Nougatkipferl have never been my favorite of my Christmas Cookies to make. There are a number of things wrong with the recipe that I have been using for years, not the least of which is that nougat is really hard to find in the US. Substituting Nutella has usually worked, however this year, Nutella’s ingredient / composition changed somewhat (to much controversy, actually), and that made it more difficult to bake with. So, after a fail or two with the dough, I started from scratch and came up with this recipe. It has a little bit of corn syrup in it, which is not my favorite thing, but seemed to help with the dough’s consistency when I was rolling it out.
I have a lot of brownie recipes up here on this here page, because even “from scratch” brownies are so darn easy to make. So when I saw these “Butterfinger Bits’ (which I had never actually seen before last week when they jumped off the shelf at Target), I thought that they would make a nice marriage for these brownies. Delish!
Every year, I seem to make another variation on cranberry sauce. There have been versions with ginger, apple, port wine and this one, with Rosemary and White Balsamic. It’s a great little combination, though you really have to like rosemary as it is pretty powerful as far as herbs go. It will go great with your turkey dinner though. Tick tock, almost Thanksgiving!
I was in the mood to continue the “Harvest” trend here on this here website, but somehow, I am not overly pleased with these cookies. They taste really nice — chocolate-dipped chocolate sugar cookies, with just the right amount of toasted pecans, but somehow, these little squirrels don’t look right to me. Next time, maybe I’ll have the little critters holding a nut, and maybe even paint eyes on them. At any rate, still wanted to post them here. Enjoy.
Here is a little bit of an odd-ball recipe for you: Rigatoni Pie. OK, in this case, it is actually Paccheri Pie, because that is the kind of pasta that I used, but most people would use rigatoni. Any tubular pasta will do though. I had found the paccheri a while back at Eataly, so figured that I could use them with this.
So what is a pasta pie? Essentially, a lasagna with the noddles standing upright. All the ingredients are the same. I just think this turns out to be a bit of a fun presentation. And perfect comfort food as well.