Pumpkin Syrup to Round out the Season

I have finally finished roasting the last of my pumpkins. Luckily, they keep a good long while if kept cool and dry. And I got to the last one before we finally got freezing weather here in lovely central New Jersey.

My favorite type of pumpkin to prep for later jamming and pieing and such are cheese pumpkins. These are delightfully rich with a touch of natural sweetness. They almost smell like cantaloupe when you cut into them. My 4 rather large pumpkins from Giamarese Farm yielded about 40 ounces of roasted mashed pumpkin. That's quite a bit for future use! And it also gave me about 9 cups of sweet, earthy pumpkin juice.

What to do? Time to make some Pumpkin Syrup! It's a slow process - but soooo worth it. As Alton Brown says - Your patience will be rewarded.

First, I took the pumpkin juice and simmered in down a bit to enhance the flavor. I kept it on a very low simmer, so it wouldn't over cook. When it simmered down to about 8 cups, I added 2 sticks of cinnamon, a little ground nutmeg, and some allspice berries and let it continue to gently simmer for about an hour.


I took out the spices, then added 1 cup of chai infused honey, 1 cup of white sugar, 1 cup of turbinado sugar, and one cup of the mashed, roasted pumpkin. This then simmered for about another hour.

The trick to make this smooth is to blend it all together. I took my stick blender and gave it a good whir. I then brought the whole thing up to a boil, stirring frequently. Watch it carefully or it will bubble over. Once it comes to a good boil, turn it off and remove from the heat. Let it cool
completely.

One of the blessings and curses of being an herbal student is that I tend to have bottles and jars a plenty. I put the the syrup in 3 cute little bottles.

I've kept this in my fridge for up to 6 months and it's been fine. It's divine in chai tea, heavenly over waffles, and oh so marvelous over ice cream.

You can always play with this recipe a bit. I've made it before adding some maple syrup or some brown sugar.  For me, an extra dash of cinnamon never hurts either.

This is the perfect way to keep the Season of Everything Pumpkin going, so you'll want to make  sure to have some on hand.

Put Out Cold Season with a litte Fire in Your Cider

Actually - it's a little fire in your apple cider vinegar.

For a number of years I've been studying about herbs and their power. About 15 years ago, I came across the well-known recipe from Rosemary Gladstar, a renown herbalist and healer, and in general a very cool lady. To tell you the truth, the recipe didn't sound very yummy, but it did sound mighty powerful to fight colds and sinus problems. So I gave it a shot. The original recipe for fire cider from Rosemary follows. 

• 1 part Garlic
  
• 1 part Horseradish
• 1 part Onions
• ½ part Fresh ginger
• Cayenne to taste (just a few grains will do)
• Honey to taste
• Apple Cider Vinegar.

Chop fresh garlic, onions, and grate the horseradish and fresh ginger. The amounts and proportions vary according to your particular taste. You can always adjust the flavors in future batches. Chop enough of the first four ingredients to fill a quart jar approximately half full. Put in wide mouth quart jar and cover with Apple Cider vinegar (keep vinegar about two to three inches above the herbs). Add cayenne to taste (just a small amount or will be too hot!). Let sit at least 4 weeks. Strain well, squishing out all the goodness, and discard spent herbs. Add honey to taste, 1/4 cup at a time (add the honey after you strain the rest of the herbs). Raw honey is best if you have it. Don't use store bought honey unless you are 100% sure it's real honey.

Fire cider should taste hot, spicy and sweet.

You can see Rosemary make her recipe here. Plus she explains the benefits of all the ingredients.

This is the way I first made my fire cider. There are lots of recipes available, and all have their own slight variation.

My recipe has changed over the course of time as well. I like to add a few cinnamon sticks, a handful of dried elderberries, a sliced orange &/or lemon, turmeric (I can never seem to find it fresh so I use a teaspoon of powdered), a dried thai dragon pepper or two, and extra ginger. Sometimes I'll add some astragalus root or licorice root.

Something else I do now - I store the infused fiery apple cider separately and add the honey as needed. One of the reasons I do that is to have the chance to use an assortment of infused honey's, depending on how I'm using my brew.

You'll find a number of ways to use fire cider in our newsletter. However, it's main use in our home is still to help battle those bugs of winter. I particularly use it when my sinuses are acting up.

This wonderful winter tonic is a remedy that was found in many kitchens in years past. With it's many uses, it's something that is easy, healthy and fun to make.

