Recipes

How about a recipe thread? I mentioned elsewhere that my wife likes to bake, and my sister is pretty close to a professional baker. I think this is the recipe my wife uses for "cowboy cookies." At any rate, it's the recipe I found on my computer. I'm pretty sure it's not original with her; I've looked, and it seems to be the same as Laura Bush's recipe.

Cowboy Cookies

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon. baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups sweetened flake coconut
2 cups chopped pecans (8 ounces)


Directions

Prep Time: 25 minutes
Bake Time: 17 to 20 minutes
Yield: About 3 dozen cookies (see note below)

1. Heat oven to 350 F.

2. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl.

3. In 8-quart bowl, beat butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 1 minute. Gradually beat in sugars; beat to combine, 2 minutes.

4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in vanilla.

5. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Add chocolate chips, oats, coconut and pecans.

6. For each cookie, drop 1/4 cup dough onto ungreased baking sheets, spacing 3 inches apart.

7. Bake in 350 F oven 17 to 29 minutes, until edges are lightly browned; rotate sheets halfway through. Remove cookies from rack to cool.

Note: For 6 dozen small cookies, use 2 tablespoons dough for each. Bake at 350 F for 15 to 18 minutes.

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As I've said, they are really great.

We have 3 more recipes that have been praised. She has her mother's "Eggless Milkless Butterless Cake," which she usuallly makes as a fruitcake. We have my mother's recipe for "Green Tomato Mincemeat," which is a vegetarian version and very good, and I make a mean cheese fondue, largely based on the recipe used at Les Armures, the oldest restaurant in Geneva, Switzerland (a mere 450 or so years old!).

We actually have a recipe book that we put together to raise money for a charity. You can still get copies I believe. TCS members contributed their favourite recipes to the book and it was wonderful.

This is awesome!!! If you have time will you post your recipe for cheese fondue???

OK, here's the basic cheese fondue recipe:

1/2 pound Emmenthaler Swiss cheese
1/2 pound Gruyere Swiss cheese
clove of garlic
bottle of dry cheap white wine
a few tablespoons of flour
salt and pepper
fondue pot
fondue forks
crusty French bread

The deal is that this comes as much with experience as it does from reading the recipe.

You need a really cheap white wine, very dry. If you pay more than $5 for the bottle, you paid too much. When we used to make this in college in France, we bought the bottle of wine from the local wine merchant in one of those returnable bottles with a flip top like a Grolsch bottle. The bottle cost 4 francs, which was about 80 cents at that time. And 3 francs of that was the deposit on the bottle! This was 1972, by the way. By "dry," I mean at least 12% alcohol. 13.5% is about as dry as wine gets.

Emmenthaler cheese is what we think of as "normal Swiss cheese," which has large holes in it. Gruyere is creamier and has smaller holes, usually none larger than a pea.

Grate the cheeses coarsely. Put the cheese in a bag or bowl and add the flour. Stir or shake it up to lightly coat the cheese so it won't stick together.

Cut the clove of garlic in half and rub it around on the inside of the pot. You CAN use a pinch of garlic powder, instead. Put in a pinch of salt and a little pepper.

Put a couple of cups of wine in the pot. Put it on medium heat, uncovered. Make sure you've cut up the French bread in about 1 inch cubes. Try to leave crust on each piece; that makes it harder to drop in the fondue!

When the wine is just coming to a light boil, start adding the cheese, a handful at a time. Stir it in and keep adding the cheese. You will want a smooth mixture, not a clump and not a liquid. Remove it from the heat and put it on a stand with sterno, or a warming plate, or some such thing. If it cools, it will tend to clump up. Most restaurants add a shot of kirsch just before serving; we find that makes it too bitter.

Put a piece of bread on your fondue fork and dip it in the cheese. Eat. Repeat. Serve the rest of the wine with the cheese. The old tradition is that if you drop your bread in the fondue, you have to kiss everyone around the table. Alternatively, you have to pay for the wine.