Shamrock Peppermint Creams

Shamrock Peppermint Creams

BY: RIKKI SNYDER

To be perfectly honest, I’m probably only about 3% Irish, but as a little kid I always got strangely excited for St. Patrick’s Day. In grade school we would go outside for recess and come back in to find the items in our desks were all messed up and rearranged and the teachers told us it was from the pesky leprechauns. To this day, I still don’t know why, but I thought that was the coolest thing ever.  

Many years later and I still find myself getting excited for March 17th to roll around. Seeing all the green of this holiday makes me feel like spring is right within my reach! It’ll be here before we know it and for that I’m celebrating with these bright green shamrock peppermint creams!

If you’re wondering what a peppermint cream is think of it as a slightly larger after dinner mint. That’s what it reminds me of. If you can’t find a miniature shamrock cookie cutter a bigger one will work just as well. And if you’re a chocolate lover like me, dip your mints in some melted chocolate and sprinkle with some St. Patty’s sprinkles!

Shamrock Peppermint Creams

1 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

4-6 Tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

Green food coloring paste

A mini shamrock-shaped cutter

Sift the confectioners’ sugar into a large bowl. Gradually add the condensed milk and peppermint, mixing with a wooden spoon. The mixture should come together like a dough and you may need to use your hands towards the end of mixing. To knead the dough, sprinkle confectioners’ sugar on a clean work surface. Shape the dough into a ball and push on it and press it onto the work surface, turning it round often. Do this for just a minute of so until smooth. Divide the dough in half and tint one half green using food coloring. Knead the dough again until it is evenly green. On the work surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch using a rolling pin. Stamp out shamrocks with your cookie cutter and arrange them on a sheet of baking parchment. Let dry out overnight. Dip in melted chocolate and cover with sprinkles if desired. 

Slow Cooker Chocolate Covered Pretzels

If you're anything like me you have an irrational fear of burning chocolate. I found a solution for this by melting chocolate in a slow cooker. Basically you're creating a double boiler, but one that will melt your chocolate and allow you to work at your own pace. This winter I've been creating several treats with melted chocolate. Below is my way of melting chocolate in a slow cooker.

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

This technique works for any kind of treat you'd like to create using melted chocolate. 

Fill your slow cooker, I use a Kenmore 5 Quart Slow Cooker, with several inches of water. You will want it to go about 2/3's up the side of your bowl you'll use for melting. Turn your slow cooker to low or high, depending on how long you have to create your treats. 

Place your chocolate chips, chunks of bark melts, or whatever sort of chocolate you will be melting into a microwave safe bowl. Place the bowl into the water, making sure not to get any water inside  the bowl. Water in the bowl will cause the chocolate to be grainy. 

Allow your chocolate to slowly melt, uncovered. Stir on occasion to ensure even melting. 

Once the chocolate is fully melted dip your pretzels into the chocolate. Place on waxed paper to cool. If you'd like to sprinkle with sprinkles, do so while the chocolate is still hot. If you're in a hurry place in fridge or freezer to speed up the cooling and setting process. 

I found that one regular size bag of chocolate chips will cover around 40-50 pretzels. 

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Images created with Canon 5D Mark IV | Slow Cooker by Kenmore

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Homemade Slow Cooker Apple Butter

I think I have had PSL overload after the past three years of everything being pumpkin spiced. This year I have been all about the apple and the apple cider. From apple cider cakes, to apple pies, to apple butter...I have been baking at least two or three dishes a week with apples in them. I recently partnered with Kenmore to try out their 5 Quart Slow Cooker. I developed a super easy Slow Cooker Apple Butter recipe for their newly redesigned blog. 

So, after you head inside from a picture perfect trip to the orchard to load up your pantry with enough apples to survive the winter, head over to Kenmore’s website  and give my recipe a try. Don’t worry, it only takes six apples, that you don’t even have to peal....and store bought apples will do.

MAKE IT NOW

Apple Cider Spiced Cake

We're going to go ahead and declare this the official dessert of fall 2017. It couldn't be easier to make, and it couldn't be any more delicious. The addition of the apple cider gives it a fresh crisp taste that you'd never expect in a spice cake. Our icing continues the apple cider theme, and is truly a dessert all to its own. We aren't even going to pretend like this cake is healthy, but it is worth every bite.

