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Whole-Wheat Bread * how to proof yeast * how to knead bread dough
2 packages (or cakes) yeast
½ c. warm water
1/3 c. honey
3 c. whole-wheat flour
1 Tbsp salt
1/4 c. shortening
1 2/3 c. warm water
3 1/2 to 4 c. bread flour or all-purpose flour
Dissolve the yeast in the 1/2 c. warm water and add honey. Mix, then set aside to proof (about 5 minutes).
In a very large bowl, mix whole-wheat flour and salt. Add shortening and 1 2/3 c. warm water and mix well with a fork. Add yeast mixture and mix well again. Add three cups of bread flour (or all-purpose flour) and mix first with the fork, then with your hands.
Flour working surface well and knead for a full ten minutes, adding more flour as needed (up to another cup). Grease a very large bowl and turn the dough until greased on all sides. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm spot until about doubled in size. Punch down dough, then divide and shape by hand into two loaves. Place in greased loaf pans, cover with a towel, and allow to rise another hour or so. When dough has doubled in size again, place in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.
Turn out on racks and rub tops with butter. Allow to cool for at least ten minutes before cutting. Makes two loaves.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make whole-wheat bread.
I’ve been planning this episode for a long time, because everyone should know how to make bread from scratch. It’s not hard, but it does take a lot of time because the dough has to rise twice. This will also be the final episode of Real Life Cooking. The old episodes will remain for you to listen to, though.
This recipe is my mother’s, and as you may remember, she wasn’t actually a great cook. But she could make bread and it was always amazing. I’d like to say this is a family recipe passed down for generations, but she actually got it off the back of a flour bag when I was a kid.
You’ll need two kinds of flour for this recipe, whole wheat flour, preferably stone-ground because it’s coarser and more robust, and either bread flour or all-purpose flour. You’re also going to need a lot of both, so make sure you have plenty. If you bought whole wheat flour during lockdown, thinking you were going to make bread, it’s probably pretty stale by now so I recommend you buy fresh. Just, you know, an observation, no real reason. Also, check the date on your yeast. You need ordinary yeast for this recipe, not quick-rise. You’ll also need a really big mixing bowl and two large loaf pans.
First, clean your working surface and give it a good scrub. Then get out your very biggest mixing bowl, the one you sometimes wonder why you own because it takes up so much space. Give it a wipe to make sure it’s clean if you haven’t used it for a while. You only need one giant mixing bowl even though if you read the recipe, it sounds like you need two. We’ll go over that in a minute.
Get out a small bowl too. A cereal bowl will do. Measure half a cup of warm water into the bowl. The water shouldn’t be anywhere near boiling but it also needs to be more than just lukewarm. Then add the yeast to the water and stir it in until it dissolves, more or less. It’s easiest to do this with a whisk if you have one, but a fork or even a spoon will do. Don’t worry if you can’t get it to dissolve all the way. Add the honey to the mixture and stir it in until it’s dissolved, then set the bowl aside.
This process of adding warm water and honey or sugar to yeast and letting it sit for five or ten minutes is called proofing. Sometimes a recipe will just direct you to proof your yeast, without any further instructions or amounts, or it might say to proof one package of yeast in X amount of water. Even if a recipe doesn’t say so, you have to add some form of su
Cranberry Coffee Cake
Season 3 · Episode 5
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 06:02
Cranberry Coffee Cake * how to make substitute buttermilk
Cranberry Coffee Cake
1/2 c. half and half
1 tsp lemon juice
2 c. flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
1 egg
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp almond extract
2 c. frozen cranberries (do not thaw), plus a few handfuls more for topping
2 Tbsp turbinado sugar or other large-crystal sugar
Grease and flour 9x9 pan. Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
In a small bowl, mix half and half with lemon juice and set aside. (You can substitute 1/2 cup buttermilk for the half-and-half/lemon juice mixture.)
In a medium bowl, mix flour with salt and baking powder and set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add egg and extracts. Mix well, then add flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk mixture. Fold in 2 c. cranberries last. Spoon into prepared pan and top with reserved cranberries and turbinado sugar. Bake about 45 minutes. Cool in pan about 15 minutes before turning out.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cranberry coffee cake. The whole reason I’m cooking with cranberries in May is because I discovered a bag of frozen cranberries in the freezer the other day, left over from fall. I found this recipe to use them up without needing to thaw them. If I had more frozen cranberries I’d tinker with the recipe and try to get it to work in a loaf pan, but it’s quite good as it is.
