Archive for December, 2008

Cuban Pork and Plantain Stew

Published December 30, 2008 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Tags: , ,

Okay, the cookie baking is over for a while. Platters went to the office and to my neighbor’s Christmas dinner. The remaining few are carefully closeted in the freezer, where their plaintive cries to be eaten are muffled.  I’ll take them out gradually, one by one, as late night snacks.

Now it’s time to turn to hearty dishes to help warm the winter night.  Yes, it’s still snowing. 63 inches and counting.  I need something to warm the cockles of my heart, and this somewhat unusual dish does the trick. It has a little peppery heat to it.  This is definitely something I will make again.

It began when I bought two plantains.  I love the plantains that you get at some Latin American restaurants, sweet and gently fried.  But apparently these are made from plantains that are soft and black.  Not knowing much about plantains, I passed over the black ones thinking they were past their prime, and bought two large green plantains.  When I began researching plantain recipes, it turned out that my sweet plantains were not to be, unless I was willing to wait weeks until they turned black.  I’m not all that patient.  I did let the one of the very green plantains turn yellow with black splotches.  I found that the very green plantain was hard to peel, and remained rather hard after cooking (although longer cooking might have softened them). So this recipe calls for yellow plantains with brown spots, which will stay firm, but not too hard during cooking.

The original recipe for this used chicken breasts, which would make it about one gram lower in fat/serving.  However, I thought the pork was a more traditional Cuban ingredient, and I have quite a bit of pork tenderloin to use up.

Cuban Pork and Plantain Stew

1 Tablespoon  canola oil
3/4 pound  pork tenderloin, trimmed of all visible fat and cut into bite-size pieces
1 cup  coarsely chopped onion
1/2 cup  coarsely chopped red bell pepper
1 1/2 cups  coarsely chopped plum tomato
1 cup  dry sherry
1 ½  teaspoons  paprika
1 teaspoon  ground cumin
1 teaspoon  dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon  salt
1/4 teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (14 -ounce) can low-salt beef broth
2 cups  sliced (about ½ inch slices) plantains (about 3/4 pound)
2 Tablespoons  chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Heat oil in a Dutch oven or large pan over medium-high heat. Add pork, onion, and bell pepper; sauté for 8 minutes, stirring frequently, until onions soften. Stir in tomato and next 8 ingredients (tomato through broth). Bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes. Stir in plantains; cook 15 minutes or until tender. Sprinkle with parsley if using.  This makes 4 servings at 7 grams of fat/serving.  I expect that this would be great over rice, and with Cuban black beans, but I have been eating it in a bowl like a hot soup. And it definitely warms the cockles of my heart.

cuban-pork-stew

Variation: If you like spicy food, this could take a bit more pepper, or you might even add a minced jalapeno pepper.

Rugelach (Grandma’s Butter Cookies)

Published December 28, 2008 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Tags: , ,

When I was young, there were two cookies that captured the essence of home and tradition. They were “rugelach” (sometimes called “der ahnderer” or the other ones) and “der geralte”, the rolled ones, which were damson plum jam, raisins and nuts rolled in a pastry dough and sliced.  The recipes were passed down from my Grandma Fredyl.  Fredyl, having grown up in the “old country”, did not have recipes; she cooked by eye and feel.  Family legend has it that my Aunt Gladys stood by her side as she cooked, and every time Grandma tossed in an ingredient, Gladys stuck out a measuring cup to measure the recipe.  Now I have the recipe on my mother Sylvia’s recipe cards, a memory of her since she’s gone.  They still evoke home.  Once I was visiting my sister when she lived in North Carolina, and we baked “Grandma cookies”. Her husband thought we were crazy, since we rarely saw one another, and we were spending our precious time together baking cookies.  We told him that we were “channeling Sylvia”.