Playing With Pancakes

I can't help it. I'm a recipe diddler. I don't think I've ever just taken a recipe and followed it without any alteration. But there are some things I'm getting better about - I write down my changes. This way, I know if I've tried something and how it turned out.

Here is the original recipe, with the alterations I made. They were wonderful and fluffy and so very yummy. The second time I made them - still messing with the recipe - I added blueberries and drizzled them with vanilla honey.

Fluffy Pancakes
Ingredients:

Yield: 8 pancakes Mine made about 17 medium size

1 1/4 cups flour
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar (my alteration – 1 ½ tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon maple sugar)
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder (my alteration – add ½ teaspoon baking soda)
1 egg
1 1/3 cups milk (my alteration – 1 and almost 1/3 cups milk, finish up to 1/3 with vinegar – I used a pear cinnamon balsamic)
3 tablespoons oil (I used Grapeseed)
(add 1 tablespoon buttermilk powder)

Directions:

1 In a small bowl, whisk milk, egg, and oil together.
2 In a larger bowl, combine all dry ingredients.
3 Slowly add liquid mixture to dry mixture and whisk well. Let sit for 5 minutes.
4 Spray large frying pan with cooking spray, and heat to medium heat.
5 Wait until pan gets nice and hot.
6 Make pancakes whatever size you wish-- allowing top to form bubbles before turning over.
7 Cook until both sides are golden brown.

Serve with maple syrup, or whatever you wish to put on your pancakes! These can be frozen and toasted in the toaster to be reheated.

Now if you were to ask me how I came up with these changes - well, I couldn't really tell you. We had wanted pancakes, so I looked up a few recipes on line and fond a few that sounded interesting. I probably blended two together. Then I looked around my kitchen. I love maple flavor, so that's where the maple sugar came in. We love buttermilk pancakes, so that's why the powdered buttermilk. One of the recipes I read added vinegar. But why add plain old vinegar if you have something interesting. That's how it fell together.

So play with those recipes. It may not always work - but you might find magic! Just remember to write it down.

The Bestest Perfect Peanut Butter Cookie

For me, it's not the Holiday Season without lots and lots of Christmas cookies. I don't really eat that many ... well, maybe this time of year.... but I do love sharing them and finding new and interesting recipes. In fact, Cindy and I have a bakeathon the weekend after Thanksgiving when we get the first round of baking done.

Recipes come from all over. A real family favorite is your basic peanut butter cookie. And the best recipe I have is in an ancient tome - the 1957 Betty Crocker NEW Boys and Girls Cookbook. 




It's a well worn cookbook. I don't remember if it was mine or my husbands or where we got it, but it has lots of easy kid friendly recipes. It's also a bit of a time machine, showing how certain things have changed through the years. The kids comments crack me up.


 















I found this Peanut Butter Cookie recipe ages ago. It was always something the kids and I made together when they were young. It is so easy.

QUICK PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
1 package yellow cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup water
1 cup creamy or chunky peanut butter

Mix together 1/2 package of the cake mix, eggs, water and peanut butter. Beat until smooth.
Add the other 1/2 of the cake mix and beat until blended.

Heat over to 375°. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls unto an ungreased cookie sheet. Press a fork dipped into flour, flatten rounds by pressing in a crisscross pattern on top of each cookie.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Let cool on the cookie sheet for about 2 minutes, then continue to cool on cookie rack.

Perfectly yummy peanut butter cookies.

When I made these last night, I started thinking. What if I used chocolate cake mix instead of yellow? Or maybe Spice Cake Mix? Hmmmm. I think I see an experiment in my future.
 

Honey of a Time... With Infused Honey

It's been a hectic past few months. Between Super Storm Sandy clean up and the Holiday season, life has seemed to pass by in a blur. Now that we've welcomed in 2013, I've had a little time to catch up on some of my herbal chores. Of course these aren't really chores at all. They are the favored tasks that you reward yourself with when all the rest has been done. What have I been doing? Oh, how sweet a task it is. I've been decanting and setting up my herbal infused honeys.

The sweetness and health benefits of honey are well documented. Whether you're using honey in your skin care, food or for your health, you can give it a boost with some herbal input. And it is so very, very easy.

Ginger swimming in honey.

What You'll Need:

• Clean mason jar/s
• Honey (my favorite is Herberstville Honey. Try to use local honey to aid with allergy immunity building)
• Your favorite fresh or dried herbs. Personally, I prefer using dried, except for roses. Less chance of moisture getting into the honey and causing problems such as mold or fermentation. Of course, fermentation could lead to an interesting mead, but that's another story for another day.

