Cookie Jar Gingersnaps

When I was in grade school back in the not-quite-dark ages, we used to get these saucer-sized, rich-with-molasses and rolled in sugar, crackle-topped cookies every now and then for dessert with school lunch.  I loved them. They had that crunchy-stiff outer edge and a slightly chewy middle... yum. Once I learned to bake, I started looking for a recipe and this one is about the closest I've found.

It also has the benefit of being relatively quick and doesn't require a lot of complicated fiddling.  I don't make them hand-sized, because that's a LOT of cookie - and the big ones don't fit in a normal-sized coffee mug. ;-)

Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps

Cream together

• 1/2 c. soft shortening (butter flavor Crisco works well)
• 2 c. sugar 

Beat in:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c molasses (blackstrap, or the darkest you can find unless you like a lighter cookie)

Sift together... and then add to moist ingredients and blend well:

• 4 c. flour
• 2 T. ginger
• 1/2 t. salt
• 2 t. cinnamon
• 2 1/2 t. baking powder

Roll into balls the size of a walnut.  Roll in white sugar.  Place 2 1/2" apart on parchment paper lined cookie sheet.  Bake at 350' for 12-15 minutes.  Store in airtight container.  Yield: 4-5 dozen.

Molasses-y goodness

My sister always asks for these in lieu of a Christmas present; she's the sugar cookie baker in the family, so we swap! They're good right out of the oven, but the spices get stronger as they're stored - so they get better and better until they're gone - they keep well and they don't crumble when packed up and sent USPSing across country, either. 

Enjoy!!!

Weekend Update

Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps

Holiday baking has commenced.  Two Swedish Tea Rings dropped off, and the and second round of Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps are ready to go.  I love the smell of the house during the holidays.

Rolled in sugar

Hot out of the oven

We had about 1/2 an inch of rain the other night - the horses were all proper mudballs in the morning, but the ground and all the vegetation is surely happier for it.  I wouldn't have minded if it had kept up for all of the next day, too.  Unfortunately it didn't.  The horses weren't entirely pleased to be kept penned up in the corral with hay until afternoon to give the orchard pasture a chance to dry some.  Every time the house door swung open Sunny would whinny notifying us that, "Hey, you've forgotten us down here!  We want out!"


It was still damp even yesterday when I went down to snip off some more spindly trees along the orchard fenceline.  I'm making progress - I've done most of the way to the barn now, although there's still work for T to do with the chainsaw.

Cat 1 joined me to supervise, yammering away the whole time.  He's nothing if not vocal.  He's still a youngster, definitely a tom, and was likely someone's pet at some point.  He worked his way closer and closer and finally got up the courage...

Once he'd had his ears rubbed I couldn't keep him out from underfoot - I almost dropped a tree on him a couple times.  Finally the horses came over to check out what I was up to and after Sunny snuffled him over and got slobber on him and Thunder almost flattened him, he retreated under the pear tree to complain at the lot of us.

Cat 2 is still running off whenever he spots us getting closer than 20 feet or so, and there's an even shyer, big fluffy grey cat that showed up briefly over the weekend.  Finding some outside cats is not going to be a problem.... keeping track of them all, however....

I have the majority of the tub surround tiled, along with the sink backsplash.  Hopefully we'll have a working shower before company arrives for the holidays, but it still has to be grouted, so we'll see.

Last night when we went down to bring the horses in, only Amyra and Rufus appeared.  T called, I called... finally a crashing and thudding, and the errant pair trotted up over the edge of the creekbed both with grass still hanging out of their mouths.  So at least a couple of them have figured out there's edible stuff down there. 

This morning all of them but Amyra were standing in the barn when I went down to let them out, so they've figured that out, too. 

T pulled the cover off one of the old well pits yesterday so we could see how deep it is.  Fairly deep, with a bit of water in the bottom from the rain.  And it also had snakes.  T says just corn snakes. 

They eat mice and bugs and aren't poisonous.  But I still wouldn't want to run across one unexpectedly, and I sure won't be picking them up. 

They look a bit too much like rattlers at first glance.  And I'm not sure what the green one is.

And that's the news from here for the last couple of days.

Overslept Sunday morning in spite of the cats dancing impatiently across my head.  Woke up to T's phone call - 10+" of snow predicted for Minneapolis, and he might not get in as scheduled after all. The cats just were pleased I was finally up, since their usual 5:30 breakfast was over an hour late.

