I already wrote about my Chicken and Leeks and Dumplings. After that dish, I wasn’t [...]]]> Our grocery store had the strange idea to make a bunch of leeks the same price as 1 single trimmed leek. So I bought a big bunch of them. The result, adding leeks to many dishes.

I already wrote about my Chicken and Leeks and Dumplings. After that dish, I wasn’t through the leeks yet. The cold dreary weather of late, has had me craving potato dishes, so I decided on potato soup. Potato soup with rivels, with leeks.

I ate potato soup for the first time as a pre-teen. My dad had eaten it at my stepmom’s and then proceeded to make it for us, the next time we came over. (My parents were divorced, we spent every other weekend with my dad, and he was married to my stepmom, but he still lived in Europe and she in the US.)
I recall my dad being amazed with this soup. It was so simple, so basic, yet so tasty. We agreed. It was basically thin mashed potatoes loaded with bacon and cheese and scallions and such. It tasted great!

The years had passed and I’d made potato soup once in a while myself. I made alterations to the soup and at some point I just lost control of the original recipe. I didn’t have it anymore, couldn’t find it, didn’t remember it.

I called my stepmom and she promptly gave it to me and added a cookbook to my Christmas Stocking that year. A collection of recipes from people who have a link with adoption. My stepmom added, among other things, the recipe for potato soup.

When I read the book I noticed that my dad had omitted one vital ingredient in the version of the soup he’d given my brother and me some 20 years earlier. He hadn’t made rivels.

Seeing that I like starchy foods anyways, I figured trying to add rivels wouldn’t be a bad thing. I wasn’t entirely sure, as it changed the soup, but hey, live adventurously and give things a try, right?!

The soup made with rivels was wonderful. It added a whole extra layer of flavour and texture to the soup. I’ve never made potato soup without it after that.

The only alterations I’ve made to the recipe in the book (sorry Dixie, sorry grandma Julia) was the order in which you add things and do things. The recipe calls for dropping in rivels and after that mashing your potatoes and trying to avoid mashing rivels. That just really doesn’t work too well. Once the soup gets cloudy (and yummy) there’s no way to distinguish rivels from unmashed potatoes. So I changed the order. First purée, then add rivels. I also add a bouillon cube to the water I boil the potatoes in, instead of using salt. Besides that, the recipe is perfect the way it is.

Having said that. Obviously I alter things, add things, do things. I had a piece of ham (bone in) hanging out in my fridge. I had a bunch of leeks. I figured, why not.

The pictures you see here, are pictures of the newest version of this magical potato soup. I first simmered the piece of ham in  a big stockpot to make a sort of ham broth. After removing the ham I proceeded with the regular recipe, only adding in a whole leek, chopped. I cut up the meat on the ham and after puréeing not only the potatoes, but the leeks as well (with an immersion blender, sorry, I’m lazy that way!). Then in addition to the rivels, I added the pieces of ham.

A great adjustment, if I might say so. Leeks and potato just work really well together.

For now however, I will give you the base recipe. The one I found in my stepmom’s cookbook. Enjoy!

Grandma Julia’s potato soup with rivels

• 4 cups potatoes, diced
• salt
• pepper
• parsley flakes
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 eggs, beaten slightly
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups milk
• water
• bouillion cube (my personal addition to grandmas recipe)

Place diced potatoes in a large kettle, cover with water and add salt or a bouillion cube to taste. Cook 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Mash them up, add pepper, butter parsley flakes and onion.

Make rivels by beating the eggs, adding 1/2 tsp salt and mixing in the flour and baking powder. Drop into soup by the spoonful. Stir, cover and cook for 10 more minutes. Add 2 cups of milk. Thicken as needed by adding a thickening of 1/2 c of milk mixed with 1 or 2 tbsp of flour.

I’ve always loved  almond toffee, from the first time I ever tasted it. Love it! Unfortunately my favorite toffee is extremely expensive and only sold in Colorado (or you have to get it shipped, [...]]]> Yes, Almond toffee deserves at least 5 exclamation points. It’s just THAT good.

I’ve always loved  almond toffee, from the first time I ever tasted it. Love it! Unfortunately my favorite toffee is extremely expensive and only sold in Colorado (or you have to get it shipped, which makes it even more expensive.)

