Brazilian Coffee Cookies

I made these cookies for the first time several years ago. Kay was playing in the snow with the little boy next door (he isn't little anymore!) and I took a plate of cookies out for them. Kay came in a few minutes later and said "Johnny really loves those cookies!" I always think about him when I make these. For some reason, these have become one of our traditional Christmas cookies.


The recipe comes out of this book (copyright 1963):

After years of hinting, I finally got this book from my mom including all the cut out dessert recipes she had stuck between the pages. It was my favorite book growing up mainly because it has pictures of the various cookies along the bottom of the pages like this:

I remember searching through it and deciding on the most fantastic cookie only to have my mom say "those look too hard, find something else"! At the time I thought she was so unfair but when I got the book I found myself saying the same thing to Kay.


This is a nice easy cookie though. Any instant coffee works well in this. Those coffees in the little cans called International Coffee or something like that work really well because you can get different flavors. Sometimes I add mini chocolate chips to make them extra special. I was just thinking tonight that chopped up chocolate covered coffee beans would probably be unbelievable!

I had to take this picture for Ms. Mac. Look at my poor daughter ruining her health with one of these coffee cookies! Kay loves the taste of coffee but it makes her bounce off the walls so her intake is severally restricted!

Brazilian Coffee Cookies

1/3 cup shortening

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/12 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon milk

2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons powdered instant coffee

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix shortening, sugars, egg, vanilla, and milk until fluffy. Stir dry ingredients together. Add to sugar mixture and mix thoroughly. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet. Flatten to 1/8 inch thickness with greased bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Bake for 8 minutes.

Kay: I love these. I really like the coffee from Gloria Jean's. I go crazy even when my grandma gets me the low caffeine.

Mom (Dana): These would also make really good sandwich cookies with chocolate in between. (I must really have a sweet tooth going tonight!).

Tater Dipped Veggies

I have a torn up book that no longer has a cover where I started writing down recipes when I went away to school. I wasn't much of a cook so it took me until after I was married before I filled it. Surprisingly, there are still a few in there that we still eat.

I don't know what made me think of this recipe a month ago. We hadn't had it for over 10 years at least. The last time I remember having it, Bill and I were still in the apartment and our friends were over. I remember only getting to taste a few because each time I pulled one pan from the oven, everyone would eat them as I tried to fill a second pan.

Last month, I had left over cauliflower that I planned to serve with dinner and decided to use this recipe instead of our usual roasted or steamed cauliflower. Kay really liked it so last week I used it again, this time with leftover broccoli.

As you can see, she is now able to eat but has to be a little creative when trying to take bites!

Tater Dipped Veggies

(For most recipes, I wrote down where I got it but this one doesn't say. Not that it would matter, most are from TV shows that are no longer on or really old magazines!)

1 cup instant potato flakes

1/3 cup Parmesan (or nutritional yeast flakes)

1/2 teaspoon celery salt

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
2 eggs (I used egg beaters)

4-5 cups raw bite-sized veggies such as mushrooms, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini or carrots

Ranch dressing for dipping

In a small bowl combine potato flakes, Parmesan, celery salt, garlic powder, and butter. In another bowl beat the eggs. Dip the vegetables, one at a time, into the egg, then potato mixture. Coat well. Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Kay: I really liked it. I usually don't like nutritional yeast but this was really good. I liked the broccoli and cauliflower both.

Mom (Dana): I think this is the third or forth recipe I've posted using potato flakes! I never realized it was one of my favorite ingredients.

I Can't Eat Anything Besides a Smoothie Smoothie

(written by Kay)

Today, I had an orthodontist appointment . I had my braces checked. They didn't hurt when I went in. But, when I came out, I WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN!!!! We had Broccoli Potato Bake(which I LOVE) for dinner and I ate the potatoes but not the broccoli because I WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN that I couldn't eat any hard things. So my mom made me a smoothie. Here's a recipe that I call...

I Can't Eat Anything Besides a Smoothie Smoothie

1 cup soymilk

7 frozen strawberries

1/2 banana

4 tablespoon chocolate sauce

Put everything in the blender and blend until smooth.

I like mine blended extra long so I can't feel the seeds from the strawberries. It was SO good I almost forgot about my braces. EXCEPT when I touched my tooth with my tongue.

Lentil Patties

Bill has not been very happy with a lot of our meals since I quit eating dairy about a year ago. Therefore I was not very optimistic when I decided to make lentil patties with chickpea gravy. I can't think of many things that sound more weirdo vegetarian than that. Surprisingly, he really liked these and he swears that they taste just like Salisbury Steak. I have no idea what that tastes like so I couldn't tell you if he's right or not but I'll take his word for it.

I adapted this recipe slightly from one on allrecipes.com.

Lentil Patties

1 cup dried brown lentils

3 cups water

1/4 cup rice milk

1 cup oatmeal

1 envelope dry onion soup mix

2 eggs (I used Egg Beaters)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Vegetable oil for frying

Place the lentils and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain any remaining water.

In a large bowl, mix together the cooked lentils, milk, oatmeal, eggs, walnuts, and onion soup mix. Mix well. Let stand for 30 minutes or refrigerate overnight.

Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Use an ice cream scoop to portion out balls of the lentil mixture. Drop them into the pan and flatten them with the back of a spatula. Fry until nicely brown on both sides, about 5 minutes per side.

Top with ketchup or your choice of gravy.

