Mommy Cooks

Easter Eggs

Äppelformar

In honor of Thanksgiving, Laura's second-grade class is doing a unit on immigrant ancestors this month.  This morning they are having an "immigrant banquet" in which they share foods of their ancestors, and Laura decided to bring something Swedish.  This has been a favorite recipe of mine for some years, discovered in the old Time-Life Scandinavian Cooking book. Äppelformar -- "apple shapes" or "forms" -- are little apple-filled pastries, like a little muffin-shaped pastry.  You can also make the filling with applesauce -- during those long, dark, Swedish winters, perhaps, when there are no fresh apples to be had -- but I like the fresh ones in combination with the light tartness of the jam and the crunchy almonds.

Äppelformar

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature (divided use)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tart cooking apples
3/4 cup apricot preserves
slivered almonds
confectioners' sugar

For the pastry, cream 10 tablespoons butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs.  Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the butter mixture, blending well.  Shape the dough, wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper, and chill for 1 hour or more.

For the filling, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over moderate heat.  While the butter is melting, peel, core, and finely dice the apples.  Add the apples to the butter, and cook 1 or 2 minutes, shaking the pan to coat the apples with the butter.  Remove from the heat and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Lightly oil or butter 12 muffin tins.  Cut off 1/3 of the dough, roll it out about 1/4 inch thick, and using a 2- or 2-1/2 inch cookie cutter, cut out 12 circles.  Work the dough scraps back into the remaining dough, divide into 12 pieces, and press each piece into the bottom and sides of the muffing cups, extending the dough slightly above the rim of the cup.  Divide the filling between the lined muffin cups.  Top each with about 1 tablespoon of the apricot preserves and a sprinkling of almonds.  Cover the apple filling with the dough rounds, folding the edges down over the tops to seal.

Bake for 40 minutes or until lightly golden.  Loosen gently with a knife, and let cool in the tin.  Lift out with a narrow spatula or knife.  Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar just before serving.

Makes 12 äppelformar.  Active work time, about 30 minutes; total preparation time, about 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Quick Gifts for Knitters

Grandma's birthday is this week, and so the girls and I came up with this quick almost-handmade gift -- "personalized" knitting needles.

Use a pair of wooden knitting needles.  Mask off the stick with painter's tape, and with water-based paint in the recipient's favorite color, paint the knob.  Carefully peel off the tape fairly soon after painting, and let dry.

Use any paint you like, but I do recommend water-based as it is so much easier to clean up when kids are involved!  The teal paint we used is a craft paint, and the blue is a Benjamin Moore sample pot.

You can also make a label to hold the needles.  Cut a fairly long rectangle out of thick paper or cardstock.  Make two holes side-by-side near one short end, large enough to hold the needles firmly but not so big that they slip right through.  (I started the holes with an ice-pick, then used the needles themselves to make the holes bigger.)  Make a corresponding set of holes at the other short end, and then slip the needles through the top set of holes from the front and the bottom set of holes from the back.  Decorate the label as you like.  You can crease the label to make it look more tidy.

School Cones

This is a Schultüte, a school cone, a treat traditionally given to children in Germany on their first day of school.  I got the idea from one I saw here, and being the kind of person I am did some research -- there is a bit of history of the Schultüten here.  In the strictest sense, the cone is given to children on their first day of first grade, as a marker of the end of kindergarten and babyhood, and first grade and the beginnings of childhood proper. I think it's a sweet idea, and don't mind tweaking tradition a bit, making the cone smaller than the megaphone-sized originals and filled with less-expensive treats, but then into something that can be given every September, to ease the transition between summer and back-to-school.

This cone is made with a sheet of 12 in. x 12 in. patterned paper -- it could be made with 8 1/2 x 11 or A4 quite easily, of course, or sturdier cardstock, whatever is on hand.  This particular one was on clearance, so I got it marked down from 40 cents to 10, and felt rather triumphant!  I found lots of little treats at the market and in the craft store's dollar bin (most in packets of two, so there is also enough for Julia's cone when preschool starts on the 18th) -- hair bobs, some rather psychedelic drawing pencils, a plastic pencil case, some rubber stamps, stickers, a note pad, and pens with purple ink, as well as two bite-sized Milky Way bars for a sweet.  I resisted my first urge to color-coordinate everything, and just went with what would be Laura's choice, the most colorful things possible! 

Simply wrap a piece of 12 x 12 or similar-sized patterned paper around your hand to make a cone, secure the edges with double-sided tape, and fill with back-to-school treats.

Oatmeal Cookies

Laura is feeling a bit nervous about the first day of school tomorrow.  She worries about not knowing anyone, about being shy.  I find this very poignant, because once she is in that new situation, instead of dreading it, she is the kind of person who makes friends very quickly, playing easily with boys as well as girls. 

