Recipes

Recipes we’ve enjoyed lately, complete with commentary:

 

Oatmeal Beer Bread

2 cups flour

1 1/4 cups oatmeal

1 T baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 T brown sugar

2 T honey

12 oz. beer

1/4 cup melted butter

Grease loaf pan. In a bowl, mix dry ingredients, pour honey over dry ingredients, then beer over all. Mix just until blended. Pour into pan, pour butter over batter. Bake at 375 for 25-35 minutes (or more, in my oven) until knife inserted in middle comes out clean. Makes one loaf. Different beers will make a different flavor. We like this one so much I bought a box of Milwaukee's Best just for bread. Cheap. Good. Liberty can make this one start to finish alone in about 1.5 hours. She’s a little slow, but she has more time than me so she can go at it. Liberty cooking and me sitting around eating bon-bons doing something else is a major bonus.

Caramel Creams

1 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 egg yolks

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup finely chopped pecans. (Or not. Why ruin a good thing?)

1/4 tsp salt

Filling:

2 1/2 T butter

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

2-3 T heavy whipping cream (I used 1/2 and 1/2 with good results.)

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla. Combine flour, pecans, and salt; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Shape into two 10 inch rolls; wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 1-2 hours. Or forget about them in there for longer. They won’t mind. In fact, make some for next week while you’re at it. Two birds, one stone. They are good enough you’ll wish for more anyway.

Unwrap and cut into 1/4 inch slices. (Getting too thin makes crunchier cookies. We liked the ones that were thicker. Stick to 1/4". My 2 cents.) Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 11-13 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks and cool completely. Slap at fingers that attempt to snitch cookies. Break several cookies in the downward motion when small hands are faster than large ones. End up feeding them the cracked ones since making those into sandwiches is a crumbly affair. Inform them they aren’t being rewarded for cracking the cookies. But they are. But they aren’t. They aren’t getting frosting. So there.

For filling, heat butter in a saucepan over medium heat until golden brown. Remove from heat; add powdered sugar, vanilla and enough cream to achieve spreading consistency. Spread on the bottom of half of the cookies; top with remaining cookies. (Oreo style.) Repeat “Do not lick your fingers until you are completely finished making and touching the food” over and over and over. Resist the urge to disobey your rules. At the very least, wait for them to leave the room.

Makes about 3 dozen sandwich cookies. We really liked them. Three dozen cookies lasted two days. In a house that cookies don't always go over so well, even B ate these. That's something. They aren't terribly sweet. I'd never intentionally browned butter in my life, but it was good. :)