Choly challah!

OK, so we thought that making bread pudding with eggnog was the best idea ever. Then I thought, ooh, we should make it with challah bread! That is also a great idea, but both those ideas were superseded when we added a meringue topping to the challah eggnog bread pudding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yow.

1 loaf challah bread, cubed
6 egg yolks
eggnog (mmm, about 32 ounces?)
meringue (look in the recipe for explanation)

Put the cubed challah bread in a 9 x 13 baking pan and put in the oven set at 250 until it's a bit dried out. Whisk the egg yolks with the eggnog (add some sugar if you want it sweeter, and maybe some vanilla if you like), and pour over the bread in the pan. Using your hands, squish the bread down into the liquid, pressing it until it flattens a little. Pop it back in the oven with a cover for about 30-45 minutes.

While it bakes, set out to make the toffee meringue cookies (previous recipe), but accidentally get some egg yolk into the whites. Then decide that it will probably be fine and all that information about how egg whites won't beat to stiff peaks if there is even a tiny bit of yolk in them is a bunch of hooey. Follow the recipe exactly, and start getting a little worried when the whites aren't quite beating to stiff peaks. Add the sugar and vanilla anyway. Watch as the egg whites dissolve back into almost a liquid form.

Walk away and think about this for a minute (or keep reading this and discover a world of wonder!).

Realize that maybe you should go ahead and pour the meringuey stuff over the bread pudding (which is almost completely set at this point) and see what happens. Leave the lid off and let it bake for awhile longer.

After you put the kids to bed and remember that you left the bread pudding in the oven, go back and find out that the meringue has puffed up into a beautiful brown wonder! Call in the older kids and show them. Hear the accolades, take a bow, and try the bread pudding, which ends up tasting like the world's best french toast.

But you have to let it cool and put it in the fridge for the morning, because everyone it too full to eat it now.

Puffed rice cookies.

My wicke't awesome elderly friend Scott keeps telling me about these cookies, that they are really good, and good for you ("...except for the sugar, of course..."). I haven't made them yet, but I did get to have one at his house last year, and it was yummy. We will be making them this week...

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups puffed rice

How to:

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a little bowl. Melt the butter & set aside to cool. In another, bigger bowl, beat the sugar, vanilla, and eggs super well. Add the butter & stir some more. Add the flour mix and stir it up. Stir in the puffed rice, then drop by spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet & bake for about 8-9 minutes at 375. Then yummy crunch and munch them all up!

Toffee meringue cookies.

Yes. Toffee, meringue. Yes. So good. Cookies. Yum.

We got the recipe from the All Recipes website, but changed it a little. Of course. Like how we made a trillion cookies, so tripled the recipe, and stuff.

The stuff: 

 

6 egg whites (separating eggs is really easy-- save the yolks for making custard or maybe bread pudding!)

1 1/2 cup sugar (we used organic Florida Crystals)

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1 TB vanilla extract

1 cup Heath Bar crunchy bits from a bag

 

The how:

 

Preheat the oven to 250 & cover your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Parchment paper rawks. I love parchment paper, and even forgive it for always trying to roll itself back up.

 

In your stand mixer (because you have a stand mixer if you like to cook, and if you don't, go steal one) beat the egg whites up until they yell "Uncle!" at which point they will be stiff and dry. We yelled at them some first, because you're s'posed to yell at someone yer beating up, according to William. Toss the cream of tartar in while you're beating them, it will humiliate them even more.

 

Now turn the mixer to low and slowly start adding the sugar, and at some point in the midst of this, also the vanilla extract. Then beat the hell out of the mixture some more until it is poofy and glossy. Sprinkle the Heath Bar crunchies on top, and fold them in.

 

Use two spoons to scoop and plop-- the second spoon will be useful to get that sticky stuff off the first one and shape them into little lumpy things. You can get fancy if you like, but I prefer free form meringues. Because they are easier and look less pretentious. Pretentious looking cookies never taste as good. Plus sometimes they even taste kind of like some florally soap or something.