And before this year I’d never thought of making it myself. I don’t know why, but it just never occurred to me that it was something you could do yourself.

Fortunately this year (well, last year, it is 2011 by now…) I decided to use my brain and look up a recipe.

I barely altered the recipe I found, just used himalayan pink salt instead of regular salt, halved almonds instead of slivered ones inside the toffee and I used a piece of good quality chocolate instead of chocolate chips. The result was toffee that tasted exactly like the crazy expensive stuff I buy in Colorado, for a fraction of the price (and about a half hour of my time).

I will definitely keep on making this every year, possibly for every holiday! Who says you should just have toffee around Christmas?

 

[print_this]Almond toffee (recipe altered from Marilyn Moll, who got it from someone who worked at Enstrom’s)

• 1 cup, 6 tbsp  sugar
• 1/2 pound salted butter
• 1/4 tsp himalayan pink salt
• 1/2 cup halved raw almonds (or the same amount (by weight) whole almonds
• 6 ounces of decent quality milk chocolate (don’t use it if you wouldn’t eat it the way you buy it!)
• 6 tbsp almonds, chopped very, very finely – almost a powder

Look at the pictures, they show most stages, so you’ll know what to expect!

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the salt. As soon as the butter is melted add in the sugar and start stirring constantly. As soon as the sugar is well stirred in, add in the halved almonds. (Make sure you have raw almonds, they’ll toast in the sugar!!!!)
Keep stirring over low to medium heat for a while. The mixture goes through a couple of changes while cooking. First it’s liquid and light colored, then it’ll get just slightly darker (but still really light colored) and get thick and sticky and harder to stir. The butter might start to separate out of the mixture. Don’t worry about that and just keep stirring that back into the sugar mixture. At some point it’ll incorporate back into the sugar mixture, which’ll get thinner and darker. You can up the heat a little now too.
Use a thermometer to figure out how close to ready you are, keep stirring until you reach 290F (140 C) or until you reach ‘hard crack stage’. If you don’t have a thermometer and/or ice bath ready, at some point it’ll slightly start to smell like burnt sugar, but you it isn’t burnt yet. That’s the point where the toffee is ready!

Note of caution: you really NEED to keep stirring and smelling and just generally keep an eye on your toffee. It changes really quickly once you’re almost there, so that’s not the time to let it stand.

Have a smallish cookie sheet standing ready to pour the toffee into, and a cooling rack to place the sheet on. The toffee mixture will be VERY hot, so if you don’t have that cooking rack there, you can easily warp whatever you’re placing it on. (Plus it’ll take 10 times longer to cool and harden.)

Once you’ve rached the slight burny smell/290F/hard crack stage, pour the toffee into the cookie sheet and move that around to fill out the sheet evenly. Let it cool and harden.

Once the toffee is hard, it’ll have pulled away from the side of the cookie sheet a little and it’ll release very easily. (So no need to grease that cookie sheet!)

Place the slab of toffee onto some parchment. Melt half the chocolate and pour it over the toffee and spread it evenly with an offset spatula or a knife. Sprinkle half the ‘powdered’ almonds over the chocolate and let it sit to harden. Once the chocolate has completely firmed up, flip the toffee over and repeat the process. Let it cool and cut into pieces and enjoy!
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First, a little story. A fun story. The story of people who love cookies more than what’s good for them!
This year I dove into the Christmas baking [...]]]> So those recipes I promised you, along with the video of the ginger snaps baking. They’ve finally arrived!

First, a little story. A fun story. The story of people who love cookies more than what’s good for them!
This year I dove into the Christmas baking  big time, with 3 different kinds of cookies, of which 2 types came in different versions. And then there was the ‘mock-Enstrom-toffee’ that made an appearance as well. Lots of sweets to delight not only ourselves, but plenty of others as well.

So yes, I was a nice person, a good baker, true to the title and motto of this blog. I shared the goodies I made!

When bringing some to the office, 3 of my co-workers (who have a 6th sense for sweets, they were standing next to my desk before I’d even plated all the cookies and I hadn’t told anyone I brought them!) requested that I’d start a tradition of making Valentine’s day cookies, Easter cookies, Passover cookies, Queen’s day cookies, Ascension day cookies, Summer cookies, Halloween cookies and Thanksgiving cookies as well. In between those special cookies, they’d accept it if I’d limit myself to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday cookies.

