The Twelve Weeks of Christmas-Week Four

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas-Week Four

This week I did two recipes. One of them I liked a lot, and will write about, and one was just "meh" so I won't write that one up. I tried a ginger cookie, like molasses cookies, but it just wasn't amazing. If I'm gonna eat cookies, in my new way of eating, they have to be incredible, not merely passable. 

The recipe that did work out, I quite liked. It's one of my older recipes from my collection, and I was unable to track down the source, so I can write it out here.

Spiced Oranges

8 or 9 oranges

3/4 cup red wine

6 Tbsp. sugar

Cinnamon

Ground Cloves

Section oranges to remove all membranes.

Arrange the sections in a serving dish.

In a saucepan, combine wine, sugar, and a generous dash each cinnamon and ground cloves. Heat the mixture, stirring frequently, until the sugar is dissolved and pour it immediately over the orange sections.

Let the dessert cool and serve chilled.

This is so simple to make! The hardest part is sectioning the oranges. I only used one since I was the only one eating this. Make sure to section them over the plate you'll be serving so you catch all the dripping juice to add extra flavor.

I cut the sugar down to one teaspoon of brown sugar, and just used enough wine that I thought would cover the orange. I also cooked the wine long enough till I thought most of the alcohol had burned off, since I don't really like that taste.

Make sure to turn the orange pieces over a couple times so they absorb the wine mixture evenly.

These would be good on ice cream or on pound cake or angelfood cake. But I like them just plain.

I was thinking these would be good to eat while watching It's A Wonderful Life. When Clarence is at the bar and starts talking about the mulled wine, "heavy on the cinnamon, light on the cloves," this would be perfect to eat!

This flavor, with the wine, the oranges, and the winter spices, is so perfectly Christmassy! There's something old-fashiond-y about it. I'm really happy I finally tried this one!

 

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Week Three

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: Week Three

This week saw my first fail. Sadly there were too many issues with the recipe that I'd have to tweak to make it work to make it worth sharing it here, so I'm just going to focus on the recipe that did work out. This week's theme was Christmas lunch. Soup and salad. The soup, which took a lot of work, was the fail. The salad, which also took a bit of work, turned out well.

I used this recipe for Green Bean and Bacon Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette. I made a half recipe, which was very easy to do, since I didn't need a full recipe just for myself. This can be made ahead of time and eaten cold when you're ready for your meal.

Red onion is something I don't use a lot, but I really like it every time I do. It has a mellow flavor when you cook it. Green beans and onion, a very simple base for a salad.

Here it is after the roasting process. You add fresh cherry tomatoes and diced cooked bacon to round out the flavors and textures. The dressing is really easy to make, and I found it a bit sweet for my tastes, so I would probably cut the honey down even further. You can always add more to your liking, but you can't take it out once it's in there.

This dish looks like Christmas on a plate. The red and green. It's very festive. This salad would be good for a group meal, a potluck, maybe. You can just double or triple it depending on how many people you're feeding.

I was really happy with how this turned out. I am also curious to try it some time with sherry vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar and see how that changes the flavor profile. That's always a good sign that you're already thinking about making a recipe again!

I wish my soup had worked out. It was going to be my lunch tomorrow, and I had to make other plans. I will keep eating the salad leftovers with my dinners this week till it's used up. This is not something that would freeze well.

I highly recommend this recipe for any time of the year, but particularly at Christmas, because of the colors. I hope you enjoy it too!

12 Weeks of Christmas 2024: Week Two

12 Weeks of Christmas 2024: Week Two

Today's meal was a full Christmas dinner. I tried three recipes that all turned out amazing! All three are online recipes, so I can't write them out here, but I will tell you the changes I made.

First up was Apple Dijon Pork Roast. This recipe needed very little adjustments for it to be ok for me to eat. I misread the apple juice as applesauce, and it turns out that unsweetened applesauce was much better for me to use than apple juice, anyway, so I just used that instead. The only thing you have to make sure to do is to strain the sauce after before thickening it cuz the applesauce will mess up the texture.

Here are all the assembled ingredients. This is a slow cooker entree, which is lovely.

The sauce ingredients, pre-stirring.

And post-stirring and over the roast. This makes a lot of sauce. You can probably cut this in half, for the 2lb. roast I used, and still be just fine.

I loved being able to just turn this on and walk away from it. It doesn't use the oven, which is also really nice if you're planning a meal with lots of oven components. You do need a sauce pan to thicken the sauce on the stove, so plan on that.

