Gran-Gennie's Famous Sugar Cookies

I have a big and wonderful family, and Christmas has always been a very big deal, filled with tradition! Since my family is very close there are multiple Christmas parties and family get-togethers throughout the Holiday season, and it seems everyone brings the same dishes and treats every year so I have begun to associate certain foods with Christmas. Sugar Cookies are one of those things that as soon as the Holidays are around the corner I start craving them! My grandmother is famous for her sugar cookies, and they are a Power family classic. So I decided to bake them to get into the Christmas spirit, and although my first attempt was not even close to my Grannies, they still turned out delicious! So here is the famous Gran-Gennie's Sugar Cookie Recipe! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt dash of vanilla (I use a cap full normally)


Directions:

First in a medium bowl combine all the wet ingredients (butter, eggs, vanilla) and beat well, and in a second larger bowl combine all the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar) and mix well. Mix the dry mixture slowly into the wet mixture until the dough is smooth. Roll balls the size of toonies, and press them down with a fork onto your baking tray. The cookies will become larger as they bake. Finally, sprinkle with granulated sugar (I like to add some food colouring to mine to add a holiday kick!) and put in the oven. Bake at 375 for eight to nine minutes.

Aurora <3

A Halloween Treat: Toasted Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year, and when I lived at home we had many long standing traditions, one of them is we would always carve our pumpkins the night before halloween and we would collect all the seeds to make my favourite Halloween treat (yes, I like these even more than mini candy bars, mini potato chips, and surplees combined), toasted pumpkin seeds!

Ingredients:

Pumpkin seeds
Butter
Salt
Cayene pepper
Chili powder
Paprika

Directions:

Once the seeds are taken from the pumpkin, and all the pumpkin guts are removed, give them a quick rinse and then set them to dry for a night or two. In a pan on high heat, melt a table spoon or two of butter, enough to coat your seeds. Toss the seeds in the butter, add your salt, and just a pinch of each spice, you can make them as spicy or as mild as you want, the spices really bring out the natural flavour. Toast them until they turn a nice golden brown and are crispy! Enjoy!

Amaretto Apple Crisp Pie

First of all I would like to say happy thanksgiving to everyone! This is my fourth year at Memorial University, and thus my fourth Thanksgiving away from home! Luckily I have amazing friends who like me are also are too far from home to have Thanksgiving with their families and we have been having our own Thanksgiving dinners since 2007!

I provided the dessert for the dinner, and made my first ever apple pie! I saw the idea a while ago to make a amaretto apple crisp and since I love to bake with alcohol I thought it was perfectly fitting! However, nothing is more Thanksgiving than pie, so I decided to combine the two elements together. I incorporated the amaretto to my mother’s apple crisp recipe and added it to a pie. It was absolutely delicious!

Ingredients:

Five apples peeled and cored (I used Cortland’s)
Pie crust (I admittedly use Pillsbury pie crust, it’s delicious and zero hassel.. I never claim to be a true baker)
Three-four tablespoons Disaronno Amaretto Liqour
Teaspoon unfiltered apple juice (not necessary, just something I did)
Mini bottle of Talea Amaretto Cream (the little mini mickies)
Half cup flower
Cup rolled oats
Half cup brown sugar
Half cup butter
Two teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:

In a bowl mix the apple slices (sliced thin and in even sized pieces) with the apple juice and desserono amaretto. Place pie crust in a pie pan, and place the apple amaretto mixture in the pie pan. Make the edges look pretty (roll them, fork them, ect). In another bowl mix together your flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then add in slightly heated (think 20 seconds in the microwave tops) butter to the oats mixture and mash with your hands until it becomes an even crumble. Place the crumble evenly over the apples in the pie. Cover with tinfoil and bake at 350 for twenty minutes, remove tinfoil and then bake again for 15 or until crumble is crisp and crust is nicely golden. Then pour your amaretto cream on top and allow to sink in, let set for 15 minutes then serve!

Rory <3

Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting

This is one of my more famous recipes, and I have to say... the best damn cake you will ever have!

I am very proud of this particular cake, because it was my first solo baking endeavour, and the very first cake I ever made from scratch! It’s the perfect rich, moist, chocolate cake and will certainly stand out from any chocolate cake you have had before! It also makes a perfect St. Patrick’s day treat since it includes two of the finer Irish liquids available – Guinness and Bailey’s.

