use real butter

The travel continues - this time to beautiful Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We are visiting with the ILs this weekend. Jeremy and I took a slightly longer route on the way out in order to survey the remainder of the autumn colors. We are now at the tail end. The high winds and snow storms on tap for this weekend will surely put the kibosh on any more golden aspen stands. The temperatures have dropped and the winds were chilling on the drive. It’s both sad and happy… sad to see the fleeting glory of color stripped from the trees and carpeting the ground, but happy to feel the cold snow pelting my face.

that’s a big farmer or a small tractor

what’s left

I dropped our skis off to get tuned today before we left Boulder. Heeeeeeee!

Now if you think the lime meltaways or the shredded beef tacos were enough to finish off my bag of limes, you are surely smoking crack. I used up a few more for a delightful cheesecake recipe. The rest were juiced before they shriveled up into small weaponry. I am not a huge cheesecake fan, but this recipe for lime cheesecake (originally key lime cheesecake, but I don’t seek those out often) is different. The texture is lighter and I love anything with a mild tartness to play against the creaminess.

mix the crust

softened cream cheese

I know some cheesecake recipes call for pastry crust, but honestly, I love the traditional graham cracker crust. It just works so well with cheesecake flavors. Oh wait, I also like to use crushed chocolate cookies (Thin Mints are great too) for a chocolatey crust… But as far as the lime is concerned, I am graham cracker all the way.

lime zest

adding the eggs one by one

The recipe makes a nice 9-inch cheesecake. I made six 4-inch cheesecakes with a little extra crust. Maybe I should have piled the crust higher? The small springforms do funky things to the thickness ratios, which I try to preserve from the 9-inch version. In any case, if you make mini cheesecakes just be sure not to make them too thin (short).

mix in zest

prepare to bake

It is an easy cheesecake and I like to add a pan of water to the oven to prevent rifting of the surface(s). I typically bake the cheesecakes until there is the slightest jiggle in the center, and then let the cheesecakes sit in the oven (turned off). This results in a creamy texture rather than a dried out and crumby texture. Even though I don’t dig on cheesecake much, I think overbaking a cheesecake is a crime.

can you believe these were frozen?

making the sauce

While the cheesecakes were cooling, I threw together a quick blackberry sauce. Actually, I usually make a raspberry sauce. When I hopped over to the local market in our mountain town, I saw frozen blackberries were half the price of the raspberries. I just boil the berries in sugar and then put the mess through a food mill. It’s a nice marriage of flavors (come now, what isn’t awesome with lime?!) and another one of those deceptively light desserts to keep in the files.

drizzle blackberry sauce

dig in

Lime Cheesecake with Blackberry Sauce
Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Desserts

crust
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
6 tbsps sugar
6 tbsps butter, melted

filling
3 8-oz pkgs cream cheese
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 limes, juice of
2 limes, grated peel of

sauce
10 oz fresh or frozen blackberries or raspberries
¾ cup sugar

Combine graham cracker crumbs with butter and sugar with whisk. Press into bottom of 9-inch springform pan (or 6 4-inch springform pans); refrigerate. In large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth; gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, blending until smooth. Add remaining filling ingredients, beating until smooth. Pour over prepared crust. To minimize cracking, place a shallow pan half full of hot water on lower rack during baking. Bake at 325°F for 55 to 65 minutes or until set (25-33 minutes for 4-inch pans). Turn oven off; let cheesecake stand in oven 30 minutes with door open at least 4 inches. Remove from oven; let stand 10 minutes. Remove sides of pan; cool to room temperature on wire rack. Refrigerate overnight or up to three days. In a pan, boil berries and sugar until sauce thickens. Deseed through a food mill or sieve. Let cool and serve over cheesecake.

It’s a good thing we didn’t end up settling in the Bay Area, because I would have died a long time ago from eating way too much of the incredible food here - and I’m only talking about the Chinese food. If I lived here, I’d get to sample all of the OTHER food too, just that when we’re visiting Grandma, we eat what she likes, and that would be Chinese food.

passion fruit bubble milk tea, green tea slushy, passion fruit slushy

The eating, shopping, walking around marathon has come to an end and I feel exhausted! I’ve probably exerted a small fraction of the energy I expend on a normal day at home, but I’m wiped. The city and this culture is mentally taxing on me. I am most certainly a country mouse, or better yet - a mountain mouse. This mountain mouse will be in her mountain house by day’s end tomorrow. A great time was had by all. More pics to come when I get home to my guy and my baby puppy.

beef noodle soup

I realized last night that I had intended to include a recipe, but didn’t. Sorry ’bout that, kids. I’ll do right by you tonight.

I have a problem with buying bulk sometimes. I see one lemon for a dollar in the grocery store and decide to purchase a bag of 20 for $7 instead. Then I run around like crazy trying to use up my citrus before it spoils. This exact thing happened last week except it was limes and not lemons I needed to polish off.

take that, scurvy!

juice the limes

Some of the limes were already destined for other recipes, but I reserved a handful to make lime meltaways that I had spied on Smitten Kitchen. Remember, I am on a shortbread kick and these cookies are eggless and butterful and mmmmmmmm.

mix in the flour

cookie dough speckled in lovely green zest

Since I had a couple of medical appointments back to back last week, I baked up a double batch of the lime meltaways. These were distributed to several folks at the radiation center, as well as packaged for my oncologist and surgeons at the medical center. The funny thing about these cookies is that they are dead giveaways. Everyone can tell if you’ve eaten one and where you ate it - they need only follow the trail of powdered sugar.

