Fun Owl Snack

 

I made these owl snacks for recess on Friday last week.

Ingredients:

Sliced Banana 

Sliced Apple

Frozen Blueberries 

Slivered Carrot

Peanut Butter 

Bread

Spread peanut butter on the bread to make the owl body.

Use peanut butter to glue the apple wings, banana with blueberry eyes, and the carrot beak onto the bread.

Serve to children and enjoy the smiles!

You could also toast the bread or use Nutella as variations on this basic idea.

My Mother's Chocolate Cake | Recipe

 This is a moist, fudge-y, chocolate cake made with plenty of butter!

My Mother's Chocolate Cake Recipe 

4oz. Baking Chocolate, Chopped (I used 3/4c. of cocoa powder instead without adding any extra shortening or oil)

1 1/2c. Unsalted Butter (3 sticks) (I used salted butter)

1c. Boiling Water

2 Eggs

1 3/4c. Sugar

1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract 

2 1/2c. Flour

2 tsp. Baking Powder

2 tsp. Baking Soda

1 tsp. Salt

1c. Hot Coffee

Melt butter and chocolate over medium heat with water. Remove from heat.

Beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla until creamy.

Add chocolate mixture to the egg mixture.

Sift together dry ingredients and stir them into the batter.

Add coffee. Mix to combine.

Pour batter into two 8" greased and floured cake pans.

Bake at 350°F. for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool on wrack 10 minutes before turning out of cake pans.

These cake layers were so fragile. I wrapped them in plastic and foil and froze them. Before they had a chance to thaw I assembled the layers. I made a 2 ingredient dark chocolate mousse to go between the layers. I followed Ann Reardon's video instructions.

The original frosting recipe that came with the recipe is as follows:

Frosting:

1 1/2c. Softened Unsalted Butter

2 TBS. Milk

1 1/3 lbs. Powdered Sugar

2 oz. Baking Chocolate, Melted

1 tsp. Vanilla Extract 

Whip together with an electric mixer.

Now for the funny story that goes with this cake recipe:

My grandma found this recipe in a newspaper. The title of the recipe read "My Mother's Chocolate Cake." My grandma clipped it out and mailed it to my mom. She said, "With a title like 'My Mother's Chocolate Cake' my daughter better have a copy." even though my grandma had never made the recipe. That's her sense of humor. It is a very tasty chocolate cake. My mom made it once when my grandma was visiting so that at least she would know what a good recipe she had passed on. 

My Mother's Chocolate Cake with
dark chocolate mousse and butter cream frosting
dyed with reduce beet juice.

Birthday Wellington!

   I had big plans for my birthday luncheon this year. I wanted to take the opportunity to make something special. Having come across some really nice cuts of deer back strap, I decided to attempt my first Wellington. 

  To learn the process I watched America's Test Kitchen Beef Wellington video, Chef Jon's video, Gordon Ramsay's video, a few shorts, Fallow's Beef Wellington Guide, and Chris Young's video, just to name a few. I will add my references at the end. 

  I took most of my inspiration from Chef Jon. He advised to keep realistic expectations. The meat is going to exude juices all over once you cut into the roast. The pastry is going to get a little soggy. Accept that. His tip is to bake extra pieces of puff pastry to serve with the Wellington, that way you still can have plenty of crispy, flaky pastry to go with the meat. He also prefers a more simplistic method and avoids the use of crepes or prosciutto. 

  I started by making the duxelles ahead of time. I knew that school would be back in session at the time of my birthday and it would be difficult to pull off the extra steps if I waited until the week that I needed the components.

  I minced 2 ½ pounds of mushrooms by hand. I substituted onions for shallots and used a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar in place of wine. I seasoned the mushrooms with salt, pepper, bay leaf, and thyme. I didn't have any truffle infused pāté that Chef Jon recommended but I had some homemade liver pāté so I mixed in a spoonful of that once the mushrooms had finished cooking down.

  Three days ahead I pulled the meat out of the freezer to thaw. I had two small pieces of deer back strap in one bag. I would make two small Wellingtons. I thought it would be the perfect amount for my family and I would be able to cook them effectively in my toaster oven.

  Once the meat was thawed I patted it dry and salted the surface. Then I wrapped each piece tightly in plastic wrap to form them into nicely shaped logs.

  I started the Puff Pastry two days ahead of time. You may remember that I learned how to make Puff Pastry last year in order to make an Egyptian dessert.

