Soooo. Just in case you didn’t get my hint yesterday, I’m shouting it from the rooftops today. Use your homemade coffee liqueur to make white Russians.
Click on through for both the basic cocktail and our indulgent Thursday afternoon treat. Because Thursdays are practically weekends.
Today we have the simplest of desserts to share with you.
I love a good spice cake. In my book, there’s only one way to improve any good cake : make it portable! That must be why the whoopie pie was invented.
If you’re unfamiliar with a whoopie pie, let us introduce you. These are small treats made by sandwiching frosting between two small circular cakes. Most commonly, the cakes are chocolate and the frosting is vanilla, but I always felt lucky when I found a place selling the chocolate pies with peanut butter frosting!
Growing up in PA, it was common to see individual whoopie pies wrapped and for sale at farmer’s markets and near the cash registers of mom & pop markets. If you’re in Philly – stop into Reading Terminal and pick up a whoopie pie from the Amish stand. You can thank me later.
Today we’re sharing a recipe for ginger whoopie pies with cream cheese frosting. This recipe comes from the cookbook (appropriately named) Whoopie Pies. While this is still a fairly common whoopie pie flavor, that book is filled with a wide variety of cake and frosting options for mixing and matching.
Ingredients
Instructions
The cookbook comes with a candied ginger frosting recipe, if you want to go whole-hog with the ginger.
Personally, I love pairing these cakes with a simple cream cheese frosting. Beat together 8 oz cream cheese + 1 stick butter + 2 cups powdered sugar + 1 tsp vanilla. Spread a generous layer between two cakes.
In my opinion, these are cakes that get better with age. Give them a few hours or even a day for the flavors to meld, and you won’t be disappointed.
As I mentioned, these are super portable cakes. We had a friend over last week that packed an extra one for the slopes… pass these out on the chairlift, and you’ll become a legend.
Do you need a reminder that the holidays are right around the corner? We don’t! WE CAN’T WAIT. too much?
Today we’ve rounded up a few ideas that make perfect edible DIY gifts. There’s a range of options on this list, from nuts in solid and liquid form to citrus peels and marshmallow. Some take a bit more preparation than others (some are so easy you’ll have all of your teacher gifts done in an afternoon). But I may be a bit biased when I say that possibly the best gift on this list is the one that takes the longest to make.
And, as we all know, the best part about giving receiving an edible gift is that you don’t have to remember to put out that neon light up statue of Mt. Rushmore every time Aunt Peggy comes to visit. So get on with it.
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Spiced Mixed Nuts : a truly perfect blend of sweet and spicy. These are super easy to make with basic ingredients (think nuts, honey, cayenne pepper). Just make sure you share more than you eat!
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Hazelnut Liqueur : give this and you will be loved by all. Especially if you pass along a few key serving suggestions, such as mixing a shot into a cup of hot chocolate or a vanilla milkshake. BUT start making this one ASAP, because you need about three weeks of steeping time.
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Marshmallows! : There are so many perks to making your own marshmallows. You can personalize the color and flavor. Cut them out with cute cookie cutter shapes. Pair them with hot co for a real treat. And we aren’t kidding when we claim that these are easy to make.
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Candied Citrus Rinds : Again, another super easy treat. I added chocolate to these, but you can totally skip that. And as a bonus – we shared our orange marshmallows at the bottom of that post.
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Use this post as an excuse to get a jump start on the eating, drinking, and merriment! xo
A few weeks ago, we woke up to our first snow of the season. If that wasn’t special enough, I thought that it was worth fully celebrating the day, and any celebration worth its salt requires a cake. That was the humble beginning of our “First Snow Cake”.
The base of our cake is a delicious ginger cake and it’s topped with a healthy layer of powered sugar snow. It’s a simple cake that’s easy to bake on a whim and should definitely be incorporated into your next snow day. The recipe and more thoughts on celebrating the everyday below. *I’m thinking that next year the cake has to be baked in this pan.
We’re so excited about today’s chia pudding because it’s a delicious dessert that’s amazingly healthy thanks to the chia seeds. This is also a dish that a little chef can put together *almost* entirely on their own! Why almost? There is a pesky can opener involved, and that can slow down even the most ambitious 4 year old.
