Cashew tassies

In my chats with people, there seems to be this mutual agreement that while October moved at a nice, healthy clip, November has been zooming by.  We just finished celebrating my husband's birthday and now, we're looking forward to Thanksgiving just a few days away.

We'll be gathering with family and just sitting around to eat, talk, and be in the moment.  This holiday season, from now until Christmas and New Years, I'm determined to enjoy myself, stress less, and just savor the moments.   I look back at last year feeling like I had a little too long of a to-do list, too much of an agenda during the last 2 months of the year.  This year, I'm going to chill a little bit more and when it comes to cooking and baking, I plan to stick closer to old favorites and keep homemade gifts simple.  

That doesn't mean I won't try a few fun recipes that call out to me.  Here's one I made that I thought would be a great dessert option for Thanksgiving or a dinner party.  You often hear of pecan tassies but since my family and I are not huge fans of pecans, I substituted it with one of our favorites - cashew nuts.

I used cashews (ground in the crust and chopped in the filling) in this recipe instead of pecans

"Tassies" refer to the Scottish word for "little cups" and these are basically little tart cups filled with a filling of cashew nuts, sweetened with good things like maple syrup and brown sugar.  It's got the warm flavors you associate with autumn and pie, plus a small presentation that's so nice for times like Thanksgiving when everyone has already enjoyed a big meal and might want to savor smaller bites at dessert (or make room for a greater variety of dessert on their plate).  In any case, if you love small bites and mini desserts like I do, these little tassies are a nice dessert anytime. 

For those a little pie-phobic like me and anxious about making crusts, the crust for these tassies is very easy to make.  Cream cheese - and butter - give it a lovely tenderness.  The dough is easy to handle and you simply roll out small balls and press each into mini muffin tins.  I substituted a little of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour with no problems.  

The filling is even easier to make.  Stir together an egg, the brown sugar and maple syrup I mentioned, a tablespoon of butter, and a good amount of toasted cashews, and simply fill the cups and bake.  The finished tassies pop right out of the tin.

These end up with a tender pastry and a sweet - but not too sweet - filling loaded with toasted cashew flavor.  I made these to enjoy for our "mini" or pre-Thanksgiving dinner at home, just the three of us.  On the actual day, we're getting together with more family and I'm simply on dessert duty.  I'm bringing an ice cream pie and a chocolate-hazelnut torte but now that I've auditioned these little cashew tassies, they just might be a contender for next year's gathering.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Chocolate pudding pie

As I sit here writing this, I am seriously stuffed from our Thanksgiving meal.  I'm not complaining; I feel very lucky to have so much but I do wish I had indulged just a little less.  After the turkey and a long list of side dishes, we scrounged up a bit more room for this chocolate pudding pie.

I considered this our alternative to the traditional pumpkin pie I also made for the first time this year.  As I suspected, the chocolate dessert edged out the pumpkin in popularity at the dinner table (particularly with the kids), although my husband was a big fan of the pumpkin.  There's something about pie that belongs with Thanksgiving.  Any other day, I'd likely go with a lighter alternative and just make chocolate pudding (i.e., without the pie crust).  This is a cornstarch and milk based pudding, rather than the richer egg based variety.  It's slightly richer than Ellie Krieger's lighter chocolate pudding since we use whole rather than 1% milk but it's still relatively light, not overly sweet, and just generally yummy.

Pumpkin pie

For my first serious foray into pie making this Thanksgiving, I knew I wanted to make a classic pumpkin pie.  So I made this "silky smooth pumpkin pie" from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Cook's Illustrated (and if you're familiar with the people at this publication, you'll have high expectations for this pie.)

The "secret" ingredient in this pumpkin pie is candied yams, which I think boosts the flavor of generally rather bland pumpkin significantly.  Secondly, taking the extra effort to strain the cooked filling through a sieve gets rid of any lumps and ensures you have the silkiest possible result.  I would just note that when straining the cooked filling, use a medium-mesh strainer as opposed to fine-mesh.  It's nearly impossible to do with a fine-mesh strainer, which I tried using first.  On my long list of things to be thankful for, I had to make a little room at the bottom to be thankful I recently tracked down a medium-mesh strainer for my macarons. 

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration.  I hope your table was bountiful and you were surrounded by some of the most important people in your life.  I have so much to be thankful for and I think about it almost everyday of the year.  May we always have a whole lot to be thankful for both during Thanksgiving and the rest of the year. 

Simple cornbread

Now that Halloween is behind us, we have Thanksgiving to look forward to.  Are you dreaming up your Thanksgiving menu and loading the pantry?  I think Thanksgiving is such a lovely American holiday - it's all about food and family.  How much better can it get!  For my family, Thanksgiving is a collaborative effort and a multi-cultural affair.  We'll have the usual like turkey and gravy but also loads of Asian dishes my mother will cook up (she does most of the work not only for Thanksgiving but all the other family meals that take place very often).  It can be anything from oyster pancakes to noodles and seafood on our Thanksgiving table.  Today, I thought I'd post this super easy, basic cornbread recipe.  It might make an appearance on our table this year - if there's room.  I actually cooked this up recently for our six-year old after he'd tasted some at school and really enjoyed it.

In our elementary school, we recently held a "Colonial Day" where the children, teachers, staff, parents dressed up in Colonial garb and "went back in time" to experience what life was like then.  It was a fun and educational day and part of the event included tasting of food typical of Colonial times.  That meant turkey, ham, cornbread or corn muffins, apple cider, and pumpkin pie.  My son said he liked the cornbread best of all.  That sent me in the kitchen to make a batch for him at home.

This is a very easy, basic cornbread recipe to mix up quickly.  I like using yellow stone ground cornmeal for a bit more texture.  Buttermilk makes these tender and the flavor is fairly mild so it's a nice accompaniment to the robust Thanksgiving meal.  If you're going to someone's house for Thanksgiving this year and need to bring something, this is an easy side dish to whip up.