Contrary to my prediction of cold by morning, it actually warmed up overnight.  Slightly.  It was a brisk 31', with a stiff northwest wind when I turned the horses out, but by full daylight it dropped back to hover in the mid-20's with lots of wind.  The sun hid until after noon; morning was overcast, the sky a flat dirty grey.  I crossed my fingers for precipitation - rain, snow, I don't really care. Rather than stand in the barn out of the wind, the horses were all tucked in the lee of the barn.  Still out of the wind, and since it's dry, probably just as warm.  I'm curious to see if any of them will actually use the barn when it finally does decide to rain. When they cleared the gate and took off down to the far end of the pasture for a brief surveying circle, dust puffed up with every thudding hoof-fall.  The perfect Christmas gift?  A wet winter.

I suppose I should have listened to the weather, but I finally got my mp3 player to play nice with my laptop.  Maybe later.  Weather happens regardless, right? 

Only the thinnest scrim of ice in the water tank, and no packrats to fish out.  Not sure if that's because I filled the tank to brimming the night  before and none fell in, or if my makeshift rat ramp worked.  I've been using half a steel post to break the ice/fish out rats, and it occurred to me that I could lean it kitty-corner in the tank to give them something to climb up if they fall in. I hooked it to the fence with a piece of wire so the horses can't knock it over.  Rats, it's up to you.  Field test away.

Coffee on and the first load of laundry in the washer, I tackled unpacking and sorting one of the "sort" boxes.  The first boxes all arrived with contents notes, but toward the end there were those random odds and ends that when lumped together, kind of defied description.  I'm down to the last three of them though, so the end (of those, at least) is in sight.

Mixed up a batch of cookies - I decided on good old classic chocolate chip - pausing now and then to watch Amyra's attempts to persuade the boys to play with her.  She'd swing her neck, bounce a little, trot around and bump her shoulder off a one of them, immediately poised to race off.  None of them wanted to cooperate, but finally they got into the mood and raced up and down, tails flagged, swapping ends, sliding to a stop, snorting and caroming off of one another like four-legged bumper cars. Even Sunny got into the spirit of it, kicking his heels in the air and generally acting like a two-year-old.  Yep, seeing them out the window isn't going to get old anytime soon! :)

The blustery days one of them is perpetually on watch. And even on calm days they're still pretty alert for anything that might be sneaking up on them.  They're still learning what all the normal noises here are.  Grazing or napping they tend to line up three abreast, with the fourth horse turned to face into the wind, butt toward the other three.

Periodically a random gust will slap something against a metal shed side, or a cow will barge through a thick patch of dead brush and one of them will startle.  The other three heads will pop up and they'll stare toward wherever the noise originated.  T's brother stopped out yesterday morning to sight in a rifle.  He stopped up at the house first for a cup of coffee - he wanted to make sure I knew he was here.  T'd told him the horses shouldn't mind him shooting - three of them grew up next to a pheasant hunting lodge where fall always meant the sound of shotguns, and the fourth one's been hunted off.  Still, it was nice of A to check again that he wasn't going to scare them silly. 

I couldn't hear it in the house when the rifle cracked the first time - foot and a half-thick stone walls make excellent buffers - but I could tell he'd fired.  Heads popped up, and the ones that weren't already facing A's direction spun around.  They moved a bit closer to the fence on that side, and nobody went back to eating until he'd finished, but none of them ran. 

Nu-nu does her best dead cat imitation

Morning Baking

Soup and baking.  Two delicious reasons to love fall/winter months.  Today will be a chilli day, and the house already smells like pumpkin bread.

The kitchen is chilly in the mornings.  The best cure for that is something in the oven filling the air with heat and tasty smells.  I have wonderful banana bread recipe, but since I ate the last banana Friday for breakfast, that was out.  And my zucchini was frozen rock solid.  But I did have can of pumpkin that missed out on being pie at Thanksgiving. 

I've always wondered if I could substitute pumpkin for banana in the banana bread recipe and with a bit of tinkering, come out with something edible....

I suspect there might be a tad more than three bananas worth of pumpkin in a 12oz can, but what the heck - bananas come in all sizes, so there had to be some flexibility built into the recipe, right?

Banana Bread

• 1 stick butter/margarine, melted
• 3 ripe mashed bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup nuts

Combine butter, bananas, eggs, vanilla and sugar and stir until mixed.  Add flour, salt, baking soda and stir together.  Add nuts and stir until just mixed.  Pour into greased bread pan and bake at 350' for one hour.

So... I substituted the canned pumpkin for bananas, added 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp cloves and since I had about a cup of fresh cranberries left over from Thanksgiving, I added those in when I added the nuts.

