Yule and X-mas food

After the Pumpkin Pies I made for Thanksgiving I decided I would never use canned pumpkin to make a pie with, canned anything for that matter! If I make a pie I want fresh ingredients so it can be the best pie it can be! I was so happy I had found those pumpkins at The Farm at Lee Martinez park in November I decided to to take a chance and see if they had any left. To my surprise and shear luck they still had quite a few salvageable pumpkins left in the middle of December!! I did a little happy dance and jumped the fence to pick threw the pile! :) They were frozen b/c of the week long arctic front we had gotten but they would work. This time I grabbed 4 pumpkins and the lady in the office only charged me $0.50 for them since they were frozen talk about a steal!!!!

At some point I decided to make cookie tins for everyone's presents this year. (Boy that ended up being a lot more expensive than I had planned it to be, but I now have a Kitchen Aid standing mixer!) I found 24 holiday tins on Ebay for about $18 I think it came to $35 after shipping.


I decided to make 6 different types of cookies and a sweet and spicy nut mix. I will link all the cookie types to the recipes I used to make them.

· The snowflake cookies are sugar cookies with an orange flavored glaze. Sadly this is the only picture of the cookies I baked. :(

· Coca snowball cookies with almonds. These did not come out right. They ended up more dome shaped and were very hard. I did not make the green tea one though just the chocolate.

· Almond cookies ~ with an almond orange flavored glaze. these melted in your mouth! I added extra almond paste an baked them for less time

· Chai spice cookies. ~These were mine and Chad's personal favorite! These are wonderful dipped in milk =)

· Snickerdoodles ~ need I say more!

· Caramel stuffed apple cider cookies. ~ I added only a 1/2 tsp of salt instead of a full one. I also added about 1/4 cup of fresh apple juice ( I have a Jack Lalane Juicer) and all of the pulp that was discarded during juicing I added as well. minus the big chunks of skin. I had to add more flower as well but I did not measure how much I just added enough till the dough felt right.

· The nut mix has almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans,pistachios, pumpkin seeds and walnuts. they are coated with a mixture of vanilla, brow sugar, cinnamon and chyanne pepper. I found all the recipes online but I tweaked all of them a bit. Everyone said these were their favorite in the tins. I had issues with these too! I had to make 2 batches because I burnt the hell out of the first one. :( I had put all the nuts in my huge stock pot so I could mix them all together and then roast them one batch at a time. Well the burner they were setting on got turned on to high and scorched all the ones on the bottom and "smoked" the rest of them with nasty burnt nut flavoring. I was so upset when I had to toss that huge batch of nuts out! I can't find the link for this one but I will keep looking and I will add it when I do.

For the winter solstice (Yule) ritual with NCCR I decided to make 2 baked pumpkins filled with eggnog custard. OMG these came out AMAZING!!!! I'm starting to drool just typing this!! LOL!! This was my first time making a custard so I was a little nervous it wasn't gonna come out right. After being in the oven for almost an hour the custard was still in a liquid state boy was I starting to panic! Then remembering I live above 5000 ft I needed to adjust my baking time. I left them in at 375○ F for another 15 min then I cranked the heat up to 425○F for another 15 min and the custard finally set! and I ended up making it to group on time to eat and enjoy the ritual!

Now to finish off the holiday baking spree with the pumpkin and apple pies I brought to Gillette for X-mas dinner. I decided to bake these at home and transport them to Gillette in my handy cake carriers! I will start with the pumpkin pie. I ended up putting almost 2 pumpkins into one pie. and I used real maple syrup to sweeten it with. Let me tell you this is hands down the BEST pumpkin pie on the planet!!! Again this is a huge pie pan I use so 2 pumpkins is just a little to much but it's better then not enough!

• Ingredients

2 small sugar pumpkins

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup real maple syrup
1 1/4 cups half-and-half cream
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
3 eggs

and your favorite pie crust

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F

2. Cut the pumpkins in half and gut them then cover them with foil and place in the oven for about 45 min, or until very tender. Remove from oven and set aside to cool. ad just the heat to 425 degrees F

3. Put all ingredients into one bowl besides the eggs and blend with an emulation blender. I taste test here to make sure the sugar and spice levels are good for me and then tweak if needed. If everything is good to go I add the eggs one at a time.
4. poor pie filling into unbaked pie shell. my leftover batter I used to make a mini pie for myself! :-P

5. I bake the pie at 425 degrees F for 15 min then I reduce the heat down to 350 degrees F for 45 min or until the center has set. I live above 5000ft so you may have to adjust your baking temps and times accordingly.

Apple Pie
I don't remember the recipe I used for this but I was told buy my husbands maternal grandfather that I was #3 on his list of favorite apple pie makers. :) His mom being #1 and his wife #2. That made me feel pretty damn good! Heck he ate half of that pie by himself!