Severed Finger Cookies!!

The October issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine featured some really neat Halloween recipes.  For whatever reason, I could not resist the severed finger cookies.  They seemed simple enough, they sounded tasty, and they looked, well... pretty cool.  With Halloween right around the corner, these cookies are the perfect thing to bring to a Halloween party - for both adults and children. 

I was getting together with my girlfriends recently, and said I'd bring a dessert.  Since I wanted to make these cookies so bad, I determined that girls' night was the perfect occasion. 

Perfect?  Really?  Yeah, okay.  So a small group of 30-something women are probably not going to go crazy over a cookie clearly designed for a child or a Halloween party.  But I wasn't going to let that deter me.  (And as a last minute bonus... I did learn that my friend's 5 year old son was going to join us, so this dessert turned out to be thoughtful, and even a little genius.)

Here's the recipe...

Ingredients

·        1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

·        1 cup confectioners sugar

·        1 egg

·        1 t pure vanilla extract

·        2 3/4 cups flour

·        1 t baking powder

·        1 t salt

·        1/2 cup sliced almonds

·        Raspberry jam

Method

·        In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy.  Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla, then mix in the flour, baking powder and salt.  Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

·        Preheat the oven to 325°.  Using your hands and working quickly, roll a heaping tablespoon of dough into a finger shape.  Place the fingers about 3 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.  If the dough gets sticky and hard to work with, re-chill it in the refrigerator.

·        Stick a sliced almond on 1 end of each for the fingernails.  Use a table knife to make three crosswise knuckle marks in the middle of each cookie.  Bake until lightly golden, 20 to 25 minutes.  Transfer to a rack to cool.

·        Meanwhile, in a saucepan, cook the jam over low heat until it reaches a saucy consistency.  Once liquefied, remove from the heat pour into a small bowl; dip the "severed" end of each cookie into the sauce. 

Here's a photo of Rach's cookies (on the left), along with one of mine (duh, on the right).

A couple of comments... Clearly, the folks at Every Day with Rachael Ray have a better photographer than I do (me).  And I blame my iPhone.  My screen is all messed up, and it's hard to see if the pictures come out good or not.  (I gotta get that fixed.)  Aside from that, I'm pretty impressed with mine.  My fingers are definitely severed from a person who was probably a little more chubby and stocky, but they still look good.  My only complaint is that the cookies were a little dry - even though they were a little bigger than they should have been.  I baked them the full 25 minutes because they weren't getting lightly golden.  If you try these yourself, I would recommend making them smaller, and watching them carefully to avoid over cooking.  Fortunately, they are good dipping cookies, so all was not lost. 

As luck would have it, my girls' night got canceled because poor little Jack was sick, but all was not lost.  I managed to eat about half of the cookies myself before I brought the rest to my parents house (to get them away from me!!).  Watching my ten month old niece eat a severed finger was priceless. 

All Things Pumpkin

It’s definitely that time of year again – pumpkin time. There are lots of things I love about the fall… the return of cozy sweaters and Uggs, Sunday afternoon football games, and a warm fire in the fireplace. But one of my most favorite things about fall is all the pumpkin flavored food things.

This past weekend, B and I went apple picking and pumpkin shopping. Even when I lived in my tiny condo, I would always buy a pumpkin. It never felt right to not have a jack-o-lantern on Halloween. And I can’t resist roasting the pumpkin seeds and snacking on them for as long as they last, which usually isn’t very long.

Okay, if I’m being honest, the jack-o-lantern is probably more of a by-product of the pumpkin seeds rather than the other way around.

Now that we have a house, I’m super excited to decorate it with not one, but three pumpkins – two on the front steps (with some beautiful yellow mums) and one under a tree in our front yard (accompanied by a pot of deep burgundy mums). But the true glory of the day was all the pumpkin flavored stuff I got to eat and drink.

It all started with a Pumpkin Spice coffee. This was of the Green Mountain k-cup variety, and not, sadly, of the Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks variety. But it was still very good.

Then, I decided to mix some pumpkin puree into my oatmeal for an extra flavor and nutrient boost. Not a lot – just a spoonful or so. Throw in a dash of cinnamon, or maybe even pumpkin pie spice if you are so inclined, and you got yourself a yummy, hearty, and nutritious breakfast.

When we purchased our pumpkins, I was distracted by a display of locally made fudge, and naturally they had pumpkin fudge. I bought a piece and threw it in my bag to save for later.

From there we had lunch, which I enjoyed with a pint of Shipyard Pumpkin Ale, served with a cinnamon and brown sugar rimmed glass. Yum.

