Delicious Honey Cranberry Pinwheels

Although it's Halloween, there is nothing scary about these cookies, folks!  In fact, a case could be made that these cookies are actually good for you (well...perhaps we should say that they're not as bad for you).  The dough includes whole wheat flour and canola oil and, according to the recipe makers, they clock in at only about 54 calories a cookie.  The recipe comes from the Eating Well website where it has received rave reviews.  I see why--they're tasty and chewy and they make a nice impression.  Robert gives them his thumbs up!  They were also well-received at the Friends of the B.F. Jones Memorial Library annual wine and cheese fundraiser last Saturday. :)

This makes a very soft dough especially for rolling, yet the canola oil makes the dough less sticky than you'd expect.  Refrigerating the dough also makes it more manageable. Don't let the long list of ingredients deter you.  The recipe isn't that complicated to make.

Honey Cranberry Pinwheels

Filling:

1 1/2 cups sweetened dried cranberries

1 cup cranberries (fresh or frozen)

1/2 cup honey

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest (could use orange zest)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cardamom (or allspice)

Dough

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cardamom (or allspice if you used it in the filling)

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup honey

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons low fat milk

2 1/2 teaspoons lemon (or orange) zest

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

For filling:  Combine all of the ingredients in a non-reactive* pan over medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.  Let boil about five minutes until the fresh cranberries pop and soften.  Remove from heat and cool.  Place in a food processor and process the filling until finely ground. Place in refrigerator while you make the dough.

For dough:  Whisk the flours, baking powder, salt, baking soda and spices in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, honey, eggs, milk, zest and extracts and beat well.  Stir in half of the flour mixture to incorporate then add the other half. (If you're using a mixture, switch to a wooden spoon when you add the second flour portion.)  Stir to thorough combine, but don't over-mix.  Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes to make the dough easier to work with.

To form the cookies:  Take 1/2 of the chilled dough and place between two sheets of waxed paper (about 12 x 18 inches long).  Roll out dough into a 12x15 inch rectangle.  Place the rolled out dough in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.  This will make it easier to spread the filling on the dough.  Remove top sheet of waxed paper and spread 1/2 of the cranberry filling over the dough--it will be thin (I used my hands to get the filling to the edges.  With the long end parallel to the counter, use the waxed paper the dough is resting on to help you roll the dough into a tight, round log.  Place the log on a clean sheet of waxed paper, roll it up and twist the ends to make the log as tight as possible.  Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for at least four hours (and up to three months**).  Repeat with the other half of the dough and filling.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Unwrap the roll and, using a long serrated knife, slice the cookies into 1/4 inch wide slices, turning the log as you slice to keep the cookies as round as possible.  Place the slices on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for about 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.  

Makes about 90 cookies.

*Non-reactive pans are stainless steel or enamel--not aluminum (or copper!)

**If you're freezing for an extended time, don't defrost before slicing the cookies.

Honey Chocolate Shortbread Ribbons

I'm still in the midst of my cookie baking extravaganza here.  The recipe for these honey chocolate shortbread ribbons is from the National Honey Board, where I get a lot of great recipe ideas.  I have to confess that these aren't Robert's favorite.  The recipe calls for orange peel, which adds a tang to the dough that Robert isn't that fond of (he ate a few of 'em though!).  You could skip the peel if you'd prefer.  In that case, I might be tempted to add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to the dough, just to kick up the flavor a bit.

Honey Chocolate Shortbread Ribbons
1 cup butter, softened
2/3rd cup  honey
1 tablespoon finely grated orange rind
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted

Cream the butter and gradually drizzle in the honey, beating until light and fluffy.  Add the orange peel and beat to incorporate thoroughly.  In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, salt and baking powder and then stir into the honey-butter mixture, combining well.  Remove about 1/3 of the dough to another bowl and add the melted chocolate to it, combining well.

Line one 9 inch square pan and one 9x5 inch loaf pan with waxed paper, letting the paper hang out of the sides so that you'll be able to lift the dough out once it hardens. Flatten the chocolate mixture into the loaf pan and the remaining dough into the square pan. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the 9 inch pan and cut in half.  Place the chocolate dough in the middle of the two halves and press lightly but to be sure the layers hold together.  With a large, sharp knife, cut the block lengthwise to make two logs.  Wrap each with wax paper and then with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least four hours (or freeze up to three months).

