Crunchy, Gooey and Chocolatey–Toffee Bar Cookies

A crunchy crust, a gooey caramel layer and a ganache topping--the perfect toffee bar at last.

By Laurie A. Perry
I’ve been making toffee bars since I was nine years old–but not the same toffee bar. I’ve tried a dozen recipes by that name, and I started numbering the ones I liked enough to make twice. Toffee bar number one had coconut and brown sugar. Toffee bar number two had a brown sugar and butter crust and a topping of melted Hershey’s milk chocolate (milk chocolate–no wonder that one fell by the wayside). Number three, from an ancient Better Homes and Gardens cookie cookbook, calls for a sweetened condensed milk filling and a fudge frosting. I liked it–and Mel really liked it–but it never quite worked.

So I’ve been tinkering with the recipe, and I think the current version is pretty darn good. Try it; see what you think. I’m taking a batch to a New Year’s Day gathering. Because, you know, there just aren’t enough sweets this time of year.

GANACHE-TOPPED TOFFEE BARS

Crust
2 cups flour
1 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla

Ganache topping
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 cup cream

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×11-inch baking pan with foil.*
Make the crust: stir together the dry ingredients. Melt the butter; add the vanilla to the butter, and mix both into the dry ingredients. Pat the mixture into the prepared pan; it will be soft and easy to spread out. Bake for about 20 minutes, until lightly browned.
While the crust is baking, make the filling. Pour the sweetened condensed milk into a medium saucepan, add the butter and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about five minutes, stirring to keep it from burning. The mixture will thicken. Add the vanilla.

Pour the filling over the baked crust, making sure to cover all of the crust. Bake for another 20 minutes. It will bubble and turn a lovely golden brown (toffee-colored, in fact).
Remove from the oven and let cool for about half an hour. Make the ganache: break up the bittersweet chocolate and place in a heavy-bottomed saucepan; pour in the cream, and put the pan over low heat. Melt the chocolate, stirring. When the mixture is nice and smooth and glossy, it’s ready to pour gently over the first two layers. Once again, go for coverage–you want the ganache to cover the entire surface.

Chill. Remove the confection from the pan, using the overhanging foil as a handle. Cut into bars. These are rich, so don’t make the pieces too large.

*Maida Heatter’s fool-proof method for lining a pan with aluminum foil: Turn the pan upside down. Tear off a large piece of foil and press it over the pan, so you have the basic shape. Then press the foil into the pan, using a dish towel to keep the foil from tearing.

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Healthy Christmas Quinoa Salad

Today we have a guest post from our nephew Ryan Moore, who came up with this yummy quinoa dish. It’s a nice change from all of the rich foods of the winter holidays, and it’s very pretty too.

By Ryan Moore
Quinoa is a wonderful, soft, light, fluffy, grainlike seed that can easily be tossed into salads or serve as a replacement for other grains. It’s so easy to prepare too. My mother, in her explorations of healthy gluten-free alternatives to wheat, introduced me to quinoa, and it quickly became a favorite.

The ingredients for a simple, delicious and healthy salad.

I started out thinking I would create something like tabouleh with it, but the homogeneous nature of traditional tabouleh doesn’t suit fluffy quinoa, so I broke it into two parts: the warm nutty quinoa and a delicious seasonal mixture of pomegranate and cucumber. I liked that combination a lot, but I thought it needed something just a little richer and sweeter than the traditional olive oil and lemon juice as a dressing, so I came up with a yogurt-honey dressing.

Quinoa Cucumber-Pomegranate Salad

Quinoa:
•1 cup dry quinoa
•1tbs butter or ghee
•1/2tsp ground cumin (whole Cumin can also be used)
•2 pods black cardamom, ground
•1 clove garlic, pressed
•2 cups water
•Salt to taste