It makes a pretty loaf - sort of deep orange, with the bright red of the cranberries.  I suspect I probably could have added an extra 1/4-1/2 cup of flour, and an hour of baking time wasn't quite sufficient, but an hour and a quarter saw it done.  It's definitely best to let it cool in the pan, and it cuts better when it's been chilled in the refrigerator for a while, but all in all I'm pleased with the result, and I think with the extra flour it would even be company-worthy.  But possibly as muffins.

Good thing we have all these nice neighbors/relatives that stop by for coffee.

Cookies!

Not the horse kind, either.  Although the day is young yet...

Yesterday I made my annual batch of fruitcake.  Don't hate - my family likes it!  I have an ancient Betty Crocker cookbook I inherited from one of my grandmothers, and it has a whole page of fruitcake recipes.  I always use the base recipe, but depending on what a) sounds good at the moment, and b) what I have handy... I end up with something different every year.

This year I went dark.

In addition to the traditional
citron, candied cherries and pineapple pieces,

walnuts and golden raisins, this year's batch has:

coffee, molasses, dried cranberries,

cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves, and

for "tart" jelly I used whole-berry cranberry sauce.

It bakes in a slow oven, 

so the house smelled wonderful 

all yesterday afternoon and into the evening.

While the first batch was in the oven I tackled the package of gingerbread marshmallows someone thought I would know what to do with.  I'm not sure what exactly you'd call the result, but they're tasty...

Cinnamon Cereal Ginger-People Bars

1 package gingerbread marshmallow people

2 cups mini-marshmallows

1/4 cup butter

6 cups cinnamon squares ceral

1 cup mini-chocolate chips

Make them as you would Rice Crispie treats, stirring the chocolate chips in with the cereal and pressing them into a 13x9" pan while they're still warm.  They're weirdly addictive.

This morning I managed to ignore the cats bouncing off me until 5:30 - hey, it's the weekend, I can sleep in a little, right? But once I was up and coffee was on, I figured why not get some more of the Christmas baking done.

These macaroons are C's favorites, and they'll be filling an exam care-package shortly.

Almond Joy Macaroons

 1 package shredded coconut

1 can sweetened condensed milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract

1/2 package (or so) mini-chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped almonds

350' oven for 8-10 minutes

**The secret to these is parchment paper

and letting them cool on the pan for 1-2 minutes.

DO NOT 

make them without parchment paper

unless you LIKE swearing... a lot.

Chocolate chip cookies, just because I like them... well that, and I had all the ingredients.

Milk & dark chocolate chips
with big chunks of walnut - YUM

  I use the recipe off either the Baker's 

or Ghirardelli's chocolate chips. 
This time it was Baker',

but they're both good.

I should probably title this post "Thank you, Sunbeam"

The next ones are for my sister.  I've been sending these to her for Christmas for a number of years now.  Not long after she was married I sent her her traditional tin.  Her husband, who apparently couldn't remember if he'd had them before asked her if he liked them...  

Her answer, "No, you don't." - LOL!

Cookie Jar Ginger Snaps

Pretty, aren't they?  They taste darn good, too!

Now I have to scramble if I want to get everything mailed.

Snow for the New Year

The cats and I are doing the couch thing again today. I hemmed and hawed this morning before daylight, debating risking the roads to fill the hay feeders again since the forecast is inching up toward 12" - history says the plows won't hit the gravel roads Sunday or Monday.

We had a brief window of clear before the blizzard kicked in again, and I was tempted, but it's really hard to judge how badly things have drifted in - town weather is rarely the same as conditions outside the city limits. Often it's better, sometimes it's a lot worse.

If nothing else, I figured calling to check and let them know I was on my way wouldn't hurt. I'm glad I did, as J said she'd feed for me this afternoon and tomorrow if necessary. Which makes me feel a lot better. If I was going to go, it would have had to have been then - at this point, the wind is holding at about 25mph at the moment, but I can barely see across the street it's snowing so hard, so I think the window has closed.

Tortilla soup is bubbling away in the crock pot, bread's baking, and I have pears that need to be made into... muffins, maybe? Or possibly pie - haven't decided yet. Something to make the house smell good, though.

Holiday rush

Or maybe that should read sugar rush, because that's what I spent the majority of yesterday on. Friday morning was a run to the store for baking supplies and a few Christmas presents. Friday afternoon was two batches of fudge and a batch of cherry mash (cherry fudge with Maraschino cherries layered between dark chocolate fudge with pecan bits). Saturday morning was - almost - the last of the boxing for mailing, a batch of cookie jar ginger snaps and mini-shortbread cookies and getting all of the sweet stuff boxed up for the vet clinic, garage, library and assorted other destinations.

T has a cold, so he was banned from the kitchen, but he made the post office run for me, bless him! Haven't touched the cards yet, though.