This is a lot of changes all at once -- kindergarten is not only fenced off from the upper grades, but Laura's new classroom is on the opposite side of the campus, and she will now be eating her lunches at school, too.  (Her kindergarten teacher told us in May that they try to make sure that every first-grader has at least someone in the same class that they already know, and Laura was relieved to see two familiar names on the class list last week, but this is hard for a six-year-old to remember.)  We made oatmeal cookies this afternoon, and I told Laura that we would put some in her lunch tomorrow.

Cookies are one of the best comfort foods around.  They are easy to make, even for kids, there is lots of nibbling, the baking makes the house smell wonderful, and you have cookies afterwards.

(The jury is still out on the Silpat vs. stoneware baking sheets -- the stoneware batches took on average about five minutes more to bake, and mine isn't really seasoned yet, but all of the cookies came out nice and golden on the bottoms.)

The recipe is from Moira at Who Wants Seconds?.  I used dried cherries instead of chocolate chips -- wanted dried blueberries, which I've done before with happy results, but there weren't any to be had -- cherries are good, though.  We made them a bit smaller than the recipe says, and they came out chewy in the middle and golden-crisp at the edges -- just the thing for those first-day-of-school butterflies.

A Big Day

The training wheels are off of Laura's bike!

She's been balancing pretty well anyway, so we decided to take the training wheels off altogether.  David thought that he would at least have to run along beside her for the first few minutes, but she was off like a shot.  (I got a little misty-eyed, I must confess, watching her go.)

Happy Mother's Day

Julia's class made these little presents for Mother's Day -- cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on toast.  They made the papers on the top of the jars themselves, too, out of the papers that separate foil muffin cups, painted with colored dye dripped from eye-droppers -- messy and fun.

Julia was delighted to have cinnamon toast for breakfast the next day, too!

Cinnamon Toast

1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons white sugar
bread
butter

Mix together the cinnamon and sugar.

Toast and butter the bread, and sprinkle with about 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon sugar per slice.

Store the remaining cinnamon sugar at room temperature in an airtight container; it will keep indefinitely, if you can wait that long.

Makes enough for about 40 servings of cinnamon toast.  Preparation time, about 2 minutes for the cinnamon sugar.

Mommy Cooks

The idea for this blog came about indirectly, as I watched a steady stream of Saturday afternoon cooking shows on PBS and thought how nice it must be to cook for a whole half-hour in a spacious, tidy kitchen with no interruptions.  I love the shows, the creativity and new ideas that come from them, but -- my cooking show would be in a smallish, inefficient kitchen with children wandering through every few minutes asking for snacks or needing a hug or wondering what's for dinner, doors slamming and phones ringing off-camera, and the occasional scream as the girls fought over whose Barbie would get to wear the pink princess dress that day.  That would be a real cooking show, I thought.  Welcome, then, to "Mommy Cooks"!

I still remember vividly the first meal I made from scratch after our first baby was born, grating cheese and stirring a roux one-handed with the colicky Laura in a sling over my shoulder.  I don't know what we'd been eating before, probably cereal and take-out pizza in those sleep-deprived first weeks.  I marveled at the sheer normality of cooking, and at the changes that had taken place in our lives since I had last stood in front of the stove.  This dish of macaroni and cheese tasted heavenly for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it's just really good.  The Gruyère and Parmesan give the cheese sauce an extra dimension of flavor, and I love the crushed croutons on the top. 

This recipe is adapted from one printed in the Los Angeles Times, and originally comes from the Mustard Seed Café on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Angeles.

Mustard Seed Café Macaroni and Cheese

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup flour
4 cups milk
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
a dash each of cayenne pepper and dry mustard
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 pound (3 cups) grated Cheddar cheese
1/4 pound (1 cup) grated Gruyère or Swiss cheese
2 ounces (1/2 cup) grated Parmesan cheese
1 pound macaroni, cooked and drained
1 1/2 cups seasoned croutons

Preheat oven to 350° F / 175° C.

Cook and drain the pasta according to package directions.  Set aside.  Spray a 13x9-inch baking dish with cooking spray.

For the white sauce, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat.  Stir in the flour to make a roux, cooking and stirring constantly, 2 to 3 minutes.  Add the milk and broth.  Simmer until the roux has thickened and the liquid has evaporated, 6 to 8 minutes.  Season to taste with nutmeg, cayenne, mustard, and salt and pepper.  (Remember that the cheese will add a bit of saltiness on its own.)  Remove from heat.

Combine the cheeses, and stir 3/4 of it into the hot white sauce.  Pour the cheese sauce over the cooked pasta, and pour all into the prepared dish.  Sprinkle evenly with the remaining cheese.  Put the croutons into a resealable plastic bag, and let the kids crush them with a rolling pin or other fairly heavy object.  Sprinkle the crumbs evenly over the top of the macaroni and cheese.

Bake until the cheese melts and browns lightly, 35 to 45 minutes.

Makes 8 to 10 servings.  Active work time, about 30 minutes; total preparation time, 1 hour.