For several years, I’ve been looking for a way to make low fat rugelach.  After all, the family recipe started with a quarter of a pound of butter.  I thought I found a recipe in a low fat baking book.  The recipe was a bit fussy, and after my experience with the lemon bars, I decided to calculate the fat content of my family recipe.  I was delighted to see that Grandma’s rugelach were quite reasonable in fat grams, so here is the recipe.

Rugelach

¼ pound of butter, softened
½ cup granulated sugar
1egg
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ¾ cups all purpose flour + up to ¼ cup flour if needed (I used about a Tablespoon)
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup walnuts, toasted and chopped small
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 350.  Sift 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour and baking powder into a medium bowl and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar until well-blended. Add egg and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating at low speed until flour is incorporated.   Turn out onto a floured surface and knead in enough of the ¼ cup of flour to firm up the dough.  Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill overnight.

Take dough out of refrigerator and cut about ¼ of the dough. To make rolling the dough easier, roll it out between 2 pieces of either parchment paper, wax paper, or plastic wrap, with the lower sheet lightly sprinkled with flour. Use new sheets for each ¼ piece of dough.  This makes it much easier to get the cookies off the paper.  Roll the piece of dough into a rough square, about 1/8 inch thick.  Sprinkle with ¼ of the walnuts and a bit of the cinnamon and sugar (I have a shaker with mixed cinnamon and sugar, so I don’t usually measure them). Gently roll the rolling pin over the dough to set the filling.  Cut the dough into 2 inch squares.  Don’t worry about ragged edges.  I find that I have to shape each cookie by hand, and rough edges can be tucked in.  Put 2 raisins at each end of the squares.

rugelach-squares

Roll up each square, pushing the dough around the raisins to cover them up. Try to make them approximately the same size so they will bake evenly – I am not always successful in doing this.  Bend the cookies into little crescents.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

I was rather distressed the first time I made these, since my rugelach were rather bumpy and unshapely.  But then I remembered that the rugelach of my youth looked that way, too.  They are a homey cookie, not a glamour cookie – but oh the taste of them.  Here they are in their lumpy splendor on the cookie sheet waiting to be sprinkled and baked.

rugelach-raw

Sprinkle the unbaked rugelach with the cinnamon and sugar mix.  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Do not let them get too brown.  Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes and then cool completely on rack (Try not to eat too many of the “broken ones). This makes 60 cookies at about 2 grams of fat/cookie.  These keep well, and freeze beautifully. We always had them in the freezer when I was growing up for a late night “nosh” or if unexpected company came.

rugelach

NOTE: My mother didn’t toast the walnuts, but toasting brings out the flavor so that you can use fewer of them.

Now if I can only figure out how to make low fat geralte.

Candy Cane Cheesecake Brownies

Published December 26, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Yet one more cookie for the cookie plate I’m bringing to my neighbor’s Christmas dinner (if I can get myself shoveled out).  I made them in haste this morning while I was waiting for the snow to stop – hah!  But here they are; the original recipe is from Cooking Light.

Candy Cane Cheesecake Brownies

Cheesecake batter

1 (8-ounce) block 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (see note)
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
Red food coloring (optional)

Brownie batter:

4.5 ounces  all-purpose flour (about 1 cup) I weighed the flour, and it was about 7/8 cup. I expect different flours have different weights.
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups packed brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil (see Note 2)
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large egg whites
1 large egg
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350°.  Spray a 9 inch square baking pan with cooking spray.

The cheesecake batter: place softened cream cheese in a medium bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth. Add granulated sugar and peppermint extract; beat well. Add 1 egg and 1 egg white; beat well. Add 1 tablespoon flour; beat mixture just until blended. If you want the candy cane look, put half of the cream cheese batter into a separate small bowl and tint to the desired shade with the food coloring. (You can skip this step and make the cheesecake layer all white – or any color you wish). Set aside

The brownie batter: weigh or lightly spoon 4.5 ounces flour into a dry measuring cup. Combine the flour, cocoa, and salt in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Combine brown sugar, oil, buttermilk, vanilla, 2 egg whites, and 1 egg in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium-high speed until well blended. Add flour mixture to brown sugar mixture; beat at low speed just until blended.

