Fall Fun: Tons of Ideas and Recipes

Harvest Moon Pie Pops

I have this love affair with fall. It's when I seem to really start cooking again. I mean, it's not as if I'm not cooking during the summer. My family is not starving to death if you were worried.


It's just I don't LOVE cooking in the summer. It's too hot in Georgia. Truth be told, it would probably still be too hot for me in Maine, but whatever.

Fall, on the other hand, begs for cooking. The amazing apples, sweet potatoes, squashes like butternut and pumpkin. All of them are glorious!! It's a joy to pull out the food processor, and hand blender to make soups and homemade apple sauce.

As I was reminiscencing and thinking of some fall recipes I really wanted to make, I thought I'd share some from the past....


Chocolate Acorn Treats

Mummy Dogs

Rice Cake Eyes and Apple Teeth (I know this photo is TERRIBLE. Thankfully I've learned a few photography tips since then!!)

Gumdrop Apple Turkeys

And of course, we can't forget the silly family costumes that have come in the past. This year it's another book. Stay tuned to see what we come up with!

Here are the scientist and four seasons.

http://fromchapelhilltochickenville.blogspot.com/2011/11/christian-scientists-halloween-costumes.html
http://fromchapelhilltochickenville.blogspot.com/2010/10/happy-halloween-from-four-seasons.html

This one seems to be the online favorite.


The Three Little Pigs




Butternut Squash Wedges



Apple Pie Soup





Pumpkin Lattes and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes


Creamy Spiced Pumpkin Soup




Hot Chocolate Cake


Crockpot Apple Butter

Happy Fall and Happy Cooking!!

Patriotic Cupcakes

Any excuse to celebrate is my motto. I am the geeky Mom who has Valentine's Day decorations, St Patrick's Day fun, we even celebrated National Doughnut Day here in Chickenville. 

Complete with a blind taste test of the top two national doughnut brands. It was Krispy Kreme by a landslide (I'm raising them right).

I'm sure one day my kids will look at me and realize I'm a little holiday crazy, but until then, I keep on celebrating.

I made these cupcakes for Memorial Day, but they would be perfect for next week on the 4th of July. I bake this Fresh Strawberry Cake and icing recipe into cupcakes. Then topped with fun marshmallow stars from Walmart.  I got the big size, but they come smaller too which would be perfect for decorating mini cupcakes or even homeschool projects like these.

Real Pecan Pie...Frozen

I love pecan pie, but NOT the nasty slimy middle. I solved this problem one time when I bought a piece of pecan pie from the freezer section - Edwards or some brand. I figured it was only one piece so I couldn't go overboard, but when I got it home it was all I could think about (restraint is not my strong point). That silly piece of pie was calling my name. I got home, ripped open the cardboard package and ate the entire slice without letting it thaw or even using a fork.

Turns out it was the best pecan pie I ever ate! It had nothing to do with the brand but the simple fact that the pie was still pretty frozen. When the jiggly middle is frozen it turns to a wonderful gooey, caramel like treat that I LOVED! Now, I make and serve pecan pie to my guests and then freeze my leftovers for me to enjoy another day. I encourage everyone to try pecan pie frozen - you may love it. I've even converted my very southern husband to freezing his.

I decided I needed to make a pecan pie because my husband's wonderful Aunt and Uncle gave us a HUGE bag of pecans. Apparently they have the largest pecan tree in Fayette County, which is really saying something. They gathered the nuts for us and I put the kids to work cracking them with this cool contraption. I won't say it makes cracking the pecans easy...let's say easIER. Once we had enough nuts, I was all set to make my pie.

Real Pecan Pie
adapted from Baking Illustrated by way of Brown Eyed Baker

Single crust pie shell, store bought or homemade
6 tbsp butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 c brown sugar
½ tsp salt (if using unsalted butter)
3 eggs
¾ c light corn syrup
1 tbsp vanilla
2 c pecans, chopped into small pieces

Toast your pecans in a dry skillet on the stove for a few minutes until they smell nutty or toast them on a tray in your toaster oven. Just be sure to watch them as nutty and delicious can turn burnt VERY quickly. Let cool.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prick the crusts with a fork all over the bottom.

Then cover the crust with aluminum foil and fill with dried beans. This keeps the pie shell from puffing up with air and becoming brittle. Bake for 15 minutes.

Remove foil and beans weights bake 5 additional minutes until crust is golden brown and crisp. Remove from oven and reduce the temp to 275 degrees.

Melt the butter in a double boiler. {See my new one??} Remove from heat and stir in the sugar and salt with a wooden spoon until the butter is absorbed. Beat in the eggs, then the corn syrup and vanilla. Return to this stove; stir until the mixture is shiny and hot to the touch, about 130 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from the heat; stir in the pecans.