For the Wellingtons I made 1 ½ recipes of that puff pastry in one batch. It turned out to be the perfect amount for what I needed.

To assemble the Venison Wellington I rolled out a section of puff pastry, brushed it with a whole egg egg wash, and let that dry for a minute. While the egg wash was drying I spread Dijon mustard on the meat.

Next I spread the duxelles onto the pastry, and rolled the piece of meat up in the pastry like a fat sausage in a blanket. I brushed it with egg wash.

I really wanted to add a lattice ornament to my pastry. I had no lattice cutter but when I was little my mom let us play with hers when we had playdough. I remembered how it cut the dough and I tried to replicate the pattern on a section of puff pastry using a ruler and knife.

Voilà! I was so happy with these lattices! They were perfect! (Perfect enough for me.) Everything got another coat of egg wash.

I baked the Wellingtons at 450° F. for 27 minutes. The internal temperature reached 122° F. I removed them from the pan to a cutting board. After resting 5 minutes the temperature had risen to 150°F. The meat was perfectly cooked. It was between medium/rare and medium. What a relief. One of my main concerns was getting the meat cooked right without over cooking it. I opted not to sear the roast because I just knew I would over cook it, if I attempted a sear. American's Test Kitchen left out the searing in their recipe, too, so I was in good company.

My meal was delicious! I wanted a restaurant quality meal at home and that is exactly what I ended up with. 

Menu:

Marinated Cucumber Salad

Mashed Potatoes 

Venison Stock Gravy

Maple Glazed Roasted Carrots 

Venison Wellington 

Coconut Cream Pineapple Drink

Reference material:

The Kitchn mushroom duxelles 

The Kitchn Individual Wellington 

The Kitchn Puff Pastry

Pumpkin Cake Taste Test

 I compared 3 sweeteners in this Pumpkin Cake recipe. I was inspired to do this by my son's science book. One of his projects was to design an experiment to test a cake sweetened with sugar versus a cake made with honey. I did that a couple weeks ago. It was really hard to tell the difference. We did a triangulated blind taste test. We learned this type of test from Ann Reardon's YouTube channel: How to Cook That. I recommend her if you are interested in food science.

Last Saturday I decided to run another experiment. I wanted to compare sugar, honey and maple syrup. This time we didn't do a blind taste test. We just observed and compared the cakes.

This is the recipe I followed:

Pumpkin Cake 

1/2 c. Sweetener (Honey, Sugar, or Maple Syrup 

1/2 c. Vegetable Oil

2 Eggs

1 c. Pumpkin Puree

1 c. Flour

1 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Cinnamon 

1/4 tsp. Ground Ginger

1/4 tsp. Nutmeg

1/8 tsp. Ground Cloves

Mix sweetener, oil, eggs , and pumpkin until light in color.

Add dry ingredients. Mix to incorporate and then beat for 30 seconds.

Pour into prepared 9 inch round cake pan.

Bake in preheated oven at 350° F. for 25-30 minutes. 

Cool for 10 minutes and then turn out onto wire rack.

I had to bake the honey and sugar cakes at the same time in my toaster oven. I rotated them half way through baking to get them cooked evenly. The maple cake got to have the oven all to itself when it was baking. It was right in the middle the whole time.

The pumpkin I used was from a Blue Pumpkin that my neighbor gave me last year. I wrote about the pumpkin processing I did last year. You can read my blog post where I compared the different pumpkin flavors Here. (Blue Pumpkin is my favorite. Very deep orange color, sweet flavor, and dense flesh.)

Anyway, back to cake comparison.

A. = Sugar

B. = Maple Syrup 

C. = Honey

The honey I used is creamed honey from Canada. I know there is a lot of variation among honey in the flavor so this could be much different with different types of honey. The honey I am using is pretty mildly flavored.

 

The maple syrup is from Indiana trees. My Dad made it and gave me a jar this spring.

 

The sugar I am using is the Zulka brand cane sugar.

 

A.

The Sugar Cake:

Very moist

Sweet

Pumpkin flavor a little more noticeable 

B.

The Maple Syrup Cake:

Moist

Less risen

Larger air bubble

A little tiny bit less sweet

A darker flavor. Not caramel-y nor molasses-y. Just more cloudy and murky.

No maple flavor detectable.

C.

Honey Cake:

Very difficult to tell apart from the sugar cake.

Very moist. Maybe a tiny bit more moist than the others.

Sweet with a little extra stickiness. Maybe caramel like but just a hint.

