Dutch Letter Bars

In Pella, IA, they have a huge tulip festival called Tulip Time and the town's motto is A Touch of Holland. The town center is beautiful with many tulip gardens and there are many shops dedicated to Dutch goods. On our 6th anniversary my husband and I traveled there for the weekend to walk among the tulips and see what the town is famous for. One of those famous things are the Dutch pastry Dutch Letters. They are made of almond paste and puff pastry and shaped into an S. They are mouth-wateringly delicious!  We visited the town on a weekend, the week before the Tulip Time festival and we had to wait in a line snaked through the bakery for at least 15 mins (although the line moved very efficiently) the letters were worth every second of the wait.
Of course I wanted to figure out how to make these confectionery wonders, but haven't had the patience to do it yet. Then one day I was browsing through Our Iowa magazine and a woman submitted this recipe. I loved that I could get the taste of the almond goodness in an easy to make bar. I only added one ingredient, the cinnamon sugar - so that makes it my recipe, right?

Dutch Letter Bars

1 stick butter, softened

1 stick margarine, softened

2 eggs

1 8oz. can Almond Paste

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

sliced almonds, to taste

cinnamon sugar, to taste

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Put butter and margarine in a large mixing bowl to soften

With the butter/marg wrappers, grease a 9X13" pan

Take a cute picture of your kid with the almond paste :)

Cream the butters together,

Then add the eggs, (I know this seems totally different from most recipes as usually you cream the butter and sugars together. And honestly I haven't tried it that way, I just followed the recipe).

This mixture will look totally curdled and separated. It's okay.

Next, open the heavenly smelling can of Almond paste, take a big sniff and then add it to the butter/egg mixture and beat well. 

Then add the flour and sugar. I do one cup of each and then mix, adding the second cup of each and beating again. 

"Wow, that is going fast Mommy!"

Scrape out the bowl of almondy goodness into the baking pan.

Spread out evenly using a rubber or offset spatula,

Sprinkle with the sliced almonds and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon sugar (to taste)

Bake for 30-35 mins or until golden brown along the edges.

Cut into 36 bars and enjoy!

These bars are the perfect harmony of chewy and crisp. I LOVE the texture that the almond paste brings to the bar. They don't feel heavy at all and the crisp topping of the almonds and cinnamon sugar is just the right suggestion of crispness that the puff pastry is in the original treat. These go fast! And I'd suggest bringing them to a function, meeting or somewhere where other people can help you eat them because if not, you might eat the whole pan yourself. Not that I have or anything...

Baby Food

So since I have a 7 month old - his food intake has become a constant thought throughout my day. Of course, I always think about food.  I read food blogs, I watch Food TV, I plan out weekly menus so I can shop more efficiently, and really, I just love food.

 I've never been an extremist about any type of food, but I do like to make my own meals as much as possible. The whole convenience food movement that started 60 or so years ago in this country is just starting to wane, I think. Those TV dinners are scary looking and unfortunately so cheap that people begin to think they can't afford real food. (off soap box)

I hate canned fruits and veggies - but frozen works pretty well. I am aghast at the sodium content of the meals you can buy - I do my own version of the cheeseburger pasta meal that my family loves...but one thing I didn't stress over a lot was baby food. With my first, I made a few things on my own - like mashing up a banana or when she was self-feeding I gave her frozen peas - but I loved the convenience of Gerber small packages...that way you knew how much they were eating, AND they were so easy to just throw in a diaper bag with a bib and a spoon.  And don't get me wrong, I still buy those little Gerber packs - they are great.  That said, making your own baby food is EASY, and cheaper.

I'm making strained prunes. You can use this process for any baby food you want to make, peas, carrots, apples, green beans, etc. I just happen to need to get my kid some prunes...if you know what I mean. 

You need a food processor, a food sieve, a small sauce pan, some H2O and prunes.

Here I had about 4oz. of prunes and just enough water to cover them. Bring them to a quick boil and then turn off the heat - allow them to cool to room temp.

They will rehydrate a little and look like this:

Now just throw 'em in your work bowl of the food processor along with all the water. You might even need more water as you begin to process. 

Here they are just whirring away. I didn't pulse them, I turned that sucker on and let them whir for about 15 seconds,

Opened them up and looked like they needed more whirring...

