It was the day after Thanksgiving and we were still stuffed with turkey and all the traditional side dishes that must be eaten with the big bird.

Several pounds of butter were laid out on the kitchen counter. Ten-pound bags of flour were piled one on top of the other. Powdered sugar, brown sugar, pure vanilla extract and dozens of eggs were lined up ready to go. It was time to start mixing, baking and frosting some of the holiday cookies.

I mixed, my daughter-in-law and granddaughters rolled dough, baked and frosted the cookies. The holiday baking had begun.

With memories of my mom and I baking Christmas cookies together, I mixed some of the same dough that she and I would make together each year. These were special cookies, the recipes coming out of the tightly-packed index-card file box only once a year.

This year I’ll share some of those recipes with you.

This year’s first day of holiday cookie-baking produced a couple kinds of cookies.

Praline Cookies are relatively new to our family Christmas cookie platter. It’s a recipe that I first tried about 10 years ago and it’s become a family favorite. I discovered the recipe in a supplemental homebaking insert to the St. Paul Pioneer Press that my mom had saved. It was the best baking ideas of the year from the 11th Grand National Pillsbury Bake-Off and the year was 1960. The recipe had been a $1,000 winner for 14-year-old Cheryl Dean Matthews of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Matthews’ recipe has definitely lived on. A few years ago I saw Martha Stewart prepare these cookies on television. She didn’t give credit to Ms. Matthews, though.

The butter and brown sugar-rich cookies are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. They can easily stand deliciously on their own, but put some pecan pieces on top and cover them with a spoonful of praline frosting and they become truly decadent. The frosting tastes like a praline candy right from a New Orleans candy counter.

I’ve made a tiny adjustment to the original recipe. I toast the pecan halves that will be broken into smaller pieces over the top of each cookie. And, I use heavy whipping cream in the Praline Frosting rather than the regular cream listed in the original recipe.

When it comes to Christmas cookies, I only use the best quality ingredients — pure vanilla extract, the freshest nuts I can find, and really good butter. My daughter-in-law and I make 3 batches which yields between 140 and 150 cookies. The baked cookies freeze well. The dough can be mixed a day or two before baking day and stored in the refrigerator.

Be ready to work quickly with the frosting, spooning the hot topping over each cookie. If it starts to thicken before you’ve used it all up, stir in a little more cream.

So, gather your ingredients and let the baking begin!

Praline Cookies

• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup pecan halves, toasted

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside. Cream butter with electric mixer. Add brown sugar gradually, creaming well. Add egg and vanilla and blend well. Stir in dry ingredients. At this point, dough can be refrigerated and baked later.

When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

I use a #100 portion scooper to lift dough from bowl and then roll each portion into a ball. This guarantees that allo the cookies will be the same size. If you don’t have a portion scooper, drop dough by rounded teaspoon and roll into a ball. Place dough balls on parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake cookies in preheated 350-degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to waxed paper-lined countertop to cool.

Break each pecan half into 4 or 5 pieces and place the pieces on the cookies. Drizzle Praline Frosting over the top of each cookie. Makes 3 1/2 to 4 dozen cookies.

Praline Frosting:

Combine 1 cup firmly-packed brown sugar and 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream in small, heavy saucepot. Bring to a boil. Boil and stir for 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Blend in 1 cup sifted powdered sugar, adding it all at once. Beat by hand until it is smooth. If frosting thickens, add more cream.

I was reminded recently how delightful it is to discover new flavor combinations. I had the opportunity to have dinner at The Sample Room in Minneapolis. It was my first visit to this hopping restaurant/bar housed in a restored turn-of-the-centruy building, tucked along the banks of the Mississippi River in a mostly residential area of Northeast Minneapolis. As the name implies, you can order samples of many of their homemade offerings, including their house-made sausages. It’s the perfect set-up for someone like me who always finds several entrees that sound good, making it difficult to make a decision on what exactly to order.

My experience at The Sample Room was totally enjoyable. Smaller sample portions made it possible to taste a variety of their sausages (Chicken, Artichoke and Roasted Garlic Sausage served with creamy leeks, House-Smoked Polish Sausage with sauteed onions and pepeprs and a Smoked Swedish Potato Sausage with sauerkraut), a Roasted Fresh Veggie Torte, and Fire Roasted Artichoke Gratin with Flat Bread. It was all very flavorful. But the surprise of the evening was the sample plate of a wedge of Select Cheddar served with Tart Cherry Mustard. It was a flavor combination that really charged up my taste buds. And, it reminded me to be creative and take some risks when pairing flavors and putting menus together.