Make sure your mason jar is clean. Run it through the dishwasher or submerge in water and boil for a few minutes. Make sure the jar is thoroughly dried before using.

Loosely fill the jar to about two thirds full with your favorite herb, spice or combination.

Vanilla beans soaking in honey.

Pour the honey into the jar to cover the herbs. Stir with a knife or something long to remove all the air pockets. Top off with some more honey.

Cover tightly and put in a sunny windowsill or on a shelf you check fairly often.

Every few days turn the jar over to circulate the honey and herbs. Let the jar sit for at least two weeks or longer. The longer it sits, the stronger the infusion will be.

I just decanted a cinnamon infused honey that had been steeping for almost a year. I will admit that I only flip or check the jars every month or so when I'm letting it set up for that long a time.  It's divine! So extraordinarily yummy on waffles.

Here are some herb or spice combinations to try:

Honey dripping from vanilla sooo yummy!

• Rose petals. You can use fresh or dried petals (untreated, naturally). If you use fresh petals you don't even have to strain - just use eat the petals like a jam.
• Lavender
• Cinnamon - use just the sticks. Powder is OK, but it can make it gritty.
• Vanilla
• Chai - use cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, a few black peppercorns, a vanilla bean, cloves, allspice, star anise, or other chai flavoring that you like
• Peppermint
• Thyme
• Lemon Herbs - I like to combine lemon thyme, lemon balm, and lemon verbena
• Orange or lemon - use the peels cleaned of pith
• Rosemary
• Hot peppers - this is great in barbecue sauce or as a glaze for ribs or ham
• Ginger
• Calendula petals
• Elderberries - dried make a wonderful cough syrup

Use your imagination! These honeys are great to use in cooking or in teas, or straight off the spoon!

Of course, honey's not just great for your insides - it's fabulous for your outsides. I like using Calendula honey straight on cuts and scraps. We use ginger infused honey in our Orange Ginger Sugar Scrub.  Rose infused is used in our Rose n' Dew Sugar Scrub and the Rose 'n' Dew Face Spritz.

And if you want to ease away the stress of the past few months, try some Lavender honey in your tea - or in your bath!

Have fun making infused honeys. Let me know what herbal combinations you're trying, and I'll keep you posted of mine.

Play with Your Food - Herbal Sugars

I have an infusion fascination. I admit it. I love taking all those lovely herbs and flowers from my garden and infusing them into a multitude of other things to make intriguing new flavors.

If you saw my apothecarium right now, you'd see 8 or 9 different flavored sugars setting up. There's also about 12 honeys, 10 vinegars, a few salts and many herbal alcohol based extracts waiting for the herbal and fruity goodness to be fully released.

I've talked about herbal sugars before. The simplicity of it makes me wonder why everyone doesn't have some of these herbal sweets in their cabinets at home.

As a quick refresher:
You'll need:

• 1 large, extremely well cleaned dry glass jar with a lid. Quart size
• About 1 cup (loosely packed) of your herb of choice - see some suggestions below.
• Sugar to fill your jar.

1. I prefer to use dried herbs. They infuse their flavor and fragrance without making the sugar clumpy. You can use fresh, but make sure they are rinsed off and then thoroughly dried.
2. Lightly crush the herbs to help release some of the oils.
3. Put about 1/2 inch worth of sugar in the jar.
4. Place a layer of herbs on top of the sugar.
5. Continue layering until you reach within 1/2 inch of the top of the jar.
6. Seal the jar tightly.
7. Let this sit on a shelf for at least two weeks, but the longer you let it sit, the stronger the flavor.

I have a jar of vanilla sugar that's been sitting on the shelf for a few years. Whenever I want to add a vanilla flavor to something, I sift out the measure of sugar that I need. Then I add more sugar to the jar and shake it up well. It smells fabulous when I open the jar!

The best herbs to use for infused sugars are once with a strong fragrance. Here are some of my favorites and how I use them.

Lemon Herb - dried lemon peels, lemon verbena, and lemon balm
Vanilla - just vanilla beans
Cinnamon - several crushed cinnamon sticks
Rose Geranium - Lots of lovely rose geranium leaves
Bee Balm (Monarda didyma, Bergamot, Oswego Tea) - flower heads as well as leaves
Chai Blend - Cinnamon sticks, cloves, a nutmeg, small piece of vanilla bean, a few pepper corns, some holy basil leaves and cardamom pods
Mint - mint leaves
Lime - dried lime peels and lime scented geranium
 
The uses for these delectable sugars are limitless. I like to use all of them when I'm baking. The vanilla or chai make great angel food cake. Blend the Rose Geranium with Strawberry lemonade for a truly refreshing summer treat. There are some wonderful Sorbet recipes at The Herb Companion site - use any of these sugars to bring a different twist to these frozen concoctions. Sprinkle a little Bee Balm sugar on a fruit salad and toss lightly to add some sweet pizazz. I LOVE using the Cinnamon sugar on French Toast, or when I make glazed carrots. I've used the Lime sugar when making a blueberry crumble.


