Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook (22 page)

I'm of the opinion that banana bread is overdone in this country, but that's me. It still sells out at Starbucks and everywhere else. But our family does love these muffins, and this easy, inexpensive recipe will help you use up ripe bananas. Moreover, I think any recipe with whole pecan halves is worth making.

1.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line 24 cups of 2 muffin tins with paper liners.

2.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, mix together the banana, oil, and eggs. Alternating with the milk, gradually add the flour mixture to the banana mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir in the pecans.

3.
Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling the cups just shy of full. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the muffins are puffed and golden brown, and a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.

4.
Serve warm, or cool the muffins on racks. Freeze in zippered plastic freezer bags for longer storage.

Makes 24 muffins

Scottish scones were originally made on a griddle, and fresh ones are divine. The problem with most of the scones sold in this country is that they are not served fresh and therefore have the consistency of sawdust. Serve these scones right off the griddle. They do not keep.

1.
Preheat a griddle over medium-high heat.

2.
In a bowl, stir together the flour, buttermilk powder, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon, and salt. Add the water and stir until well combined. Turn the batter out on a very well-floured surface, knead a few turns, and pat into a round about 6½ inches in diameter. With a sharp knife, cut the dough into 8 wedges.

3.
Melt the shortening on the griddle or in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet. When the shortening is
hot,
reduce the heat to medium and place the scones on the griddle. Cook until the first side is golden brown, about 2 minutes. Turn and cook the other side, about another 2 minutes. Test for doneness by splitting one scone. It should not be doughy, but should look like a biscuit. Remove the scones from the griddle and serve immediately with butter and apple butter.

Makes 8 small scones

¼ cup currants

2 cups spring water

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons (½ stick) well-chilled unsalted butter, cut into 4 equal pieces and chilled again

1 large egg

¼ cup heavy (whipping) cream

¼ cup milk, preferably whole

2 teaspoons sugar (optional)

Butter, whipped cream, jams, lemon curd, or marmalades, for serving

1.
Place the currants in a medium bowl. Bring the spring water to a boil and pour it over the currants. Allow to stand for 10 minutes. Drain the currants and discard the water. Pat the currants dry with paper towels and set aside.

2.
Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Butter a baking sheet. In a food processor, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. With the machine running, add the butter, one piece at a time, and process only until the mixture looks like cornmeal.

3.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg slightly with the cream and milk. Turn the food processor back on and pour the egg mixture in a thin stream into the flour mixture just until the dough holds together in a ball. Fold in the currants.

4.
On a floured surface, lightly pat the dough into 2 rounds, each about 7 inches in diameter. Cut each round into 6 even wedges. Place the scones on the baking sheet 2 inches apart. If desired, sprinkle them with the sugar.

5.
Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the scones are puffed, golden, and cooked through. Serve immediately with butter or whipped cream, and jams, curds, or marmalades.

Makes 12 scones

Oranges and cranberries are soulmates. Playing around with those ingredients led to this recipe.

1.
Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Line 24 cups of 2 muffin tins with paper liners.

2.
In a bowl, combine the orange juice, Grand Marnier, and oil and set aside.

3.
In a large bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and orange zest.

4.
In another large bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy with soft peaks. Combine the juice mixture with the beaten egg whites. Add the egg mixture and the cranberries to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

5.
Using a ¼-cup measure, divide the batter among the muffin cups. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden brown and puffed, and a toothpick inserted into one muffin comes out clean.

Makes 24 muffins

This is our family's favorite sweet bread. How it came about was a happy accident. Jim, tired of hunting for peanuts through all the packages of dried fruits on our pantry shelf, vowed he was going to throw them all out. Horrors! I promised to put something together that would use them. This recipe was the result. Now I end up having to quadruple the recipe, just so I have enough of the bread for the holidays.

1.
Place the cherries and chopped pineapple in a large bowl. Bring the spring water to a boil and pour it over the fruit. Let stand 15 minutes, then drain (discard the water). Pat the fruit dry with paper towels. Set aside.

2.
Butter and flour two 8½ x 4½-inch loaf pans.

3.
In a bowl, with an electric mixer, cream the butter with the sugar until well blended. (The mixture will look like wet sand.) Add the eggs and beat well. Sift the dry ingredients together twice. Alternating with the orange juice, add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir in the fruits, blending well. Divide the batter evenly between the pans. Allow to stand for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350˚F.

4.
Bake the breads for 45 to 55 minutes, or until toothpicks inserted in the loaves come out clean. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Makes 2 loaves

If you're really into cooking, you could make your own applesauce, or you could just serve it with fresh apples. What I do now for a big family breakfast is to serve it with sliced fresh apples or cups of applesauce, and a baked ham.

