Posts filed under 'Desserts'
How do you make five kids extremely happy? By transporting rhubarb from their home state to the southern state they live in and making a surprise rhubarb crisp for them after a weekend away.
Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? I think so, too. Surprisingly, one of the things my kids miss the most about living up north is rhubarb. It simply cannot be grown in the southern states. The plant requires 2 - 3 months of constant cold temperatures in order to thrive and we don’t have the right weather for it. Consequently, we can’t buy it in the stores, either. It’s funny, the things you take for granted and then suddenly miss soooo… much.
For you southerners, rhubarb - the part you eat - is a bright red and green stalk that appears something like celery. It is very tart, but delicious when baked up with sugar in a pie, crisp, or cake. The leaves of the rhubarb plant are very large and they are poisonous. It crops up in the springtime and you just break the stalk off near the ground and chop the leaf off of the top. To prepare, you usually dice it before putting in the pie, cake, or crisp. If you live in the south, keep your eyes out for rhubarb in the freezer section of your grocery.
To learn more about rhubarb and see a nice photo, click here.
Last weekend, I flew north for my nephew’s wedding, (Way to go, Curt!) and brought 20 cups of chopped rhubarb, compliments of my dear mother, home in a cooler in my suitcase. 2 hours after returning home, I had steaming fresh rhubarb crisp cooling on my countertop. I got this recipe out of our family cookbook, submitted by my cousin Wanda. Check it out below:
Fresh Rhubarb Crisp
makes one 11 x 7 pan, which will last about 5 minutes if your kids haven’t had rhubarb for several years
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. flour
3/4 c. oats
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. butter or margarine
4 c. chopped rhubarb
2 T. cornstarch
1 c. sugar
1 c. water
1 t. vanilla
In a large bowl, using a pastry blender, combine the flour, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon, and butter until it looks crumbly. Use half of this to form a bottom crust in a greased 7 x 11 pan. Set the other half of your crumb mixture aside.
Next, lay the chopped rhubarb on top of this crust. In a sauce pan, combine the cornstarch and white sugar. Add the water and vanilla and heat to a boil over medium heat. Cook and stir constantly until it is thick and clear. Now pour this sticky mixture over the rhubarb.
Finally, sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture over the gooey rhubarb. Pop it into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or so.
Rhubarb crisp is best served warm with vanilla ice cream on top. Enjoy!
February 23rd, 2010
So quick. So easy. So elegant.
This is the perfect cookie to take to that Christmas party that you forgot you were supposed to bring cookies to. Or your oven broke. Or - admit it - you simply don’t want to bake Christmas cookies.
I invented this all by myself. Well, okay - after I saw something like this being marketed by Oreo, but selling for the incredibly high price of nearly $3 for a tiny package with 20 cookies in it. That’s when I decided to do something similar myself.
They turned out so beautiful, I knew I had to share my idea with my readers - all 4 of you!
Basically, these are just an Oreo (or in this case, it’s Wal-Mart brand cousin, a “Twist and Shout”) cookie, topped with white chocolate and crushed candy cane. That’s it.
Three easy steps:
1. Buy a package of Oreos, some white chocolate chips, and candy canes.
2. Melt the white chocolate according to the package directions. In the microwave, watch it closely, and you might want to add a few drops of cooking oil. Also, crush some candy canes.
3. Spread a little white chocolate on top, and sprinkle some crushed candy cane on before it hardens.
For one package of Oreos, I melted 1 cup of chocolate and crushed 4 regular-sized candy canes. I had just a little bit extra. These Candy Cane Oreos disappeared quickly.
December 7th, 2009
Hello Folks!
Apologies — I had an issue with my blog format and got a bit lazy about fixing it, but I am back now and determined to keep my blog more up-to-date than I have in recent months.
News item from the Hochstettler kitchen… After nearly 20 years of marriage and countless pies, my rolling pin was malfunctioning. I had the “regular” kind that most people have - handles on either end of a fairly large wooden rolling pin, the middle spins freely while the cook hangs onto the handles. This always worked just fine for me and, trust me, I’ve never had any complaints about my pies. A couple of months or so ago, when my old faithful rolling pin began sticking so that it wasn’t spinning freely like it should, I checked out rolling pins and decided to give a French Rolling Pin or Tapered Rolling pin a try.
The one I picked is a Vic Firth French Rolling Pin, made of maple:
Vic Firth, by the way, is a famous drummer and maker of drumsticks, who has apparently moved into the chefware arena.
I told myself that for $12.95, I would give this tapered rolling pin a try, but I was largely unconvinced that I would like it. I don’t like learning new things, and since I already knew how to operate my traditional rolling pin, I was pretty sure that I would end up wanting to buy one just like the one I’d had before. At best, I thought it would take me a while to adjust to using the tapered pin.
I was SO wrong. When I opened the package, I immediately fell in love with this thing. Honestly. With no finish, this maple pin was the smoothest piece of wood I’ve ever handled. I was busy that week and didn’t have reason to use it right away, but found myself just slipping it through my hands while I was in the kitchen. When I finally did put it to use, I instinctively knew just how to use it. Having tapered ends means you can turn it and change angles quickly and easily, almost without thinking. You can also easily adjust pressure to get a very even thickness on whatever you are rolling out.
With this French rolling pin, I feel like I can make pie crust, pizza crust, etc. just as thin as I want. It is truly a joy to use.
I know this blog post sounds like an ad; it really isn’t meant to. I just simply haven’t bought anything for my kitchen in a long time that I have liked so much.
June 17th, 2009
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