Pomegranate-Cucumber salad:
•1 pomegranate
•½ English cucumber, or 2-3 Persian cucumbers, diced
•½ red onion, quartered and finely sliced
•flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
•1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
•juice from 1 lemon, plus some of the lemon zest
•1-2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
•
Yogurt-Honey dressing:
•Greek yogurt
•Mint, chiffonade or finely chop
•Honey to taste
•
Preparation: Heat butter/ghee (I like to use ghee because it tolerates high) in a pot over medium to medium-high heat. Add the cardamom, cumin and salt. Stir or swirl that together; it should become fragrant almost immediately–just make sure it doesn’t burn. Add the pressed garlic and when you can smell the garlic, pour in the dry quinoa. Stir that around for 30-60 seconds. Add water, cover, bring to a boil and then simmer until done.
While the quinoa is cooking, mix together the yogurt, mint and honey; set aside. You’ll notice there are no amounts given–that’s because your taste buds must be the guideline. Start with a cup of yogurt and a dollop of honey, plus a tablespoon of mint chiffonade. Add more of any single ingredient until you have a flavor you love.
Separate out the pomegranate kernels. If you’ve never done this before, it’s easiest to completely submerge the pomegranate in water, split or cut it in half, and then liberate the kernels (yes, I do mean liberate; they are delicate). The pith will float to the surface and the kernels will fall to the bottom. Combine the pomegranate kernels and the remaining ingredients in a bowl and toss them together gently.
As far as presentation goes, the only important guideline is the separation of the three components. For single servings, simply place a serving spoon’s worth of quinoa into a bowl or onto a plate, top with a generous dollop of mint yogurt and top with the pomegranate-cucumber mixture.

Hazel served it at her holiday party in a large shallow bowl, mounding the quinoa in the bowl and then creating a well in the center for the yogurt sauce, with a festive wreath of the pomegranate-cucumber salad circling it.

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Salmon Tacos with Sherry? Only in California!

For Laurie’s annual solstice party, she decided on a taco bar. I’ve been enlisted to make our sister Hellen’s famous salmon tacos.This is usually a summer dish for me and my honey Mark but it got rave reviews for a party we did in September, so Laurie asked me to repeat it and I decided to share the recipe with you.

I keep a kitchen journal on my computer; in fact, long before my chef nephew Sam even told me to give it that name, I had a file simply called it “Recipes” handy on my computer desktop. When someone raves about a recipe, I can easily copy, paste and email it. I never mind sharing recipes–they’re not secrets; they’re gifts. Of course, I’m sure I’d get slightly cranky if someone sold one of my (or my sisters’) wonderful recipes and made millions but, frankly, I’m just not seeing it.

I tell anyone cooking one of my recipes to be sure to use nice wine and liquor. If I can’t drink what I’m cooking with, I sure don’t want it in my food. My sis Margy sent me a bookmark one year that said “I always cook with wine – sometimes I even put it in the food,” and I adhere to that adage.

Hellen and her son Will invented this, and I make it often. It’s pretty simple and incorporates the ever popular chipotle mayo we posted on the blog a few days ago.

Hellen’s SalmonTacos
Filling:
Cubed fresh salmon fillets (I usually use one of Costco’s salmon sides)
1 thin sliced leek (mostly the white part)
1/4 cup cream sherry (don’t scrimp, use the good stuff – Harvey’s Bristol Cream or my favorite, the hard-to-get Philo’s)
Dash or 2 Tabasco
1 tsp Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste

In large sauté pan, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter. Add leeks (separated into rings) and sauté about 5 minutes. Add sherry, Lea & Perrin’s and Tabasco. Sauté another minute, cover and set to the side. In another large sauté pan (a good cast iron skillet can be your best friend in the kitchen), heat the third tablespoon of olive until it begins to smoke. Add salmon and just sear it. Toss into the leek mixture and warm through (about 2 minutes). Add minced garlic (fresh, not sautéed).

Serve with tortillas, chipotle mayo and shredded cabbage. Wowzers! It’s yummy, I promise! And as holiday party food goes, not all that bad for you. You could do worse–and will when we start posting some desserts! Chocolate chunk bread pudding, for instance…. We’ll also be sharing a lot of appetizer recipes between now and New Year’s.

Hazel

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Don’t Let the Cats Out!

Any minute now Laurie, with the help of Hazel, will throw her big yearly solstice party. Wine will flow like, er, wine and anybody who shows up full of somebody else’s food has only himself to blame.

Though I am officially a cohost, my part in these shenanigans is minor. On the afternoon of the party I will be sent to the local market for last-minute ingredients and bags of ice. After that, I will have long heartfelt discussions with Hazel’s sweetie, Mark, and generally try to stay out of the way. Later, as my regular dinner time approaches and then passes, I will certainly sample the appetizers. Sevenish, guests will start to arrive. While Laurie and Hazel run around like crazy people making last-minute preparations, I will let the guests in.

Roswell helps set the bar for the party.

I know most of the people Laurie invites, and in fact I invite some people myself. I am delighted to see them individually or in small groups, but I am really not much of a party person. I am not good at keeping a conversation in the air with small talk.