The cats are thoroughly enjoying the holidays. Although their space under the tree has been taken up by packages, the boxes arriving and going are endlessly fascinating.
This box came from my folks - Yancey, their dog, is a cat-eater (or she would be if she had the opportunity) so when they visit we set up gates and she goes in her crate at night.
The box must have retained some Yancey smell. As soon as it was open Nunu started sniffing the air and as I took the presents out, commenced digging through the packing to make sure it wasn't concealing anything suspicious. Once she'd ensured it was sage, she made herself at home. Mabel checked it out, too, but Snowball just supervised from a safe distance in case the actual dog appeared.

T suggested we just tape the box up and send Nunu to Yancey for Christmas... One of them would enjoy that, the other likely not so much! Apparently Yancey's been checking all the incoming packages on that end for furry occupants, as well - but I don't think she takes naps in the boxes afterward.

The ponies, meanwhile...
Are eating their fool heads off. They greeted me enthusiastically yesterday and left off their afternoon naps to join me at the feeder. I wanted to make sure they could still reach the bale okay, and ended up distributing a bit, not that they really needed it.

We're supposed to have 20's today, so if there isn't too much wind and T's feeling better we may try riding. It's looking pretty gray at the moment, but we'll see how it goes.

Escapees on Sunday

Sunday's clear morning turned into overcast and gloom before noon - not that I'm complaining, as the temps at least nudged up out of the negative numbers once the clouds moved in. With the thermometer still hovering around -3' at 9am, my morning's planned outing - to go observe C's science fair project (something to do with resting and active heart rates in horses) research in progress was on hold. Even with the prospect of a heated arena to use at the end of the trip, no one was really that enthused about trailering the 12 miles over to the trainer's for a non-emergency.

So I decided to be productive and start my Christmas baking - five loaves of fruit cake (not my favorite thing, but my dad and a couple of other family members request it every year) with properly whiskey-soaked fruit. I'm late, so it won't get its full three weeks of post-baking liquor-drenching before mailing, but it's done. It's different every year, since I never remember exactly what I added to the batter the year before. This year I'm trying jalapeno jelly instead of the peach/apple/apricot/cherry I've used in past years. The batter raw was tasty, so hopefully the finished product will be likewise.

While that was in the oven I contested with the cats for the Christmas wrap. They finally were satisfied with their own piece to pounce on and punch full of claw prints. Silly critters!

Then I tackled two batches of fudge, one with a cup of Andes Candies mint pieces for flavor, and one with a half bag of Heath English Toffee bits; neither with nuts, because I used all of those up in the fruit cake. I use Carnation's fudge recipe and have yet to have any issues with graininess or failure to set, even when I experiment with random additions like the Andes Candy bits. Taste testing says the Andies Candies were a definite hit. I don't like toffee, so I'm not thrilled with the other batch, but T gave it two thumbs up (and had to be threatened with losing a few fingers to keep him out of the pan, so I think he did actually like it - LOL!).

I was just starting to bundle up for the afternoon's horse-checking expedition when the phone rang - it was J, the farm owner letting me know that she'd penned all the horses in the lot except the one on the wrong side (!) of the fence. The neighbor's cows had apparently pushed their way into the east horse pasture trying to escape Saturday's wind, and she didn't want the horses getting in the way of the removal efforts. Sigh...

I plated some fudge for her, then headed out to see what the damage was. Thankfully, other than Thunder, who was indeed completely on the wrong side of the fence, and the other four miffed ponies who wanted out of the lot and back at the hay bale post haste, all was well. The cows were back where they belonged already, Thunder was happy to be reunited with the other four and had only a small scuff mark from being driven over the feeder (green paint on his back hooves gave that exit route away). I rearranged the gates to hopefully discourage further escapes and let them all back out. T'll check them again tonight, but I think now that the weather's calmed down and the panels are secured differently, they should stay where they're supposed to.

Today is a do-over

Yesterday did not happen. And you can quote me on that.

Should have known that back to back travel plans were a bad idea. But I really thought I'd manage to get everything I needed to get done accomplished. Not so.

And after a hectic day of not-quite done laundry, an abortive shopping excursion, and lots of other headaches, and a husband annoyed about goings on at work (they're interviewing for a newly open position in his department, and it's going in an interesting direction), I was ready to crawl back in bed and start the day over.

Instead, I waited for T to finish his "dinner with candidate" at 7 pm, because I really wanted to ride, and he'd promised to tape me. Well, the horses were pleased to see me, which was nice, but they were also bouncing around and twitchy. Amazing how you can always tell watching them when there's some sort of front moving in.