Next up was the Cranberry Applesauce. This recipe had the most adjustments made to it. I didn't have 6 apples, I had 4, and I used the entire bag of cranberries. I used honeycrisp apples and thought they were wonderful with this. Instead of 2/3 cup of white sugar, I cut it all the way down to 1Tbsp. of brown sugar. I used water instead of the cider. This turned out to be delicious and perfectly sweet. I possibly would have gotten away without even adding the brown sugar. A serving is 1/2 cup but can't imagine eating that much in one sitting. It's so good, though! I'm going to use it for my overnight oats and see how that works for breakfast this week.

I was thinking originally of grating some of the apple to replace the cider, but decided not to since I have to cook it all down anyway. I figured it doesn't matter what shape it was in.

Here's the whole thing on the stove, just getting started.

5 minutes into cooking.

10 minutes in.

15 minutes.

And 25 minutes in. Make sure to stir this well because it will burn on the bottom if you're not careful.

After letting it cool down a bit, I pureed this in two batches, but tried to keep it from being too pureed. Keep it a bit rustic.

The color is so pretty and striking! At first taste, when it's just finished, you might think it's too tart and be tempted to add more sugar. Resist this urge and let it chill properly for several hours. It will be perfect by then. This was really delicious!

The last recipe was a simple mashed sweet potato recipe. This is from a member-only site, so you might not be able to see it unless you open an account. But the general idea is to make mashed potatoes the same way you normally do, but use peeled and chopped sweet potatoes and no salt in the water. When the potatoes are soft, you mash them with melted butter, soy sauce, and put chopped green onions on top. I really liked how these turned out. I don't like it when people take sweet potatoes and make them even sweeter. I like more savory applications, and this was a great one. I used the yellow sweet potatoes instead of orange, cuz rumor has it that they are better on the glycemic index.

I just used one sweet potato and adjusted the rest of the ingredients to work for a smaller amount of potatoes. 

I mean, does this look like a proper Christmas dinner, or what?! Before I changed my way of eating, I would have had rolls or biscuits with this, but found that this was plenty of food and I didn't need that.

The potatoes were good on their own, and also with the sauce mixed in. I was worried that the sauce might be too Dijon-y with the amount used, but it all blended well with the chicken stock and applesauce. I also wasn't sure about having zero spices, but decided to try that element as is, and think it's fine. If anything, I might have added some sage and/or poultry seasoning. If I make this again, I'll probably try that.

This is a really festive meal. It felt fancy and used basically all the pots and pans, so that made it feel like holiday cooking. I will be eating leftovers for a couple days, so that feels like Christmas, too!

I recommend all three of these recipes and hope you enjoy them!

The 12 Weeks of Christmas: 2024-Week One

 

Week One: Apple Desserts

Yes, I'm doing another round of Christmas recipes this year! After starting a new way of eating, and having lost over 50lb so far this year, I wondered if there was a way to continue with this annual project. Then I realized, there was nothing keeping me from doing it! I'll just make sure the recipes are, or are modified to stay within my new way of eating. So this year's overall theme is: Healthier for me.

I started off this week with two desserts. Yes, I still eat dessert! In fact, I eat dessert every night! It's just less than it used to be, and usually involves fruit as all or part of it. I won't be shying away from sweet treats this holiday season. The holidays are only for a short time, after all, and I have a long time to walk off any indulgences!

My dad makes apple pie every year at the holidays, and since he is also changing his eating habits, I was concerned that I might not get apple pie this year. So, I tested out a couple options, and am happy to say that both of them were successful!

First up was Crustless Apple Pies that I made after dinner on Friday. They are in fact, very easy, and very quick to make. The recipe is from Delish, which is subscription only, but I had a daily calendar from last year and this was one of the recipes. Because it's not mine, I can't write out the recipe here, but you can use the ingredient list from the link above, and see how I did it, and know how to do it yourself.

I did the recipe based on making a single serving. I added more spices than just the cinnamon. I added ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom, as well as apple pie spice. Just a dash of each. And the cinnamon was a cinnamon-sugar blend, so I left out the actual sugar it called for.

This is a Hasselback apple. Apple halves, cored, that you slice down width-wise, but not all the way through so it creates an accordion effect. After brushing it with melted butter, I did more sugar-cinnamon on the outside, instead of just sugar. When you reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe, one that doesn't affect the texture, such as this one, you want to replace it with more flavor. Something highly spiced will taste better than something with less sugar and no spice.

