Pumpkin Pie Spiced Pretzels

Pumpkin Pie Spiced Pretzels

Last year I invented the Pumpkin Pie Truffles that I posted last week. To keep my creative juices going, I decided to get imaginative again. I'm trying to eat a LITTLE bit healthier so I wanted to use something that's relatively lower in fat. What could I use as the basis of a new fall recipe? Pretzels are low fat, tasty, and easy to add flavor! A little thinking and one trip to the grocery store and here is what I got:

PUMPKIN PIE SPICED PRETZELS

1 lb Tiny Pretzel Twists (I use Rold Gold)

1/2 stick butter, melted
3 T honey

3/4 C white sugar

1 T Tone's Pumpkin Pie Spice

Heat oven to 225º. In a small sauce pan, melt the butter and honey. While butter is melting mix the sugar and spice together. When the butter is melted, drizzle mixture over the pretzels and toss gently to coat. Sprinkle the sugar spice blend over the sticky pretzels and turn gently to coat. Bake the pretzels for about an hour, turning every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and as soon as they are cool enough to handle, break them apart as they cool to prevent having one giant clump of pretzels.

If you have more self-control than I do, store leftovers in an airtight container.

Sweet Hot Almonds

Sweet Hot Almonds

Sweet AND savory--a taste combination that is hard to describe and impossible to beat. These glazed nuts are sweet while you're eating them and spicy hot as you swallow. Make more than you think you'll need because you'll need them!

SWEET HOT ALMONDS

1/2 stick butter

3/4 C real maple syrup

1 t cayenne pepper (adjust to your taste)

1 pound almonds or  pecans

Melt the butter in a large non-stick skillet. Add the maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Heat over medium high until boiling. Add almonds. Cook, stirring constantly, until the butter and syrup have cooked to a glaze. Carefully spread onto a buttered cookie sheet into a single layer to cool. As they cool, be sure that they are separated. Store in a sealed container if there are any left.

Easy Hummus

Easy Hummus

Once in a while I try to eat more healthy foods. Hummus is a very protein-rich alternative to most dips and it's EASY to make fresh so you know what goes into it! If you have some lemon zest, toss  little in to brighten the flavor a little. I've never had leftovers when I serve this to friends!

EASY HUMMUS

2 C canned garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1/3 C tahini (near the peanut buttter at Hy-Vee)
1/3 C lemon juice
1 t salt
3 cloves garlic, halved
1 T olive oil
1 pinch paprika
1 t minced fresh parsley

Place beans, tahini, juice, salt, and garlic in a blender and process until smooth. It should be about as thick as guacamole. Transfer to a serving dish.

Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with paprika and parsley. Serve with fresh cut vegetables (carrots, broccoli, sweet peppers, cauliflower) or crusty toasted bread.

Cody's Crusty Bourbon Beer Bread

Cody's Crusty Bourbon Beer Bread

It's fall and time for GOOD bread, even when you're trying to avoid carbs! (Everything in moderation.) I recently adapted this recipe to include some local ingredients. This is a very crusty, chewy bread similar to sourdough without the need for a starter. If you aren't close to the Quad Cities, use the best you can find.

CODY'S CRUSTY BOURBON BEER BREAD

3 C All-Purpose Flour
2 T Sugar
1 T Baking Powder
1 t Salt
1 C Great River Oktoberfest Beer (or Roller Dam Red if the Oktoberfest is out of season)
1/2 C Mississippi River Distilling Company Cody Road Bourbon 
2 T Honey
3/4 stick Butter, melted.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the beer, bourbon, and honey all at once and mix only until the batter is evenly moistened.

Put 1/2 of the melted butter in the bottom of a 9x5 bread pan. Put the batter on the butter and top with the rest of the melted butter. 

Bake at 350º for one hour or until the crust is dark golden and a pick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool on a rack. Don't expect any leftovers. 

Variations:

1. You can omit the bourbon and increase the beer to 12 oz if you prefer.
2. Decrease the honey to 1 T and add 3 bulbs of roasted garlic
3. Decrease the honey to 1 T and add 4 strips of crisp bacon and 3/4 C shredded Cheddar cheese. I substituted the bacon grease from cooking the bacon for the melted butter in the bread pan.
4. (12/20/12) Use dark beer (Like Great River Brewery's Farmer Brown Ale) instead of the red beer and add 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon.

Citrus Rind Candy

Citrus Rind Candy

I get to go to Arizona every couple of years for Christmas. It's always good to spend a few days with my parents and my sister and her family. Friday night at her house is always Pizza Night and she makes some GREAT artisan pizzas with her own homemade crust. One night after dinner she shared her technique for making orange rind candy from her home grown oranges. It's very simple and I've also used lemon rind which makes a nice variation. Use these as a nice after dinner treat or drop about a one inch piece into a snifter of cognac in the winter time. Crumble them and they make a great addition to home made blueberry muffins.