 

Apple Cider Spiced Cake

• 1 Box Spice Cake Mix
• Apple Cider
• Butter (melted)
• Eggs
• Brown sugar

This cake couldn't be easier, you're basically just grabbing yourself a spiced cake mix from the local grocery, market, or store. Any brand will work. I use Betty Crocker because its the easiest to reach on the Walmart shelf. Once you've gathered your ingredients, pay for them, and taken them all home. 

Follow the instructions on the back of the box, but substitute your water for apple cider. If you can't find apple cider, you can use apple juice, but I really don't like the idea of using it. Substitute the oil for melted butter, and add however many eggs the box tells you too. 

I bake mine in a bundt pan simply because it is my favorite pan. You can absolutely use a loaf pan or a baking dish. The key to making it amazing is absolutely covering your pan in cooking spray. After its well lubricated add a handful of brown sugar. This will give your cake a delicious crunch. Add however much you'd like.

Bake the cake according to the instructions on the box. Use a tooth pick to see if the cake is done. If it comes out clean the cake is fully baked. If it is still wet, keep baking. Remove and cool. If baking in a bundt pan, remove from the pan a few minutes after taking out of the over.

 

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Apple Cider Whipped Creme Icing

This is the very basic form of the recipe. We also have a more complex creamed cheese apple cider whipped creme. 

• One cup heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup apple cider
• 1/2 tsp corn starch

Mix all ingredients with a mixer on high. Gradually add the powdered sugar to avoid a mess. Whip until stiff enough to spread. Drizzle on cake. Chill and eat left overs while watch fall episodes of Gilmore Girls. 

A Garlic Primer: Smell the "Stinking Rose"

 

 

A GARLIC PRIMER

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GROW YOUR OWN GARLIC

This small bulb has been used throughout history for medicinal use as well as consumption dating back as far as early Egyptian civilizations, and though its Syrian cousins have stolen the limelight, garlic is still a particularly powerful crop in Egypt. Tracing written connections through the Indus River Valley civilizations of modern Pakistan and India to a new home in China where it was praised as an aphrodisiac with life-lengthening qualities. Then to Portugal, France, and Spain where the crop once snubbed by ancient upper echelons became the ingredient a la mode for flavoring bland dishes, it then crossed the Atlantic to be a part of The New World.

What was once criticized as too volatile a food for consumption because of its alleged stimulant properties, the small bulbs have helped many races and generations ward of vampires, smallpox, and heart disease alike. Though the culinary use hasn't always invaded every cultures dinner plates, it has been used in a widespread fashion for medicinal purposes. Today, garlic is still a food recommended to patients with high risk associations for certain types of cancer for its richness in antioxidant and anti-carcinogenic vitamins in its raw form, and is also a great supplement for people suffering from heart disease and hypertension.

Garlic by classification is an allium, meaning it belongs to a family of flowering onion and leek plants. Though the history of garlic's medicinal us is long, following America's founding pilgrims back to their homelands, the use of garlic as a fairly mainstream ingredient in American food is relatively new. Spreading from traditionally ethnic neighborhoods like Brooklyn, New York, garlic found its way into American food most prevalently during early 1940s in an organic and slow osmosis. Today Americans alone consume around 250 million pounds of garlic annually. 

This spring, we encourage our readers to become a part of this historically and nutritiously rich herb and plant garlic of their own. If you can't plant it yourself, check in your local farmer's market for fresh, dried garlic for use in your own recipes. With colder weather lingering on, who doesn't want to curl up to a warm bowl of homemade minestrone and garlic bread?

 

HEATH'S GARLIC PLANTING TIPS

1) Plant garlic near the end of winter, after the fear of the ground freezing has ended. Garlic cloves will grow and lie dormant during the remainder of winter and mature in time for harvest in late summer. 
 

2) When planting, wait until just before planting to break apart bulbs. Cloves should cleanly remove from the basal plate. Plant very small cloves in a small group, but large bulbs singly. 
 

3) It's common practice to stop watering garlic plants upwards of three weeks before harvesting. 
 

4) To test the maturity of bulbs, scrape away the dirt from a few bulbs. Mature bulbs have cloves which can be felt through the skin. 
 

5) Garlic's flavor can be changed by overexposure to the sun after harvest, a process a lot like sunburn. It's best to store harvested baskets of garlic in a garden shed or barn. 
 

6) The top of garlic bulbs is called the scape. It has a lighter garlic flavor than cloves and can be prepared in sautéed dishes when chopped like green onion or served whole like asparagus.