1.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Butter 1 or 2 large baking sheets or line with silicone baking mats.

2.
In a small bowl, mix together the cinnamon and sugar.

3.
Lay the bread slices on the baking sheets so that they are not touching. Place them in the oven and toast the bread for about 5 minutes. Remove the sheets from the oven, but do not turn the oven off.

4.
Using tongs, flip the bread slices so that the untoasted side is facing up. Using a pastry brush, completely brush each slice of bread with melted butter. Carefully sprinkle each piece of bread generously with the cinnamon sugar. You want a thick layer of cinnamon sugar on each slice.

5.
Return the sheets to the oven and watch carefully. In 10 to 20 minutes, the cinnamon sugar layer will begin to bubble. Remove the sheets from the oven.

6.
Serve immediately with apples or applesauce on the side.

Makes 8 servings

This coffee cake recipe is very sturdy, because you can make all kinds of changes to it and still have a wonderful result. Sometimes I omit the guava preserves and substitute cherry, strawberry, or raspberry jam. You can even get by without the zests, although they do add marvelous flavor. And if you are charged with bringing the coffee cake for the dreaded morning meeting, this cake can be made the evening before, cooled, and securely wrapped. Cakes made with sour cream actually are better the next day.

1.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Butter and lightly flour two 9-inch round cake pans or two 8-inch square pans.

2.
In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter with the sugar until very light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well, until very well combined. Add the sour cream and stir in thoroughly.

3.
Add the vanilla. Mince the zests together (or whirl them in a coffee grinder dedicated to mincing zests). Stir in along with the preserves. Stir thoroughly.

4.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir carefully until thoroughly combined. Do not overmix. The batter will be stiff.

5.
Divide the batter evenly between the two pans. Spread the batter to the edges of the pan.

6.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or just until the cakes pull away from the sides of the pans, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

7.
Cool the cakes in the pans on racks for 10 minutes. Then remove the cakes from the pans and cool completely.

8.
When you are ready to serve the cakes, if you'd like, sift powdered sugar over the tops.

Makes 2 cakes

Note:
  
If possible, use Mexican vanilla. You may also substitute 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste.

P
eople love desserts. Caterers know this; restaurauters know this;
children
know this. The only people who don't know it—or who pretend not to—are the women's magazine writers, who announce (on their fall covers)
Lose 30 pounds by Christmas!
And of course the photo next to that headline is of a holiday dessert: a three-tier chocolate cake. So maybe the magazine writers do know you can't, nor should you try, to lose thirty pounds by Christmas. (And by the way, I checked the calorie count on a piece of that particular cover cake. It was northward of 1,500 calories
for one slice,
with enough carbohydrates to keep one going to New Year's.)

So in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I know people should
not
overindulge in desserts. People with diabetes need sugar-free sweets, as do any
folks who are limiting their intake of simple carbohydrates, which is just about everyone. But limiting is not prohibiting. We all need to be careful, and there's the rub.

The tales of people fooling themselves are legion. I once helped cater a very high-end dinner for forty. The host had had a heart attack, and—I learned later—his doctor had sternly warned him to lower his intake of sugar and fat. For dessert, our host had been told to have berries. He ordered the following from us for dinner: tossed salad, rolls with butter, grilled shrimp, new potatoes, and a green vegetable medley, followed by . . . brownies topped with Häagen-Dazs frozen vanilla yogurt, with a few strawberries and blueberries strewn on top. Like the customer in the restaurant who orders fish followed by chocolate cake, the berries don't cancel out the brownies and—
spare me
—frozen vanilla yogurt.

Now for the good news. (You already know it.) Dessert is special because it's fun. You don't have to have a whole lot of pie for indulging in it to be joyful. Children love birthday cakes and holiday cookies. If we parents and grandparents take the time to teach them how to make them, as Mrs. Jones did for me, that's even better.

Since Jim and I live part of the year at 8,000 feet above sea level, where baking can be
challenging,
I developed all of the recipes at that altitude. Then I tested them at sea level, often at one of my siblings' homes in Maryland and New Jersey. At that point I
wrote
the recipes for sea level, as is the custom in the food business, but put the high-altitude directions, if necessary, in parentheses. Some recipes needed no alteration, thank goodness.

I've learned a thing or two in the years since 1982, when I started on the Goldy books. Now don't panic when I say this, but as with any other adventure in the kitchen,
science
is involved. For example, just as osmosis and diffusion are important in brining, diffusion is important in the making of cookies. In order for cookies to bake up with the best flavor, the dough should be refrigerated overnight, to allow the liquids to diffuse through the dry ingredients. Thus, with the cookie recipes that do better with chilling, I have altered them or suggested that you put the dough into the refrigerator overnight. Some cookie recipes
require
overnight chilling, which is indicated in the recipe.