 Pour the pecan mixture into the hot pie shell.

Bake on the middle rack until the pie looks set and yet soft, like gelatin, when gently pressed with the back of a spoon, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer the pie to a rack; cool completely, at least 4 hours. Then to really make magic, put it in the freezer. Promise me you'll do it with a least one piece, just to try. I bet you'll love it!!

Chai Tea for Now...or Later

As I mentioned yesterday, I want to share a Chai tea recipe. Not only because I love chai tea but I've been promising my Aunt a recipe for a few years. (I am a procrastinator.) I had given my whole family chai tea fixins (that's Southern for "ingredients") in canning jars for Christmas one year. Aunt Sharon asked for the recipe, which I didn't have, since I just made it up...as usual. How do you write down "a little of this and a little of that" and expect someone to follow it? When I saw this recipe on Lavender and Lime, I knew it might get me out of the dog house. Will you forgive me now Aunt Sharon??

Chai Tea Mix

Adapted from Lavender and Lime

Ingredients
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cloves
2 tsp green cardamom pods
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp anise seeds
1/4 tsp peppercorns
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
6 c water
10 black tea bags
1 c sugar (use more or less according to your taste)
2 c water
milk

Bring all the spices and 6 cups of water to a boil. Add tea bags and let steep until very strong tea is made. Remove tea bags and add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Add 2 cups more of cold water. Store this concentrate in the fridge in a closed pitcher.

Pour concentrate into a mug, filling halfway. Fill the rest of the way with milk and heat in microwave.

My kids request hot tea often, for afternoon snack or for special occasions, but they LOVE chai tea. Super Bear even requested it for his Secret Agent birthday party.

This makes a great gift  - end-of-the-year teacher gifts, new mom, get well, etc. Just change the colors I used that Christmas long ago and make it whatever colors you like. To make chai tea into a gift, bag the spices together. Fill a container with the sugar in the bottom. Lay the tea bags on top of a square of wax paper. I wrapped mine in colored tissue paper to jazz it up. Add the spice bag on the top. Tie a ribbon around the container with instructions. Your container could even be a pretty pitcher to keep the concentrate in!!

Hot Chocolate Cake

Happy Leap Day! First, I must wish my #3 child Happy Birthday today!!  He's four, but according to the calendar he's only one. Since his Leap Day birthday only rolls around once every four years we are celebrating BIG today. I took in homemade cinnamon rolls for his birthday snack at preschool and we'll be dining at IHOP at his request :) This weekend we are having a Super Fast Racecar Birthday Party to celebrate, so stay tuned for those photos. I don't imagine it will be as loud as last year's Marching Band party, but it will be just as much fun.

As promised, here is the Hot Chocolate Cake recipe. This is a doctored box mix cake that turned out fabulous!  Really, really, good. I don't usually like chocolate cake, but this one was great. It was moist and dense in all the right places. I served it with chocolate buttercream icing. My 8 year old decided on the the flavor, just assuming I could make it happen! I was pretty relieved when it came out delicious - nothing like letting your foodie child down. He would have been the first person to tell me if it was terrible.

Hot Chocolate Cake
1 box of chocolate cake mix, regular chocolate or devil's food
4 eggs
1/2 c water
1 c buttermilk
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 sm box pumpkin pie instant pudding mix (if you can't get this substitute 1 box chocolate or vanilla pudding mix and 2 tsp cinnamon)
1/2 c semi sweet chocolate chips
1 c mini marshmallows or cut up large ones

Put chocolate cake mix, eggs, water, buttermilk, oil and pudding in mixer bowl. Beat as directed on the cake mix box. Then add the chocolate chips and marshmallows and stir. Pour cake mix into greased cake pans and bake as directed on your cake mix box according to your cake pan size.

I used this to make my Magic Tree House birthday cake and it was moist and delicious. I frosted it with a chocolate buttercream icing.

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas to ALL! These beautiful sugar cookies were given to me by my talented Sister-in-law, Nadia (the one posing with my strawberry cake here) to celebrated Christmas. She sells them at her shop on Etsy. I hope you are having a wonderful time with your family and friends!!

And the angels proclaimed, "Give glory to God in heaven, and on earth let there be peace among the people who please God." Luke 2:14

Hannakka Latkas - The Chickenville Way

I honor of Hanukkah going on right now, here is a recipe for potato "pancakes" from leftover mashed potatoes. Not exactly, latkas, but my version.