You bake the apple for about 25 minutes before putting the filling in and baking for 10 minutes more. This is what it looks like after you bake the oats in it. I think it looks pretty cool! I had some extra oats, and rather than throw them away, I put them under the apple to bake. It all turned out pretty good, except that I would try two things differently next time. 1-I would add chopped walnuts for a bit of crunch. And 2-I would cook the oats separately from the apple and then put it in the slits afterwards. I found that the moisture from the apple essentially cooked the oats into oatmeal, instead of what I thought would be more of a crunchy granola.

This calls for cool whip or whipped cream or ice cream, for sure. Something special on top. I used cool whip so I didn't have to deal with the dairy. This definitely tasted better when I let it cool off and come to room temperature to eat. Right out of the oven is too hot to let the flavors really come forward.

This is a really satisfying recipe for this time of year. It would make an easy Christmas dessert, too. If you wanted to be extra fancy, you could crush a gingersnap over this for added texture and a bigger holiday flavor.

My second recipe was Hand-Held Apple Pies and this was definitely way more time and energy intensive. Make sure you are at your peak for energy for the day when you start on this, cuz once you start, you're committed to finishing it. After making the dough, the portioning, rolling, filling, assembling, and baking took the entire length of time it took me to watch Empire Strikes Back in my Star Wars rewatch.

The dough uses butter and cream cheese. Cream cheese is not something I've actually ever made dough with before, so this was cool to try out. I used a mixer for that first mixing step, and for the first part of mixing in the flour, but you have to use your hands, eventually, to properly mix this dough.

The first of my alterations to this recipe was to use half whole wheat flour, and half King Arthur keto wheat baking flour. I had a bag that I haven't had a chance to try yet, and was very curious about it. I was very happy with the results. They say you use it basically as a 1:1 substitute for regular flour. I was impressed with the texture and flavor of the dough. I was also impressed that this flour didn't have weird, fakey stuff in it, either.

Here's what the dough looks like when it all comes together. It's darker because of the whole wheat flour, and feels grainier.

This is a recipe where measuring on a scale is really handy. Each dough half then gets divided into 12 pieces, so making sure the halves are equal to start with, and then measuring each piece, ensures the same size portion. Portion control is vital to how I eat now.

The second set of changes I made, was to the filling. Instead of white sugar, I used an equal amount of apple butter, and then added 1tsp. of brown sugar. I think when cutting down on the sugar, replacing what you do use with brown sugar gives you much more flavor. And apple butter just increases the apple flavor overall. It also has sugar, but overall less than just adding the 1/4 cup of sugar the recipe calls for.

Here it is, all blended together. I did stick with just the cinnamon and allspice, this time, as I wanted to see what that spice combo was like, without adding more flavors to it.

Here's the chilled dough, cut up into equal-weight pieces.

I found, because of the space I had to work with, that doing some from start to finish was better than doing all of one step for all 24. I also don't really care about putting a lot of effort into making the dough round or equal. They get rolled out into whatever shape they end up in, and that's how the tart ends up shaped! It all tastes the same!

I carefully measured 1 Tbsp. of filling for each one. They probably could have handled at least twice that much.

I'm calling these "rustic" style. None of them look the same. Some of them I forgot to cut slits in the tops to vent as they baked. It's all good...!

I ran out of filling with two pieces of dough left, so instead of making more filling, I just spread them with butter and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon, a dessert I grew up with at my parents' house. If you make this recipe, I used two large apples, plus one quarter of a large apple. I'd use at least one half of that last apple's leftovers and add a bit more filling ingredients to stretch it further. That way you can use all the dough.

Of course I had to put cool whip in this one too! These were really tasty. I'm going to try a couple leftover, but I froze the rest in hopes of thawing some out at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas.

Autumn and the winter holidays are the best time for apple desserts. If you love apple pie, but want to try something a little more carb-friendly, but still incredibly indulgent, these are for you!! And I jsut thought of a possible additional way to make these, if you wanted. I will have to try it some day to ee if it works. You could put the dough into mini muffin tins and put the filling in them and bake till done. They'd be little pie bites. Not sure if it would work or not, but with a shot! 

Enjoy!

Cranberry Muffins

My place now smells like lovely cranberry orange almond muffins, thanks to the recipe I tried this afternoon. Since I can't track down the source, I'll write it out. I think they turned out to be really delicious! 