Sunny was quiet enough, though. But then there was a nice little debate over whether or not the pasture I wanted to ride in had been sprayed yet - really didn't want to ride on top of new Roundup - and it devolved from there. I was so not in a good riding frame of mind by the time we got done examining weeds and discussing alternatives.

So I unsaddled, Sunny got a cookie for being patient, and he got to go back out with his mates. T went asparagus hunting.

When I got home I still had to pack, and by that point I'd acquired T's headache. It all called for a good night's sleep, which I might have had, but Mabel decided to be affectionate....

At any rate, I'm doing yesterday over today, and so far it's going much better. Laundry is drying, I managed to get some housecleaning done, and I actually have a plan for supper. Now we'll see if the riding goes better. Will leave for MI in the a.m. one way or the other, though!

Thanksgiving week

Well, looking at my track record this week, I can't say I've accomplished quite as much as I'd planned, but it's been a good week.

In order of completion:

1. Fruitcake! My father's one Christmas request every year. I bake it around Thanksgiving, and it ages for several weeks until completely "drunken" before it's ready for eating.
   
   
   Step 1 of fruitcake baking: soak all fruit thoroughly in secret ingredient at least overnight, if not longer.This much fruit makes a 2 batches - this year I did a dark, with coffee and blackberry jam, and a light with orange juice, mace and orange zest.
2. Worming horses: a solid dosing of Strongid to get rid of any nasty little parasites they might be harboring. Since T and I both had the afternoon completely free, it took only half an hour to weight tape and worm the lot of them. And had we been silly enough to allow only half an hour, it would have taken three!
3. Pies... This year we didn't travel for Thanksgiving - H had classes through Wednesday, and neither of us wanted to risk iffy weather and 25+ hours of driving for a four day trip - so we had friends over instead. This year's flavors? Traditional pumpkin, and H's favorite, lemon. I had to call my mom for both recipes, as she's usually the pie maker. Her pumpkin pie recipe is super easy to follow and turned out perfectly. The lemon (meringue-less and double the lemon, please!) was also a hit.
4. Crescent rolls - I love making bread, but probably shouldn't have added the whole wheat to this usually light & fluffy recipe. They're hearty, but substantial enough to have matched better with a thick potato or ham & bean soup. More notes in the cookbook for for next time.
5. Thursday was devoted to last minute cleaning, turkeys and various side dishes. We ate around 2 PM, and everyone rolled out around 9 PM, replete with turkey, pie and lots of good conversation. It was the first Thanksgiving we haven't traveled.
6. Black Friday - I've never done the mad shopping dash, and after Thursday's hosting, I was peopled out. T & H headed for Sioux Falls for basketball shoes and Christmas shopping. I curled up on the couch with a cat and a book.
7. The rest of the weekend? Laundry and all of the usual chores in preparation for Monday.

Rainy Days

Well, that's what I deserve for squandering last night's cool calm on the couch with a book, I suppose. But when T rolled out of bed this morning for the start of this month's drill weekend (Army Reserve), the sun was just peeking over the horizon out and it was lovely. The forecast did say 40% chance of rain, but there wasn't any sign of rain!

After the first three loads of laundry on the line there were clouds. And of course it started raining before they were dry enough to bring in. Not hard, but steadily. We can use the moisture, but....

So, instead of tree-trimming (should have headed that way this AM instead of dirty clothes & bathrooms!), I tackled some more postponed housework, baked a couple pies and watched the line sag under wet clothes' dragging weight each time I headed for the back door to let the cat in and out.

For Mabel, two-feets are all doormen to be enlisted as necessary in her continuing quest to always be on the right side of any closed door. And which, you may well ask is the right side? Why, whichever one pleases her at the moment, of course. She's a cat, after all!

"I'm on the wrong side again!"

On the side of accomplishment I can count the pies, bathrooms, laundry, and satisfaction in the warmly insistent, purring lump of cat poised in my lap waiting for me to finish typing and pay her more attention - or open the door again.

Pear Pie

I've never attempted this recipe before. Pie crust is not my favorite thing to make, but since I couldn't find the store-bought ones I thought were in the freezer, I cheated. I can successfully make a cheesy salmon pie recipe. The crust for it is lovely, light and flaky, but thick to counter balance the hearty nature of the dish. I've discovered that if I make one recipe (double crust for the salmon pie) and divide it in four before I roll it out, it makes two double-crusts pies that are light, buttery and flaky and thin enough for dessert-type recipes.

The final result is pretty enough - now hopefully I cut the pears thin enough to bake in the time recommended. Here's hoping it turned out!