And I worry about things — mostly the cats. People who know me well, or even moderately well, know about my constant cry of “don’t let the cats out!” Letting the cats out is of particular concern when I’m dealing with guests who don’t have pets of their own and don’t think about such things. They are in no hurry to shut our door because they are never in a hurry to shut their door at home.

And so I generally hang out at the end of our entryway where there is a narrow shelf upon which I can rest a glass of seltzer and a plate of food. Special friends will sometimes join me there and understand if I run off to shut a door behind guests who are a little slow.

Eventually we will have more departing guests than arriving guests. The process of letting them out is similar to that of letting them in but can be even more maddening to those of us with a psychotic concern for the cats. Because people tend to stand at the door and continue conversations, or start new conversations, or wish people well in the new year. Whatever. As politely as I am able, I suggest they either stay in or go out but in any case quit standing with the half open door as an attraction to our escape artist cats.

These parties are always a big success. There is nothing like good food, drink, and conversation to make a party go, and there is always plenty of those things. And the truth is, we haven’t yet lost a cat. I suppose there is always next year.

Mel

Mel’s essay about how he came to write a semi-sequel to Surfing Samauri Robots has been posted at Omni Mystery News. This is a great website full of useful, interesting, and timely info about the current mystery scene. You can see the essay here.

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Smoking Gingerbread Is Not for Sissies!

This is the week of my birthday. How will I be celebrating it? Well, I’ll be putting in overtime at work (but my sweetie is taking me out to dinner). So, knowing how little time I’m going to have, I wanted to give you guys a couple of recipes in one post–elements for the gingerbread trifle.

First the great gingerbread. It received rave reviews from our guests at the tree-trimming tea. I think it worked equally well with both the butterscotch and the lemon filling. I used Laurie’s lemon curd recipe and thought the combo was fabulous.

The recipe is based on one from Gourmet.

The gingerbread was great but, truly, not pretty enough to photograph after the lava flow!

Gingerbread
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardomom
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, well softened
2/3 cup molasses (not blackstrap)
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons finely grated (with a microplane) peeled fresh ginger
2/3 cup hot water

Put oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 9-inch square baking pan.
Whisk together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in a bowl.
Beat together butter, molasses, brown sugar, eggs, and ginger in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until combined. Reduce speed to low and beat in flour mixture until smooth, then add hot water and mix until combined (batter may appear curdled).
Pour batter into pan and bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool to warm in pan on a rack.

And here’s what I learned with this recipe. They were serious when they said “9-inch square baking pan.” I chose a slightly smaller pan, a silly inch smaller, who’d notice? Hmmm, my oven did. As the gingerbread oozed over the side of the pan, landed–and then burned–on the bottom of my oven, the stench of burning gingerbread permeated my house and my nostrils. The smell lasted for hours. Seriously I woke up the next morning with the house still smelling of burnt gingerbread. It was right there with the time I thought it would be a good idea to smoke a cigar in the house with my friend Sam. DON’T DO IT!!!

Tangy, sweet and lemony--made with lemons just picked from the garden

Lemon Curd
Enough ripe bright-skinned lemons–about three–to yield 1 tablespoon of grated zest and 1/2 cup strained juice
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, cut up
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups sugar

Run 2 inches of water into the base pan of a double boiler and set it over medium heat to come to a brisk simmer.
Grate the zest, and juice the lemons.
Put the zest, juice, salt and cut-up butter in the top of the double boiler (off the water).
Beat the egg yolks and whole egg together at speed in a large bowl until they’re foamy; gradually add the sugar and beat until the mixture is pale yellow and very thick (the original says about five minutes –I find it never takes that long, more like three).
Scrape the egg mixture into the double boiler and set the top into the base over the simmering water. Begin whisking the mixture immediately. Cook it, whisking constantly, until it has thickened smoothly and is steaming hot, about 10 minutes. Be careful not to overcook the curd; it is done when it will coat a metal or wooden spoon heavily. (If you have a candy thermometer, it should read between 175 and 200.) Remove the upper pan from the hot water.
Pour the contents into sterilized jars and allow to cool uncovered, then cap the jars with sterilized lids. Or scrape it into a clean plastic container and use it up in a week or two. In any case, keep it the refrigerator.
This recipe comes from the wonderful Fancy Pantry by Helen Witty, unfortunately out of print, though used copies can be found.