Cranberry Muffins

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour(if you can't find this, like I couldn't, use 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2 regular flour)

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking power

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp butter, softened

2 Tbsp. canola oil

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp. vanilla

3/4 cup orange juice

1 tsp. orange zest(I forgot to write this ingredient on my recipe card so I'm assuming it was orange zest and assuming this is a good amount. Just add whatever you want, there's no rules for zest!)

1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries, whole

3/4 cup sliced almonds, divided

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees for muffins, or 350 degrees for mini loaves or a loaf pan. Coat pan of choice or line muffin tin if doing muffins.

2.) Whisk together whole-wheat flour, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl. Beat butter, oil. and sugar in a large mixing bowl with electric mixer until creamy and pale. Add egg, zest, and vanilla, and beat until smooth. Alternately fold in flour mixture and orange juice, making 3 additions of flour mixture and two additions of orange juice. Stir in cranberries and 1/2 cup almonds.

3.) Scoop batter into prepared pans. Smooth tops and sprinkle with remaining almonds. Bake muffins 18-22 minutes, large loaf 50-60 minutes, or mini loaves 35-45 minutes, or until golden brown and tests clean when you test it with a toothpick. Cool 5 minutes. Loosen edges, and turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 muffins, 1 loaf, 3 mini loaves. Per muffin: 173 calories, 5 g fat, 2 g fiber

Here we have the dry ingredients mixed together. Good luck tracking down whole wheat pastry flour. I went to three grocery stores and ended up googling substitutes, which I included in the ingredient list.

The wet ingredients ready to mix. I actually didn't have quite enough orange juice so I just used water to make up the difference. It's still plenty flavorful. I also didn't know I needed the zest until it was too late for the orange so I just threw in some dry lemon peel I had, and I think it worked just fine.

The finished batter looks really amazing! It's pretty thick but it made 12 perfect muffins.

Ready for the oven. Pre-almonds on top.

Just out of the oven. The almonds toast on the top so you don't need to toast them ahead of time.

And the finished product. Pre-butter, of course! These were really good. The almond and cranberry come through really strongly and you'd never know there was no almond extract in the recipe! The texture is really god. I was very happy with these! Especially with the butter!

Muffins are generally a really easy type of recipe to make. They don't take too many steps and don't dirty too many dishes. This time of year we can finally get fresh cranberries. This is a great way to use some!

The 12 Weeks of Christmas Baking-Week 1

Yes, it's October and I'm starting the Christmas baking project in order for it to be done by Christmas! I started off easy, and luckily it turned out well! The recipe says it's from tasteofhome.com but I could not find it there or anywhere online so I'll go ahead and write it out.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

2 cups self-rising flour*

1/8 tsp. salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup mashed sweet potatoes

4-5 Tbsp. milk

In a bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in shortening and sweet potatoes until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in enough milk, just until dough clings together. Knead lightly on a floured surface. Roll dough to a 1/2" thickness. Cut with a 2" biscuit cutter and place on lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes: 1 1/2 dozen

*As a substitute for each cup of self-rising flour, place 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt in a measuring cup. Add regular flour to measure 1 cup.

I used the tip to make my own self-rising flour. It's a lot cheaper than buying a bag of self-rising flour. definitely don't waste your money. In case you're wondering how to cook the sweet potato, you can bake/roast it if you want, but I peeled, cubed, and boiled it like with regular mashed potatoes. I think it worked out really well. It made more than I needed and I froze the leftovers in hopes that it'll thaw ok for another use another time.

Everything blends together very easily. I ended up using 4 Tbsp. of milk and that made a perfect dough.

This was a really nice dough with a really pretty orange color!

I couldn't find my rolling pin easily so I just patted out the dough with my hands and it worked just fine. 

This made 3 more than the 1.5 dozen, so this dough goes a long way!

Here's the finished product, fresh out of the oven.

And the texture of the inside. This had a really great texture.

The flavor is pretty mild, but let's be honest, biscuits are merely vehicles for butter, honey, jam, or gravy, so that's where most of the flavor comes from. This was a good way to get a little more veg into your diet. If you're gonna make biscuits with a bunch of fat in them, you might as well have some veggies in them too, right?!

This would go well at the holiday table. If you're not a fan of sweet potato casserole or pie, give these a try, I think you'll enjoy them!