15 seconds later (so a total of 30) I felt they reached a good consistency and I spooned some out to push through the sieve. 

It's hard to hold the sieve, push the prunes through, and get a picture, but here ya go.

It should look like this as it strains out.

You'll have a lot of fiber, skin and occasionally a pit left over.

And this is the glossy puree.

And the amazing fiber/skin left over. You could keep this for yourself, mix it into yogurt or a smoothy, on a day you might need to get things moving. *wink wink.

And then I divide it all up into those little Gerber packs...see they are convenient!

Now for about 77 cents worth of prunes I got 5 packages. At the store this amount of baby food would cost $2.73.  

 That is a huge savings, plus, you know how and when your baby's food was made. Win, win.

Decorated Sugar Cookies

It's that time of year to make the cookies for Santa. And Kirah wanted to make decorated shapes. We have several cookie cutters, but decided for decorating purposes the tree, star, candy cane, stocking, and snowflake would give us the best palate to display our creativity. 

Here our the ingredients for the cookies. I've put the recipe here before. My grandmother's sugar cookie recipe is versatile and delicious. Margarine, sugar, egg, vanilla, vinegar, flour, baking soda and a pinch of salt.
Making cookies is pretty straight forward; creaming butter and sugar together - adding rest of wet ingredients. Mixing dry together and adding to wet without over beating. Then roll out on floured surface, cut, cook and enjoy!

Whisking dry ingredients

Creaming butter and sugar

After adding dry to wet

All rolled out to begin cutting

Cookie cutters laid out

Cutting the cookies

Baking at 425 for 8 mins

Cooling on wire wracks

Ready to frost

The finished product

We decided to use Royal Icing which is made of powdered sugar and egg whites. I used meringue powder as it is easier to work with and seems safer to me to leave out of the fridge. Last time we decorated the cookies were moist and awesome. This year somehow the cookies were dry and the frosting got very hard. I assume our house was a lot dryer this year. But if you held the bit of cookie in your mouth for a moment to dissolve the frosting - they ended up tasting pretty good. But I think the final product was more about the beauty! And the time I got to spend with Kirah and her decorating skills. (some how I completely forgot to take pictures of that process...oh well - there's always next year!)

Pumpkin Bread

So ever since we carved our pumpkins and I mentioned to Kirah that we could eat almost everything a pumpkin gives us, I had to make good on my pronouncement. I successfully managed to make Honey Mustard and Buffalo pumpkin seeds and now we were set to make some pumpkin bread.

I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie - I usually have a little pie with my whip cream, but I LOVE pumpkin bread - I like the cake consistency of the bread and the milder taste of the spices in the bread application.

I found this recipe on a blog and completely forgot to favorite the page so I could link it here. Then I remembered when you do a google search, it shows you the pages you've been to before. Hah! Big Brother win! So here's the website; 

Kirah took a picture of the ingredients - but blogger flipped it on its side. I'm going to include it because it makes me laugh.

Teaching Kirah how to grease the pan;

I mixed my own pumpkin spice just like the blogger told me to... even grated my own nutmeg.

Kirah mixing the dry ingredients (the sore between her eyes was a run-in with the playground equipment)

The wet ingredients waiting to be mixed

Pouring dry onto wet;

Kirah mixing gently to incorporate;

Dividing into the pans;

Here is the second loaf cut and ready to enjoy;

I didn't get pictures of  the loaves in the oven or when it was cooling or when we ate it because I was preparing for Thanksgiving too - but it was delish. Try it with some orange cream cheese. Let some cream cheese soften and then zest an orange into it, whip that up and let it chill a bit. SO GOOD!

Roasted Seasoned Potatoes

Our farm share this year has given us plenty of potatoes and we love them any which way, but this is our favorite lately and so easy!

3-4 lbs favorite potatoes, cut up in bite size pieces
3 Tbs. Olive Oil
4 Tbs. Butter
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp Thyme
1/2 tsp Rosemarry
1/2 tsp. Marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Mix the dry seasoning together in small bowl and cut up potatoes. Pour olive oil in 9x 13" baking dish and add potatoes.

Sprinkle herbs over potatoes,

Stir the potatoes and herbs sprinkling in the minced garlic, 

Add cut up butter,

Tightly cover with foil and roast covered for 20 mins, uncover and roast another 20 mins before serving.

We had pork chops and baked beans too...delish!