Hazel

The butterscotch pudding, which was our alternative filling, could come from a packaged mix–if you can find it. (Don’t use one of those instant puddings; they taste horrible and the texture is disgusting.) But pudding is easy to make from scratch. I used a simple one from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, but virtually any one will do.

Now, for assembling the trifle, though it’s not exactly a proper trifle because it lacks both alcohol and fruit. (It could have alcohol, of course, maybe a little spiced rum sprinkled over the gingerbread.)

The Trifle
2 cups whipping cream, beaten stiff
Slice the gingerbread and line a pretty glass bowl with the slices (and sprinkle it with a little rum if you like). Spoon the filling of your choice over the gingerbread. Pipe or spoon the whipped cream over it all. If you’re thinking of making it for a holiday party, I recommend getting out the cake decorating set and piping whipped-cream rosettes around the perimeter.

You can assemble this a couple of hours ahead of time, but don’t make it the day before you plan to serve it. The pudding will soak into the gingerbread and you’ll end up with mush.

Laurie

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The Great Kitchen Migration

Laurie and I have a theory that every good party starts in the kitchen. And in our family, most of them also migrate there during the course of an evening. Laurie has a great kitchen in that it’s open to the living room, with a breakfast bar between the two spaces. She always sets up her appetizers and drinks on the bar, so she can converse with her guests while putting the finishing touches on her meals. Her guests keep her company and usually help out–win-win! The same goes for my sister-in-law Vicki’s fabulous mountain kitchen. Mine’s a bit quirkier, more like a train station, but I like it.

Our Aunt Mary’s kitchen is a different story. It’s probably twice the size of our kitchens, but it still gets pretty crowded. We always try to have appetizers of some sort ready for guests as they arrive, but the day of our tea was drizzly and cool, so we all had champagne in the kitchen while everyone chatted, listened to music and kicked in to help make our afternoon tea.

While our hostess sat with her injured ankle wrapped in ice and propped up on a stool, Maddie assembled the trifle and Allisande made tea. Laurie and I made sandwiches, which was pretty easy, since we’d really done all the prep work in our own kitchens, where we were able to commune with our own food processors and favorite knives. Don’t get me wrong, Mary has all the right stuff–we just can’t find it in her enormous 1920s-era kitchen!

Barb artfully arranged fresh fruit on a crystal dish that she had foraged for in Mary’s butler’s pantry. (She forswears other desserts. Such virtue!) One of the fun things about Mary’s house is that her butler’s pantry is chock-full of antique serving dishes passed on by her and Phil’s moms and aunts. Dee and Ryan arrived late because they had to work late, so they missed out on the fun in the kitchen. But with everyone helping, we pulled together sandwiches for 10 in record-breaking time.

Let’s eat!

Hazel

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Bring on the tea and tinsel!

Thanksgiving came on so suddenly this year! It doesn’t usually sneak up on me because we almost always have Thanksgiving dinner at my house. This year, my aunt Mary and I switched, so I didn’t put in the usual two weeks of cleaning, shopping and cooking. Not to say I didn’t cook, of course I did, just not as much pre-cooking as usual. Since I didn’t slave away for two weeks, I had my four-day weekend planned before our brunch was finished. I hung my outdoor Christmas lights. My 14-year-old niece Madison got roped into helping me (thanks, Maddie!) and now I’m inspired to start on Christmas.

At some point I made up this rule that my Christmas tree needed to be decorated on the weekend closest to my December 7 birthday. But it will be rough this year, because over Thanksgiving dinner, we somehow decided December 5 would be the perfect weekend to have a Tree Decorating Tea — at my aunt Mary’s. We’d get a great holiday tea and Mary would get her tree decorated — win-win, well, except my tree will remain undecorated til… hmmm, my sister Hellen has a phrase for this.

Mary is perhaps the one person I know who loves tea more than I do. We had a casual tea just last Saturday to plan our Thanksgiving dinner and here we are planning another in just a week. But teas are a lot more fun to plan than a huge dinner. Maybe it’s the tiny sandwiches or the great desserts…not sure why, they’re just fun! And Christmas-y teas are even more fun because the food is always so festive.

My aunt Mary and her husband, Phil, live in a historic mansion in Southern California at the foot of the mountains. It lends itself to both tea and holiday decorations, and Laurie and I are always inspired to do special teas for this wonderful couple and the house we dubbed Toad Hall in deference to its resemblance to the stately home in The Wind in the Willows.

What do we have planned? Stick with us: You’ll see. From food to flowers, we’ll show you how to decorate a tea, er tree.
Posted by Hazel

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