“Gyngerbrede.–Take a quart of hony, & sethe it, & skeme it clene; take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & throw ther-on; take grayted Bred, & make it so chargeaunt that it wol be y-lechyd; then take pouder Canelle, & straw ther-on y-now; then make yt square, lyke as thou wolt leche yt; take when thou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leves a-bouyn, y-stykyd ther-on, on clowys. And if thou wolt haue it Red, coloure it with Saunderys y-now.”
Form of Cury
340g of honey
2 scant cups of bread crumbs
1/4 teaspoon of long pepper
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ginger
Boil the honey, take it off the heat, add the spices and mix. Then add the bread crumbs, and stir until fully incorporated. Place on a non-stick surface, then allow to set. Once it’s set, cut into pieces.
Made the crust, should’ve chilled it, since the shortening was room temperature. It totally fell apart when I tried to get in the the pie tin, so I just pressed it into the pie tin
“Cheesecake” layer
8oz cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix it all together and pour over the pie crust. Sprinkle 1 1/4 cups chopped pecans.
Pie layer
3 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
My pie tin was too short, so I couldn’t pour the whole mixture in, and when I did, it started leaking out of the sides.
Bake for 35-40 minutes.
And, just to follow it up, the lower right is where all of the “pie” layer leaked out. So the pie was actually a cheesecake topped with candied pecans. Which got positive reviews, so what do I know.
Someone at work suggested I make Biscochitos, because his abuela did and he wanted to try them again. Now, I don’t normally try to duplicate abuela’s work, but I decided to give it a shot.
Found a recipe and he confirmed they looked right.
Followed the recipe, using vegetable shortening instead of lard.
Pretty straightforward rolled cookies, nothing much to report. I don’t normally roll cookies because the dough either sticks to the rolling pin, or just won’t roll out and falls apart (these cookies). Warming the dough up did help some, but it was a pain to work. Maybe if I hadn’t left it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
Before cooking. Rather than make the cookies too stiff by overworking and cutting, I used my cookie stamp to flatten the dough out:
Recipe calls for 10 minutes at 350, but my oven is super slow, so I gave it 12 minutes.
Took a half cup of confectioner’s sugar and added enough lemon juice to make a glaze. Used a brush to apply glaze.
I was making my mother’s cinnamon hearts for Mollie to bring in to school, and I had 3 egg whites left over. Well, as long as I’m here, I’ll see if I have any recipes for merengue type cookies (spoiler, I do, and I already knew I did).
This recipe takes 2 egg whites, so I’ll make a batch and a half, even if I am bad at merengue (and by bad I mean I don’t normally make it).
Bonus picture, me at 21 monthsReady for the ovenJust started to brown!
I read reddit sometimes, and the ask baking subreddit is a complete trip. “I made a vegan version of this recipe but the mouthfeel is inaccurate” (no kidding) “I accidentally added an extra 5g of sugar to my cookies when the cat bumped my elbow, will they come out?” (yes) “The recipe calls for lard, but that’s super unhealthy so I used shortening, but it tastes different, what happened?” (duh)
Me, on the other hand, I’m big on winging it. I guess spending 3 years making recipes that have modes like “add enough flour to make a stiff paste” will do that for you. Plus, I mean, it’s not like I won’t make a cookie. The cookie will probably also taste OK too. It might not have the exact texture or taste I expect, but that’s OK.
Which is my lead in to the story of me making my mother’s Christmas cookies. My mother sent me her book of Christmas recipes and I decided to give them a try. Pecan balls are my 2nd favorite cookie. While I was trying to decode how to make them (more on that later), I discovered it’s actually a Southern recipe. Sure enough, my grandmother got the recipe from an American she met at English lessons.
I looked over the recipe, and step 1 says to beat the butter and sugar well, but no sugar is listed. Ugh. Well, the recipe mostly looks like a 123 shortbread recipe, so 113g of sugar should do it (half cup about), so that’s what I used (you can see my notes in pen). Of course, 2 tsp of milk wasn’t enough, so I bumped it to 2 Tbs.
Other than that, I followed the recipe. Here are the rolled out cookies (20g each)
Press a pecan on top
Bake and cover in powdered sugar (recipe calls for 15 minutes, I started at 17, then went to 20 when they didn’t look done).
Sent a picture to my sister and brother in law so my mother could render judgement. Somehow that got turned into I wanted her to call (I had also asked them for clarification on the whole sugar thing, but I just winged it when they didn’t reply). So while the mover is there drawing up an estimate, I’m talking to my mother about pecan balls and the mover is just listening and smiling.
In short, the cookies came out fine. They are pecan cookies that taste of pecan (who knew, with a third of the flour being pecan flour). The texture was not what I remember (and since I added sugar and increased the milk, no shock that), but the taste was what I remember. I gave one to Mollie, and while I was looking elsewhere, she grabbed 2 more, ate one, then ate the pecan and licked the sugar off a second cookie.
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