slicing

cool the cookies for just a few minutes

The beauty of these babies is how you can prepare the dough ahead of time and bake as needed. People, you NEED these cookies. I like the tart, sweet, light, crispy, buttery, and meltaway all at once. A great alternative for folks who aren’t big chocolate fiends or folks who love citrus. Let us rejoice and thank our lucky stars for Deb, whom I love with all of my baking equipment and expensive ingredients. Take care when tossing the cookies in the powdered sugar (toss your cookies?!) because overzealous tossing can lead to casualties which must be summarily eaten so as not to freak out the other cookies in the bag. You get my meaning…

shake shake shake

mmmmmmmmmm

Lime Meltaways
slightly modified from Smitten Kitchen

12 tbsps unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 limes, grated zest of
2 tbsps lime juice, freshly squozen (I like to use 3)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsps all-purpose flour
2 tbsps cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt

With balloon whisk (oops, I used the paddle) of a stand mixer, cream butter and 1/3 cup sugar together until fluffy. Add lime zest, juice, and vanilla; whip until fluffy. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Add to butter mixture, and beat on low speed until combined. Roll the dough into two 1 1/4-inch-diameter logs. I held a sheet of parchment on opposite ends, cradling the dough in the middle and rolled it about until it was loggish. Wrap in plastic wrap. Chill at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place remaining 2/3 cup sugar in a resealable plastic bag. Remove dough from refrigerator and slice into 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Place rounds on baking sheets, spaced 1 inch apart. Bake cookies until barely golden, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool slightly, just three or four minutes. While still warm, place cookies in the sugar-filled bag; toss to coat. Bake or freeze remaining dough. Store baked cookies in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Frozen dough can keep up to 2 months. Makes 4 dozen.

I’m in California now, wrestling with the suckiness of what hotels claim to be “wireless” connections… my ass. I can’t transfer any of the photos I shot today (yet). But I need to get this post off because I’m blogging each day for NaBloWriMo! Luckily, I planned ahead and have a recipe ready.

[Edit: With the help of my remarkable guy, we have photo-age! Thanks, Jeremy!!]

at denver international

puffy clouds between colorado and california

My visit with Grandma is a bit of a special one, I mean more than usual, because my mom and aunt are here too! Sort of a three generation girls’ weekend, so to speak. We are celebrating Grandma’s 87th birthday because she is teh cool.

the three most important women in my life today

For dinner, we went to Pan Tao. I had always been there for dim sum in the past, but my mom had the salt-pepper fried pork ribs on the brain! When we walked in, they led us to a standard table for four. My mom exclaimed in Chinese, “Oh, this table won’t be big enough for all the dishes we’re going to order!” I laughed - just HOW much was she planning to order?! We convinced her that it wasn’t humanly possible for us to finish whatever number of plates we required to cover the table - in the end we ordered 4 dishes that were phenomenally good. We still packed up leftovers.

salt-pepper fried pork ribs

seafood and tofu clay pot

pea sprouts

dry cooked e-mien

I’ll get I got those pics up eventually (damn you, weak and crappy hotel wireless!) but for and now you must suffer my recipe for the evening. I didn’t bother bringing my external flash, so I had to use the internal flash. I am messing around with it to improve the quality… I may have found a neat solution! More on that later.

making use of delightful citrus

simple syrup: sugar, cinnamon, and lemon

I grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia where typical summer jobs for my friends included fife and drum corps, dressing up in period clothing (i.e. dreadfully hot colonial garb), or serving fries and/or ice cream in Colonial Williamsburg to thousands of tourons. I didn’t dig on the whole colonial scene. Part of being a local is acquiring massive disdain for the tourists meandering through your town. What I came to love (only after leaving for college) were some of the terrific foods that were tied to both tradition and region. Southern Virginia has an interesting intersection of Southern, Colonial, British, and just plain White Trash.

if possible, i like fresh squozen lemon and orange juice

syrup is ready and smells quite heady

One of my favorite discoveries was wassail. My dad made this out of the Williamsburg Cookbook one chilly evening (really, it wasn’t chilly by Colorado standards, but I’m sure half of Virginia thought they were going to die of the cold). I loved it for the fruity, heady flavor - or so I thought. I think I was hammered because it doesn’t take much alcohol to knock a fifth grader on her ass.

i love my automatic juicer

cheap and boozy red wine - woohoo!

You can use canned or frozen juices if you like, but fresh orange and lemon juices taste better to me. I know some folks say you should only use a wine in cooking that you are willing to drink. I tend to go for the cheaper reds (a cab will do) like Two Buck Chuck (Charles Shaw) because you alter the wine so much in this preparation that it wouldn’t really be decent to do it to a bottle of fine wine that cost a small fortune.

pouring the orange juice

i buy small cans of pineapple juice because i hate to waste the big cans

I really do love this hot, spiced wine punch despite being a total lightweight when it comes to alcohol. I make it every year to be sure that I love it. Yup. I love it. It is the perfect party drink for winter and I like to serve it to guests when entertaining. If I drink enough of it, I might even don a colonial style dress with the cute little doilie-esque hat thing and run around singing (screaming) carols to (at) my neighbors! Not really… I mean, not the dress thing - the singing is a very real possibility along with some most excellent cussing because I do that when I get liquored up. Good times!

adding syrup to the heated booziness

wassail! (means “be healthy”, not “let’s get plastered”)

Wassail
The Williamsburg Cookbook

1 cup sugar
4 cinnamon sticks
3 lemon slices
2 cups pineapple juice
2 cups orange juice
6 cups dry red wine
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup dry sherry
2 lemons, sliced

Boil the sugar, cinnamon sticks, and 3 lemon slices in 1/2 cup of water for 5 minutes and strain. Discard the cinnamon sticks and lemon slices. Heat, but do not boil the remaining ingredients. Combine with the syrup, garnish with the lemon slices, and serve hot.