Potato Cakes
Makes about 8 cakes
2 c leftover mashed potatoes (the kind with milk, butter and garlic are best, but the instant flake kind can be substituted but you'll need to add salt and pepper)
2 eggs
1/8 c flour

Turn on a skillet on med high and add a little oil. Beat the eggs with a fork and add the potatoes and flour. Just like making pancakes, pour a little of the potato batter in the pan to form cakes. Let fry for a minute or so until sides seem to be browning, then flip to cook the other side. When cooked, cool on a paper towel like bacon to drain the extra oil off.

You can serve these the traditional way with sour cream and applesauce or cooked apples OR you can serve them with Parmesan cheese and bacon. What combos can you think of?

British Candy Poppers

We made these fun candy "poppers" (or crackers) for the kids' friends. They were really fast and easy to make. If you have candy, toilet paper or paper towel cardboard rolls, tissue paper and ribbon...you have all you need to make them. My almost-six year old tackled this project as one of the two she choose to make this year.

First, stuff the tp roll with as much candy as it will hold. Using leftover Halloween candy is optional, but highly recommended (after all, this is leaving your house which is a great thing).

Then wrap the roll with a section of colored tissue paper. I cut a package of the paper in half and that was a perfect width.

After it's all wrapper up, tie the sides of the paper with ribbon. You can add a note that tells the recipient to pull the ends of the paper apart to "POP" the gift open. For kicks, you can open them the traditional way. Have two people pull at the same time, one on each end, but then there is the inevitable drama of who gets more candy, so maybe not!

This gift is also a great teaching moment since they are originally an English tradition. We looked at the map and learned a little about Britain. My girl was pretty proud of herself after she made a bunch of these for her friends. If you need a last minute gift, this is an easy one.

Candy Cane Cookies - A Flop

Around Christmas we start making many of our presents for our neighbors, friends, preschool teachers and family as I mentioned in my Macaroni Ornament post. Sometimes it pairs with treat we have canned over the summer like the rosemary peach jam (we added fresh loaves of bread), sparkling green pepper jelly, tomato sauce (bread sticks and italian seasoning) or russian tea (mugs). We also usually bake cookies to go along. Our only traditional recipe is my favorite molasses cookies, but the others are usually picked out by the kids each year according to their whims. I save my Family Fun, Martha Stewart, Better Homes and Gardens December issues and a few special Christmas cookbooks. The kids look through them and each pick one recipe or project. This was the first year I let Sausage Boy pick out his own. I figured at three he can make a somewhat reasonable choice. Little did I know what I was in for! 

Right away he picked out these candy cane cookies from Family Fun Magazine. Regular readers of  my blog will know that we are big fans of FF here in Chickenville. All you have to do is search the archives and you'll find all kinds of recipes and crafts we have done from the magazine.They were so cute in the magazine! I had visions of making them for everyone on our gift list so I decided on making a double batch. I imagined we'd have a fun time rolling them out and creating little Christmas masterpeices. Things did not go as planned. Not only did these innocent little cookies take WAY longer than I planned, but they weren't exactly easy to assemble - and in the end, our cookies looked nothing like the slim delicate candy canes pictured in the recipe. The magazine said it would take about 30 minutes prep time and 10 minutes cook time. Not to let Family Fun off the hook, but it seems they have published a better version of this recipe online that does state a 1 hour and 20 minute total prep and cook time! With that, I invite my fearless readers to step into my disaster, so you can avoid one of your own!

The trouble started almost immediately with the dough. It was super soft after making it, so we had to chill it in the fridge for a good hour (unplanned delays are not good with a three year old). Rolling the dough into "snakes" was fun until it kept breaking. He's so used to playdough, I didn't even think about this being a problem.

Then I started having problems twisting the two colors together. It was not easy. I was frustrated, but to his credit, Sausage was not. His colors pretty much ended up melded together and I had to make the cane shape, but he managed about four cookies which took about 30 minutes. These are his masterpieces. He was so very proud!

I had to make the rest of the the batch because I couldn't let him down. I just wasn't expecting it to be that much of a challenge. I know decorated sugar cookies take time, but these looked deceivingly easy. It was laborious rolling the dough out and then twisting the colors together (to say nothing of trying to get a photo for you all)!

With practice (remember I prepped a double recipe) I got a little better. These were the few that turned out pretty. They each took about 25 minutes to make. That's maybe a *slight* exaggeration.

After all of that work, the cookies are VERY fragile. Even though I made the ropes thick they still broke at the slightest un-tender touch. These are NOT cookies for shipping to my cousin in California or even for walking next door to the neighbors house.

Also, I did have to reduce the cooking time to 7 minutes because the white part of the cane was browning making it look like a dirty candy cane. Yuck!

 

Overall not a recipe we will be making again. Too much work for a so-so cookie. But this face made it all worth the trouble. I enjoyed cracking up with my sweet, silly Sausage Boy who exhibited courage in the face of adversity. I love that kid.