Cream Cheese Tarts
Season 3 · Episode 4
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 05:23
Cream Cheese Tarts
8-oz package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
6 vanilla wafers
1/2 can (21 oz can) cherry pie filling
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line muffin pan with cupcake papers. Put one vanilla wafer in each.
Mix the cream cheese and sugar together until fluffy, then add egg and vanilla. Beat well. Spoon the mixture into each cup on top of the vanilla wafers.
Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and allow to cool. The tarts will deflate and form a dip in the middle. Spoon cherry pie filling into the dips. Chill. You can double this recipe to make 12.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cream cheese tarts.
Okay, finally, yes, this is the start of our third season. I’m going to try to release two episodes a month, but I can’t promise that I’ll manage it every month. We’ll see. The episodes themselves are usually pretty quick to record and edit, but it takes time to actually make the recipes and record all the details properly. Anyway, let’s learn how to make cream cheese tarts.
I have a vague memory of finding this recipe in a cookbook I got from the library, but I don’t remember which one. It makes a pretty and unusual treat that’s showy enough for office parties or holiday parties while being easy to throw together quickly. You just have to have enough time to let the tarts cool completely and then chill in the fridge after they’re done.
Double Chocolate Cookies
Season 3 · Episode 3
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 05:10
Double Chocolate Cookies * cooking with cocoa powder
Double Chocolate Cookies
1 c flour
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c plus 2 Tbsp butter
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 c chocolate chips
2/3 c. walnut pieces (optional)
Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla, blend well. Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture, mixing well after each addition. Dough will be thick. Add the chocolate chips and mix in well.
Bake on lightly greased baking sheets at 350 Fahrenheit for 9-11 minutes. Makes about two and a half dozen.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make double chocolate cookies.
I found this recipe online while I was looking for something else, but it made something like five dozen cookies. I don’t need five dozen cookies. I halved the recipe and made a few tweaks, and the result is a more manageable two or two and a half dozen.
You make these cookies the same way you make ordinary chocolate chip cookies, but you use cocoa in place of some of the flour. The cocoa in question is unsweetened cocoa powder. Don’t substitute any kind of sweetened cocoa mix or the result will be horrendous. These cookies are plenty sweet on their own, trust me.
Corned Beef and Cabbage
Season 3 · Episode 2
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 08:02
Corned beef and cabbage * how to prepare cabbage
Corned Beef and Cabbage
about 2 to 3 lb piece of corned beef brisket
one cabbage, cut into chunks
1 lb carrots, scraped and cut up
1 onion, diced (optional)
some potatoes, peeled and cut up (optional)
peppercorns (optional)
Place the meat fatty side down in a very large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer about one hour per pound of meat. Add peppercorns if you’re using them. Add water as needed as it steams off.
About half an hour before the meat is done, add all vegetables except the cabbage. Ten minutes later, add the cabbage. Continue to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the cabbage is fork tender.
Cut the meat into thick slices against the grain. Serve hot with the vegetables.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make corned beef and cabbage.
I’m not officially out of the season hiatus but it is spring break and I’m taking the week off work. Since I was making corned beef and cabbage anyway, I thought I’d do an episode about it.
Corned beef is not to everyone’s taste, and cabbage certainly isn’t. I cannot stand cold corned beef on a sandwich, and I’m not a huge fan of cabbage in general, but for some reason I love the combination of corned beef and cabbage. The salty, fatty meat contrasts beautifully with the mild, clean flavor of cabbage. I also add carrots, and if you want to throw in an onion too I approve although I don’t usually bother. You can also add potatoes, but if you do, you’re going to need a really big pot, more of a cauldron.
Grilled Cheese
Season 3 · Episode 1
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 06:36
Grilled Cheese * how to use a broiler
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make grilled cheese two different ways: under a broiler and in a skillet.
I made grilled cheese for myself today and realized that not everyone knows how to do it. It’s really easy, so let’s go over it.
Let’s start with the slightly less bad for you version of grilled cheese. This one requires you to use your oven’s broiler, and there are a few specific things you need to know about how to do that.
Most ovens have a setting that says broil. What this means is that only the top heating element will turn on, and it will get very hot. It’s used for searing certain dishes, often to finish, but you can use it to cook steaks in a pinch. I’ve never been too good at that so pretty much the only thing I use the broiler for is to make grilled cheese.