Kay: These were crunchy and I thought they tasted like peanuts. I don't usually like lentils. I had gravy on mine but I think I would have liked ketchup better.

Mom (Dana): For leftovers, we saved the mixture and fried them up fresh the next day. We had these with mashed potatoes and roasted cauliflower and it all came together quickly and with little effort.

Cabbage and Rice Pie

Kay is at soccer practice right now and it is very cold and starting to rain. Therefore, I'm going to type this up as quickly as possible before I get called to pick her up!

First of all we want to thank everyone who voted for our Paper Chef entry. We won the People's Choice!!

I received quite a bit of cabbage this week from the farm so I searched through all my old cookbooks for some new way to prepare it. I chose this recipe mostly because I had all the ingredients. Turns out we all liked it. Bill and Kay both told me it was good without me asking their opinions so that is a very good sign. Kay, I think, was just happy I finally made something without onions!

Cabbage and Rice Pie

adapted from Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking

1 1/2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 cups shredded green cabbage

2 cups frozen hash brown potatoes (we used the chopped)

1 1/4 cups uncooked instant rice

8 oz cream cheese, softened (we used soy)

1 teaspoon ground sage

1/2 package puff pastry, thawed

1 can tomato sauce + your choice of seasonings

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9 inch pie plate.

Heat the water to boiling in a medium saucepan. Stir in salt, pepper, cabbage and potatoes. Heat to boiling. Reduce to medium, cover and cook 5 minutes.

Stir in rice, cream cheese, and sage. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 5 minutes. Stir to mix all ingredients well. Pour into the pie plate.

Unfold the pastry sheet and place it over the cabbage mixture. Trim pastry to fit pie plate. Press edge of pastry onto pie plate with a fork.

Bake uncovered 25 minutes.

For sauce, heat one can tomato sauce with salt, pepper, Italian seasonings, etc to suit your taste.

Spread sauce on plate. Top with wedge of pie. Sprinkle additional sauce over the pie.

Kay: The cabbage thing was ok even though I don't really like cabbage. I think it would be good with spinach and would help my cousin Lily eat spinach. When we cut off the puff pastry from the edges, I wanted to eat it but my mom dipped them in cinnamon sugar and baked them. They were really good but hot. My mom said I was crazy.

Mom (Dana): This was really easy. I was worried about leftovers and how they would warm up. Bill worked late, though, and his warmed up fine. Just don't heat it too much - just enough to slightly warm it.

I'd recommend this cookbook to anyone, vegetarian or not. The recipes are very basic and "normal". No weirdo tempeh or tofu or other strange vegetarian things!!

Our special guest commenter, Dad (Bill): Amazingly enough, I actually like this puff pastry thing! (He's eating the leftovers right now!)

Promise

I am posting this to promise that I'll post a real post tonight. This should make me feel guilty enough that I won't put it off!

We tried something new last night and all 3 of us really liked it (shocking)!!

Paper Chef - Apple Pie

Edited to add: the round up has been posted - http://paperchef.blogspot.com/2008/10/paper-chef-33-roundup.html. I'm always overwhelmed by how creative everyone is!



Kay and I had a lot of fun coming up with a recipe the first time we did Paper Chef and really wanted to do it again. We tried one other time with disastrous results. The other months we were either too busy or the ingredients did not suit us. When I saw the ingredients this time, I felt like we had to participate because there were no animal products!



For anyone not familiar with Paper Chef, each month 4 ingredients are selected from a list and everyone is asked to come up with a recipe using those ingredients. This month's ingredients are beets, ginger, rice, and apples. My first thought was a main dish which we did make. It looked like this:



We really liked how it looked but weren't happy with the taste. Luckily we had a second recipe planned as well. I have to thank my mom and my friend Claire for this idea. Claire had suggested doing some kind of layered dish. I came up with a couple ideas and asked my mom's opinion. She is the one that actually said that I should base it off an apple pie. That is when I decided to go ahead and make just that - apple pie!



I used the beets mostly just for coloring. I always think that apple pie should be red instead of a boring beige and the beets worked perfect for that.



For the rice portion, I used rice milk and rice flour.



Bill immediately noticed the ginger in the filling which was surprising because I thought it was too subdued and that we should have added more.



Kay helped make both recipes and also had the very important job of writing everything down as we did it.



Really Red Apple Pie Crisp



Crust:

1 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup margarine
3-4 tablespoons rice milk



Filling:

2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
2 gala apples, peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons grated ginger
1 beet, boiled, peeled, and pureed



Topping:

1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup pecans
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons margarine


To make the crust, combine the flour and sugar in a medium bowl. Cut in the margarine with a pastry cutter or two knives. Add in just enough milk to bring the dough together. Wrap the dough in wax paper and refrigerate until you're ready to use it.



Combine all filling ingredients in a large bowl.



Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Press the crust into the bottom of a pie pan. Bake the crust for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Fill the pan with the filling. Cover with foil and place in oven. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 30 minutes.



Combine all topping ingredients in a food processor and blend until combined but still chunky.



After 30 minutes, remove the foil from the pie and spread topping evenly over the apple filling. Return the pie to the oven and bake an additional 30 minutes.

Kay: I don't really care for cooked fruits but this was actually good. I think regular crust on the bottom would have been better but I liked the top crust. This tasted like regular pie or apple crisp, not like beets at all.

Mom(Dana): Bill refuses to let me tell him what is in this pie! We all really liked this. If you need proof, here is all that is left after 24 hours!