It was that light bulb realization that led to Oatmeal-Squash Muffins with Ancho Chili Pepper Butter.

I had a large zip-top bag in my refrigerator holding two relatively small chunks of roasted butternut squash and half of a small roasted pie pumpkin. They’d been there for more than a few days and I knew I’d better use them before it was too late.

I pureed the peeled roasted squash in my food processor. The rest of the ingredient line-up for Oatmeal-Squash Muffins was built by adapting a recipe for pumpkin muffins that I’ve used in the past.

I’ve been having fun incorporating Dakota Family Mill stone ground whole white wheat flour into many of my recipes, using it to replace half of the all-purpose flour. This whole wheat flour is milled from hard white wheat and is sweeter tasting with a lighter color than whole wheat flour made from hard red wheat, but still adds fiber and healthful nutrients to the goods it goes into. My five-pound bag from Dakota Family Mill is almost gone. Luckily, my local natural food co-op has started carrying this brand that comes from Richland County in southeastern North Dakota.

Old-fashioned oats and wheat germ add more autumn-like goodness. And then there are the cranberries. I normally add grated apples to my pumpkin muffins. But, after taping "Lakeland Cooks! Cranberries" the other day, I came home from the studio kitchen with a bag full of fresh cranberries that weren’t needed by my guests who had prepared their favorite cranberry recipes on the show. So I measured a couple of cups out of the bag, cut them each into quarters, and folded them into the batter along with some broken toasted walnuts. (Oh, and by the way, "Lakeland Cooks! Cranberries" will air for the first time on the Saturday right after Thanksgiving, November 29th, from noon to 3:00 on Lakeland Public Television.)

The result? Spicy, sweet, tart, crunchy, moist muffins. And after my light-bulb moment at The Sample Room, I charged up my taste buds by spreading my muffin with Ancho Chili Pepper Butter. Ground Ancho Chili Pepper has a rich flavor with little heat. My small jar comes from Penzeys Spices. You’ve just got to try this combination. Oatmeal-Squash Muffins, Ancho Chili Pepper Butter and Turkey Pot Pie. Oh, my.

If you’re not in the mood for jazzing up your taste buds, enjoy these muffins with coffee or tea for breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack. And guess what? They make a wonderful dessert settled on a pretty little plate and topped with Maple Cream. You may remember this whipped cream that I shared with you on this blog a couple of weeks ago with little baby cakes. I’ll share it once again at the end of this post.

Enjoy. And have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Oatmeal-Squash Muffins

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole white wheat flour
• 1 cup old-fashioned oats, uncooked
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 cups cooked squash, pureed
• 2 cups fresh cranberries, each cut into 4 pieces
• 1 cup broken toasted walnuts or pecans

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.

In large bowl, combine flours, oatmeal, wheat germ, sugars, baking soda, salt and spices. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil and squash. Whisk to blend. Add to dry ingredients in large mixing bowl and stir gently until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in cranberries and nuts.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake about 20 minutes, or until tops are golden brown and wooden pick inserted into center of muffin comes out clean. Makes 24 muffins.

Note:

Two teaspoons of Pumpkin Pie Spices can be used in place of the individual spices in the list of ingredients.

Any kind of cooked squash will work in this recipe.

Ancho Chili Pepper Speckled Butter

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon ground Ancho Chili Pepper

In small bowl, mix butter and Ancho Chili Pepper, blending well.

I pushed plastic wrap into my turkey-shaped cookie cutter, then pushed the seasoned butter into it and wrapped up tight with the plastic. Afer some chill time in the refrigerator, I was able to pull the butter out with the plastic, unwrap it and garnish it on a plate to serve along side the Oatmeal-Squash Muffins. Isn’t it cute with its sage leaf feathers and fresh cranberry wattle?

Maple Cream That Turns Oatmeal-Squash Muffins into Dessert

• 1 cup cold heavy whipping cream
• ¼ cup pure maple syrup

Have mixing bowl and beaters chilled for best results.

Beat whipped cream until soft peaks form. Add maple syrup and beat until firm. This recipe can easily be doubled.

Just before I left home on Wednesday to drive to Fargo to teach a cooking class, I thought about sticking a little note to the top of the bowl of leftover Autumn Rice on the Wild Side that was in the refrigerator. I had made the wild rice dish on Sunday. Tiny chunks of sweet potatoes and butternut squash and the nutty flavor of tender wild rice was a delicious pairing with the pork chops my husband had fried to perfection.