Savory Herb Biscuits

And what would go better with this soup than a warm biscuit smothered in butter and dried basil? They're quick and easy too. Pop them right in the oven just before the soup is done and you have the perfect bread for dipping.

Savory Herb Biscuits

BY: RIKKI SNYDER

2 cups biscuit mix

1/2 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon basil, dried

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Combine biscuit mix, cheese and milk until a soft dough forms. Beat vigorously for 30 seconds. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto and ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown. Combine basil and garlic powder with melted butter and brush over biscuits after removing from oven. Makes 12 biscuits

Potato Soup

This rustic and hearty soup makes for a perfect savory meal this season. The yukon gold potatoes offer a unique flavor that is perfectly complimented by the crumbled bacon. Save some extra bacon for garnish and if you're a cheese lover, sprinkle some shredded cheddar on top before serving and it'll melt right in.

Potato Soup

BY: RIKKI SNYDER

 

8 slices bacon, fried and crumbled

1 cup onion, chopped

1 cups yukon gold potatoes, chopped

1 cup water

10 3/4 oz. Can cream of chicken soup

1 cup sour cream

1 3/4 cup milk

1 Tablespoon parsley, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

Dash of pepper

Fry bacon and crumble. Set aside, reserving some drippings in skillet. Saute onion in same skillet until transparent. Add potatoes to and boil until tender, about 15 minutes. Add soup, sour cream, milk, bacon and onions, parsley, salt and pepper. Mix well and let simmer 2 hours. 

Cast Iron Apple Pie

This has been our most popular recipe every year since we first published it in 2011. A traditional cast iron skillet apple pie with a few seasonal additions make it the perfect treat to serve all autumn long. 

It is my go to recipe for fall. Nothing is better than going to the local orchard and hand harvesting the apples yourself. I use a Martha Stewart enameled cast iron skillet. The pie comes out perfectly every single time. The pie is perfect served hot or cold. 

RECIPE:

Ingredients 

1 stick + 1 tablespoon butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon  

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

3 tablespoons sorghum or maple syrup  

1 boxed pie crust  

5 pealed and sliced apples

Preaheat oven to 350 degrees. Add stick of butter and brown sugar to bottom of skillet. Place in oven until melted, do not let boil.  

Remove from the oven. Put bottom crust in skillet. Toss apples in sugar, spices, and syrup. Add mixture to skillet. Place remaining butter on top. Cover with crust. Dust top of crust with a dash of sugar and spices. 

Cut vent holes or decorative pattern in the top of the pie. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until apples are tender. 

Easy Whipped Cream

Cool Whip is overrated and not that good....fresh whipped cream is so easy to make..and so much better. Our recipe keeps it super simple.

WHIPPED CREAM

• 1 quart heavy whipping cream
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

In a large bowl pour the whipping cream and the vanilla. As you beat the mixture add the powdered sugar to help provide stiffness and a bit of extra flavor. Whip until it is as thick and creamy as you'd like. I prefer stiff peaks. Be sure to not over whip or you'll end up with butter.

Lilac Sugar

Every morning should begin with tea. Festive teas are the best. This lilac sugar is the perfect addition to your mornings. As lilac comes into season why not ensure it'll last all year long. By simply preserving the gorgeous floral flavors of lilac in sugar it infuses the sugar with the most wonderful flavor. You'll never want to return to basic table sugar again. 

Ingredients:

Berry or Fine Sugar: if super fine sugar isn't available throw your regular sugar into a food processor.

Lilac Blooms: for a quart jar I used around a cup of blooms.

An Airtight Container

Simply alternate layers of blooms and sugar until you have either filled your jar. Once complete put the lid on the jar and shake until well mixed. Shake once a day for about a week to make sure the flowers dry evenly. 

After one week strain the sugar to remove the blooms. Store in airtight container. 

Chocolate Chess Pie

Chocolate Chess Pie

This recipe is so very simple. It is absolutely delicious. It literally takes less than five minutes to mix together. I found the recipe in my aunt's handwritten recipe book from the 1970s.

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 2 eggs, slightly beaten

• 1/3 cup cocoa

• 1/4 cup butter

• 1/2 cup evaporated milk

• 1/2 cup coconut

• 1/2 cup pecan pieces

• 1 9” pie shell

Mix all ingredients by hand and pour in pie shell. Bake for 30 min in 400 degree oven. Cool and serve with whipped cream.