Misshapen-taschen

It's a little late for Purim. But it's perfect for rhubarb season.

I was making Deb's apple cake for work (we raised £800 for Comic Relief on Red Nose day), and flipped to the recipe for Rhubarb Hamantaschen. (Recipe's not on the web...you'll have to buy the book! Her other hamantaschen recipes are here.) I suddenly had a rather overwhelming urge to make some. We used to buy them at Riesterer's Bakery in Garden City, where they were always perfectly shaped with pretty, glassy centres. However, they're traditionally either filled with prunes (blech) or apricots (meh). But Deb says we can make them with rhubarb. I LOVE rhubarb!

Onward, then.

Here they are before being folded:

And here they are fresh from the oven. Apparently my shiksa hamantaschen-crimping skills need work.

Some of them turned out quite pretty. We're not really in commercial-bakery-on-Long-Island territory, though.

I can verify that the rhubarb hamantaschen still taste excellent, regardless of shape. In case my New Rochelle Jewish-food credentials were in doubt, I make excellent latkes.

I can also verify that rhubarb appearing at the farm shop also means spring is coming, despite the fact that we had about 3 inches of snow yesterday and today. Blech.

Oatmeal cranberry cookies with dark chocolate chips

I made these back before Christmas. I based the recipe on (what else?) Smitten Kitchen's oatmeal raisin cookies, but instead of raisins and walnuts I put in dried cranberries and dark chocolate chunks.

Oh, hi, red Kitchenaid! Yes, I love you, too.

They were seriously good - not too sweet, and felt vaguely healthy. They were the closest I've come to the cookie that my mom and I bought on the way back from Grandma's funeral last February. I've googled and it looks like we stopped at Kessman Farms, in Pawling, NY. Oatmeal cranberry raisin cookies. If you're passing through, that is. You could just make these instead...

Aw, rats. Now I want to go make some cookies.

Comfort food

After admiring Smitten Kitchen's Mushroom Bourguignon for months and months, it suddenly hit me this afternoon that I had to make it tonight. The thought of it was making my mouth water at 3:30 this afternoon.

So, yeah. I picked up some mushrooms on the way home. I bought big cremini, but I think it would have been good with any meaty mushrooms.

Oh, and because we're not vegetarian and we had two sad week-old slices of (English) bacon in the fridge, we used bacon right at the beginning. It was AMAZING and so much quicker than the full boeuf version and I could hear Julia admonishing me NOT to crowd the mushrooms! (Darling, I didn't. I did them in 2 batches. You'd be proud of me.)

SO good that we ate it all and there were no pictures.

Oh, and we put the pearl onions and butter/flour mixture in right after adding the liquid. Other than that, unchanged. And delicious.

Veggie peeps: go make it.

Meat-eating peeps: this is almost boeuf bourguignon and it was on the table in an hour. SHUT UP and go make it.

And as the other part of my quest for comfort food, I made the pumpkin-apple muffins from the Libby's Pumpkin tin on Thursday last week (Thanksgiving, for those of you paying attention). I wanted cream cheese icing, not streusel, so that's what I did.

Libby's recipe is on the inside of the pumpkin labels, and also here. I used Martha's cream cheese frosting recipe, here. YUM.