First, before you do anything else, move the top rack in your oven up to the very top slot. Do not turn on the oven yet!
Next, get out your bread. I just use ordinary sandwich bread. Then get out your cheese. You can use presliced cheese meant for sandwiches, the kind my brother and I called smashed cheese when we were little, or you can slice thin pieces of any kind of cheese so that you have enough to nicely cover the tops of both pieces of bread. I’m assuming you’re only making two slices, but of course you can make more at once if you like.
Now you have a choice. If you like your grilled cheese toasted on both sides, it takes a little more work. If you’re fine with just toasting the top and having the bottom still soft, it’s easier and quicker. We’ll go over both ways.
If you want to toast the bottom first, slice your cheese but set it aside. Don’t put it on the bread yet. Instead, set your bread slices directly on the oven rack, but near the front so you can keep an eye on them. Do not shut the oven door all the way. You’ll notice that the oven will naturally stay propped open a few inches if you don’t shove it all the way closed, and that’s because it needs to stay open while you’re broiling.
Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies
Season 2 · Episode 27
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 07:59
Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies * how to make butterscotch
Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies
saltine crackers
1 c butter, unsalted
1 c light brown sugar
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 oz, or about 2 cups)
1 c M&M candies (optional)
1 c chopped nuts (optional)
sprinkles (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with tinfoil and grease. Place crackers all over it in a single layer, touching. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and brown sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and stir constantly while boiling for about four minutes. Pour evenly over the crackers. Bake 7 minutes.
Remove from oven and pour chocolate chips evenly over the pan. Allow them to sit for a minute or two to melt, then spread with a knife. Sprinkle with M&M candies, chopped nuts, decorative sprinkles, etc., as desired.
Allow to cool for several hours or until the chocolate hardens, then break apart and serve.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make chocolate butterscotch cookies. I don’t actually know what else to call them. The butterscotch does not taste like butterscotch flavoring, fortunately. It’s much, much better. [It may actually be toffee by the time it gets out of the oven, now that I think about it. Toffee is just butterscotch that’s been cooked longer.]
This is the recipe you make when you remember late at night that you promised to bring cookies for the office meeting the next day. You don’t have time to do anything fancy or run to the grocery store, but you want something everyone will like.
Sugar Cookies
Season 2 · Episode 25
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 15:31
Sugar Cookies * coloring dough * rolling out and cutting cookie dough * coloring sugar
Sugar Cookies
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c. butter
3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
food coloring (optional)
cinnamon candies (optional)
sparkle sugar (optional)
Mix dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar, then add egg and vanilla and blend well. Add a generous squirt of food coloring to the butter mixture and blend it in well. It should be really green (or whatever color). Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Divide dough, wrap in plastic, and chill for at least half an hour.
Preheat oven to 350 F and grease two cookie sheets. Roll out chilled dough on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes. Place on cookie sheets and decorate with sparkle sugar and cinnamon candies (if desired). Bake for 9-11 minutes. Makes about two dozen.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make sugar cookies! This is hands down the best sugar cookie recipe I’ve tried, and my family has made it for many, many years. We call them holly cookies because we use food coloring to dye the dough green, then cut them out in holly leaf shapes and decorate the tops with green crystal sugar and cinnamon candies like holly berries. I’ve included all the steps to make holly cookies, but if you don’t have a cookie cutter shaped like a holly leaf, you can use any shapes you like or just cut them out round.
Cranberry Relish
Season 2 · Episode 24
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 06:09
Cranberry relish * cooking cranberries
Cranberry Relish (small amount)
1/2 c. orange juice (or apple juice)
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 c. fresh cranberries
1/4 tsp allspice
Combine ingredients in a saucepan and heat to a boil. Turn heat down to medium low and simmer for 15 minutes. The sauce will thicken as it cools.
Cranberry Relish (large amount)
1 c. orange juice
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
12 oz fresh cranberries
Dissolve sugars and cinnamon in juice over medium heat. Stir in cranberries and simmer 10-20 minutes. The sauce will thicken as it cools.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cranberry relish, also called cranberry sauce, just in time for Thanksgiving.
I know many of us grew up with the cranberry relish that comes in a can, and which comes out of the can can-shaped, at which point an aunt or somebody slices it carefully into thin discs and arranges it on a plate, where it looks festive on the table and almost no one eats it. But you can make your own cranberry relish very easily from fresh cranberries that’s not only delicious, but it looks lovely in a glass compote if you own such a thing. It also takes very little time to make and can be done ahead.