On the way home, B and I shared the fudge. Had I had any idea how good this was going to be, I would have bought a pound instead of just a piece. It was fantastic. It had all the deliciousness of pumpkin pie with the comforting, delectable texture of your favorite kind of fudge. It was the perfect combination. (And even though I love all things pumpkin flavored, I really do not like pumpkin pie. I think it’s a texture thing.)

Later on that evening, not in front of a warm, crackling fire since it was eighty-something degrees out on Columbus Day weekend, I enjoyed a pumpkin spice martini. I found a recipe for this drink somewhere (I honestly can’t remember), and decided to google some different executions. From the results of my search, I came up with a few concoctions of my own and proceeded to the test bar to get mixing and determine a winner.

The end result is a delicious drink that I had to share with you all.

In a shaker filled with ice, combine 2.5 oz vanilla vodka, 1 T pumpkin pie syrup (I use Torani’s sugar free version), 2 T pure pumpkin puree, 2 T half & half, and 1/8 t pumpkin pie spice. Shake like crazy (you want to make sure the pumpkin puree is fully incorporated). Rim a cocktail glass with a mixture of brown sugar and graham cracker crumbs (I used simple syrup to get the stuff to stick, but I think maple syrup will work way better). Strain the drink into the glass, and enjoy responsibly

See how yummy it looks!!

If you don’t have, or don’t want to get, the pumpkin pie syrup (you can buy it online, which is what I did… I was going for homemade pumpkin spice lattes), you can swap it out for some Bailey’s Irish Cream (you may want to use 2-3 T, and get rid of the half & half since you will get the creaminess from the Bailey’s).

And yes, if you caught my Five O’Cocktail piece, you are correctly guessing that I am breaking my own rules by calling this drink a martini. It’s really a cocktail, but when in Rome… You can’t win ‘em all.

PS – check out one of my early pieces comparing canned pumpkin to fresh pumpkin in pumpkin bread if you’re interested in which is the better option (it's under "Saturday").

Mixing It Up

After my foray into salts, I got to thinking.  What else can I mix up?  Sure, this line of food prep isn't very culinarily exciting but sometimes really great flavors come from really simple things.

My family was coming over for brunch one Sunday to see the new house.  I wasn't making anything really fancy (generally because nobody ever eats anything and when they do, they all of a sudden morph into New York Times food critics), but still I needed to feed them something.  I stuck with bagels, english muffins, fruit and a banana bread.  Not to forget coffee, and since it was my family, morning booze was a must.  Bring on the Bloody Marys and Mimosas!

Instead of just plain old butter and cream cheese I wanted to do a little something more.  Back in my working days, when I needed people to leave me alone so I could get work done, my go to breakfast was an onion bagel with bacon and scallion cream cheese.  (Worked like a charm, in case you're interested.)  Yes, it was smelly.  But even better - it tasted really good. 

While I didn't invite my family over to leave me alone, I still wanted to make this cream cheese.  It was really simple... an 8 oz. tub of plain whipped cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of minced chives (I opted for the herb over the scallion), and 2 T chopped bacon (like I did with the bacon salt, I opted for Hormel's real bacon bits... okay, I confess - I bought a giant bag of this at BJ's Wholesale Club on impulse and I'm looking for ways to use it).  Mix together, and chill for a couple of hours before serving to allow the flavors to blend. 

I'm proud to say it was a hit.  In fact, I don't think anyone touched the plain cream cheese.

I've lately been intrigued by compound butters, and have wanted to make some but haven't quite gotten around to it.  Usually when I see or hear of compound butters, it's generally for savory dishes.  I wanted to make something for breakfast, and remembered how much I love to sprinkle cinnamon sugar on my buttered toast or english muffin.  Why not eliminate a step and turn this into a compound butter?

So I took a stick of softened butter, 2 T light brown sugar and 1 t ground cinnamon and mixed them together.  Once fully incorporated, I put the butter in a ramekin and chilled in the fridge. 

Let me tell you, it was better than I ever imagined.  When that butter melted on the freshly toasted bagel or english muffin, I mean... words cannot describe.  (Well they probably can, but I need to be a much better writer.)  There was sugary cinnamon in every bite, with a slight toffee hit from the brown sugar, mixed in with delectable melted butter.  It was just oh. so. good. 

That butter is hard to resist, and so is the cream cheese.  The leftovers are mocking me every time I open the fridge.  But hey, breakfast happens once a day, so I suppose I can indulge for now.