A Skillet, a Spatula, and a Dream Read online

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  SWEET STUFF

  CHRISTMAS BROWNIES

  These are a delicious tradition in our family. Every Christmas Eve you'll find us digging into these luscious brownies, still warm from the oven, topped with vanilla ice cream. Simple, old-fashioned, and downright decadent. I found this recipe years ago in Dinah Shore's cookbook, "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah." (This makes two pans of brownies. Feel free to cut the recipe in half and make only one pan, although I can't imagine why you'd want to do such a thing!)

  Ingredients:

  8 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted

  1 1/2 cups butter

  6 eggs

  3 cups sugar

  1 1/2 cups flour

  3 teaspoons vanilla

  1 cup nuts, chopped

  Method

  Beat eggs, adding sugar and vanilla. Add melted chocolate and butter. Blend until light and airy. Add flour, then nuts.

  Bake in 350 degree oven in two 8 inch pans for 25-30 minutes. Don't overcook. This should be moist in the center. Of course, brownie timing is a very personal issue so follow your own taste buds. Keep checking then take the pans out when they've reached the degree of doneness that warms your heart.

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  HOMEMADE HOT FUDGE SAUCE

  Want to know my idea of heaven? A bowl of vanilla ice cream with homemade hot fudge sauce on top. It simply doesn't get any better than this.

  Ingredients:

  2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped finely

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  2 tablespoons light corn syrup

  3/4 cup heavy cream

  1 cup sugar

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  1/8 teaspoon salt (optional, but believe it or not it really does enhance the flavor)

  Your favorite vanilla ice cream

  Walnuts, toasted and chopped, for garnish

  Method

  In a heavy saucepan melt the chocolate with the butter and the corn syrup over moderately low heat. Stirring, add the cream and the sugar, and cook the mixture, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Bring the mixture to a boil over moderate heat and boil it, without stirring, for 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla and the salt. Scoop ice cream into four serving dishes and pour hot fudge sauce over vanilla ice cream. The sauce keeps, covered and chilled, for two weeks. (Let the sauce cool completely before covering it; any condensation will make it grainy. Reheat the sauce, uncovered, in a double boiler.)

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  BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

  Ingredients

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  3/4 cups sugar

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1 stick butter, melted

  1/2 cup milk

  2 large eggs, beaten

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 1/2 cups blueberries

  Method

  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Sift together your dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon) and set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together your melted (and slightly cooled) butter, milk, eggs, and vanilla extract. Blend your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients, mixing only enough to thoroughly combine. Fold in your blueberries. (Note: frozen blueberries work beautifully in this recipe but make sure you defrost and drain them before folding into the recipe.)

  Jumbo muffins? Regular? Teeny-tiny ones? It's up to you. Regular muffins take about 25 minutes to bake. The jumbo usually take about 30-35 in my oven. I haven't made the little ones yet but I'd figure on 20 minutes.

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  WONDERFUL WHEATIES CAKE aka VELVET CRUMB CAKE

  One of my most treasured possessions is my mother's recipe box. To be honest, I didn't even know she had one until after she died and it fell to me to empty cabinets and secret drawers. She had always been a seat-of-the-pants cook who created wonderful meals seemingly from divine inspiration and a sprinkling of hot peppers. But there they were, some of my favorite recipes from childhood, neatly typed up on index cards and as I looked at them, a flood of memories washed over me.

  Typing the recipes was my job. I was maybe seven or eight and madly in love with the feel of a keyboard beneath my fingers. I was also a budding entrepreneur and I decided I would set myself up as Your Friendly Neighborhood Typist who would transcribe your most treasured recipes onto index cards for a nickel a pop. My mother, of course, became my number one client, followed by Aunt Betty from downstairs who also dug up her favorites for me to turn into comic book money. (I was a major Katy Keene fan who needed some bucks to subsidize her habit.)