Mashed Potatoes
Season 2 · Episode 23
Thursday, November 3, 2022 • Duration 13:22
Mashed potatoes * Cream Cheese-Garlic Mashed Potatoes * what “water to cover” means * parboiling
Cream Cheese-Garlic Mashed Potatoes
2 ½ lbs baking potatoes, peeled and quartered
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 stick salted butter, softened
1 ½ tsp sugar
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
about 1/4 c. milk
Boil potatoes until tender. Drain. Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Add all other ingredients to the potatoes and beat until fluffy. Add the milk last so you can adjust the amount; the milk is just for consistency. The potatoes should be creamy enough that they won’t dry out in the oven.
Grease a 9x9 baking dish and spoon in the potato mixture. Bake for 30 minutes or until heated through.
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make honest-to-goodness mashed potatoes from scratch. They won’t be lumpy, I promise.
Instant mashed potatoes are pretty good and they’re definitely fast, but homemade mashed potatoes are really easy to make. All you need is a few ingredients and some time. And a pot big enough to hold the potato pieces.
First, you need some potatoes. This is when you want to buy a bag of potatoes. White or yellow-fleshed potatoes are fine, but if you have red potatoes those will work too. Basically any potato will do. You can usually get a three or five pound bag of potatoes for a few dollars, and definitely go for what’s cheap. Don’t buy those individually wrapped potatoes meant for baking. They’re overpriced. Just buy a bag of cheap potatoes.
For this recipe you’ll need a 9x9 pan, two large mixing bowls or one large and one medium, and a small bowl. This makes it sound complicated but it’s actually not.
First, turn the oven on to preheat. Then grease and flour the pan. The initial recipe just said to grease it, but you’ll get a better result if you grease and flour it the way you would for a cake. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out the zucchini pineapple bread episode from August of 2019.
Next, measure the half and half into the small bowl. This can be a cereal bowl; it doesn’t have to be big to hold half a cup of milk. Add the lemon juice and stir it in. Basically what you’re doing here is making substitute buttermilk, so if you happen to have buttermilk on hand, you can use it instead of the half and half and lemon juice. Ordinarily a recipe that calls for buttermilk or its substitute also calls for baking soda, because soda neutralizes the acids in foods like buttermilk, but in this case those acids give a lovely sour flavor to the bread that goes well with the citrusy flavor of the cranberries.
Set the milk mixture aside. You may notice it getting kind of weird and clumpy-looking, but that’s fine. The lemon juice curdles the milk slightly, giving it the acidic tang you want.
Next, measure the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium or large mixing bowl. Whisk it well or blend it with a fork, then set it aside too.
Next, cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until it’s light and fluffy, then add the eggs and extracts. If you don’t have almond extract, you can use a full teaspoonful of vanilla, but almond really brings out the flavor of the cranberries.
Now you just need to add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk mixture, just as you would for an ordinary cake. The batter will be thicker than cake batter, more like cookie dough. Once it’s blended, you need to fold in the cranberries.
Until now, you should have the cranberries in the freezer. You don’t want them to thaw out because they need to remain frozen until they’re in the oven. Measure them out now and toss them on top of the batter, but then—and this is important—mix them in as quickly as possible. You don’t need to be caref
The recipe as listed in the show notes is halved from the original, since I rarely need to make 12 of these things. They’re rich, and since they’re made in ordinary muffin pans, quite large. They taste a little like cherry danishes and a little like cheesecake, but with a lighter texture. You can easily double the recipe if you like, in which case you’ll need a larger mixing bowl.
You only need one mixing bowl for this recipe, and if you’re only making six you can use a medium mixing bowl instead of a large. You’ll also need a muffin pan and some cupcake liners. If you remember to get the cream cheese and egg out of the fridge a few hours beforehand to warm to room temperature, it’s much easier to make these.
Put the cupcake liners in the muffin pan and turn the oven on to preheat. Then place a single vanilla wafer into the bottom of each cupcake liner, flat side down. Yes, it looks too small. No, do not put more than one in each cup. The vanilla wafer just adds a little bit of texture to the finished tart and implies the existence of a crust without you needing to actually make one.
Next, cream together the cream cheese and sugar just like you would cream butter and sugar to make a cake or cookies. If you started with room temperature cream cheese, it shouldn’t take much time at all to get the sugar fully incorporated. Then add the egg and vanilla extract and mix it up thoroughly, until it’s light and fluffy.
