As many of you know, I try to make many of my Christmas pressies myself (including of course, cookie madness!), so trying to get a head start on some, I made Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Mix. Quite easy to make, though bashing the hard caramels to bits first with a meat mallet and then the food processor was loud! I put ratios in the recipe instead of exact measurements, in case you wanted to make a lot or a little.
Three things went into the making of these Swedish Sourdough Cardamom Buns: 1. despite the fact that I am baking like crazy with Cookie Madness, I have to still feed Alice in Wondoughland, 2. I was having not such a great day and needed to cheer myself up; baking usually does that and 3. I love — no, I mean love-love Cardamom. If you aren’t a sourdough person, there is a yeasted version of these Kardemummabullar on this site as well. In the meantime, I am going to try not to eat all of these in one sitting. Yummy.
In between all the other things that I am baking — whoo hoo Cookie Madness! — I need to keep my sourdough starter in tip top shape, so I made a new variation on the weekly sourdough experiment: Sourdough Maple Pecan Harvest Bread. A little nutty, a little maple-y and definitely a good choice for breakfast and bread pudding. Very New England autumn inspired.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving! Long time followers will know that I often make a few things ahead of the big foodie holiday. I also typically try a riff on your standard cranberry sauce. This year,I found some fantastic italian plums at their peek so I frozen them to add to this Plum Pear and Cranberry Chutney. It’s delicious, and while it doesn’t take very long to make, it’s nice to have it ticked off the list. Should stay good in the ridge until Christmas, if you don’t eat it all at Thanksgiving.
It’s about this time of year that I start making some foodie things that can also double as stocking stuffers. This year, I decided to make seasoned salts. The Herb one and the Lemon one were really quite simple; the tomato one took a little more effort, but is well worth it, as it has a surprising amount of tomato flavor.
The colors of these will fade within a few weeks, but the herby flavor and aroma will remain intact for much longer. There is no shelf-life limit, and this can be kept indefinitely. I use these as a finishing salts, meaning it’s used to season cooked food at the table; however, they can also be used in place of regular salt in any recipe preparation.