There are so many benefits to letting your kids help in the kitchen, from the basics of learning to count and measure, to the more advanced following of instructions. You’ll also delight in seeing them take pride in their work and their ability to do something for others – how excited will they be to serve this pudding to everyone else in the family?! And finally, for some kids, this recipe may introduce new tastes; there’s the strong coconut flavor with a hint of cinnamon, and there’s the unique texture of the saturated chia seeds.
Read on to learn more about chia seeds and our simple recipe for chia pudding!
*We first published this post almost two years ago, but these cookies are delicious and ginger is our ingredient of the season, so we’re republishing them today so that you don’t let a good thing pass you by.*
Ahhh, I meant to share this post before Christmas so that you could add yet another cookie to your baking list, but time got away from me, so here we are with a delicious ginger cookie that tastes just as good on a cold day in January as it would during the hustle and bustle of Christmas.
And I’m still smiling about how this came to be my favorite ginger cookie recipe. Calder’s sister made them a few years ago at Thanksgiving. That first batch was delicious and reminded me of the ginger chews that I used to buy in Trader Joe’s. I was so smitten that I asked for the recipe. She sent it along, and from her notes, I could see that it came from the grandma of a good friend. As I was baking these with Alex, I looked more closely at the bottle (more on that below) and realized that the recipe on the Grandma’s Molasses bottle matched the recipe I was making! Ingredient for ingredient and word for word. So, maybe you already know this recipe?
Get ready to start planning your next dinner party, because we have the perfect dessert : vanilla ice cream + ginger spread. This is such a simple combination, but the results are phenomenal. 
We used Talenti Vanilla Bean Gelato for the base, and topped it with a syrup made from Ginger People’s ginger spread. I scooped some paste into a ramekin, added almost an equal amount of water, and microwaved it for a few seconds until the syrup was warm but not hot. Then I gave the mixture a good stir and drizzled it over the gelato.
Can’t find ginger paste in your grocery store? Amazon delivers.
And I’m not joking about the dinner party. Sometimes a fancy dessert is in order. Sometimes you can plan ahead and bake something the day before. But sometimes, a tub of ice cream is the way to go. This combination takes that easy dessert and dresses it up just enough to leave an impression.
Plus, maybe it’s time that we make ginger the new flavor of fall! Pumpkin’s had its run. #outwithpumpkin #gingerishot #gingersarehot Wait. Am I doing this right?
This was such a packed month of cooking that I broke the post up into two parts. This is part two and covers the desserts, canned goods, and fermented projects for the month. If you are interested in what came in our share this month and the main-course dishes we made, check out this post.
Picking up where we lift off in the last post, here are the sweet and unique ways that I used the fruits and vegetables in our farm share.
If you want to eat dessert for breakfast, you’ve come to the right place. I’m nothing but an enabler on this front, BUT only if the dessert is fruit-based. No, wait, I also eat cake with my coffee.
This was a good month for feeding my dessert-for-breakfast habit. With weekly peach deliveries, and a few weeks with plums, there was plenty of fruit for the baking.
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Stone fruit tea cake (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : peaches and plums
We made this cake twice during the month, the first time with just peaches, the second time with peaches and plums. Even though it’s called a cake, Calder and I both thought that it was the best cobbler we’ve ever tasted. It’s delicious straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream.
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Peach crisp (a simplification of the apple crisp recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook) : peaches
I have to confess that I made this for our camping trip with the full intention to only eat it for breakfast. I packed a few small cups of Greek yogurt, and the combination was perfect.
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NYTimes {famous} Plum Torte : plums, eggs
I came across this recipe after reading the NYTimes article about it being the paper’s most requested recipe.
I don’t know why my plums sunk. Is it the altitude? No matter, the torte was still amazingly delicious. I think the boys and I ate half of it for our afternoon snack before Calder even got home from work! We have a few plums left, and I’m thinking of making this one more time for the season.
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I have to admit that for all of my interest in learning new things and experimenting, I’ve shied away from home fermentation projects. I always thought of it as such a risky venture with the chance for contamination, but after being gifted a few fermentation-related tools (this mason jar fermenting set and a couple of ceramic fermenting weights), I thought it was time to give it a try.
I’m working on both a jar of giardiniera and another of sauerkraut. Neither batch is done yet, but this is the week I get to test both, and when they’re done, whether good or bad, I’m excited to do a follow-up post to share my results along with a deeper discussion about why fermented foods are good for your gut.
