Molasses Cookies

Charles, my beloved husband, kept saying to me, "You keep promising me you are going to make those, but you never do."  So I finally did.  I looked for recipes for molasses cookies, similar to the ones that I remember making in culinary school.  I remember being proud of myself, capable of producing these wonderful treats from scratch.  

Thick & cakey batch

And now I get to share them with my hubby. He took a bunch to work for their Thanksgiving feast, and I made a separate batch to take to our traditional Thanksgiving family meal. Both batches came out a little bit different.  One was flat and crunchy, and the other was thick, soft, and cakey.  Both were very tasty.  The difference very well could have been the temperature of the butter before it was put into the mixture, or the amount of time the mixer ran at each stage of mixing.

No Bun Pun Intended...Ultimate (Cinnamon) Buns

I know, I know, it's pretty cheesy......CREAM CHEESY!!! LOL.  I came up with quite a few bun puns, but I just couldn't bring myself to use them in this post...I just had to keep it simple and clean.

All puns aside, a great cinnamon bun is hard to find.  The only way I felt I could satisfy my hunger for a warm sweet, cinnamon-y bun, was to make my own.  I wanted to be able to smell them baking in my own kitchen, just enough to warm my heart.  No "Cinnabon" could replace that fresh from the oven sensation we all love so much. 

Baking any kind of yeast dough is a lengthy process...from mixing the dough, letting it rise, forming the dough, and then letting it rise again.  It was an all day process for me, but well worth the wait.  Looks like the little dough boy helped too!!

Continue reading for recipe...
(Revised from America's Test Kitchen, All-Time Best Holiday Recipes)

Corncake--I Mean--Cornbread

Brunswick stew, pumpkins, bake sales, yard sales, flea markets, and fall fundraisers.  Fall is just around the corner now...the leaves are starting to change and fall to the ground, and we are starting to have longer, cooler nights here in North Carolina.  It is my favorite time of year for many reasons, but I think my absolute favorite has to be the hot meals that comfort us throughout the cooler seasons.  Here my focus isn't necessarily on the main course, but the bread...nice, soft, steaming hot cornbread.

Crabapples are such a yummy treat!

The low branches were hanging full!

The center contains seeds like an apple.

These tiny and tart fruits are similar in appearance to apples.  They grow in bunches with a stem similar to those of cherries.  They have an extremely tart flavor, comparable to lemons.

Crabapples are grown normally for their ornamental abilities.  But I was curious.  Since they were an edible fruit, I figured there had to be some way to utilize the bearing fruit.  The only recipes that I found were for jelly, chutneys, or cooked in addition to another ingredient, mainly because they are inedible by themselves.  They are packed with a natural fruit gelatin called pectin, which is the ingredient that causes jelly to thicken.  When cooked with sugar and pushed through a sieve, they produce this wonderful, flavorful, vibrant, ruby jelly.

Crabapples are very labor intensive.  I spent about half an hour plucking these delights from the tree.  I was accompanied by the sound of a gray dove somewhere in the distance, and a light breeze to keep me cool.

Wonderful as an afternoon snack!

Next I took them inside, removed the stems (which was no easy task), and thoroughly washed them to remove the bloom ends.  They were then cut, cooked, and strained.  Sugar was added, and the pulp was reduced once more.  Then it was poured into a glass jar and allowed to cool overnight. Definitely well worth the wait...even Charles enjoyed it!

From my very own tree!

There is absolutely nothing better than harvesting your own fruit to fill your own tummy and fridge...

Cooking for Someone Special...

Out of all the people I have fed or prepared food for, the most intriguing has been my husband, Charles.  The poor guy is the guinea pig of my cooking and testing...but it turns out he likes more things than he thought he did!

Me and Charles

One day we had a conversation on the food that we grew up with, and he told me his fondest memories of his mother cooking homemade biscuits every night to go with the fried pork chops and pintos, or meatloaf with tomato topping and mashed potatoes.  So I felt like it was my calling to reproduce these meals that were obviously so near and dear to his heart.  Preparing meals for Charles in the same way his mother used to, who is now deceased, fulfills my passion to share my love for food with the ones I love.

We both agreed that I will never be able to reproduce these meals exactly the way she did...her hands were so different from mine, and I don't own the wooden "biscuit bowl" that she used to make those lovely, rounded top biscuits.

But I sure was going to try...

The smells and sounds in my warm kitchen while I cooked the fried porkchops reminded Charles of times when he himself would prepare this meal down at the old white house he was raised in.  He pointed to a burn scar on his hand where the grease popped and burned him.  To him, and I guess to just about every home cook, a "fried" pork chop is dusted in flour and seasoned with "just salt and pepper,"  and then fried in a cast iron frying pan.  The smile on his face reminded me of why I love to touch someone's heart through food.