And before you ask how a flourless chocolate cake can be a cake without flour, it is because technically, it is not really a cake: It is a (baked) confection.

It was with desserts that I have had the most fun experimenting over the years. For Dungeon Bars, I thought, I like vanilla; why is it bar recipes never call for more than a teaspoon of the stuff? I wanted to put in more, so I did. The idea for Scout's Brownies came to me in 1990, as I was falling asleep one night. (Neuroscientists tell us that just as you're drifting off is one of the times the right side of the brain is most active. The left, critical side goes to sleep first, we're told, so the right brain is free to take off.)

What I thought as I hit the pillow was: Why do chocolate cake recipes always use dry cocoa powder, and brownie recipes call for melted unsweetened, or sometimes bittersweet, chocolate? What if I combined cocoa powder and melted bittersweet chocolate?

So I did, and Scout's Brownies were born. The combination, and the recipe, have been widely copied and republished (with no credit given to yours truly, but never mind).

What does this have to do with writing? Remember that right-brain thing? I once heard Sue Grafton say that it behooves all writers to keep a scribble pad by the bed. As you're on your way to Dreamland and an idea hits, please don't think,
Oh, I'll remember that,
because you probably won't, which is another thing the neuroscientists tell us.

This is how I come up with titles. I have learned to trust the process. The original title for the book that became
Dying for Chocolate
was so long and complicated that I don't even remember it. Then just as I was going to sleep one night, it came to me:
Dying for Chocolate
. I had my title. The book was published in 1992, and before I went on the road, I had buttons made up that said:

I am
DYING FOR CHOCOLATE

When I went to conventions and bookstores, I gave them out.

I couldn't believe no one had used the title
The Cereal Murders,
so I snagged
it. For a mystery set in the church (where Goldy is catering board meetings),
The Last Suppers
was a natural. Our youngest son contributed
Killer Pancake
; my agent came up with
The Grilling Season
. I had characters who were
Fatally Flaky
and one who was
The Main Corpse
. I began to keep an entire file called Possible Titles.

Another thing that is important for both bakers and artists to remember is that we have permission to make mistakes, to start over, to come at material, or ingredients, or titles, in different ways.

Now, a personal rant: I'd say that the very worst thing that writers and other artists do to themselves is to take themselves too seriously. Once they announce (you have no idea how many times I've heard this), “I'm going to write the Great American Novel,” they're sunk. They can't figure out why they're blocked, why they can't get anything down on paper.

Guess what?
There are many great American novels
.

So please: Start with a class, then a critique group with regular deadlines. Write your complete novel. If it doesn't sell, write another.

If you have (lots of) money and are desperate to have your story published, hire a ghost writer.

I think writing is fun. That's what has kept me at the computer since 1982. You do not have to be published to enjoy yourself while writing.

With cooking: I started from scratch, gaining proficiency in this area, then acquiring the skills to cater. I took cooking classes from caterers and even took that very eye- and palate-opening course at the California Culinary Academy.

In writing, I joined writers' organizations and attended writers' conferences. A key hint that I learned early on was: Whatever it is you really love to
read
is what you should be writing. If you want to become a professional writer, there are excellent writers' organizations that can help. If your taste runs to commercial fiction, there are Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and so on. Sisters in Crime is an outstanding organization dedicated to helping female writers of mystery fiction. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is also superb. In addition
to these, there are classes and organizations for poets, memoir-writers, essayists, and literary novelists.

In the Denver area, I belonged for many years to Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, dedicated to helping writers of commercial fiction. Another excellent, relatively new group in Denver is Lighthouse Writers. I have attended a number of outstanding workshops given by both groups. In addition, these organizations usually run critique groups where you can take your material.

I also need to put in a plug here for your local independent bookstore. The people who own and run these wonderful shops are readers. (Trust me, they're not in it for the money.) They can give the person who wants to write recommendations for reading, as well as point him or her in the direction of good local writing groups.

So get writing, or baking, or both. Just don't be too serious about it.

Note:
Because I took cookies, bars, and brownies to bookstores and other events, this is a very long chapter. Those cookie and bar recipes are listed first, followed by the other dessert recipes. When measuring any type of flour, I fold a large piece of wax paper in half, put the measuring cups on the paper, then lightly spoon the flour into the cups. I level off the cups with a kitchen knife. Following the crease in the paper, the leftover flour is easily dumped back into the bag. When making cookies, I bake them one sheet at a time. Except for Goldy's Nuthouse Cookies, I do not rotate the sheet. Instead, I keep an eye on the cookies as the time ticks down.