*This isn’t my first foray into fermenting. It all started with kombucha! This is just my first time throwing vegetables into the mix.
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Giardiniera : basil, onion, carrots, broccoli, green bell pepper
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Sauerkraut (from Preserving by the Pint) : cabbage
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I’m hoping to do some more canning this fall, but keeping my expectations in check, I’m focusing on small-batch canning. A couple of great resources that I heavily rely on for small-scale canning are the books Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint. Both are written by Marissa McClellan, who writes a canning-focused blog called Food in Jars (another great resource for canning recipes, tips, and tricks).
If you’re nervous about canning, then doing a small batch is a great way to start. You can do it with the pots already in your kitchen, so you aren’t investing in new equipment. You can also do it with a smaller quantity of produce, so the prep-time is less, as is the clean-up, and it’s not a big loss if the batch fails (it won’t).
This month, I focused my canning efforts on that big box of peaches we received, making both a peach salsa and a peach bbq sauce.
Peach BBQ Sauce (from Preserving by the Pint) : peaches, onion
The BBQ sauce recipe makes about two half-pint jars. We’ve been using it on grilled skinless and boneless chicken thighs this month, and it’s so good that I ended up making three batches of the sauce so that I’d have enough to pass around to my family!
Peach Salsa (from Food in Jars) : peaches, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno
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Needless to say it was an exciting month in the kitchen. We tried so many new-to-us dishes, and all were delicious! I can’t wait to see what the month ahead brings, and I’m really excited to push myself to try even more canning and fermentation recipes.
Month two with the farm share and we’re still going strong! We’ve repeated some meals and gotten creative with others, spicing up our routine with dishes that are becoming fast favorites!
In the first post I explained what a farm share, or CSA, is and gave an overview of our particular share. This month, I’ll continue to list the variety of foods we’ve received over the past month and will post photos and recipe links to meals.
I was going to discuss our fruit and produce storage system, but this post on Design Mom does a great job of that, discussing many of the methods I use plus more! Instead, I thought it might be fun to start a discussion or just document how we approach eating with our two kiddos (ages 3 and almost 1.5).
Let me start by saying that we are lucky because both boys are generally adventurous and willing to try new things, both at the dinner table and in their day-to-day life. Also, they are great eaters (more on why this may be below), they come to the table hungry and willing to eat.
It wasn’t intentional, but over time, I’ve realized that I/we have some standard practices when it comes to dinner time.
And on them being good eaters, we have a few theories.
Meal Planning – Month 2
The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During our second month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!) and some variety of fresh herbs.
| veggies | proteins | dairy & misc. | fruit & herbs |
|---|---|---|---|
| cucumbers | pork chops | herbed goat cheese | sweet cherries |
| romaine lettuce | chorizo sausage | camembert | tart cherries |
| carrots | fryer chicken | yogurt | peaches! |
| cabbage | tofu | coffee | lemongrass |
| green onions | tempeh | fruit jam | basil |
| onions | tomato sauce | parsley | |
| zucchini | ketchup | dill | |
| summer squash | pickles | ||
| mushrooms | |||
| beets | |||
| chard | |||
| kale | |||
| kohlrabi |
Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.
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Miso-dipped Tempeh Logs + coleslaw wraps (scroll down within those links for each of the recipes): tempeh, cabbage, carrots
This was a meal that we took to the park for a picnic dinner. The wraps, using warmed naan, were the grown-up version. For the boys, I packaged their tempeh, slaw, and some extras (hard boiled eggs, fruit) in bento boxes, adding seaweed smiles to the logs for a bit of fun.
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Breaded Pork Chops, Braised Cabbage & Roasted Vegetables : pork chops, zucchini, turnips, carrots, cabbage, onions
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BBQ Pork Chops, Sauteed Kale, Beet & Green Bean Salad : pork chops, kale, onions, green beans, beets, cucumbers, parsley, goat cheese
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Salad with Sauteed Shrimp & a Cilantro and Lime Dressing : romaine lettuce, cilantro, dill, parsley, basil, (hard-boiled) eggs, cucumbers
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Chorizo & Shrimp Tostadas w/ leftover Beet & Green Bean Salad and Grilled Corn : chorizo, onion, cabbage, beets, green beans, cucumbers, parsley, corn
These were so delicious that we made them twice! The first time we used our salt-block on the grill to cook the shrimp (it’s so worth the extra time required to slowly heat the salt!) while the we grilled the corn. The second time we were pressed for time and just sauteed the shrimp in a cast iron pan on the stove.