I found a recipe for a chocolate stout cake in a magazine while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, the idea of beer and cake was something I couldn’t get out of my brain and so I knew I had to try it. The recipe I use is a mix of two recipes I found online.

The first time I used this recipe I made it as a double stacked birthday cake for an ex-boyfriend. I used the Bailey’s Cream Cheese Frosting in the middle layer between the two 8 inch cakes. I made a simple Belgian chocolate ganache glaze on top. The second time I made this recipe I baked it in cup-cake form for a Young Liberal bake sale with a standard cream cheese icing, and for St. Patrick’s day I couldn’t resist making this Irish themed treat for my friends and archaeology classmates and topped the Bailey’s Cream Cheese Frosting with green sprinkles!

Chocolate Guinness Stout Cake
Makes: Two 8-inch cakes
or 36 cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup Guinness
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
1 tablespoons vanilla

Directions:

Melt the butter in a sauce pan, remove from heat and let cool a bit, then mix in the Guinness, cocoa powder and vanilla. In a separet bowl mix the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together. In another bowl mix the eggs and sour cream. Mix the Guinness mixture into the egg mixture and then mix in the dry ingredients into the wet. Bake in a preheated oven at 350F until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean. Cupcakes need to bake for eleven minutes, cakes in a single pan should take about 40-50 minutes. If you bake it in two cake pans then it should take about 20-30 minutes.

Bailey’s Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

Two packages of cream cheese
Half cup butter
Two cups icing sugar
Four tablespoons of Bailey's

Directions:



Slighlty melt the butter in the microwave, under thirty seconds, then mash it together with the cream cheese at room temperature. Add in the icing sugar, and the Bailey's. Whip together till smooth and slighlty fluffy.

Belgian Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:

9 ounces chopped chocolate (I used belgian fondue chocolate)
Cup of heavy cream
Tablespoon corn syrup (adds some shine, but not nessisary!

Directions:

Place the chocolate into a large bowl, heat the cream in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil. When the cream has come to a boil, pour over the chopped chocolate, and whisk until smooth. Stir in the corn syrup. Allow the ganache to cool slightly before pouring over a cake for a glass like effect.

Chicken Masala

I absolutely adore Indian food, in fact the very first thing I did when I arrived in England after my summer in Armenia (who generally don’t use a lot of spice in their cuisine, besides cilantro and bayleaf) was take the Tube from Heathrow to Leicester Square, London to get amazing Indian food. I’ve heard the best Indian food outside of India is found in England. I have wanted to attempt an Indian influenced dish for a long time, so I decided to make an oven-cooked chicken masala.

Ingredients:

Chicken thighs
Two tomatoes
Half a can of diced tomatoes
Two green chillies
Four garlic cloves
Handful of coriander leaves
Tablespoon flour
Salt to taste
Five tablespoons cooking oil
Half of a lemon
Half a dried birds eye chilli
Four cloves Four cardamoms
Half tablespoon thyme
Half tablespoon red chilli powder
Half tablespoon turmeric
Half tablespoon cinnamon
Half tablespoon nutmeg

PS: Spice measurements are totally estimated... probably inbtween a half and whole teaspoon... but I don't measure things. Add as much as you think you can hanlde.

Directions:

First dice fresh tomatoes, and add the additional diced canned tomatoes to a large bowl with the cooking oil. Add all of the spices and cloves and then mix well. Next add your coarsely chopped garlic, and the chilli peppers sliced in halves. Next add your cilantro leaves, stems removed. Now add your chicken and cover over with the tomato mixture and cover the bowl. Let the chicken marinate overnight in the fridge. The next day remove the chicken from the sauce and add to a pan on high heat until the skin shows a little colour and then place them in the oven until fully cooked. Next add the sauce to the pan and let simmer down for 15 minutes, and then remove the cloves and chilli peppers and add the flour to thicken the sauce. The last step is to take a potato masher and soften up the tomato chunks. Pour over chicken and rice, and spoon some of the chicken broth from the bottom of the oven pan... Can’t waste that amazing stock!

Rory <3

Armenian Style Chicken Rice Soup

Last week Newfoundland was hit by hurricane Igor, and although St. John’s had it better than many of the rural towns who had to declare a state of emergency, we still got hit hard and there was a lot of flooding, damage, and of course power outages. I personally lost my power for 36 hours, and with that my entire freezer defrosted. I hate throwing food away so I saved what I could, and when I gained power I decided to throw together a ‘everything but the kitchen sink” Chicken Soup with an Armenian touch.