Assembly: Reserve 1/2 cup of brownie batter. Pour remaining batter into the prepared baking pan. Carefully spoon reserved white (or all if you’re not tinting) cheesecake batter over top making the layer as even as possible and extending it to the edges. Dot white cheesecake batter with the pink cheese cake batter and then with reserved brownie batter. Carefully swirl the layers of batters together using the tip of a knife. I went across about 4 times and down 4 times and it made a nice pattern:

mint-brownie-pan

Bake at 350° for 25-28 minutes or until top is set. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.  Cut into pieces.  This is one of those recipes that called for 16 brownies, but they were huge, so, like with other bar cookies, I halved them.  This thus made 32 brownies at about 4 grams of fat/brownie.

mint-brownies

Note: The recipe called for ¼ teaspoon of mint extract, but it wasn’t very minty.  I read the reviews of the recipe online, and several said it wasn’t minty enough, so I increased the amount.  I suggest that you add the mint extract gradually, and taste after each addition, so that you get the flavor that you want.

Note 2: As you may know, usually I partially replace the oil in baked goods with applesauce, leaving a tablespoon or so of oil to bind the flour.  But it’s tricky replacing fats in cookies; sometime they turn hard as rocks.  So I left the oil in, and reduced the fat by making the bars smaller, putting them in the acceptable 4 gram ranges (and making them fit on a cookie tray.)

Variation: I think it would be pretty sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of crushed candy can or hard mint candies over the top of the brownies while they are still warm, pressing them in gently.  And you could certainly vary the colors.

Confession: These are not the best brownie I have ever tasted. They were tasty, but they weren’t rich and chocolaty, and the texture wasn’t quite right. Maybe they needed to bake a little longer, but I think I am going to try the cream cheese topping over a really good brownie.  I also thought the colored swirls looked a bit garish when the brownies were cut into pieces.

Double Cheese Twice-Baked Potato

Published December 25, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: , ,

Twice-baked potatoes are a nice side dish.  They dress up a plain piece of chicken or meat, and make it seem a little more festive.  They also can be a meal in themselves, hearty enough to be eaten with a salad or a bowl of soup.  I confess that I primarily made these twice-baked potatoes as something to freeze and take for lunch, reheating them in the office microwave. I’m not much of a sandwich eater, and these potatoes and a piece of fruit will make a nice lunch variation.  I originally planned to make the twice-baked potatoes without the cheddar cheese topping, so here they are with a dusting of paprika ready for their second baking.

stuffed-baked-potatoes

But when I tasted my first one, I thought it needed a little something extra, so I added cheese on top.  I froze them without the extra cheese, since I might want to vary things or use a different cheese (like the reduced fat havarti I just bought), but the recipe is for the potatoes with cheddar.  If you don’t use the cheese, you can reduce the overall fat gram count by 2 grams/potato half.

Double Cheese Twice Baked Potato

5 large baking potatoes (about 4 pounds of potatoes)
½ cup non-fat sour cream
½ cup non-fat milk
2 Tablespoons light butter
½ cup reduced fat blue cheese, crumbled
¼ cup thinly sliced green onions or chives
4 ounces of reduced fat cheddar cheese

