Cinnamon Almond Squares-Improv Challenge

The ingredients for the May Improv Challenge, hosted by Kristen over at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker, is cinnamon and sugar.

This is a pretty common combination so it wasn’t difficult for me to chose a recipe to share today.  Of course, it is a cookie.  Of course, it is a bar cookie.  Of course, it comes from one of my favorite cookie books, my old reliable “Homemade Cookies” from Farm Journal.

This is a shortbread type cookie that takes only six ingredients and is very quick and easy to put together.  The dough is most easily made with an electric mixer as there is only an egg yolk binding all the ingredients together.  To facilitate it blending in, it is best to remove the egg from the refrigerator, separate the yolk and the white and let them sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

The cookies can be easily varied by using different spice and nut combinations.  My favorite spice is actually 5-Spice, but nutmeg, cardamom or ginger are all good.   Use any nut that you like or have on hand.

Walnut Cinnamon Squares
adapted from “Homemade Cookies” by Farm Journal

2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1 c. butter, softened
1 egg, separated
1 c. toasted slivered almonds

Place flour, sugar and cinnamon in the bowl of an electric mixer.  Add butter and mix until mixture is well blended and crumbly.  Add egg yolk and mix until mixture is well blended and sticks together.  Turn mixture into the center of a lightly greased 10x15-inch jelly roll pan.  Pat dough out evenly to cover the bottom of the pan.  Beat egg white until it is foamy.  Using a pastry brush, spread egg white over the top of the dough.  Sprinkle the slivered almonds over the top.  Press them in lightly with the palm of your hand.  Bake at 275 degrees 1 hour.  While still hot, cut in 1 1/2-inch squares.  Cool in pan on rack.  Makes about 4 doz.

Check out the links below to see what other bloggers have made with cinnamon and sugar.

Sharing at these great parties:
Full Plate Thursday
Fantastic Thursday

5-Spice Stuffed French Toast with Buttermilk Syrup-Secret Recipe Club

My assignment for this month’s Secret Recipe Club was Bad-Girls-Kitchen.  This is both a one-person and a collaborative blog that was started in 2008.  That means there is a wealth of wonderful recipes, and my “to make” file grew by leaps and bounds when I searched through this blog.

There are so many wonderful recipes I want to make, especially Carrot Salad, Spiced Quinoa with Cherries, Instant Chai Mix, Carrot Hummus, Garlic Naan and on and on.

I knew that I would be home alone on Mother’s Day, wanted to make myself a treat, and chose to make Stuffed French Toast with Buttermilk Syrup so I actually made two recipes from the blog.

Min is right about the Buttermilk Syrup, it just may make me give up maple syrup completely.  This syrup is  ridiculously quick and easy to make, but I do have a couple of hints.  Use at least a medium saucepan to make this, as the sauce foams quite a bit when the soda is added.  I used a small saucepan, and the syrup almost foamed over.  I cut the butter into thick slices when I put it in the saucepan so that the butter will melt a little faster.  I think a nice variation for the syrup would be to add some spices to it.  5-Spice, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Apple Pie Spice or Pumpkin Pie Spice would all be good.

I love it so much, I chose to use 5-Spice instead of cinnamon in the Stuffed French Toast.  Although I was making French Toast just for me, I made a full recipe of the filling which I plan to use as a spread on English muffins, bagels, or toast.  I am thinking of adding  a quarter of a cup of mashed berries to the filling sometime.

Because I was cooking for one, I used one egg and a quarter of the rest of the coating ingredients.  I had planned to use Texas Toast, but  my local bakery outlet store was out.  I bought a loaf of bread that was very much like homemade, but it may have been a bit soft for French Toast.  I let the sandwich sit in the egg mixture until almost all the egg was soaked up, turning the sandwich a couple of times.

Trying to be fancy, I chose to bake this in my waffle iron for waffled French Toast.  This worked OK, but the sandwich separated, and I had to use a fork to remove the bread slices from the grids.  I didn’t spray my grids with non-stick spray so that would probably have helped.  Not totally sure that it was worth the effort, though.

I served the French toast with the Buttermilk Syrup, a couple sausage patties, mini orange slices and a couple of strawberries.  This is a delicious breakfast for Mother’s Day or any day for that matter.

Thanks for two delicious dishes.  I have subscribed to this blog and expect to find more great recipes.