Preheat oven to 375.  Slice the logs about 1/8th to 1/4th inches wide and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Bake for about 7 to 8 minutes until lightly browned.  Makes about four dozen cookies.

And stay tuned!  The recipe for Robert's favorite honey cranberry pinwheel cookies coming soon!

Honey Almond Rugelach

Though I haven't been posting much on the blog recently, get ready for a run of cookie recipes!  The Friends of the B.F. Jones Memorial Library annual wine and cheese is Saturday, October 27 and I've been making a bunch of cookies in preparation.  These almond rugelach cookies are classic--not too sweet--and the hint of honey in the filling really comes through.  They're one of my favorite cookies to make.  This recipe comes from a small cookbook published by the National Honey Board in 1994 called Sweetened with Honey the Natural Way. The recipe is also available on the National Honey Board's website--click on the link.

And stay tuned!  Recipes for shortbread-like honey chocolate ribbons and some delicious cranberry pinwheels will appear in future posts!

Honey Almond Rugelach
1 cup butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 tablespoons honey, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped almonds
1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries, chopped (I used cherries)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy.  Add three tablespoons of honey and mix well. Add the flour, stirring until the dough comes together.  Form into a disk, wrap well and refrigerate for at least two hours.

In a small bowl, combine the almonds and chopped cherries. Drizzle about 3 tablespoons of honey over them and mix well.

Divide the dough into fourths and roll one piece into about a 9-inch circle.  Combine two tablespoons of honey and the lemon and mix well.  Brush the dough with the honey-lemon mixture.  Sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon over the surface. Spread about 1/4 of the almond/cherry mixture over the surface.  Cut the circle into 8 wedges.  Starting with the wide end, roll up each wedge and then curve the cookie to make a crescent shape.  Place on parchment-lined cookie sheet and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.  Repeat with remaining dough.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

You can freeze these cookies unbaked.  Thaw them out before baking.

Chewy Pecan Honey Cookies

We've been major blog slackers here at SteffesWood Apiary.  Teaching and flying are occupying us a lot these days.  I had a chance to make these delicious cookies last weekend, though.  I'm testing out cookie recipes for the annual Friends of the B.F. Jones Library wine and cheese fundraiser on October 27.  The fundraiser always includes an elaborate and delicious cookie table and I wanted find some honey-based cookies to add to the offerings.  These are a keeper.  They're chewy, have a lot of great honey flavor and a nice little crunch from the pecans. I wasn't so sure about the recipe at first because it doesn't include any eggs--but these are delicious and have a wonderful texture.  I highly recommend them!


Chewy Pecan Honey Cookies
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (one stick) butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  In a small mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.  Cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the honey and cream well. Slowly add the flour mixture and mix until just combined, finishing by hand if needed, trying not to over mix.  Stir in the pecans.

Using about one teaspoon, form the dough into balls and place on the prepared cookie sheets. (You can chill the dough for about 10 minutes if it's very soft--don't chill for much longer, though, since the honey will harden making it hard to form into balls.)  Bake for about 10-12 minutes, until edges are golden brown and set.  Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Brewing "The White House Honey Ale"

Beekeeping got a big bump after the Obamas installed beehives at the White House a couple years ago.  Recently word got out that the President had purchased beer making equipment and instructed his chefs to brew up ales incorporating honey.  The clamor from the wonky home brewing community for the recipes actually made national news.  Bowing to the "pressure," the White House staff posted a video and two recipes on their website.

As the resident brewer here at SteffesWood Apiary, I was assigned to test the Executive Branch's effort.  The Honey Ale is roughly equivalent to a British ESB (Extra Special Bitter), a full bodied amber beer with a 7% alcohol content.

New to brewing?  If you can make soup, you can brew beer, though you'll obviously require some specialized equipment that will run you $100-150.  A good tutorial on basic technique can be found at How to Brew.  Beginner's kits and ingredients can be purchased in the Pittsburgh area at one of South Hills Brewing's locations.  There are plenty of on-line sources available as well, including Northern Brewer Home Brew Supply, which has already put together an ingredients kit.
 
