C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S Is Coming

Yup, I’ll take my snow and cold thank you very much. Turn up the heat and go outside when it is safe.

The sunsets and sunrises lately have been wonderful to watch. They call Saskatchewan the “Land of the Living Skies” and it sure is. We have been to Mexico and other destinations and always watch the sunsets – they last about 60 seconds and are not as amazing as what I watch in my backyard. Remember to watch what you can from your backyard as well and enjoy it. And how about the Aurora Borealis / Northern Lights that have produced many a colorful dancing show this fall. If you are on social media, some of the pictures posted are absolutely stunning. One page on Facebook is called Saskatchewan Scenery Showcase where fabulous pictures are posted there from across the province.

What am I going to share today?

As I am writing this blog Christmas is about one month away. As many of you know I published a cookbook this spring called “A Baker’s Dozen”. Therefore, I thought I’d share some baking tips I found in some cookbooks I picked up on Buy and Sell. These were older, antique cookbooks. To me, when I found them, I was so excited and thought I’d share a couple of things I found.

The Proctor and Gamble cookbook, “Recipes for Good Eating” has a copyright date of 1945. I absolutely love the picture on it. It shows a mom with her daughter busy baking with matching checkered red gingham aprons on. Oh, how I love aprons!

The one part I love about a cookbook is the tip section. Even though these books are 75 years or older, some advice in cooking never changes.

Here is the first tip from one of the three cookbooks I purchased. “Use part butter when possible as it adds a rich flavour.” This is such a true statement. Butter makes it better. I have specific recipes that have tweaking notes on them to use butter only. Margarine just will not produce the same flavor, texture, etc. So, when baking, remember sometimes it just has to be butter – margarine will not work.

Another cookbook was from the Royal Baking Powder Co. called “New Royal Cookbook”.

As far as they are concerned the only baking powder to use is Royal Baking Powder and they had some good tips as well, like add one or two teaspoons of baking powder to your plain pastry as it will add wonderful qualities to it: makes the pastry light and tender. This is a tip my mother-in-law shared with me as well when I asked her to teach me how to make pastry many years ago. Pastry is finicky and harder to master than most recipes. I say yes to adding baking powder, it does help. They also recommended adding a little bit of baking powder to an omelette to improve the fluffiness. I believe I will try that tip the next time omelettes are on the breakfast menu. How do you tell when a cake is baked? When a cake is thoroughly baked it shrinks from the sides of the pan. A light touch with the finger which leaves no mark is another way of knowing that the cake is baked.

And last, but not least the other cookbook was Robin Hood “No Sift Recipes Cookies”.

Their goal was to assure the baker that all recipes in this cookbook were to use Robin Hood flour, without having to sift it, which, if we go way back into the earlier years of cooking, most homes had a flour sifter and we would sift the flour before using it in our cookie and cake recipes.

For you younger folk, you may have to Google the word flour sifter to see what I am talking about – hahahaha.

A lot of the recipes called for shortening; however, they recommended using part butter with the shortening as it adds a richer flavor. Try and make cookies the same size on your cookie sheet for even baking. I like using a cookie scoop, that way I am likely to make them the same size. When making my shortbread cookies I will weigh each piece of dough out and roll it into a ball and flatten to 5/8” approximately with a handy tool I have in the kitchen called a mini tart shaper. It has a flat round bottom and works well for this. It also works extremely well when I make my own mini tart shells. I roll a 1” ball of pastry and place it in the mini tart pan. Press the tart shaper into it and rotate with even pressure to make your own mini tart shell. Presto – a tart shell. Fill with your desired filling and start baking.

So those are a few tips for you as Christmas is coming and so is Christmas baking. It seems to be a time of year when we make extra special goodies to have around for munching on. I know I have several recipes that seem to only come out at Christmas, probably because they are so yummy and good and full of calories that I really don’t need to consume.

Here is a quick rant about keeping your recipes in a digital format – technology. I have had a recipe app on my phone for about 10 years now and absolutely loved it. I was able to add my own recipes, pictures of my baking, tweaking notes, etc.

However, they stopped supporting it in Canada a few years ago. But because I had already purchased it, I could still use it. So about 6 months ago, after a new update to my iPhone, I went to look up a recipe on my phone and the app would not open. I believe the company that made this app has gone out of business and probably got tired of having to keep up with updates to their app every time Apple did an update.

Now what to do?

All of my hard work of putting my recipes into one app, my favorite recipes are going to be gone.

Fortunately, I can still open the app up on my iPad. Now to figure out a way to export these recipes somewhere. Oh, what to do? What a curveball. As we know, if you own an Apple product, they always need updates. If I update my iPad I will lose the Recipe App on it as well. Grrrr – updates and passwords! I have since put these recipes into a Word document and it’s an okay answer for now. It’s not the final solution though. Maybe another cookbook is required. Hmmmmmm.

My tip for today is – protect your recipes.

Back them up somehow, someway. Figure out somewhere to save them. I have them in a Word document for now, but it’s not the same as my app was with pictures and tweaking notes. And the best part was being able to have my favorite recipes with me, wherever I was, and being able to share them with whoever I wanted to in a second. This is a new technology problem to solve.

Now, as per usual, I must leave you with a song, and yes, I am one of those people that loves Christmas music and I play it for about a month nonstop.

I have many, many Christmas songs that I love. My favorite Christmas Album is “Christmas with Boney M”. I love all the songs, especially Mary’s Boy Child. For a one pick song that always makes me smile and start singing, I am going to go with Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano. It warms my heart every time I hear it and makes me want to sing and dance.

Have a great day and the countdown is on! Enjoy the crazy, hectic month of December. It’s here.

Merle Lee Ann Pratt – merleleeannskitchen.com – Email: merleleeann@gmail.com

This column is sponsored by MacKenzie Funeral Chapel and Crematorium – We will be there when you need us – Bev and Brian Stobbs

130 9th St. E, Prince Albert, SK

Phone: (306) 763-8488

https://mackenziechapel.ca/

by Merle Lee Ann Pratt – Merle Lee Ann’s Kitchen, author of “A Baker’s Dozen”

C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S Is Coming

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