jar and use a ladle or measuring cup to put the apple butter into the jar and allow about 1/4" left on the top for any expansion. 
11.  Wipe down mouth of the jar:  Wipe down the top and edges of the jar to remove any apple butter that would prevent a proper seal from forming.   
12. Put the lid & band on the jar:  Take a lid out of the saucepan with a fork, and center it over the jar.  Hold it in place with your finger  and then with your other hand put on the band and tighten it until it is what they call "fingertip tight."  They say to make sure the bands are not too tight because any air inside the jar must be able to escape during the canning process. 
13. Fill canner with jars of apple butter:  (1) Use a canning jar lifter to lower each jar into the water bath canner.(2)  Better Homes & Garden says make sure the jars don't touch each other.  (3) Put the lid on the canner.  You count the time when you hear the water come to a rolling boil.  (4)  Jars should be covered with 1" of water; so add more hot water if you need to.  (5) It takes 10 minutes to process either a pint or quart of apple butter, but check your chart to make any allowance for altitude.
14. Let jars sit in the canner for 5 minutes after the timer goes off:  After the jars have been processed, turn off the heat and let them sit in the water bath canner for 5 minutes.  Then take them out with the jar lifter and put them on a clean towel and let them sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours.  Do not touch the bands or you can loosen the seal!
15.  Checking to see if the jars are sealed properly: The next day you can remove the bands from the jars and check to make sure the lids have sealed.  Wipe the mouth of the jar.  The instructions from the package of Ball pectin say press the center of the lid, if it doesn't flex up and down, it is sealed.   If the jar didn't seal, you can refrigerate it and use it within 3 weeks or you can reprocess it with a new lid.  
16.  Storage:  You can store the jar in a pantry for up to 1 year.  The jars may be stored with or without the bands.  


  
Other jam and canning blogs you can check out:

Making Low Sugar Blackberry Jam
Making & Canning Applesauce

How to Make Low Sugar Raspberry Jam

Life Study of Acts: Prayer, the Spirit & the Word - How the Lord Carries out His Work

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The Grand Canyon

  Prayer, the Spirit, and the word.  That's all--just three things.  I really liked Acts Life Study #49 because it made it crystal clear that God carries out His work on this earth through our prayer, His Spirit, and the word of God.  This message touched me because in another week I will be helping distribute  free Recovery Versions of the New Testament through Bibles for America to students at our university. I've taken part in this for several years, and if you'd like to read about my experiences last September, you can check out this blog:  The Best Things in Life  are Free--Free Study Bible Distribution at WWU.   Anyway  when I reading this message this week, different parts meant more to me especially these two parts: 

  If we would have the power and impact in our gospel preaching, we need to pray.  

There is no shortcut to having power in preaching the gospel.  We need to pray, we need to learn the Word, and we need to be one spirit with the Lord.  In 1 Corinthians 6:17 Paul says, "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit."  We need to stand upon this word, claim the fact, and practice it.  We should say, "Lord, this is Your word, I stand on Your word, Lord, and claim the fact that I am one spirit with You.  Lord, I ask You to vindicate Your word that You are truly one with me.  Lord, I intend to speak for You and even to speak You forth.  Lord, vindicate the word and show that You are really one with Your followers."  We all need to pray such a prayer.  This is the prayer that will be heard in the heavens and by all the demons.  If we are one spirit with the Lord in preaching the gospel, we shall have power and impact.  Therefore, let us not trust in eloquence.  Let us trust in prayer, in the Word, and in the Spirit (Life Study of Acts, Page 426, 431). 

Other Blogs on the Life Study of Acts:


What is Christ Doing in His Ascension?

Acts Life Study - The Early Church in Acts

What is the Purpose of the Lord's Ruling Over the Earth?

How Did the Lord Spread the Gospel in Acts?

The Gospel Reaches the Gentiles!

Acts is a Book on God's Move & Prayer

God's Move  & Satan's Frustration