 

Anyway, each one should be somewhere between the size of an acorn and the size of a ping pong ball. Too small and they will be dry and crumbly, too big and they will be too gooey and fall apart.

 

Put them in the oven and cook them for about 30-60 minutes. Yah, it's variable. Just keep checking them, and if they feel dry and are starting to get a little brown, they are prolly done. If you take them out too soon, that Heath Bar crunchy stuff will still be melty in the middle and they will fall apart. If you wait too long, they could be unbearably dry. Take them off the pan and cool them on a rack.

Now, while you are making these, you might see your muffin tin, the one for tiny muffins? And you might think, "Hey, I'll bet that would work perfectly for meringues! Just the right size and shape, and so much easier to dollop into..."

Don't. It doesn't work.

And then you will have 24 perfect meringues you can't get out of the tins, and you will have to let your son and husband scrape them out with a spoon. And then they will complain about feeling sick from too much sugar. But then they go back and do it again.

Store the meringues you don't eat right away in a sealed jar in your pantry. Not open, and not in the fridge. These little suckers suck up humidity like a mofo.

Spaghetti squash!! Yay!

Max hates fall because fall = squash. However, Max doesn't hate fall as much as he thinks, because not only did we get him liking pumpkin ("...except those chunks of pumpkin..."), but last night he loved the spaghetti squash I made.

Get this stuff:

1 spaghetti squash
1 jar spaghetti sauce
2 cups cooked chickpeas
grated mozzarella
crumbled feta

Make it like this:

Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds. Put it cut part down in a big baking dish with about 1-2 cups water. Bake at 350 until it is tender when you stick it with a knife.

Drain the water out of the pan (be careful! it's wicked hot!) and turn the squash over face up. Using a fork, scrape the squash halves until all the strands are loose-- if it's cooked well enough, it should come loose all the way down to the rind (skin? husk?). This part is really fun and makes everyone happy.

Pour spaghetti sauce over both halves, add half the chickpeas to each side, and stir it up to mix the sauce, chickpeas and squash. Sprinkle both halves with feta and mozzarella, and stick it back in the oven until it is all hot and the top is yummy and brown. Take it out, scoop some out, and eat it! Eat it with a delicious salad and garlic bread! Then breathe garlic breath on each other!

Potato pumpkin soup.

I am so awesome. Max "hates" pumpkin, unless it is baked into a pie (or maybe some kind of sweet bread). Yet I made a soup tonight that he says tastes delicious!

Stuff:

6 small yellow potatoes
1 smallish pie pumpkin
1 yellow onion
1 can coconut milk
spices/herbs:
salt & black pepper
dried cilantro
dried basil
garam masala
allspice
star aniseed powder
smidgen chipotle powder
smidgen sriracha sauce

Do it like this:

Gut & peel the poor defenseless pumpkin (throw the seeds outside for a lucky squirrel to find). Chop it into small cubes. Wash the potatoes & chop into small cubes. Dice that onion up coarsely. Set about 1 cup of the pumpkin aside.

Put the rest of the pumpkin, the potatoes, and the onion into a crock pot, and add about 2 cups of water. Turn it on high and leave it alone until everything is almost completely cooked (I think it took about 2 hours?), then add the can of coconut milk & stir well. In a frying pan, saute the remaining pumpkin in a little oil, along with some salt and garam masala powder. Get it nice and brown and a bit soft.

Add the salt/pepper, herbs & spices to the crock pot-- to taste. I mean it. Just stir and taste until you think it tastes good. Go easy on the chipotle, or the soup will end up tasting only of smoky hot. Mash everything up coarsely while it's in the crock pot, then add the sauteed pumpkin and stir. It should be super thick and lumpy.

Max thinks we should have pureed it, but thick soups like that always remind me of baby food and are a little boring, in my opinion.

OK, so as delicious as this is, Max had an incredibly good idea-- serve it in bread bowls & sprinkle Fontina cheese on top. That kid is so smart. We're going to do just that tomorrow for dinner. You know what I love about the crock pot? I put the insert into the fridge, and then put it back in the heaty part when I want to get dinner ready. I already made dinner for tomorrow night!!