Buttermilk Syrup
from The Bed Girl's Kitchen

1 c. sugar
1/2 c. (1 cube) butter
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 t. baking soda
1 t. vanilla

Combine sugar and buttermilk in a medium saucepan.  Slice butter cube and add to saucepan.  Stir and bring to a boil over medium heat, continuing to stir often as butter melts.  When the mixture has reached a full boil, remove from heat.  Cool 1 minute and add vanilla and soda.  Serve warm or cool.  Store in the refrigerator.  Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

5-Spiced Stuffed French Toast
From The Bad Girl's Kitchen

8 sliced thick, sturdy bread
4 oz.s. soft cream cheese ( I used whipped)
1 t. 5-Spice or cinnamon
1 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. vanilla
4 eggs, well beaten
1 t. 5-Spice or cinnamon
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. milk
1 T. butter

Combine cream cheese, 5-Spice or cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla in a small bowl and mix well.  Spread 1/4 of the mixture on each of 4 slices of bread.  Top with remaining bread slices to make sandwiches.  Beat eggs well with a whisk in a small bowl.  Add 5-Spice or cinnamon, vanilla and milk.  Pour egg mixture into a 9x13-inch baking dish.  Add sandwiches to egg mixture.  Soak until almost all of the egg has been absorbed by the sandwiches, turning to soak evenly.  Slowly heat butter in a large skillet.  Add sandwiches and cook about two minutes on each side or until heated through and a golden brown.  Remove to plates, top with Buttermilk Syrup and enjoy.  Serves 4.

 If you are not familiar with it, Secret Recipe Club matches you up with another blogger each month and you secretly visit their blog, select a recipe, prepare and blog about it on a specific date each month.  All the details are on their blog.

Linking to these great parties:
Mop It Up Monday
Marvelous Monday
Make the Scene Monday
Melt in Your Mouth Monday
Mealtime Monday
Manic Monday
What'd You Do This Weekend?

Improv Cooking Challenge-5-Spice and Honey Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Today is the third Thursday in November and time for Improve Cooking Challenge hosted by Kristen at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker, so this is post number two.

The ingredients for the challenge this month were sweet potatoes and honey.  Sweet potatoes are one of those things that there is some confusion about.  Here in the northwest yellow fleshed sweet potatoes are called sweet potatoes, and orange fleshed ones are called yams but are, supposedly, actually a variety of sweet potato.  Confusing, I know.  Anyway, I chose to make my recipe with the orange fleshed potato as that is the one my family likes.

In searching the web for inspiration for this ingredient combination, I found a short video by Tyler Florence where he was making what he called sweet potatoes (they were the orange ones) roasted with honey and cinnamon.  The video was my inspiration for this recipe.  There were no ingredient amounts or oven temperature given in the video.

I love Chinese 5-Spice seasoning with its slightly licorice undertones so chose to use that in this recipe.  I will be trying other spices such as Pumpkin Pie Spice, Apple Pie Spice, Nutmeg, and Ginger (I probably will need to reduce the amount of spice for this one.).  5-Spice can be a little difficult to find in the grocery store, but I know that Spice Islands still makes it.

Although I used whole pecans in the dish I made for the photo, in the future I will use coarsely chopped nuts.  Any other nut of choice could also be used, or the nuts may be omitted.

All in all, I am very pleased with the result and have a recipe that I will use often.  The not-too-sweet glaze really lets the flavor of the sweet potato shine through.  Personally, I just kept eating these like popcorn and could not stop.  If you like true sweet potato flavor, I think you will like this.

5-Spice and Honey Glazed Sweet Potatoes
2 1/2-3 lbs. sweet potatoes or yams
1 1/2 T. olive oil or melted butter
1/3 c. honey
1 t. 5-Spice seasoning
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. coarsely ground pepper
1/2 to 3/4 c. coarsely chopped, toasted pecans or other nuts (opt.)

Peel and slice potatoes into 1-inch slices.  Quarter slices.  Place sweet potatoes in a large mixing bowl.  Drizzle olive oil or melted butter over the potatoes and mix until they are well covered.  Pour honey into a glass measuring cup and warm in microwave about 30 seconds.   Add 5-Spice, salt and pepper to the honey and stir well.  Pour honey over the sweet potatoes and mix until they are well covered.  Turn into a foil-lined 10-15-inch baking sheet and spread into a single layer.  Bake at 375 degrees 15 minutes.  Carefully stir and turn sweet potatoes so that they are well coated with the liquid (honey will still be quit liquid at this point).  Return to oven and bake about 15 minutes more.  Stir and turn potatoes again until they are well coated with glaze (honey will be glaze consistency at this point).  Sprinkle nuts over potatoes and return to oven for about 10 minutes until potatoes are tender.  Remove from oven and place in a serving dish.  Makes 6 to 8 servings  (Unless you are me, then it make a serving for one.)

 If you like to join in the fun of this challenge, you can find all the necessary information on Kristen's Improv Page.  December's challenge is chocolate and marshmallows.  The recipe does not have to be original.