Cooking Grand

with Joanne Carr
Grand Island Dispatch, December 8, 2006

Giving gifts from your own kitchen is satisfying

The more years I accumulate, the more intensely my passion for giving grows.

There is a problem in this, though – the fantasy doesn’t match the reality. The fantasy being that my husband, Bob, and I could ever afford to give everyone exactly what they wanted.

The reality is that we can’t afford the fantasy – not in a family with more than 30 members in line to inherit our very limited largesse.

The coming season that all retail businesses count on to declare the year’s success won’t be getting many of our dollars.

Our gifts are from the kitchen for adults, and grandchildren and great-grands will unwrap old-fashioned, basic toys or books.

Each of the grands and great-grands, starting about 12 years ago, got a big, colorful scrapbook – and our dining room was wall-to-wall scraps.

All families will get a crazy variety of homemade cookies packed in saved coffee containers – decorated with holiday gift-wrap and big, floppy bows.

For some, there will be a hot mustard made from a treasured recipe or chili sauce, maybe jam.

I dutifully produced a light fruitcake for years and years until someone had the courage to tell me that it wasn’t always well received. That’s a euphemism for “We don’t eat it.”

Now I bake a yeast-based fruit stolen to be served on the day that we gather the largest bunch of family members together. No one complains, even though the fruit is precisely the same as those in a fruitcake.

Here are two recipes to get you started on gifts from your heart.

Cindy May’s Hot Mustard

4 oz. of Coleman’s Dry Mustard
2 cups of Wondra flour
1 cut white sugar
1 and 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 eggs

Combine mustard, flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl.

Whisk together vinegar, eggs and melted butter.

Stir liquid into flour mixture.

Be very sure that you use the brand names listed above. For instance, only Wondra works. The recipe makes about four eight-ounce jars of mustard.

Keep refrigerated.

I am so thrifty that I save pickle relish jars or other small glass jars, wash and dry them to be filled with this hot mustard. I scrub off the original labels and stick on labels of my own, putting on the date and contents.

Holiday Fruit Stolen

Deluxe roll recipe:

1 and 1/4 cups milk
1 cup melted margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 packets dry yeast
1/4-cup warm water
5 and 1/2 to 7 cups bread flour
4 eggs, beaten

Filling:

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4-cup sugar
3/4-cup golden raisins
3/4-cup crushed pecans
2 to 4 oz. red pineapple
2 to 4 oz. green pineapple
or the same weight of red and green cherries or citron

Topping:

Enough whole pecans and cherries to dot three loaves of stollen

Heat milk to just below a boil.

Using a large bowl, pour in milk, add sugar, salt and softened margarine, which will melt in the hot milk.

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, stir, and add a teaspoon of sugar over yeast mixture. When yeast is bubbly, stir into a cooled milk mixture.

Add beaten eggs.

Add 2 and 1/2 to 3 cups of flour and beat well. Then add enough flour to make a fairly soft (not sticky) dough.

Turn out on a well-floured surface and kneed, using only enough additional flour to keep the dough from sticking to your hands. Knead until dough is smooth and satiny.

Place the dough in a large bowl that is coated lightly with margarine. Turn dough over so that the top and bottom are greased.

Put the bowl in a warm place to rise – for about two hours. When dough is doubled in size, punch down and form into three rounds. Let rise, again.

Roll each round out on a floured surface.

On each round, distribute one third of each of the “filling” ingredients.

Knead each until the filling is incorporated into the dough.

Coat cookie sheets with cooking spray and shape each round into an oval loaf. Let each rise again until doubled in size.

Bake in a 375° oven for 25 or 30 minutes.

Cool on racks slightly.

Glaze with:

1/3-cup softened margarine
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 and 1/2-teaspoons vanilla
2 to 4 tablespoons hot milk

Glaze the stollens, dripping the glaze to run down the side of each loaf.

Decorate with the pineapple or cherries and whole pecans.

These loaves are so colorful and flavorful that you may be asked to do them again next year.

I really do think that your passion for giving will be as satisfied as mine in making and giving such gifts this season.

Good for you!