Soup is something I love to make, my grandmother and my mother are both queens of soup making... and nothing in the world is better than homemade soups. I never make soup the same way twice, as I always find something new to add. This time I was influenced by the amazing chicken soups our dig chef Gohar would make us in Armenia this summer. The soups had flavourful broths, with a little bit of a spicy kick, and were filled with big chunks of chicken on the bone and whole vegetables and had a large amount of rice in it. I was never big on rice in soup, but after Armenia I loved it, it really turns soup into a hearty and filling meal.

Ingredients:
Chicken breast (I would have used chicken on the bone, since it adds so much to the broth and gives the soup a rustic touch, however with the amount of defrosted boneless chicken breasts in my feezer after Igor I decided not to be wasteful)
Chicken stock (homemade stocks are wonderful, but alas a can of stock also does the trick when you are short for time like me!)
Salt
Pepper
Summer Savoury
Bay leaves
Armenian mixed spices (from the most amazing spice bazaar in Yerevan.. it was a mix spice and older lady handed to me so I don’t know its exact contents, but I know it includes paprika, cumin, among other spices)
Saffron (not needed since it is so expensive, but I have lots from my visit to the middle east so it was something to add a unique kick)
Celery
Celery leaf
Carrots
Mushrooms
Onions
Garlic
Baby potatoes
Basmati rice
Olive oil

Directions:

Add a liberal amount of olive oil in a large pot on high heat, and add in the exotic spices (Armenian mixed spices, and saffron) and let the olive oil take on the flavours. Next add in your chopped onion (don’t be shy with them) and a minced clove of garlic and some minced mushroom (to a near powder). Once the onions begin to caramelize, add in your seasoned (salt and pepper) chicken breasts, and don’t make the pieces too small! Let the chicken get some colour and then add in your can of chicken stock. At this time you can add a couple dried bay leaves to the mix and a pinch of summer savoury. Dice up into larger pieces celery, carrots, and baby potatoes. Add some celery leaves to the mix, and leave the skins of the baby potatoes and add to the pot. Add two cups of water and close the lid and let simmer until the vegetables are soft and the stock has visibly reduced. Use your judgement if you need to add more water or more seasonings. The last step is to add a handful or two of basmati rice! Serve with some soup rolls and butter!

Rory <3>

Lamb in a Balsamic Honey Reduction on a Sweet Potato Mash

French cutlet - recomended if you can find it

Lamb Chop also works, but is a slightly tougher cut

If you would have asked me last year to cook a lamb dish, I would have laughed and said no-effin way. Last year if you would have asked me to even try a lamb dish, I would have most certainly turn it down... or possibly nibbled at a small bite depending how much I liked you. However, I have seen the light, and have learn to not only tolerate, but in enjoy the game-ier meats such as lamb. I had lamb a few times in Armenia, cooked to perfection, and I was instantly won over. This is my first attempt at ever making a lamb dish, and among the first of my red meat dishes.

Ingredients:

Lamb chop (I would have used a French cutlet, which is a separated rack and a much nicer cut... but alas it is impossible to find such a cut in St. John’s... I’ve tried).
** edit I found rack of lamb and remade this recipe, amazing!
Rosemary infused olive oil
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Balsamic vinegar
Dry red wine
Honey (must note that I have the most phenomenal, raw, Armenian honey, so you should really be jealous).

Directions:

Massage in a liberal amount of rosemary infused olive oil (you can buy olive oil already with rosemary in it, or you can simply put a table spoon of rosemary in some olive oil and let it sit for a day or two) into the piece of lamb and season with salt and pepper. Next drizzle some olive oil into a pan on high heat. Drop the lamb in the pan and let it sizzle away until there is some good colour on both sides (two minutes on each side should do it, but let the colour be the judge). After this make a tinfoil boat and place the lamb inside and add more olive oil. Wrap it up and place it in the oven to finish for about 12 minutes at 350 degrees. With the juices left over in the pan, add a table spoon of water and add a little bit of red wine, a few dashes of balsamic vinegar and a spoonful of honey. Mix and let reduce over heat and let thicken a bit. When the lamb is out of the oven there will be leftover juices in the bottom of the tinfoil boat, add a few spoonfuls to the reduction sauce to bring the sweet sauce back to savory-town. Serve on top of a simple sweet potato mash and enjoy! :)

Rory <3