CITRUS RIND CANDY

Choose 3 or 4 oranges or 5-6 lemons for their bright color and smooth rinds.
Wash them to remove everything that gets on them between Arizona and Iowa!

Using a sharp vegetable peeler, remove just the outside colorful part of the rind, leaving the white pith on the fruit. Make strips as long as you can--they are easier to handle in the process. Cover with water in a small sauce pan, about 2" should do. Bring the water to a boil and keep boiling for 10 minutes. Drain the water. Notice that their is a lot of color from the rind in the water. This is good. Cover with water again and boil for another 10 minutes. Drain again. cover again with about 2 cups of water and a cup of white sugar. Boil again for another 10 minutes. 

BE CAREFUL, this is very hot! Using kitchen tongs, remove the peels from the syrup and lay out on a drying rack. I don't have a drying rack so I cover a pizza pan with about 1/4" of sugar and lay the peels in a single layer to cool and dry. The drying takes 2-3 days or more, depending on the humidity.  These will become very crisp. Be creative in using them! Store in an airtight container after they are completely dried. 

If you want to be real frugal, use the left over syrup for pancakes or cook it to hard crack stage, pour it onto a sheet to cool and break it into hard candy. Juice the fruit and enjoy it, too! I'll try this with limes sometime but I think the lime rind is thinner and would be harder to use. My cholesterol medicine won't allow me to have grapefruit, but I'm sure that would be good, too.

Pumpkin Pie Truffles

This is my first attempt at a blog but I've been asked many times why I don't write a cookbook. Well, this IS the 21st century so my cookbook is a blog. Thanks for visiting.

As an adult I always lived fairly close to my parents, mostly because I love mom's cooking and wanted to be able to get to their house for holidays. Mom developed an art of using very simple ingredients to create some of the most incredible dishes. When they retired and moved away I was faced with  the prospect of my first Thanksgiving without mom's cooking. I knew I could do dinner but I wanted mom's recipe for pumpkin pie. Hers was THE BEST pumpkin pie ever, and it was different than any other recipe I had ever tasted so I needed HER recipe.

Several weeks before Thanksgiving I called to get her secret recipe. I told her that I liked her pumpkin pie better than ANY other that I'd ever had and asked if she would share her special recipe. She said simply, "Oh, Jon, I don't have it right here. Just buy the Libby's canned pumpkin and use that recipe!" I insisted that she MUST have altered the recipe to make hers better than anyone else could make. She said, "No, follow that recipe exactly!" Lo and behold, I tried it and it was PERFECT! So much for mom's secret!

Sometimes it's not necessary or prudent to make a whole pie. Sometimes I just want a bite or two of pumpkin pie. So, here's what I invented.

Pumpkin Pie Truffles

First, make a batch of pumpkin pie filling following the Libby's FAMOUS PUMPKIN PIE recipe on their can.

3/4 c Sugar

1/2 t Salt

1 t Ground Cinnamon

1/2 t Ground Ginger

1/4 t Ground Cloves

2 large Eggs

1 can (15 oz) Libby's Pure Pumpkin

1 can (12 oz) Evaporated Milk

Mix dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a large bowl, stir in the pumpkin and the sugar/spice mixture. Gradually stir in the evaporated milk.

DO NOT USE A CRUST! Put the filling into a greased deep dish pie pan or a greased 9x9 cake pan. Bake at 425º for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350º and bake another 40-50 minutes, until a pick inserted at the center comes  out clean. Cool on a rack.

While the filling is cooling, roughly crush 1/2 box Nabisco Nilla Wafers  in a zipper bag. Leave some chunks--you don't want powdered wafers!

When the filling is cool put 1/2 of the filling in a big bowl and stir in the Nilla crumbs. Use the other half of the filling for ice cream topping (you're welcome!) The mixture should be thick enough to scoop into balls, but not dry. 

Using a 1 oz ice cream scoop (I got mine at a good kitchen supply store) to dip the filling into balls. Put the balls on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Freeze while you melt the chocolate.

While the pumpkin balls are freezing melt a pound of white chocolate or almond bark in a small saucepan over a double boiler. Be careful not to get water in the chocolate or it will seize and that's a mess. When the coating is smooth and melted, use a fork to dip the balls one at a time, shaking the excess coating off the ball and back into the pan. Place back on the wax paper. Before they cool and harden, sprinkle with orange colored sugar or other decoration.

These freeze well or will store in the fridge but they are best when served at room temperature.