Paprika to sprinkle (optional – it’s only for looks)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Scrub the potatoes and pierce several times with a fork. Bake in the oven until they are tender, about an hour and 15 minutes.  Do not microwave them – microwaved potatoes will have skins too thin to easily withstand scooping and stuffing.  Remove from oven (leave oven on) and allow to cool for about 10 minutes so you can handle them. Cut 4 of the potatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop the insides into a large bowl, leaving about ¼ inch of potato attached to the skin to create a shell. Try to keep the skins intact.  Peel the fifth potato, cut it up, and add it to the bowl. The extra potato will give your potatoes a generous stuffing that will mound above the level of the shell.  Add the remaining ingredients except for the cheddar cheese to the bowl and beat with a mixer until it is the texture that you like.  Some people like their twice-baked potatoes to be very creamy – I prefer a bit of texture.  Stuff the potato shells evenly with the potato cheese mixture, mounding it gently above the shell.  Return to the oven to bake for 20 minutes at 350.  Place ½ ounce of cheddar cheese (shredded or thinly sliced) on top of each potato and bake for an additional 5 minutes. Makes 8 servings with about 4 grams of fat/ half-potato serving (with cheddar).

twice-baked-potato2

Variation: if you really want these to be blue-cheesy, use a full cup of reduced fat blue cheese.  This will make the potatoes have 5 rams of fat/serving

Note: Light butter is a handy ingredient, when what you want is the taste of real butter without all the fat.  It is real butter mixed with canola oil, buttermilk, water, etc.  Light butter has 5 grams of fat/tablespoon unlike 11 grams of fat in a tablespoon of butter.  You can’t really use it for baking or sautéing, but it’s good as a spread on a baked potato, and I often use it as a flavoring in place of regular butter.

light-butter

By the way, it is STILL snowing.   The truck is now completely invisible. There must be at least 4 feet on the ground, and I have been snowblowing twice a day. There is no place left to stack the snow. This is not my idea of exercise.  If anyone sings “Let It Snow” or “White Christmas”, I’m going to throttle them.

Crock Pot Potato Soup

Published December 22, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: , , ,

Winter has hit with a vengeance.  Single digit and below zero temperatures. 23 inches of snow in one day.  The snow outside of my garage door was above my shoulders!  Here is my truck after the first snow.  Yes, there is a vehicle under there.  It took me two days to shovel out – and then it started snowing again.  It’s snowing even now.

truck

It is definitely soup weather.  There’s nothing like coming in from shoveling snow, with freezing fingers and a frozen nose, and heating up a bowl of homemade soup you made in anticipation of the worst.  This potato soup is a combination of several recipes.  I made it with most of the potatoes chopped coarsely, but I recommend cutting half of them into 1-2 inch chunks to give the soup more chunky texture.

Crock Pot Potato Soup

3 pounds of potatoes, peeled, half coarsely chopped in the food processor and half cut into 1-2 inch pieces
2 leeks (optional), cleaned, white parts and a little green, coarsely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
2 medium onions (or one large), coarsely chopped
3 14-ounce cans of non-fat low sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 Tablespoon dried parsley flakes
2 Tablespoons butter
¼ cup chopped chives (optional)
1 can non-fat evaporated milk
½ cup fat free half and half (optional, but it makes it creamier)

Put all ingredients except the evaporated milk and fat free half and half into the crock pot. Cook on low for 8-10 hours, on high for 3-4 hours.  You may want to check it an hour or so before it is supposed to be done, so it doesn’t burn. One half hour before the soup is done, stir in the evaporated milk and fat free half and half.  You can adjust the seasoning (salt and pepper) to your taste after the soup is done.  Since I made this primarily to eat for lunches, I tend to add salt and other flavor enhancements when I reheat individual bowls of soup. This makes 10 servings at about 2.2 grams/fat/serving.

potato-soup

Variations As you can see, I served the soup with a dollop of non-fat sour cream (why is a lump of sour cream always called a dollop?).  I also added a sliced up low fat hot dog one day.  I expect ham would also be good.  Just remember to add the fat grams for these add-ons to your counting.

Hint: Leeks require some special handling.  Soil is mounded up around them while they grow, and you must make certain that all the sand and grit is out of them before you add them to a recipe.  Some people cut them in half lengthwise and soak them, rinsing them several times.  I cut the leeks in half lengthwise, and then into 3 inch pieces.  I put the pieces in a colander and rinse them under running water, stirring with my hand to make sure that the pieces are well-rinsed.