Hopefully by this time the oven is ready, because you are done and just about ready to bake it. I told you this was easy. Fill each muffin cup with the cream cheese mixture, plopping it on top of the vanilla wafer. You’ll fill the cups pretty much all the way to the top.
Then put the pan in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes. When the time is up, take it out and set the pan on the stove or sink to cool completely.
When you first take them out of the oven, the tarts are puffed up like little soufflés. Just like a soufflé, they’ll start to deflate and crack almost immediately, and that’s fine. They’re supposed to. They’ll form a dip in the middle as they sink, and once they’re cool, that’s where you’ll spoon the cherry filling in.
Cherry filling is canned cherries cooked down with sugar and a few other ingredients, like lemon juice, and thickene
For this recipe you’ll need two mixing bowls, one large, one medium, and at least one cookie sheet. You can use butter and an egg straight from the fridge, but it’s a lot easier to make the dough when all the ingredients are room temperature, so if you think of it earlier in the day, take a stick of butter and an egg out of the fridge and set them on the counter. You’ll actually need two tablespoons more of butter than one stick, but I’m assuming that you already have some butter out next to the toaster.
In the smaller mixing bowl, blend the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon with a fork or whisk. Be careful with the cocoa since it’s very fine and will poof everywhere if you try to handle it quickly. It’s hard to measure and easy to inhale. Once you get it mixed with the flour it will settle down some, though.
Set that bowl aside and put the butter and sugar in the larger bowl to cream together. This is also a good time to grease the baking sheets and turn the oven on to preheat. Once the butter and sugar are creamed together until they’re light and fluffy, add the egg and vanilla and mix them in well.
I’m going through this quickly because it’s so similar to my chocolate chip cookie recipe, which was our very first episode. If you need to brush up on how to measure flour or how to cream butter and sugar, listen to that episode because it walks you through the process.
Once you’ve mixed the dough except for the chocolate chips (and nuts, if you decide to add them), the dough will be extremely thick. You’ll wonder how on earth you can mix in those chocolate chips, but it’s actually not hard.
Place spoonfuls of dough on the cookie sheet. These cookies don’t spread very much so you can put them pretty close together without ending up with one big cookie. Pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes, or nine if you made your cookies very small.
When the timer goes off, take the pan out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes. You’ll notice that the cookies are a little puffed up when you first get them out of the oven, but they shrink and crack a little as they start to cool. After about five minutes or so, use a spatula to move the cookies from the pan to a wire rack if you have one.
Depending on how big or small you make the cookies, you’ll get between two and three dozen from this recipe, so it’s easier if you have two coo
For this recipe you need to be able to keep the meat submerged while it boils, while still having room at the end for the cabbage and other vegetables, so you need a really big pot. Try to find a piece of meat that’s under three pounds or so in weight, because while it doesn’t look so big in the store, once you get it home and stick it in the pot, you realize just how enormous that thing is. Also, just a heads-up, corned beef and cabbage is considered traditionally Irish although it’s actually not, so in the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day prices are high, but they often drop afterwards. I ended up paying $2 for a head of cabbage and that is just highway robbery.
Anyway, this is a really easy recipe to make. It just takes a few hours to cook, so about three hours before you plan to eat, you need to get started.
Open the package of meat and discard the little packet of spices that is usually included. I’ve used them before and found they don’t add anything to the dish and just get all over the cabbage, looking gross. If you like little seeds and crap stuck to your cabbage, that’s fine. I throw that mess out. The corned beef is already highly flavored as is and doesn’t need any help beyond maybe some peppercorns if you have them.
Put the meat fatty side down in the pot and add as much water as the pot will safely hold. Ordinarily I’d say “add water to cover,” but you’re going to have to add water as it steams off so start with plenty.
Turn the stove on high and bring the water to a boil, then turn it down to about medium or just above so it simmers briskly. Whatever you do, don’t turn it on to high and then wander off to hang pictures in your newly painted bedroom, only remembering the stove is on when you hear the violent sloshing and hissing as water hits the burner.
After you turn the heat down, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of gross whitish foamy gunk floating on the water. That’s just fat that has rendered out of the meat. Skim it off with a spatula or something and throw it out.
You want to boil, or rather simmer, the meat for about an hour per pound. My piece of meat is two and a half pounds exactly so
Turn the oven on to the broil setting and for approximately two minutes, do something else while it heats. After just about two minutes, look into the propped-open oven door and look at your bread.
