Applesauce Cake

When I was growing up my family always got together at my Aunt Nanny's house at Christmas time. All of my aunts and uncles and cousins would come and bring something to eat. It was always a great time with lots of story telling and laughter. Like most families, we gathered around the table and reminisced about Christmases past while eating delicious food. Those tastes and smells etched into us forever.

This Christmas is a tough one for all of us since my Aunt Nanny passed away a couple months ago. Being far from my family at Christmas is always hard, this year especially, but I find baking to be a comfort. When my Aunt passed away I took her recipe box and promised to share the recipes. I wanted to make one of these recipes for our Christmas Eve dinner. It is not something that I remember her making and she probably did not make it often, but I thought that it would be a perfect homage to her. Something simple yet elegant, sweet and filling, just like her.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cup flour
2 cup sugar (or 1 3/4 cup if using sweetened applesauce)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cup applesauce (we used Seneca brand unsweetened)
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 cup seedless raisins

The recipe did not include it, but I added a glaze.

For the glaze:
4 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 cup powdered sugar

Sift the four. I use a sieve and knocked it against the applesauce jar.

Add the dry ingredients and mix.

Add the shortening, water and applesauce. Mix with mixer on medium speed for two minutes.

Add the eggs and mix.

 

Fold in the raisins and nuts with spoon.

Pour batter into a tube pan, I used a bundt pan, but any round pan will work if you put something in the middle like a can. Even the batter out so it is flat.

Bake at 350F for 1 hour. Let cool completely.

For the glaze, melt butter in saucepan, add brown sugar and milk and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute while stirring and remove from heat. Let cool a bit and add powdered sugar to desired consistency. Let cake cool completely before glazing.

Molasses Christmas Cookies

My husband's absolute favorite Christmas tradition is making his grandma's molasses cut-out cookies. I first discovered this love affair when I spent Christmas in Vermont with him and his family for the first time. As we arrived at the house his mom informed him of the cookie dough waiting for him in the fridge. His eyes lit up like a small boy on Christmas Eve. "What cookie dough?" I asked. The next morning I found out. As he unrolled the dark dough from the wax paper, I said "Oh! Gingerbread, I've never had real gingerbread before!" "Um, no" he replied matter of factly, "this is molasses cookie dough." Clearly this was a superior cookie not to be confused with anything else.

Every year since we make the molasses cookies no matter what. If we are traveling to to see my family for the holidays we have the molasses cookies as a 'pre-Christmas time snack'. Even the year he had to work over Christmas he still had to have the cookies. I went to spend that Christmas with him in northern Alaska and brought two large containers of them. They survived a harrowing drive in a rare Seattle snow storm, multiple plane rides and sub zero temperatures. The night I arrived we had dinner with his lovely Alaskan host family. For dessert we introduced them to the molasses cookie and left a container with them. The next day they were gone.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup water
3 cups flour
1/3 cup molasses
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cinnamon
1/8 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp nutmeg

For frosting:
powdered sugar
milk
vanilla

Mix all ingredients with mixer until consistency is uniform.

Form dough into ball, wrap in wax paper, put in Ziploc bag and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the dough from the fridge about an hour before making them. Add a bit of water if the dough is dry and roll out to about 1/4 inch. 

Cut out shapes.

Place on baking sheet and bake at 375F for 12 min.

Let cool completely. Make frosting with powdered sugar, vanilla and milk to taste. Add sugar to thicken and milk to thin.

Frost the cookies with a spoon.

Add sprinkles and decorations. Cookies will be crunchy at first, but if you wait until the next day after they are frosted, they will get soft and chewy.

Christmas Macaroons

My gram was the baker of the family. Her father was a baker at a local bread bakery and she carried on the baking tradition. Her popcorn balls were famous around Christmas time, she would make and sell hundreds of them. She also made an array of Christmas cookies. My dad tells us stories of how she would start making cookies in the fall when the hickory nuts were ready for harvesting, and freeze them until Christmas time. I picture her stealthily moving around a tiny kitchen, cookies cooling on every available surface with flour and laughter in the air. She made sugar cutouts, date balls, peanut butter kiss cookies, but her favorites were coconut macaroons.

This recipe is from the back of the Baker's coconut bag except that I substituted vanilla instead of almond extract. I don't know what recipe my gram used for sure, but it was probably very similar to this. My dad said she put a cherry on top of them for Christmas. I love that!

Ingredients:
1 pkg Bakers Angel Flake Coconut (or 5 1/3 cups)
2/3 cup sugar
6 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
1 large jar maraschino cherries

Separate the yokes from four eggs. I use a spoon to carefully remove the yokes.

Mix coconut, sugar, flour and salt.  Add egg whites and vanilla.

 Drop by tablespoons onto sheet. Add cherry on top. Be sure to push it down to secure it.

Bake at 325F for 20min.

Chicken Corn Soup

The aroma of chicken corn soup takes me straight back to church potlucks in late summer. There would be a myriad of delicious dishes including any child's favorites like deviled eggs and texas sheet cake. But the chicken corn soup was a hearty favorite of mine and a staple dish for any large gathering in central Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania dutch are famous for their soups with small egg noodle lumps called 'rivels'. It is a thick chowder-like soup with an almost gelatinous broth. This recipe comes from my Aunt Nanny. I can't say that this recipe is traditional, but as I took the first sip of the broth it was exactly how I remembered it and so incredibly good.