If you have flavored sugars set up, whenever you're creating in the kitchen you can use them instead of regular sugar to add that little something extra to you dish. Have fun with a recipe and play with your food!


Of course, we use them all them time in our sugar scrubs, too.

Playing with Your Food

We all have little traits and habits that we've picked up during our life. Sometimes they are easy to track back and find, sometimes the lines are fuzzy.

My father is a fabulous amateur chef. He can create meals that would rival the finest restaurants. He's taken classes with Jacques Pepin as well as other renown chefs. He finds recipes that intrigue him and follows them at least once. Then he may doctor, adjust, or tweak to his liking. 99.9% of the time it is a wonderful and delectable improvement. I think that's where I got this habit of playing with my food.

It's a running joke in our house that if you like some thing I've made for dinner enjoy it, because it will never happen exactly that way again. My intent is to follow the recipe - but I just can't help myself. I wonder what will happen if I add a pinch of this, or some of that instead of this. Usually, it's a win. Sometimes, it's at least edible and won't kill anyone. Always - without question - it is fun and educational for everyone.

One of my recent forays into food play was with cupcakes. My lovely daughter has moved out to California. We had a very festive party to send her on her way. Somehow, we went from me making a traditional family cake to baking over 120 cupcakes. And on those cupcakes we wrote our well wishes. I couldn't, I just couldn't bake simple and plain cupcakes from a mix. Oh no, not I. The mix might be used - but only as a base for my baking madness. That's how we wound up with this interesting selection:

• Funfetti with Chocolate or Vanilla Frosting (OK, these were the one exception to the rule, but only because it was requested.)
• Chocolate Stout with Cream Cheese Frosting
• Cappuccino Stout with Mocha Cream Cheese Frosting
• Red Velvet (from scratch using mashed beets and beet juice)with Cream Cheese Frosting
• Aztec Fire Chocolate with Whipped & Zipped Frosting
• Apple Butter with Cinnamon Maple Frosting

What's particularly scary is I had about 6 other recipes waiting in the wings - but I ran out of time, and cupcake liners.

How did I play? Well, the Funfetti, as I said, was made as a special request for a guests birthday, so there was no playing there.

The Chocolate Stout Cupcake recipe I found here at the FoodNetwork site. I used Vanilla infused sugar and added a touch of chocolate extract. For the Cream Cheese Frosting, I took about 1/2 cup of Guinness and reduced it down to about 1/2 cup. Then I whipped that into the frosting.

The Cappuccino Stout Cupcakes use the same basic recipe, but I used Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout and blended some instant cappuccino mix into the heavy cream before making the frosting.

I have a recipe for Red Velvet cake from scratch. Admittedly, I don't know where I got it from, but most scratch recipes are similar. Instead of oil, I used boiled and mashed beets. I use powdered buttermilk - you add the powder to the dry components and the liquid to the wet components to make the buttermilk. So I used the beet juice instead of plain water.

The Azteca Fire Chocolate was interesting to create. It was simply a box of devil's food cake mix. But instead of just adding water, I made a strong tea using Teavana's Azteca Fire Tea, which uses chocolate and chili's (this is also a great tea to blend in with chai). I added an additional pinch of cayenne pepper (just a little pinch). For the frosting, I warmed the cream with some Azteca Fire Tea and added some powdered chocolate chai mix before whipping.

These were all BIG hits. But the surprising star of the evening was a last minute addition. I had thought I picked up a box of store brand yellow cake mix, but it was actually a butter flavor cake mix. Hmmm, what to do? Well, I chopped up some lovely dried apple slices I'd picked up at Target and tossed them with some cinnamon and sugar and added them to the packaged mix. Then I found a recipe for Maple Frosting and added a dash of cinnamon to that as well.

Next time you're baking or cooking, take a look at the recipe. Does it include water? What juice or tea can you use instead? Are there any dried fruits or even veggies you can add? Maybe some herbs or spices? Go ahead! It really is OK to play with your food!