It’s probably starting to toast. Watch it like a hawk until it’s as done as you want it, then turn the broiler off and open the door all the way. Carefully remove the half-toasted bread, and I usually use a spatula or metal tongs because if you use a cloth to grab them, it’s easy to accidentally knock the bread through the bars of the oven rack so it falls into the oven.
When you’ve got it removed, set it down on the counter or plate or whatever toasted side down. Arrange your cheese on the untoasted side. Obviously, if you don’t want to toast the bottom you can skip straight to this part.
Once you’ve got the cheese on the bread, put it into the oven again directly on the top rack, cheese side up of course. Prop the oven door open again and turn the broiler on.
After a few minutes, the cheese will start to get melty and bubbly and the edges of the bread, where it’s not covered by cheese, will start to brown. Watch it carefully and as soon as it’s as done as you want it, turn the broiler off and remove the toast from the oven carefully. Tada, you have made grilled cheese! It makes a lovely snack on a chilly day, or the perfect accompaniment to tomato soup.
It does not keep at all, but only a monster or a very small child would leave grilled cheese uneaten.
You can use any kind of cheese you want, whether or not it’s supposed to be a type of cheese that melts. You’re basically just heating the cheese up and maybe toasting it just a bit. I usually use cheddar.
Befo
This recipe only really needs four ingredients: saltine crackers, butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. That’s it. You can put these together in half an hour, literally. The only drawback is that they need to cool completely before you can break them apart, which takes at least two hours. But they’re just fine sitting out overnight while they cool and while you sleep, and in the morning you just grab them and go.
For this recipe, you need a baking sheet and a pot. That’s it. No mixing bowls to wash. You don’t even really need to measure out anything but the brown sugar.
First, line your largest baking sheet with tinfoil and grease the foil. This is one time when it really is easiest to use the spray stuff, but you can also grease it with just a bit of vegetable oil, shortening, or butter. As soon as you’ve done that, get the saltine crackers out. Yes, just ordinary saltines that you eat with soup or chili.
You’re going to need at least one sleeve of crackers, depending on the size of your baking sheet. Mine fits 48 crackers. Place them on the tinfoil in a single layer so that they’re all touching on all sides. If you have the kind of crackers that are joined together in pairs, you can either keep them in pairs or snap them apart, it doesn’t really matter. Once you have the baking sheet covered, set it aside, but make sure it’s somewhere you can get to easily.
Next, turn the oven on to preheat. Then put two sticks of butter and a cup of light brown sugar into a pot. The recipe says saucepan, but that’s basically just a fancy word for a pot. Remember to pack the brown sugar firmly into the measuring cup. You don’t need to soften the butter before using it, because you’re about to boil the heck out of it with the brown sugar to make butterscotch.
Butterscotch is related to caramel and toffee, but it’s richer than caramel and softer than toffee. But don’t be nervous—you don’t need a candy thermometer or anything. Just throw the butter and sugar into the pot together and turn the heat on to about medium, or maybe a little higher. Unsalted butter is best but if you only have salted butter, that’s fine too.
Heat the butter and
For this recipe, you’ll need a large mixing bowl, a medium mixing bowl, a surface where you can roll out the dough and something to roll the dough out with, and at least one cookie cutter in a shape you like.
If you want to make holly cookies the way I do, you’ll also need some cinnamon candies, and that can be a problem. These are the small round pieces of red candy that are cinnamon flavored, usually called cinnamon imperials or red hots. You can get them specifically for baking, but those are actually not very good for this recipe. The best red hots you can find are sold by Brach’s, but they can be hard to track down. I was going to order them online this year and actually went to the Brach’s website to find them, but when I followed their link to buy, it took me to an Amazon page that said they were sold out. In the end, I lucked out and found them in a small grocery store I almost never go to. Brach’s are better than the ones sold for baking because they’re much cheaper, but also because they’re flattened instead of round. Those big round baking ones tend to just melt into goo in the oven. But you can use any kind you can get your hands on, or, of course, you can leave them out. But they do really contribute to the overall flavor of the cookie.
A few hours before you start the recipe, it’s a good idea to get the butter out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature. You can do the same with the eggs too. If you forget, though, no problem.
These cookies follow the same basic method for most cookies, including the chocolate chip cookie recipe from our very first episode. If you haven’t listened to that one, you might go back and do so for basics about measuring flour and mixing dough.