If you read my last post on this blog, you’ll remember that my generous husband decided to take a tin full of Hungarian Walnut Strudels to work to share with his co-workers. That would have been just fine, except that I hadn’t yet taken a picture of them for this blog. So, I had to make another full batch of the little walnut-filled pillows.

It was that experience, still fresh in my mind, that made me think about putting a "Do Not Eat" note on the bowl of leftover Autumn Rice on the Wild Side. I was planning to turn the seasonal side dish into a creamy soup.But, I just couldn’t imagine that he would eat that rice while I was away. So, I didn’t leave a note. Big mistake. I returned home the next day to find only a little more than a cup of rice left in the bowl in the refrigerator. It wasn’t a mouse that ate it.

I was still able to make a small pot of soup that turned out to be just the right amount to serve a few hungry adults on a chilly afternoon.

If you have more than a couple of cups of rice leftover, you can easily double the soup recipe. I found the soup tasted even better after spending some time in the refrigerator.

I love it when I can make one dish and eat it twice without even recognizing it the second time around. I don’t even know I’m eating leftovers. That’s what happened with Autumn Rice on the Wild Side.

Use this same creamy base for any wild rice you may have leftover. When I visited with Susan Carol Hauser, author of "Wild Rice Cooking," she said she likes to cook a whole pound of wild rice at one time. When it cools, she packages the cooked rice in one-cup portions and stores them in the freezer. If you decide to try her method, you’ll always have cooked rice ready to stir into this creamy base along with any leftover vegetables you have in your refrigerator. You can listen to my conversation with Susan Carol Hauser by clicking here.

Autumn Rice on the Wild Side Soup

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups vegetable or chicken broth
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup half and half
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups leftover Autumn Rice on the Wild Side (click here for recipe)
• 1 tablespoon dry sherry
• Fresh-ground black pepper
• Chopped dried cranberries and pecans for garnish

Melt butter in a heavy 2-quart pot. Blend in flour and cook, stirring constantly, for a mintue or two. Remove pot from heat and gradually stir in broth. Blend well. Return pot to heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens slightly. Blend in half and half. Stir in Rice and heat through. Add sherry. Season to taste with freshly ground black pepper.

Ladle hot soup into bowls. Sprinkle with chopped dried cranberries and pecans.

Note:

• I never use cooking sherry from the grocery store. It is loaded with sodium and doesn’t taste very good. Go to the liquor store and get some dry sherry.
• I seasoned the soup with a pinch of dried thyme and marjoram.

On Tuesday evening, I rolled out Rich Pastry Dough that had been chilling in the refrigerator. As I watched election updates on the television, I cut rounds from the thin dough. I spread some light-as-a-feather whipped egg whites, sweetened with a bit of sugar, speckled with bits of ground walnuts, over each round of dough. As I gently folded each round into the shape of a pillow, my fingertips were coated with the egg white mixture. Although the little pillows appeared a little messy on the baking sheet, they baked up to look like puffy goose down pillows.

I was working toward creating miniature strudels, with the rich, not-too-sweet flavor of the walnut-filled strudel I had swooned over while I was visiting Hungary early in October. There the climate is just right for growing nuts, and walnuts grow in abundance. At the time of my visit, the walnuts had just been harvested. They were available fresh, in the shell, or without the shell at the farmers’ market. In the little villages dotting the countryside, Hungarians were picking the walnuts from trees in their yard.

 It was a bit of a messy job, but my attempt to create baby strudels filled with buttery, melt-in-your-mouth ground walnuts held together with sweetened egg whites was a delicious success. I allowed the flaky little pillows to cool, although I couldn’t resist eating one or two while they were still warm. Oh, simply divine.

Once cooled, I packed the little strudels in a tin. I didn’t have time to take a picture of them before I left for Fargo on Wednesday morning to teach a cooking class. When I got home on Thursday afternoon, the tin was empty. Was my memory playing tricks on me? I thought I had packed them in the tin, but maybe I had decided to put them in a freezer container and store them in the freezer to keep them fresh. I made a quick call to my husband to see if he knew what had happened to them. Oh, yes. He knew, alright. He had decided to take them to work and generously share them with his coworkers.

So, this afternoon I made another batch, ate a couple more while they were still warm and wasted no time getting a picture of them.

You’ll find this pastry dough to be so easy to work with. Just be sure it is chilled and right out of the refrigerator when you begin to roll it out. The scraps can be rerolled and will still bake to a light and flaky crust encasing the walnut filling.