These cakes were hard to tell apart. They all tasted very good. We all tried to pick up the differences and compare notes. 

The reason that I decided to do this taste test last Saturday was because we were going to the Pumpkin Festival in Libby's hometown. I wanted to get everyone in the pumpkin mood before we went to the parade on Saturday morning. We had pumpkin cake for breakfast and did a fun little taste test while we were at it!

Happy first day of fall! (For those in the northern hemisphere)

P.s.

I have got to tell you about this taste testing coincidence -

Yesterday, I chose to watch Ethan's Chlebowski's latest video. It is all about honey. About halfway into the video he does a taste comparison by testing honey, maple syrup, and sugar in a cake recipe to compare outcomes. What! I had to smile. How did I just do that for myself only days before his video released? I thought it was funny.

Ham And Cheese Braid

 My mom made these every year to pack for our lunch when we went to the State Fair. We'd walk around the fair for a few hours. We'd see the biggest pig and some teams of Clydesdale pulling polished coaches having a competition in the Coliseum or watch a demonstration of dogs doing long jumps into a big pool. There were so many things to see! The 4-h projects, a marching band, an old fashioned threshing machine, a historic village, fiber arts, giant fish in the conservation center, antique tractors, live music, mammoth pumpkins, and a specially carved pumpkin with a scene of the fair or something iconic about our state, large tractors driving shuttles that we'd have to scurry out of the road to let pass, and on and on. The lunch hour would come and then we'd head back to the van and have a picnic. We'd pull the cooler out, lay down a blanket and feast on slices of Ham and Cheese Braid dipped in horseradish sauce, homemade cookies, fresh grapes, and chips, maybe some baby carrots, too. After our bellies were full and the water bottles had been replenished we'd go back and see more of the fair. State Fair days were always long and hot and full of sights, sounds, and smells. The feeling on the drive home was so raw: I couldn't wait to get back to my happy, quiet home, but I was glad to have so many memories of the big, wide bustling fair in my mind. And I was just so grateful to have my family around me; of all the people that I had bumped shoulders with in the crowds during the day, I got to go home with the best people in the whole wide world - my favorite people - my family.

This year I made Ham and Cheese Braid to take to our State Fair. We don't do the whole picnic at the van. We bought corn dogs for lunch.  We had Ham and Cheese bread for a snack and to keep us from having to buy supper from the vendors, though.

I had fun making Ham and Cheese Braid after so many years. I thought it would be fun to make a video about the process and it was a fun project. Here is my little video. You can see how to make a Ham and Cheese Braid. My mom uses ham, provolone, and deli salami. I substituted summer sausage for the salami because I am too cheep to buy anything from the deli counter. Sorry for being so stingy. 

Applesauce Pancake Recipe!

 

It has been an apple-y time of year! Last week I was processing apples Monday through Friday. I froze 19 bags of applesauce. There is about 2 quarts in each freezer bag.

We like applesauce plain but also in treats like Applesauce Cake and Applesauce Pancakes.

(Follow this link for my favorite Applesauce Cake recipe.)

Applesauce Pancakes 

3 cups flour

1 Tbsp.+1 tsp. baking powder 

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. sugar 

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 oil
2 cups applesauce 

Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Combine milk, eggs, and oil in a 2 cup liquid measurer. 

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients along with the applesauce.

Mix until nearly smooth.

Cook on a hot skillet or griddle as normal pancakes.

Enjoy!

"Chicken Broth, Stat!"

Here is a quick idea that someone of my readership may also find handy.

I was out of chicken broth and needed some to make tomato soup the other day. I had this idea to use some partially thawed chicken leg quarters to make chicken broth in the soup while I cooked the soup.

I took the skin off a chicken leg quarter and cut it into a few pieces.

After I sweat the onions I added some celery seed to stand in for celery flavor that would have been in chicken broth and a little poultry herb blend.

Then the chicken pieces went in and simmered a couple hours with the soup.

Where the soup called for chicken broth I just added water and it turned into chicken broth while the soup cooked.

The gelatin that comes from the chicken adds a very comforting viscosity and mouth feel that makes for an exceptionally delicious tomato soup.

This turned out to be a great hack and the chicken we removed to eat later had a very good flavor.

The Best Pancakes: My Mom's Recipe!

Forgive me for dismissing all other pancake recipes in favor of my mom's pancake recipe. Trust me, after tasting this recipe you will need no other pancake recipes.

The stacks of pancakes are so tall and fluffy!