First, grease your baking sheets and set them aside. I use a little butter to grease the pans, since I have a theory that greasing the pan with the same fat you used in the recipe gives better results, plus I already have the butter out. When you unwrap the butter, especially if it’s at room temperature, there’s often some left on the paper wrapping. I put the wrapper face down on the pan and rub it around as an easy way to grease the pan.
It’s best to use two pans minimum for this recipe. It should make just enough to
I’ve included two recipes in the show notes, because I have two recipes that are very similar but make different amounts. You can also half or double the recipe you prefer or just tweak it to fit your own taste.
First, you’ll need fresh cranberries. These show up in the produce section of the grocery store right before Thanksgiving and they’re pretty cheap, two dollars for a 12 ounce bag in my local Walmart this year. You can sometimes get them on sale. Keep them in the fridge until you’re ready to cook them. Before you start the recipe, pour the cranberries into a colander and give them a good rinse, and pick out any berries that are under- or over-ripe. Sometimes a bit of leaf or stem makes its way into the bag and you obviously want to remove that too. Fresh cranberries should be a nice red color and should be firm to the touch. If you cut one open, you’ll see that it’s mostly empty inside except for thin membranes that separate little round seeds.
For this recipe, you’ll need a saucepan. That’s it.
Start by deciding whether you need a lot of cranberry relish or just a little. The recipe that makes a lot uses the whole 12 ounce bag of cranberries, the recipe that makes a little uses two cups of fresh cranberries, which is half the bag. If you don’t have any use for the remaining half a bag, go ahead and make the larger recipe.
Measure the orange juice into the pot and add the sugar or sugars along with the cinnamon or allspice. One note about how much sugar these recipes call for: I think you can half it. I didn’t this time, but when I tasted the finished relish it was just so super sweet that I wished I had. Then again, as you know, I have been trying to eat a lot less sugar so everything tastes sweet right now. Also, one recipe calls for allspice and the other calls for cinnamon, but it doesn’t matter which you use. They’re both good. I think the allspice has a richer, more complex flavor, but cinnamon is always a winner.
Turn the heat up to about medium high and stir the orange juice and sugar as it heats, until the sugar has mostly dissolved into the orange juice and the mixture is starting to boil. Then turn the heat down to about medium and add the cranberries. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and let it cook, stirring occasionally. The liquid shouldn’t be at a full boil but at a brisk, energetic simmer.
An important thing to remember about cranberries is that they pop while cooking. Do not be alarmed, but do be careful, because they wi
Bagged potatoes are usually pretty small, but you’re going to chop them up and then mash them anyway so it doesn’t matter. Generally, grab two small to medium potatoes per person to make mashed potatoes. If you ended up with big potatoes, more the size of ones you’d expect to get if you ordered a baked potato in a restaurant, then one per person will do. When I’m making mashed potatoes just for myself, I’ll usually use four small potatoes, since that gives me plenty for leftovers.
You need to peel the potatoes first. You can do this with a paring knife if you don’t have a potato peeler, but really, a potato peeler only costs a buck or so and will literally last you your entire life, so it’s worth buying one. That said, I did go through a phase when I was in my late teens where I wanted to feel rustic, so I peeled potatoes with a knife. It’s not hard, and you can pretend to be a pioneer woman or Cinderella or a captive of pirates who have put you to work in the galley, only the pirate captain is secretly a kind man who falls for your honest beauty and your cooking skills, and eventually you become a pirate too, but you only steal from bad people. Also, the pirate captain is super handsome.
Anyway, peel the potatoes using your method of choice. It’s easiest to peel them over a trash can or bowl so you can just let the peels fall without worrying about clean-up later. If you’re using a knife, you can go ahead and trim off any bruised or rotten places while you work. If you’re using a peeler, you’ll need to trim the potatoes once you’re done and have switched to a knife to cut them up.
Potatoes, of course, are roots of the potato plant that grow underground. That means they’re dirty. Don’t worry that your hand holding the potato gets all grotty and the potato gets covered in muddy handprints. Once you’ve finished peeling, take your naked potatoes to the sink and rinse them and your hands. Then cut the potatoes into pieces. The pieces shouldn’t be too small. You want chunks about the size of, I don’t know, an egg—several inches across, don’t dice them up tiny.
Drop the pieces into your empty pot as you cut them. Once all the potatoes are cut up and in the pot, add enough water to just cover the potatoes.