Grandma Sylvia’s Lemon Bars

Published December 21, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: ,

My mother made the world’s best lemon bars.  Tart, sweet, and rich, every body loves Grandma Sylvia’s lemon bars.  My daughter inherited the lemon bar gene, and her lemon bars are as good as her grandma’s.  I have always thought of the lemon bars as supremely high in fat – after all, the recipe starts out with two sticks of butter.  But after searching for and making several low fat lemon bars (2-4 grams of fat/bar depending upon the size), which were ok but not great, I decided to try and figure out just how many fat grams my mom’s lemon bars had in all their deliciousness.  They only have 3 grams/bar!  Oh my heart be still.  Why am I struggling to find substitutes? The trick is that my mother cut the bars into relatively small pieces, which you need to do because 1) they look better on a cookie plate when they’re not a big slab, and 2) they’re so rich you can’t eat a big slab, anyway…although I confess to eating more than one bar at times.  So here, without further adieu, are Grandma Sylvia’s Lemon Bars.

Grandma Sylvia’s Lemon Bars

Crust
1 cup (1/2 lb) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
½ cup confectioners’ sugar

Topping
½ cup lemon juice
1 ¾ cups sugar
¼ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 beaten eggs
confectioners’ sugar for sprinkling (optional)

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350. Spray a jelly roll pan (10” x 15”) with cooking spray.  Place butter, flour, and ½ cup confectioner’s sugar into a medium bowl.  Mix with your fingers until it the ingredients are well-blended and the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Press the crust mixture evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan and slightly up the sides.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly golden.  Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes.

To make the topping:   Make the topping while the crust is baking. Mix the ingredients (lemon juice through eggs) with a mixer, beating until smooth. Pour the lemon mixture over the warm crust.  Return pan to oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until the edges begin to turn golden and the center is set.  Remove from oven and sprinkle immediately with powdered sugar if you are using it.  Cool pan completely on a wire rack. Cut into 64 bars with 3 grams of fat/bar.

lemon-bars-2

These freeze very well, which is a good thing, because when they are in the freezer I am less likely to walk by and grab one.

Cranberry-Pistachio Bars

Published December 18, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

Back to cookie making.  These bars are quite festive looking, especially for the holidays, because of the bright red cranberries and the green-tinted pistachios (but they don’t photograph well).  They are a bit surprising to taste, because they are both tart and sweet.  The original recipe came from Eating Well magazine.

Cranberry-Pistachio Bars

The Crust
3 Tablespoons unsalted  butter at room temperature
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt

The Topping
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange rind
¼ cup orange juice
2 cups fresh or frozen (thawed) cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup shelled pistachios, preferably unsalted, chopped and toasted

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and position rack in center of oven. Coat an 8 inch square pan with cooking spray.  Beat butter, granulated and brown sugars in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until creamy. Stir in whole wheat pastry flour, all purpose flour, and salt until well combined.  The mixture will be crumbly.  Evenly press this mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.  Bake until just barely golden around the edges, 10-12 minutes.  Remove crust from oven. You do not have to let it cool before putting the topping on.

To make the topping: Chop cranberries coarsely by pulsing them in a food processor. Combine ¾ cup granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Add egg, egg white, orange zest and juice. Stir until blended and smooth.  Sprinkle chopped cranberries over the baked crust.  Pour the orange mixture over the cranberries and sprinkle with the chopped pistachios.

Bake until golden and set, 40-45 minutes.  Let cool completely on a wire rack.  This is easier to cut if you chill it before you try to cut it.  The recipe says that this makes 16 cookies, at 4 grams of fat/cookie.  But I found the cookies to be very large, especially for a cookie plate, so I cut them in half – and then they made 32 cookies at 2 grams/cookie.

cranberry-pistachio-cookies

A note on pistachio nuts: If you can get unsalted nuts, use them.  There is a lovely brand called “Everybody’s Nuts” that has unsalted nuts that are easy to open.  But my local stores seem to longer carry them, and I was in too much of a hurry to order them online.  I used salted nuts and rinsed them to get the salt off, but it really wasn’t as satisfactory as unsalted nuts would have been.

