Molasses Spice Crinkles

I made some cookies last night, so that Adrian could take some to work on what promised to be a cold winter day, and we could have something 'seasonal' for guests this evening.  There's something about cloves, ginger, and cinnamon that just makes me feel a little happier on a snowy day.

Molasses Spice Crinkles

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses
4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon (most people like cinnamon, so I'm a bit more generous)

Sugar for dusting (about 3/4 cup - I throw the remainder in my tea the next morning.)

Preheat the oven to 375.  I'm lucky enough to have a stand mixer, so I throw the butter and sugar together and let them get acquainted while I gather the other ingredients.  I have made these by simply creaming the butter and sugar in a large bowl as well.  Either way, do not double this recipe - it will be too difficult to manage the dough. Just make two batches - the dishes are already dirty, and you're going to be monitoring the oven for a while.

Once the butter and sugar are fluffy, add the eggs and molasses.  Beat until smooth,

In a separate bowl, measure the dry ingredients and give them a stir.  This, I drop into the mixer by the rounded spoonful, but you can add it in several portions to the wet ingredients until the flour is blended in.

This is where the fun starts.  I have a 'tablespoon' cookie scoop to make measuring out the dough easier for me.  The original recipe suggests that this recipe will make 10 dozen, baked 5-7 minutes. My scoop gives me 3 1/2 dozen fairly chewy, moist cookies - baked for 9-10 minutes, and allowed to cool.  I scoop the dough, roll it in a bowl of dusting sugar (you can get fancy and play with food coloring and demerara sugar if you want things to be more colourful), and bake them 8 to a tray. If you intend to freeze some for baking later, skip the sugar dusting, and later thaw fully to ensure the sugar will stick to your dough before baking.

If you made 10 dozen, these cookies would be smaller and more brittle like a gingersnap.  I've tried to duplicate the giant cookies that some coffee shops sell - the danger is always that you will burn the bottom of the cookies without sufficiently cooking the middle.  You could try playing with the oven temperature. ** Remember** the crinkles don't show up in the oven - that occurs as the cookie cools on the tray out on the counter. 

Play with the size and level of chewiness that you like.  Finish the dough and do a test run - or 2 or 3, to determine what size of cookie you like, and what the ideal baking time is. 

The Kraut Craft Continues

Well, Adrian and I have decided that my newest attempt at making sauerkraut was a success - hitting the two week mark in the process was the key to taking the bitter edge off, and the flavour has continued to mellow.  We've enjoyed a bit on the side of most of our recent dinners, especially anything meat-heavy, as the kraut is supposed to aid digestion.  Yesterday I packed two more jars of kraut with a twist - one is flavoured with julienned apple and celery seed, and the other is a nod to kimchi with none of the pre-soaking normally involved in the kimchi-making process (and no fish sauce either).  Krautchi?  I've flavoured that jar with garlic and shallots from the garden, and red pepper flakes from the store. The water-filled jars on top are sitting on whole cabbage leaves, holding the vegetables under the cover of the brine, and both jars are draped with a clean dishcloth when I'm not taking pictures.  The casserole dish is there to catch any spills as the fermenting process takes over.  The original kraut is currently residing in the fridge, to slow fermentation.

 

The new krauts should be ready to try by the time we finish our purple cabbage kraut.

 

Krautchi on the left, and you can see the apple peel and flecks of celery seed in the jar on the right.

 

We'll experiment with additions and vegetable combinations, and find what works best and tastes best for us.  I have some mustard greens in the garden that I would like to add to a ferment - if they survive our current drop below zero under their floating row cover. Horseradish leaves would add some interesting heat as well, and I've already promised to use some daikon in the next batch. 

 

Fermentation is a traditional way of storing food where canning and refrigeration are not available. Traditionally, many cultures have fermented vegetables, dairy and meats in all kinds of interesting ways. Cheese, miso, coffee, tea, and chocolate are all products of fermentation.  Recent studies show that sauerkraut contains a greater number of anti-carcinogenic nutrients than cabbage (and other brassicas) which are eaten raw or cooked.  What's important to me, is that I know that it tastes good and I feel good about preparing and eating it.

As I did all of this cutting and mixing and crushing, I had water boiling on the stove to prepare a new batch of kombucha.  We're on and off again with our morning consumption of a swig of this vinegary-tasting 'healthful' brew, but the kombucha mother keeps working, so I keep making it, and we keep trying to remember to drink it in the rush to get ready in the morning. 