These tiny strudels would be a wonderful addition to a holiday cookie platter. Since they are not very sweet, they are the perfect addition to a brunch buffet. And who wouldn’t love to recieve a gift of a tin full of these little pillows plump with walnuts? Bake and be generous — share them with your coworkers.

Hungarian Baby Walnut Strudels

• 1 batch chilled Rich Pastry Dough (see recipe below)
  
• 3 egg whites, room temperature
• ½ cup sugar 
• 1 cup ground walnuts
• Powdered sugar for sprinkling over baked cookies

Beat egg whites at high speed of an electric mixer until foamy. Gradually add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form and sugar dissolves, about 4 minutes. Gently fold in walnuts.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Divide pastry dough into 3 equal pieces. Roll one piece of dough to 1/8-inch thick. Cut 12 (3¼-inch) rounds with a cookie cutter or a drinking glass. Spread scant 1½ tablespoons walnut filling on each round. Roll up, jellyroll fashion, slightly pushing in ends of pastry. Repeat process with remaining dough. Arrange pastry rolls, seam side down, on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool completely on wire racks. Sprinkle strudels with powdered sugar. Makes 36 strudels.

Rich Pastry Dough

• 1½ cups flour
• 8 ounces chilled cream cheese, cut into small chunks
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled butter, cut into small chunks

Make pastry by placing flour in bowl of food processor. Add small chunks of cream cheese and butter. Pulse the ingredients until the dough starts to hold together. Remove the dough from the work bowl and use your hands to form it into a disk. Wrap the disk of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Note: If you don’t have a food processor, make dough using a pastry cutter or two table knives.
 

Most people would call them muffins, or maybe cupcakes. But, that sounds so ordinary. You know. Just the same old, same old. Not that I don’t make muffins or cupcakes. But when I do, and when I put them on a plate with a sauce and a topping, they become babycakes. And suddenly, they become extraordinary.

This is exactly what happened when I mixed a second bowl full of Maple-Walnut Cake batter that I made for my All About Food newspaper column this week. I greased some glass custard cups, spooned some of the batter into them, filling them almost to the top. They took only about 20 to 25 minutes to bake. Once I took them from the oven, I allowed them to cool in the cups for about 10 minutes, then nudged them out with a table knife and transferred them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

The baked cakes have the texture of moist banana bread. Loads of toasted walnuts give them great crunch, not to mention the health benefits they offer. If you’re not a pumpkin pie-lover, I could see this cake, sauce and maple cream topping showing up when it’s time for dessert on Thanksgiving.

Sweet Apple Cranberry Sauce takes advantage of the apples and fresh cranberries of the season. Their sweet tartness was meant to be a match for Walnut-Maple Babycakes.

A puff of Maple Cream, a sweet, fluffy adornment on these babycakes, is also decadent on pumpkin or pecan pie, pancakes, waffles, french toast or hot coffee. When I was getting ready to take the photo of the dressed-up babycakes, I pulled out a little covered bowl of what I thought was some leftover Maple Cream. As I stirred it up, I thought it seemed a bit stiff. I decided it must be the maple syrup that kept the whipped cream firm. After placing some of the mixture on top of the little cake, I took a little lick of the spoon. Oh, what  a surprise that was. It turned out the little bowl I had taken from the fridge was filled with Sesame Seed Sauce, leftover from an appetizer I had made for guests a few nights ago. Good on the appetizers, not so good on Walnut-Maple Babycakes.

So, I just whipped up another batch of Maple Cream. I used a little for the photo. The rest is in my refrigerator just waiting to be mixed into my morning bowl of hot oatmeal.

Please click here if you’d like the recipe for Walnut-Maple Cake.

Sweet Apple-Cranberry Sauce

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 5 sweet apples, peeled, cored, cut into ½-inch pieces
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup fresh cranberries
• 1/3 cup whipping cream

Melt butter in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples. Sauté for 5 minutes. Sprinkle sugar over the apples. Add cranberries. Sauté until cranberries pop, about 5 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer fruit to a bowl, leaving any liquid behind in the skillet. Add whipping cream to juices in skillet. Boil until liquid is reduced to 1/3 cup. The mixture will be thick and syrupy. Return fruit to skillet. Stir to coat. Spoon warm Sauce around each little babycake on a dessert plate.

Maple Cream

• 1 cup cold heavy whipping cream
• ¼ cup pure maple syrup

Have mixing bowl and beaters chilled for best results.

Beat whipped cream until soft peaks form. Add maple syrup and beat until firm. This recipe easily doubles.