One technique that my mom always emphasizes is to hand mix the batter gently. No, beating or whipping. And it's okay if there are flour lumps left. It's better to have mixed the batter too little than too much.

The Best Pancakes 

3 cups Flour

2 TBS. + 1 tsp. Baking Powder 

2 tsp. Salt

2 TBS. Sugar

2 1/2 cups Milk

2 Eggs 

6 TBS. Butter, Melted 

In a large bowl mix together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

In a large measuring cup mix milk, eggs, and butter together.

Combine the two mix. Stir until just starts to become cohesive. The batter will be thick.

Use a 1/4 cup scoop or ladle to pour onto hot griddle or skillet. 

Turn pancakes once you see a few bubbles have popped. Cook on the second side about a minute.

Makes 10-12 Servings.

Enjoy!

Onion Galette Recipe!

Here I am again reveling in the qualities of caramelized onions!

Several years ago I was talking to my mom on the phone and she told me about this dish that my sister had made called an Onion Galette. She said it was delicious. Ever since then I have wanted to try making one.

My time has come to try Onion Galette. I followed THIS RECIPE FROM Justine Doiron blog. It was very good. I would definitely like to make this again.

I made some minor changes to the recipe to customize it for myself. Like using a larger portion of pie pastry and using dried herbs.

The pie crust I used was one with less fat than my normal pie crust.

Pie Crust for Galette:

4 cups flour

1 cup butter

1 tsp. salt

2 TBS. vinegar

1 egg 

1 cup water 

In a large bowl mix the flour and salt.

Cut in the butter with a pastry blender.

In a liquid measuring cup blend the vinegar, egg and water.

Quickly stir the liquids into the flour mixture. 

Form 3 discs. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.

Onion Galette 

3 large onions thinly sliced (1 1/2 pounds)

1/4 cup olive oil

2 TBS. butter

1 tsp. salt

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp. Dried Thyme or 1 TBS. Fresh Thyme

1 tsp. Dried Rosemary or 1 TBS. Fresh Rosemary 

2/3 cup sour cream

1 egg for egg wash

In a large sauté pan heat oil and butter. 

Once butter has melted add the onions and salt to the pan and toss to coat the onions in oil. 

Cook on low for 45- 50 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Roll out the pie crust to about 14 inches round. Place the crust on a sheet pan and refrigerate until the onions are ready.

When the onions are almost done cooking add the garlic and herbs and cook a few more minutes just until the garlic is no longer raw.

Start preheating the oven to 375° F.

Remove the onions from heat and stir in the sour cream.

Scrape the onions onto the center of the pastry crust and spread out into a 10-11 inch area.

Fold the edges of the pastry over the border of the onions.

Place back in the refrigerator until the oven is preheated.

Beat the egg and use a basting brush to apply the egg wash to the crust.

Bake 45-50 minutes until the crust is golden.

Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Caramelized Onions

 I learned that caramelized onions are a delicious addition to grilled cheese sandwiches from an Ethan Chlebowski cooking deep dive video on YouTube. I learned a lot of onion information from that video. I will embed it for you here:

Caramelizing onions takes a while. It has to be done low and slow, meaning low heat and slow cooking. I am talking 40 minutes.

They don't look pretty, but Oh! They are so good! Sweet and savory. Warm and nutty.

 If you have never had caramelized onions on your grilled cheese sandwiches, I highly recommend you give it a try. Or, maybe you already have tried this. Did you like it? 

Gingerbread Houses 2026

We held a gingerbread house decorating party on New Year's Eve this year. This is the second year we made gingerbread houses on New Year's Eve.

 This year it was a big party with many cousins. I baked enough gingerbread house pieces for every child and adult to have their own house.

We had so much fun!

I made a short video to show all the houses and creativity displayed this year.

Happy New Year everyone! The grace of God be with you, in you, and around you in 2026!

Link: Blog post with 2024 gingerbread houses.

Link: Blog post with 2025 gingerbread houses and recipe.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

 

After all the pumpkins were processed I had 2 quarts of pumpkin seeds. If I only have a few seeds, I toss them with oil and salt and roast them. With this many seeds the effort of boiling them in salt water is worth the trouble. 

Step 1. Boil the seeds for 10 minutes in salt water: 1 TBS. of salt per cup of water. 

Step 2. Dry seeds well on a towel.

Step 3 +4.

Toss with a small amount of oil and roast in a single layer at 350° for 20ish minutes stirring a few times.

Allow to cool a few minutes before digging in. 

As you can see everyone here has been enjoying the bounty!