Hint: Specialty flours and grains that are sometimes called for in recipes (like the whole wheat pastry flour in this recipe) can become rancid if they are kept too long. The same is true of nuts.  If you need ¼ cup of wheat bran, or 2 tablespoons of pecans, what do you do with the rest?   You seal the in a zip top plastic bag, and put them in the freezer!  They will keep for months, and you really don’t have to defrost them to use them.

Chicken with Mustard and Grapes

Published December 16, 2008 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Tags: ,

In between all the baking, I experimented with a new dish.  Woman cannot live by cookies alone. (Hmm…is his really true, let’s see, 30 grams of fat per day divided by 2.5 grams per cookie…that would give me 12 cookies and a lot of non-fat cottage cheese for meals.)  OK, this is an easy but impressive dinner that comes together quickly.

Chicken with Mustard and Grapes

4 chicken breast halves, all visible fat removed
2 Tablespoons good mustard (I use Jack Daniels Hickory Smoked Mustard, but use your favorite
¼ cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoons dry mustard
¼ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon butter, divided
2 cups of non-fat low sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 cups of red grapes, halved
½ teaspoon dried chervil

Rub chicken breast on both sides with mustard.  Mix together flour, dry mustard, and salt.  Dredge chicken breasts in flour mixture, making sure they are evenly coated and shaking off excess flour.  Melt ½ of butter in a large frying pan over medium low heat.  Cook 2 chicken breasts at a time for 5-7 minutes/side, adding remaining butter for the second pair of chicken breasts.  Remove chicken breast from pan and keep warm.  Add chicken broth to pan, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to get up all of the browned bits in the pan.  Add grapes.  Cook ten minutes over medium heat.  Increase heat to medium high and cook 5-7 minutes, or until liquid reduces to about half.  Lower heat and add chicken breast to the grapes for 2 minutes to reheat.  Makes 4 servings at about 6 grams of fat/serving.  I served his over brown rice mix, but white rice or couscous would also be nice.

chicken-with-mustard-and-grapes

Variation: This would also be good with half sweeter white wine, like Riesling, and half broth.  But the grapes give a lovely sweetness to the sauce, so I didn’t think the wine was necessary.

Chocolate Cherry Chewies

Published December 14, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

I am the original cookie monster.  Tell me there’s a holiday party and I’m there with a plate of cookies.

cookies

I can’t say I never met a cookie I didn’t like.  I’ve had a couple of cookie experiments that were barely good enough for dog biscuits (like the cookies in the lower left side of the photo above, a failed attempt at a low fat peanut butter cookie).  But I love cookies for much the same reason I love muffins – they re nice measured units.  You can eat them and know just how many fat grams you are eating. Eat a 3 gram cookie and have 3 grams of fat; take 2 and have 6 grams.  You can easily fit them in as a snack.  I try to keep my cookies between 2 and 4 grams of fat/cookie.  One of my Principles is that snacks should be 4 grams and under, so that you can eat lots of them.  You can also freeze most cookies, so you can create a freezer full of carefully-packed snacks to take out when the midnight munchies hit.  And of course, most of the time cookies are delicious.

Chocolate Cherry Chewies are the cookie that everyone says “these can’t be low fat” about.  They are VERY chocolaty, the outside is kind of crisp and the inside is chewy and melty.  They keep and freeze well.  The original recipe came from Cooking Light.

Chocolate Cherry Chewies

1  cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2/3 cup dried tart cherries
3 Tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips (I used really good chocolate to give it that extra flavor)
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degree.s  Coat baking sheets lightly with cooking spray.

Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup and level.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Place butter and sugar into large bowl of a mixer and beat at high speed until well-blended.  Add vanilla and egg and beat well.  Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add flour mixture.  Be sure to scrape bowl and beaters.  Fold in cherries and chocolate chips.  This makes a very stiff dough that you can almost shape with your hands.

Drop by tablespoonful 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes or just until set (tops will begin to crack). Remove from oven and cool on pan for 5 minutes to allow cookies to firm up. Remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks.  Makes 30 cookies with 2.7 grams of fat/cookie.

chocolate-cherry-chewies

Variation: I often make this with dried sweetened cranberries rather than cherries, because the cherries are sometimes hard to find.  They’re just as good.

Luckshen Kugel (Noodle Pudding)

Published December 11, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Luckshen Kugel is my ultimate comfort food – and these days who doesn’t need a little comfort.  A Kugel, according to Wikipedia, is “any one of a wide variety of traditional baked Jewish side dishes or desserts consisting of ground or processed vegetables, fruit, or other starches combined with a thickening agent (such as oil, egg, or flour).  Luckshen are egg noodles.

My mother’s luckshen kugel was delicious – and very high in fat.   Six or so eggs were mixed in, and I remember we kids competing to dot the top of the kugel with at least one stick of butter.  My mother usually made the kugel as a side dish to go with roasted chicken or a pot roast. I often just eat a big slab of it as a main dish, take it for lunch to be reheated (which it does well, but it doesn’t freeze well), and, I confess, I sometimes even eat it for breakfast.  It’s easy to make, and quite forgiving of substitutions.

Luckshen Kugel (Noodle Pudding)

Cooking spray
8 ounce package of yolk-free noodles (the wide kind, not the skinny ones)
3 firm apples, peeled, cored, quartered and cut crosswise into ½ inch slices
½ cup raisins (I use golden raisins)
2 cups of egg substitute
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a 9 x 13 cake pan with cooking spray.

Cook noodles in a large pot according to package directions (don’t overcook).  Drain noodles and put them back in the pot (no sense making another dish dirty).  Mix apples and raisins into noodles.  Mix in egg substitute and then sugar and cinnamon.  Mix so that ingredients are thoroughly combined.  Pour noodles into prepared pan.  Cover with foil and bake for one hour.  Remove foil. Bake for an additional 20 minutes until top starts to brown slightly and liquid is completely absorbed.   This makes 8 large servings with about 1 gram of fat/serving.

noodle-pudding

Variation:  This recipe can be varied in many ways: more or less sugar or cinnamon, no apples, no raisins, or maybe add some other dried fruit.  Some people mix in a cup of cottage cheese.  At any synagogue potluck , there will be two or three kugels, each made from a family’s treasured recipe – and they’re all good.  The one above is my mom’s recipe without the fat, and to be honest, since it is a recipe from the “old country”, it never had measurements. I just mixed and baked.  I measured this time so I could give you a recipe.  Here’s one piece:
noodle-pudding-piece

Next Page »

ABOUT KAREN

I have lost 200 pounds. I did not do it through surgery – I don’t like knives and needles – or by joining a club, vigorous exercise, or rigorous dieting. I did it by gourmet cooking. To be precise, by cooking low fat, really delicious food. I love to cook as much as I love to eat. Food magazines are some of my favorite reading. I would feel deprived if I couldn’t have the sensuous experience of good food crossing my lips. This blog is about my perpetual feast, my passionate love of food, with recipes, photos, and occasional advice and principles that I have learned along the way.

More about me.

AddThis Feed Button

Follow me on Twitter

  • Ordered capri pants from Land's End in the hope that summer will someday happen. #still 48 degrees 2 weeks ago
  • It was snowing this morning. In May! The snap peas I planted are shivering in horror. I think the geraniums fainted. 3 weeks ago

Archives

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.