 

Ingredients:

1lb chicken parts on bone

1 quart water

4 chicken bouillon cubes

1 cup onion

1 cup celery

1/2 tsp celery seed

1 16oz can whole corn

2 16oz can creamed corn

1 10oz cream of celery soup

For the rivels:

1 cup flour

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

We made the soup broth with a leftover chicken carcass which worked great. You could use whole chicken parts, boil for about an hour, remove and bone. Dice the meat and return to the pot.

Add other ingredients and simmer for 15 min.

Mix the rivel ingredients until they form small balls. 

Sift the balls into the simmering soup and continue to stir. Simmer for 15min and stir occasionally.

Dutch Apple Squares

This is one of my husband's favorite family recipes. It comes from his father's grandmother who was Dutch. A few years ago my inlaws came to Seattle for Thanksgiving break. It was unusually cold and we had some snow and ice on the ground. We all gathered in the kitchen to make apple squares. My husband was so happy to show me the 'secret' ingredient and how to roll the dough as thinly as possible. We spent cozy mornings all together with coffee, tea and squares. That Thanksgiving visit is one of my favorite Seattle memories.

Last year, in late summer, my husband's parents and his brother came out for another visit. The boys went backpacking for a couple days and came back with nalgenes full of fresh mountain blueberries. That time we made blueberry squares and they were even better than the apple ones. We spent cozy mornings all together with coffee, tea and squares. The squares became a new tradition for me and a delicious one it is.

 

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup crisco

1 egg

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 cup corn flakes 

5 cups peeled, sliced apples (we use about 3-4 large Fuji apples)

about 1/2 cup milk

For icing:

powdered sugar

milk

vanilla

Combine flour and salt, cut in crisco. Beat egg yoke, save the white, and add enough milk to make 2/3 cup.

 Stir the egg and milk mixture into the flour mix to make dough.

Roll out half the dough as thinly as humanly possible into a 10x15 pan.

If it doesn't cover the bottom of the pan don't worry, noone will judge you...

Except for the dog... she might judge you.

Just fill in the empty spots with dough and press the pieces together to close the seams. Once the dough fills the bottom of the pan, its time for the 'secret' ingredient. Crumble up the corn flakes and sprinkle over the dough. The corn flakes absorb moisture from the apples to keep them from getting soggy.

Meanwhile, slice the apples as shown and cut slices into quarters.

 Mix in the sugar and cinnamon.

Put the apples in the pan without pouring in the juices.

Roll out the remaining dough and carefully fit over the top of the apples.

Pinch in the dough along the edges to join with the bottom dough. Cut some vent holes into the top crust. Beat the egg white until frothy and brush on top. Bake at 375F for 50min.

To make the icing put about 1 cup powdered sugar in a bowl. Add milk and vanilla to taste. If it's too runny, add more sugar. Drizzle over completely cooled squares.

Have them the following day for breakfast. They should cut up nicely into perfectly contained squares.

Aunt Nanny's Chicken Potpie

Until I was in college, I didn't know that most people expect a chicken potpie to actually be, well, a pie. I grew up on the Pennsylvania Dutch style chicken potpie, one that is by far my favorite childhood meal. My wonderful Aunt Nanny made the chicken and homemade egg noodle "potpie" for many birthdays and special occasions usually with a side of peas, my favorite, much to my pea-hating sister's chagrin.

I can still feel the smooth, elastic consistency of the dough in my tiny hands as I stood on a small wooden step stool to reach the counter. She would roll out the dough to the perfect thickness and let me cut out the noodles with a pizza cutter, gently reminding me not to make them too wide. She would make some thick and some thin, because she would say "Uncle Dick likes the thin ones". We would put the noodles into the seemingly bottomless pot on the stove and I would hover above it, taking in the thick steam.

My sweet Aunt Nanny passed away a few weeks ago, so for this Thanksgiving I decided to make her potpie because I am so thankful to have had her in my life and, of course, her delicious potpie. I am certainly a lucky girl.

I remember my Aunt making this with whole chicken parts on the bone. I used boneless chicken breast this time, but next time I will use whole chicken parts for a better broth and the falling apart, moist, darker chicken I remember. The recipe below is the way I made it today, but I hope to improve on this recipe in the future. Another note: I used a 4 quart deep saute pan, but a deep pot would work better.

Ingredients:
1 lb boneless chicken breast
2 chicken bouillon cubes (small)
6 cups water

2 cups flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt

Boil water in large pot. Cube the chicken breast and add to boiling water with chicken bouillon cubes. Cook on med-high for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine flour and eggs to make dough. Slowly add milk and knead, but don't overwork. Add flour if dough is sticky.

Roll out half of the dough to about a 1/4 inch thick. Note that the noodles will thicken when cooked, so roll the dough out slightly thinner than desired thickness. Use a pizza cutter or knife to cut noodles about 1-2 in wide.

 Add noodles to chicken and broth and cook for 25 minutes. The noodles float to the top, resembling a pie, perhaps?