Making good use of mixers

I grew up using my mom's Kitchenaid stand mixer, and when she got a new one around the time I got married, she passed hers on to me. It being about as old as I am, when it finally stopped working last fall, there were no parts anywhere that we could find to repair it. Since I used it all the time, we wound up getting a new Kitchenaid as my Christmas present, but early, so that I could use it for all my Christmas baking.

Unfortunately, it turned out that they don't make them like they used to... Even a single batch of chunky cookie dough had the motor straining and groaning. After about a year of doing many things by hand since I didn't trust the stand mixer to be able to handle them, I was done; one of Matt's coworkers was interested in a Kitchenaid primarily for the attachments, which worked fine on ours, so we sold it and started researching other stand mixers. 

Well, my second early-Christmas-present-stand mixer just arrived, and so far I am very impressed and happy with my Bosch Universal Plus! I made a big batch of cookies Saturday night, and a "small batch" (2 loaves) of bread Sunday evening. It's so fast! And it had no trouble at all with a cookie dough stiff with oats, white chocolate chips, and frozen cranberries. And the bread... I have never made sandwich bread in a stand mixer, not even my mom's old reliable one, because the motors simply couldn't handle it. But the Bosch is made for bread-making: it combined ingredients perfectly, and kneaded the dough as well in 6 minutes as would have taken me at least 20 by hand. The loaves rose beautifully by the woodstove and again in the oven, and I couldn't help cutting into one as soon as they were cool enough. A perfect, soft, not-crumbly-at-all texture! And did I mention that it did all the kneading, and quickly? No more having to put off nap time for another 15-25 minutes because I just started kneading but now the two year old is melting down! 

From what we've read, the Bosch should last a long time; I sure hope so! Right now, I couldn't be happier with it.

Funny thing about those cookies: when I make desserts, I know that as a rule that Matt would just as soon not eat anything containing cranberries or white chocolate, and he won't bother sneaking cookie dough from my mixing bowl if it has oatmeal in it. But, somehow, when I combine all three, he's asking if I really have to bake any of it; can he just have the bowl and a spoon? ;-) I can't really blame him, but then, I do love cranberries and white chocolate. But seriously, these are some great cookies—and seasonal! (Though I make them all year round.)

Cranberry Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar*

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

2 cups flour (I always use at least a little whole grain flour)

2 cups quick oats

12 oz white chocolate chips 

1 cup cranberries (frozen is best, if you don't want bright pink dough)

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cream butter and sugar. Scraping down sides of bowl as needed, beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix in baking powder, baking soda, salt and flour. (Switching to dough hook if your mixer recommends it), Add oats, cranberries, and chips. When combined, scoop rounded spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake until edges just barely begun to turn golden, about 8-10 minutes. 

*Alaskan cranberries are substantially more tart than domesticated ones, so you may not want this much sugar; try starting with 1 cup.

My sister, who ought to know what she's talking about since she just won numerous ribbons with them at the fair this year, says that the recipe makes 6 dozen. I don't know how small she's making them... But I also can't say how many I'd get if I actually managed to bake all the dough, since that never happens! So, it makes a good lot of them, anyway. The dough freezes fine, too, if you want to make a full batch of it but don't actually want dozens of cookies sitting on the counter all at once.

November

It's November again! I mean, it's November, and I'm posting again. Maybe; hopefully I will actually manage to finish a post this time instead of getting halfway through and running out of time and/or energy, and the draft sitting here waiting for me to finish it for so long that it becomes more work to make it current than to just start writing a new one. 

I had assumed that I would make it back to blogging regularly once I was out of the first trimester, but here we are, at 20.5 weeks, and I'm still feeling fairly first-trimester-ly. I'm pretty sure that I got the fabled second-trimester burst of energy in at least one of my other pregnancies, but not this time! At least my nausea is finally lessening, as long as I stay away from anything sweet and other foods that baby doesn't approve of. Little Bear and Kit are still very excited about the baby, and their enthusiasm makes it easier for me to not be so frustrated with how I'm feeling and how little I'm getting done. We found out on Wednesday that the new little one is a boy, and Little Bear is very excited; Kit was disappointed about not getting a sister, but that evening Matt had a conversation with her, and I'm not sure what he said, but she's perfectly happy about it now!

Among the things falling through the cracks lately has been celebrating the liturgical year this pregnancy; any extra energy goes toward exciting things like laundry or vacuuming. We did a credible job of celebrating Hallowtide though, and I'm hoping we will be able to keep that momentum through the coming Advent and Christmas seasons! I managed to make our family's favorite All Hallows' Eve supper, stuffed jack o'peppers:

We came up with costumes for both Halloween and All Saints; Thomas the Tank Engine and a butterfly princess, and St Nicholas and St Margaret of Scotland. Matt and Little Bear had fun making his crozier!

We made it to Mass for All Saints Day as a family, despite Matt's crazy work schedule right now, but couldn't make it back to town for All Souls; it doesn't work for me to have the car more than two days a week, and for some reason that I can't remember anymore I needed the car on Tuesday that week, and then my second day was Wednesday for All Saints. The kids and I talked about how November is a month particularly for praying for those who have died, though, and Little Bear and I filled in a Novemner calendar page with names of deceased friends and relatives so we could pray particularly for one person each day. What did you do for Hallowtide?

Between school, cooking, and keeping up with the house, I'm short on free time these days (probably obvious, given how long it's been since my last post!) Last week, though, I did manage to process about 30 lbs of Jonagold apples for the winter: 10 lbs portioned out for pies and kuchen in the freezer, nearly 20 lbs canned as slices and juice, and the last eight apples went into a pie earlier this week. Mmm. I used the pie and crust recipes from Joy of Cooking this time, and everyone though it was much better than my previous fruit pies. And the picky no-eating-sweet-foods baby even let me enjoy it! I think I'll be sticking with this recipe. :-)

Speaking of recipes, I keep trying to post Seven Quick Takes and it's just not working for me right now; I like categorical-type posts, though, so I think I'm going to start trying to write up a What's for Supper? post each week, like Simcha Fisher does; hopefully some of the things we make will be interesting or unique, but if nothing else, it would be good for me to see written down that yes, I did accomplish something each week!