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Tofu Vegetable Curry (two months in a row – it’s a favorite!) : tofu, yellow squash, zucchini, green onions, chard, lemongrass
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Pasta with a vegetable marinara sauce : canned tomatoes with garlic and basil, zucchini, mushrooms, onion
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Roasted Chicken with Vegetables : chicken, sage, parsley, carrots, onion, turnip, golden beets
I’m a big fan of roasting chickens using this method of first searing the skin in a cast iron pan on the stovetop before placing it in the oven. After the breast side is seared, I remove the chicken from the pan, place all of the chopped vegetables in the pan and then put the chicken back on top. This way everything roasts in one pan and the veggies get to soak up the amazing juices from the chicken.
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Chicken with Preserved Lemons & Yellow Squash Casserole : chicken, onions, yellow squash, eggs, goat cheese
This meal, and really, the farm share, taught me something I never saw coming : how to cut apart a whole chicken! We receive a whole chickens in the share, but I only wanted to use the legs to cook this dish. We already had two whole legs in the freezer and I wanted four. Cutting off the legs was easier than I expected! I’m happy to have the new skill, and am happy that I held it together while both popping chicken joints out of their sockets and cutting them (I can barely type that without squirming).
And the squash dish ended up being a bit of a (very delicious) experiment. I mainly followed the recipe above, but didn’t have any crackers in the house. So instead, I used toasted quinoa that I had on hand and some panko bread crumbs. I also added dollops of goat cheese in addition to the cheddar that the recipe called for.
So there you have it, chicken and yellow squash make for a delicious, albeit very beige, meal.
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Salads! : hard boiled eggs, leftover roasted vegetables, leftover beet and green bean salad, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce
I know everyone knows how to make a salad, but I thought I would add these in case you’re trying to break out of a rut. I throw anything under the sun in my salads.
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Omelette with mushrooms and onions : eggs, mushrooms, onions
Thinking ahead, we saved some of the sautteed mushrooms and onions that were going into the aforementioned pasta sauce and used them the next morning in these omelettes.
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Kale Chips
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Tart Cherry Cobbler (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : cherries
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Yellow cake with our favorite coconut buttercream and fruit : cherries with raspberries from our yard
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Mini Peach and Cherry Crumble : peaches, cherries
This was a super simple treat that I put together for us one night. I didn’t want to make a big crumble, because we’ve been enjoying the fresh peaches, but I knew that we could spare 3 or 4 for a few mini crumbles, so I made three of these.
I added some butter, water, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the sliced fruit. Then I topped it with some of the vanilla crumble from Rustic Fruit Desserts that I mixed with a little bit of quick oats to beef it up. The crumble topping is a stand-alone recipe in the book that gets used on top of some of the desserts (my favorite is the cranberry buckle), and it makes enough that I always seem to have some leftover in my freezer, which is perfect for quick desserts like this!
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Jam & Nut Struesel Bars : cherry jam
We get a lot of jam through the share (about a jar or two per week), but we’re still pretty slow jam eaters, especially since the boys are so small and aren’t devouring PB&Js yet.
While we’re happy to stock the jam away, I also wanted to find a way to use up a jar at a time in different desserts. Enter, one of my favorite easy desserts. I first came across this around the holidays when we actually had some leftover cranberry sauce in the fridge (that’s what the original recipe calls for). I now make these bars every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this is the first time that it dawned on me to make them with jam as a summer treat.
I didn’t add the extra sugar to the jam (as called for with the cranberry sauce), and I did substitute some of the white flour for whole wheat to give it a nuttier flavor and some extra good stuff.
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Man oh man, month two of the share was so good! The boys and I are heading off to the east coast, which means that Calder’s going to have to try to find a way to eat his way through the share, give away greens to friends, and come up with next month’s blog post! 😉
My mom has a share from a local farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia/Maryland, and I’m excited to see what we come up with while cooking from her share for the next month. It’ll also be interesting to see how the shares differ at this time of year.
What about you? Have you discovered any new recipes, tweaked old favorites, or learned some new skills while cooking from a farm share? We’d love to hear about it! And how do you keep the kids happy while cooking?