  Ingredients

  1 1/3 cups Bisquick

  3/4 cup sugar

  3 tablespoons butter

  1 egg

  3/4 cup milk

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  Topping Ingredients:

  3 tablespoons butter

  1/3 cup brown sugar

  2 tablespoons cream

  1/2 cup Wheaties (coconut, Corn Flakes, etc.)

  Method

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 8Ó square pan. Mix Bisquick, butter, 1/4 cup milk, egg for one minute. Gradually add rest of milk and vanilla. Beat for one minute. Bake in square pan for 35-40 minutes.

  Blend topping ingredients in small bowl. Spread on cooled cake. Run cake under broiler low heat until bubbly and brown. (You might try doubling the amount of topping you use for a tastier, more decadent version of our old favorite.)

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  GREAT MOLASSES SPICE COOKIES WITH ONE REALLY WEIRD INGREDIENT

  Whenever I think of Uncle Harry (who wasn't really my uncle; he was our landlord when I was growing up) I think of three things: Lititz, Pennsylvania where he was born; opera and classic music which he loved; and trips to Manhattan which always included a magical lunch at Horn & Hardart.

  Although it pains me to write this, some of you might be too young to remember Horn & Hardart. And it pains me even more to realize that some of you might only know of that wonderful chain of restaurants through an old Doris Day movie but so it goes.

  Now I was a tuna salad sandwich kind of girl. I lived for that moment when I slid my quarter into the slot and the little glass door opened so I could remove my treasure. But as good as that sandwich always was, nothing compared to dessert: Hermits.

  See, that's the thing about memory. It can drive you crazy. Periodically I Googled "Horn & Hardart" and "Hermits" hoping against hope that The Recipe would magically appear. It never did but after much experimentation, I finally came up with a recipe a few weeks ago that comes pretty close.

  Ingredients:

  1/2 C butter (softened)

  1/2 C shortening

  (I made one batch with all butter, another batch all shortening. The all butter version was head-and-shoulders better. Big surprise, right?)

  1 1/2 cups white sugar

  1/2 cup unsulphured molasses

  2 eggs, lightly beaten

  4 cups white flour

  2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

  2 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger (I prefer 3 teaspoons)

  1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves (I prefer 2 - 3 teaspoons)

  1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon (I prefer 2 - 3 teaspoons)

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  1 heaping teaspoons table-grind pepper (not finely ground, not super coarse) (Trust me. The pepper is the secret to the whole recipe. You can leave it out if you must but I highly recommend it.

  Granulated sugar to roll cookies

  Method

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  Cream butter and shortening (or all butter or all shortening) with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in molasses and eggs until thoroughly combined.

  Slowly add salt, baking soda, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and pepper. Gradually stir in flour a
nd mix well. Batter will be very thick and a little stiff.

  You might try adding some raisins and/or chopped walnuts. I haven't tried it yet but I'm going to.

  Roll pieces of dough into 1 1/2 inch balls then roll in granulated sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet. (I line the sheet with parchment paper.) Place them 2 1/2 inches apart on cookie sheet.

  Bake for 13 minutes. Cookies will flatten out into perfect circles as they bake. They might seem a little "loose" when you remove them from the oven but don't succumb to the urge to bake them a little longer. They tighten up quite a bit as they cool and become soft and chewy and -

  Sorry. I stopped to dunk one in a cup of tea.

  Bake at 350 degrees for 13 minutes. They'll puff up beautifully and little cracks will form on the tops of the cookies which make them look extremely cool. (Okay, so I'm easily amused.)

  Give these a try. I think you'll like them.

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  MY MOTHER'S RICE PUDDING

  I don't know what it is about this recipe but every time my mother made it, it was absolute perfection and every time I made it, it was an unqualified disaster. Let me know what happens when you make it, okay?

  Ingredients:

  3 eggs

  2 cups whole milk

  Soaked raisins

  1 cup cooked rice

  1/2 cup sugar

  1 teaspoon (or more, to taste) vanilla

  Method

  Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Pour mixture in buttered loaf pan (Pyrex, if possible) then settle gently into a bain marie (hot water bath.) Bake in 300 degree oven for 1 hour.