I guess it meant they liked them :-)

The cookies I opted for  and brought to my hungry, cookie-loving co-workers were chocolate chip cookies with some walnut pieces (pretty much your standard toll house cookie, why mess with a winning recipe), Ginger snaps (courtesy of my friend Amber who got the recipe from Teresa, who’s a fellow goddess-mama to our beloved Gracie, the cookies you saw in that film) and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The oatmeal chocolate chip cookies had a version with milk chocolate chips and one with white and butterscotch. Please don’t make me choose which one I liked better. The ginger snaps came in a soft-and-chewy and a crispy version, which resulted in different tasting cookies along with the difference in texture.

Word of warning to the Dutchies here. The measurements, as usual on my blog, are done with American standard size measurements. Don’t try to substitute them for Dutch sizes. a tsp (teaspoon) is really another amount than filling a Dutch spoon you stir your tea or coffee with. While with spices it’ll just give you a very bland tasting cookie, it’ll be disastrous for the end product if you do that with baking powder or baking soda.

Another word to the wise. Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable as some Dutch websites suggest. Baking soda is sold at American/English stores, sometimes at ‘toko’s’ or otherwise at the pharmacy as ‘zuiveringszout’ or ‘natriumbicarbonaat’. Also Dtuch melasse, (molasses) isn’t necessarily the same as American molasses. The European version can be fairly strong. If you like that taste, that’s fine, otherwise, substitute about half the molasses with a very mild honey. Or that’s what David Lebovitz tells us, and who am I to question his judgement?!

 

[print_this]Chocolate chip walnut cookies (adapted from the Nestlé Toll House cookie recipe)

• 1 cups + 2 tbsp AP flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp seasalt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 6 tbsp granulated sugar
• 6 tbsp brown sugar (I use a mix of dark and light brown sugar)
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 cups chocolate chips (I prefer milk chocolate for my choc-chip-cookies)
• a big handful walnuts, roughly chopped

Cream butter and sugars, add egg and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together and slowly add into the mixture. Mix well. Add in the chocolate chips and the walnuts, make sure they’re evenly mixed throughout the dough.
Preheat oven to 375 F (185 C), using a cookie scoop or 2 spoons place even-sized little heaps of dough on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until nice and golden brown. (around 10 minutes for a soft, slightly chewy cookie, around 12 for a slightly crispier cookie).
Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for about 2 minutes, then move them to a cooling rack to cool completely (if you can resist eating a warm cookie, that is!)

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[print_this]Ginger snaps (adapted from Teresa and Amber’s recipe)

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1 scant tsp ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 good pinch of finely ground (powdered) black pepper

Cream butter and sugar, add the molasses and the egg, then sift in flour, baking soda, salt and spices and mix well. Shape into balls and roll in sugar (do not flatten) bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 F (175 C) degrees for 10 – 12 minutes. If you like them even spicier (try one cooled of cookie first!) add some more ginger and pepper to the sugar which you toll the dough in. Cool on cookie sheet for about 2 minutes, then move to rack for complete cooling. As with all cookies, a shorter cooking time will give you a chewier, softer cookie. In this case, the soft cookie will really taste different, a lot more ‘molassessy’.

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[print_this]Oatmeal chip cookies (adapted from a random recipe I found and altered big time)

• ½ cup unsalted butter
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cups brown sugar (I use a mix of dark and light)
• 1 egg
• 3/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1-¼ cup regular oatmeal (not the instant stuff)
• a good handful pecans, chopped
• heaping 1/2 cup (milk) chocolate chips
• heaping 1/4 cup white chocolate chips
• heaping 1/4 cup butterscotch chips

Cream butter, sugar and brown sugar, add the egg and vanilla. Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda into the butter mixture. Mix well, then add in the oatmeal. Add the pecans and mix well.
Divide the very thick dough in 2. Add milk chocolate chips to the first half of the batter and white and butterscotch chips to the second half.

Roll the dough into small balls, (large walnut/ a bit smaller than golfball size), bake at 375F  (185 C) degrees for 12-15 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then move to a cooling rack.

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Note for all 3 recipes, if the dough is too soft to shape properly, place in the refrigerator for a half hour or so, then try scooping or rolling balls again.