I like the kraut better :)

A New Book to Add to the Library

One of the bloggers I have been following for a few years has self published, and I would love to add a copy of her book to my personal library.  She has an impressive array of informative links on her site to a range of homesteading and self sufficiency sites and references, and I've learned a lot from her thoughtful, honest, and sometimes self-effacing posts.  She and her husband have slowly been rebuilding their home and learning about the realities of trying to provide for themselves and their animals on their land in South Appalachia.  She actually has her rain catchment system connected and functioning, and a wood cook stove in her kitchen.  I can hope and dream!

Leigh was the first blogger that I've followed who actually published a comment on this blog, and I have to say that it gave me a bit of a thrill to hear from someone I've been following for so long.  She has a wonderful blog, 5 Acres and a Dream, and I've been learning about her efforts to re-mineralize her soil and grow food for her animals rather than being completely dependant on the feed store. 

By posting this entry, I've got a chance to win her book in a draw - but I intend to add it to my collection either way! I encourage you to go have a look at what they've accomplished. You might just be inspired.

The Latest Buzz

Last week I finally buckled down and dealt with the comb I had been gathering from the hive over the past season.  I knew the process would be messy, so it made sense to do this small amount of processing in one go.

In the height of summer, we accidentally broke some comb in the heat... then there were a couple of off-centre bars we mangled to protect the borrowed brood on a Langstroth hive... and then there were a few empty bars we removed as the weather grew colder in October, to consolidate the area the bees would have for overwintering.  These last bars showed a bit of mould - possibly because the humidity in the hive was increasing as the temperature dropped (I had put the bottom board on when we had our first frost), or because there weren't enough workers to keep everything tidy in the comb furthest from the busy brood chamber.

 

I set everything up on the kitchen counter, and proceeded to get sticky.

Honeycomb darkens over time as the bees use the cells for storage and for rearing the young.  There were pockets of capped (fully evaporated and finished) honey in both the light and dark areas of the comb.  The newer comb I crushed and strained for household use, and the darker comb (some not fully capped), I cut out, and put on a cookie sheet to feed back to the bees. 

The sieve didn't work as well as I had hoped, so I pulled out my jelly-making tripod and left the crushed honeycomb to drain through the fine material. Much better, and easier to use all around.  I did purchase a buckets with three nesting sieves for processing larger amounts of honeycomb, but this set up was fine for the amount I was dealing with.

I kept busy with school and chores, and checked back on the dripping jelly bag a while later. After I had allowed the honey to drain, I swished the remaining crushed, sticky comb in some water, and dumped it into some cheesecloth. There are bits of pollen and debris mixed in with the wax.

 

I managed to drain a half pint of honey out of various bits of comb - equivalent to about one full top bar.  I will use this very sparingly, and keep a few tablespoons back to add to any herbal sugar water I might need to brew up for the bees in the Spring.

 

I crushed and rinsed the remaining, empty comb, and added that to my cheesecloth sack (note to self - trim off excess cheesecloth!) which then went into my jury-rigged double boiler with several cups of water - enough to cover the cheesecloth. 

This small pot conveniently nested an inch off of the bottom of the larger one. The double boiler method is used to prevent direct contact of the wax with the heat source - wax is flammable.  It's also important to note that the small pot will now by used only for processing beeswax.  Apparently, it's impossible to completely clean the wax away. Personally, since I don't use any chemicals in the hive, I'm not worried about a bit of beeswax or comb debris on my kitchen mixing bowls, or on a wooden spoon - but I will mark the pot.

 

I brought the water up to a very gentle boil, and watched for about twenty minutes as the wax melted  and formed a floating layer. I made sure to turn the ball of cheesecloth over to get all of the wax heated and melted, and stopped when it seemed that the volume of the bag was no longer changing. (Very scientific).

I removed the cheesecloth, pressing it against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon, and placed it carefully aside to cool, then turned the stovetop heat off and left the wax to harden.

The girls have still been flying in the sunshine - even though the temperature is below 10 degrees most days.  I set the comb out by the hive entrance over three afternoons, and they cleaned all of the honey up for me.  One girl had gorged on honey and lost track of time - I found her, apparently too chilled as evening fell, when I went to bring the pan in for the night. I heated her with my breath before convincing her to walk off of my finger back into the hive.

 

My first wax harvest.  There is a bit of  dusty debris on the bottom of the wax disc, but most was easily brushed away.  

 

I'll be giving some to my neighbour, who makes herbal salves - she has been so accepting of all of our crazy backyard projects. I intend to treat myself to a small candle in one of my canning jars, and there will be enough left over for me to melt 'start your comb here' lines on the top bars for next year's hives. 

Thank you girls!