Here is the recipe from the White House website:

And here is how I brewed it:

All the ingredients

1.  A 3 gallon pot is MINIMUM. Bigger is better.  Boil overs are common if you are not careful. You don't need to use "sterile water" as the heat will do that. If you like the taste of your tap water, use that or bottled spring water. The crushed grains are steeped in a grain or hops bag.just like tea.  They add color and flavor but be careful not to overheat, steep too long or squeeze the bag dry.  Doing so can impart an unpleasant astringency from the tannins in the hulls.  Just like tea!

2.  Malt extract in both its forms is used.  You can add both now or just the dry stuff and add the liquid 15 minutes before the end of the boil.  Be careful to stir the liquid extract enough when added to put it in solution or it will burn on the bottom.

Steeping the grains

3.  The Kent Goldings hops are added when the boil starts. 45 minutes is the minimum time for the hops to give the brew (called "wort" at this stage)  enough bitterness to balance the malt.  The cooks screwed up here as they neglected to say when 1 oz. of the Fuggles hops gets added, so we're winging it already.  I added that errant ounce 10 minutes after the Goldings, figuring the ample fermentables in the recipe could use the extra balancing.  The Northern Brewer kit calls for the 1 oz. Fuggles addition at 15 minutes before the end of the boil.  The gypsum is used to harden and acidify the wort with the aim of "Burtonizing" the water.  This refers to the water used to brew Bass Ale, at Burton-on-Trent.  If your water is already hard, it is unnecessary.  I split the difference and used just 1 oz.

 A word of warning: don't let the pot out of your sight during the boil if you want to avoid a sticky mess on your stove!  Don't ask me how I know this!  Stir frequently.

plug hops (left) and leaf hops (right)

4.  The last 1/2 oz. of the Fuggles are added at the end of the boil to give the ale aroma and flavor without extra bitterness.  Note that I used leaf and plug hops in the grain/hops bag.  If you use pellets, you just leave them in the wort.

5.  I added the honey with the Fuggles as I wanted to preserve the delicate aromatics of that fine SteffesWood honey as much as possible.  My experience with brewing is that honey does not contain any microbes that will spoil the beer so it doesn't need to be sterilized.

cooling wort in ice bath

6.  You want to cool the wort as rapidly as possible down to the temp you can safely add yeast, about 80 degrees F.  I put the pot in an ice bath in the sink, then pour the cooled wort into the fermenter with enough chilled spring water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons.

pitching the yeast

7.  The recipe calls for Windsor dry yeast, a typical English ale yeast that will impart a fruity taste to the end product.  I used Safale S-04, a similar product.  All you need to do to "pitch" the yeast is make sure the wort is not too hot, sprinkle it in, close the lid (and block the airlock hole) and give the bucket a good shaking.  The yeast is aerobic and needs to have air incorporated in the wort to do its work of breaking the sugars down into CO2 and alcohol. Fit the airlock and open up a beer to celebrate all your hard work.

8.  I ferment in the basement, where the temperature is a constant 68 degrees.  Ale yeast is pretty flexible and will work well over a wide range.  

9.  You don't need to use a secondary fermenter, though I often do.  You can leave it in the same bucket for a couple weeks until there is just one bubble a minute coming out of the airlock.  If you have a hydrometer, the beer is fermented out when the final gravity is 1.020 ( the starting gravity is about 1.060)

bubbling away!

   10.  We'll pick up the narrative when it's bottling time in about two weeks, so stay tuned!

Roasted Beets with Honey & Lemon

I'm a confirmed beet lover and could eat them at every meal.  I know, though, that beets are not America's favorite veggie. An Eating Well blog includes them among the top five "most hated vegetables" in the U.S.   (What's America's most favorite vegetable?  Apparently, according to a report in Bloomburg News, it's potatoes!) 

Roasting beets is one way to persuade a confirmed beet hater to give them another try. Roasting caramelizes the sugars in the beets and makes very sweet yet they still retain their savory earthiness. I'm not promising that the beet haters in your life will convert after you serve these--but I am suggesting it's a worth a try!