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  ROSE'S SOUR CREAM COFFEE CAKE

  This simple recipe for Sour Cream Coffee Cake probably has the most personal history of any recipe in this collection. I first encountered this wonderful cake on August 25, 1968 - the day of my bridal shower. I was barely eighteen and two weeks away from marrying my high school sweetheart who was about to come home on leave from the Air Force. My best friend Danielle hosted my shower at her parents' apartment and her wonderful mother Rose made this cake.

  Well, I thought I'd died and gone to baking heaven. I was eighteen years old, starry-eyed in love, and determined to become the best cook on the planet. And I was reasonably sure this cake would give me a giant push up the ladder toward my goal.

  Roy and I married, right on schedule, and headed off to the wilds of Omaha, Nebraska where he was stationed. We were young, in love, and dead broke and I decided that maybe this wonderful coffee cake was our way to fame and fortune. I was so young and naïve that I believed a bakery would pay me money to bake coffee cakes in our tiny apartment kitchen. I guess you've already figured out that my Lucy Ricardo scheme didn't quite pan out (I ended up typing for a data processing firm) but my love for this cake never wavered. It quickly became our Go-To Cake for gatherings of family and friends. Every year for twenty years I made one for my Grandma El at Christmastime and every year she declared it the Best. Present. Ever.

  Her daughter, my aunt Mona, presented her with beautiful clothes and perfume and all sorts of wonderful things but it was always my $2 coffee cake that garnered the applause. One Christmas Mona gave Grandma El a beautiful color TV. Grandma El thanked her daughter politely but she didn't make a fuss.

  You know what's coming, right? I handed Grandma her annual Sour Cream Coffee Cake and you would have thought I'd presented her with the winning Lotto ticket. Sometimes I wondered if she actually loved the cake that much or she enjoyed needling her daughter. (Okay, maybe a little of both!)

  After Grandma died in 1989 I found her small handwritten recipe book. She had copied down my recipe for Rose's sour cream coffee cake and in the margin she wrote, "Delicious!" That about says it all.

  Enjoy!

  Ingredients

  Cake:

  1 stick butter, room temperature

  1 cup white sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1/2 teaspoons salt

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  2 eggs

  1 cup sour cream

  2 cups white flour

  Filling/Topping:

  1/2 cup white sugar

  1/2 cup chopped pecans (I usually use walnuts)

  1 tablespoon (or more; your choice) ground cinnamon

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a bundt pan or tube pan. Set aside.

  In large mixing bowl beat together butter, 1 cup white sugar, vanilla extract until light and fluffy. Add two eggs and sour cream. Beat very well. Slowly beat in 2 cups white flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda. Mixture will be very thick.

  Pour half of the mixture into prepared pan. Spread evenly. Sprinkle with one half of the filling/topping mixture. Pour remaining half of the mixture into pan and spread evenly as well. Sprinkle remaining filling/topping mixture on top.

  Pop into the preheated oven for 55 minutes or so. This makes a wonderful dessert but it's also great in the morning with a cup of coffee or tea. Enjoy!

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BARBARA BRETTON is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of more than 50 books. She currently has over ten million copies in print around the world. Her works have been translated into twelve languages in over twenty countries and she has received starred reviews from both PUBLISHERS WEEKLY and BOOKLIST.

  Barbara has been featured in articles in The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Romantic Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Herald News, Home News, Somerset Gazette,,among others, and has been interviewed by Independent Network News Television, appeared on the Susan Stamberg Show on NPR, and been featured in an interview with Charles Osgood of WCBS, among others.

  Her awards include both Reviewer's Choice and Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times; a RITA nomination from RWA, Gold and Silver certificates from Affaire de Coeur; the RWA Region 1 Golden Leaf; and several sales awards from Bookrak. Ms. Bretton was included in a recent edition of Contemporary Authors.

  Barbara cooks, knits, and writes in New Jersey.

  How to contact Barbara:

  Website

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