Roasted Beets with Honey & Lemon
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Figure on about 1 large, 2 medium or 3 small beets per person.  I usually roast extra since the oven's on and I'm happy to eat roasted beets throughout the week.  It's best if you roast similarly-sized beets in the same pan (that is, not mixing large and small beets together).  Truth be told, though, I usually throw 'em all in together when I'm short on time.

Wash the beets well and cut off their tops, leaving about 1 inch of the stalks. (This ensures the beets won't bleed too much during roasting.)  Select a roasting or baking dish that is large enough to hold all of your beets in one layer. Line it with a piece of aluminum foil that is large enough to cover the bottom of the pan AND fold over to fully envelop the beets.  Drizzle about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil on the foil.  Place the beets in the pan, tossing them in the oil and drizzling more oil on them to be sure every beet is covered with olive oil.  Sprinkle kosher salt on the beets--at least a pinch for each beet.  Fold the foil over the beets, being sure to securely crimp the edges together to keep the heat inside.  The beets will roast and steam in this packet.  Place in the pre-heated oven for at least 40 and up to 60 or 65 minutes (depending on how big your beets are).  Remove from the oven and let them sit on the counter until cool enough to handle--about 20 minutes.  This extra time will enable them to cook a bit longer, too.

Remove the beets from their foil packet and slip off their skins.  Cut them into 1/2-inch pieces and place in a bowl.  I had about 2 cups of beets when all was said and done.  Drizzle 2-3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice (go ahead and used bottled if that's what you have) and 2 to 3 tablespoons honey over the beets, tossing to mix thoroughly.  Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.  You can serve them as is at room temperature, or cover and refrigerate them to serve cold later.  You can also add some fresh lemon zest to zing up the lemon flavor a bit and/or some chopped parsley to add color.  If so, add the parsley just before serving.

Cherry Tomatoes in Honey Brine

As I lamented in a previous post, we lost all of our tomato plants to the destructive late blight.  I was particularly sad to say good-bye to two vibrant yellow cherry tomato plants.  We'd been enjoying these sweet-like-candy tomatoes throughout August.  This recipe for brined cherry tomatoes gave me a chance to use some of the not-quite-ripe tomatoes still left on the vines.  In fact, this recipe requires not-quite-ripe tomatoes.  Ripe tomatoes will get too mushy in the brine, but those that haven't ripened fully keep a nice crunch.  This is, admittedly, a recipe for adventuresome cooks (and eaters). It's very simple to do, but requires patience (time for the tomatoes to soak in the brine) and the result is crispy, salty, piquant pickled tomatoes--a few go a long way.  They'd be great as part of an antipasto platter, or served with cheese and crackers, or gracing the side of grilled cheese sandwich or added to a leaf lettuce salad.  Use them where ever you'd use a dill pickle.

Cherry Tomatoes in Honey Brine

1 1/4 pounds half-ripe cherry tomatoes

6 dill heads (or 2 tablespoons dill seeds and about 6 sprigs of fresh dill)

1/4 cup fresh horseradish, grated (you can used bottled horseradish instead--just be sure it's not a horseradish sauce with cream)

3 sprigs of fresh parsley

1/2 fresh hot pepper, seeded (I used a Hungarian hot) and cut in a few pieces

2 tablespoons pickling salt (or UNiodized salt)

2-3 tablespoons honey

1 quart of water

In a jar that will hold two quarts, layer the tomatoes interspersed with the herbs, horseradish and pepper pieces.  Dissolve the salt and honey in the water and pour over the tomatoes in the jar.  Be sure the tomatoes are submerged in the brine--I filled a small zipper-lock bag with some water and placed it on top of the tomatoes to keep them under the brine.  If your jar has a large opening, you could put a plate or saucer on top.  Let the tomatoes ferment in the brine, unrefrigerated, for a week.  When a week is up, cover them tightly and place in the refrigerator to develop more fully.  You can taste them throughout the process--and you might enjoy the delicate flavor they begin to develop after about a day.  They should keep in the fridge for at least a month.