ASDE News

Janice’s Holiday Wreath Cookies

30 mins to make and makes either 1 giant wreath or 10 small ones.

Ingredients:

• 30 big marshmallows
• 4 cups cornflakes
• 1/2 cup butter (or non-dairy butter)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• Green food coloring
• Red hots candies to garnish

Directions:

Start by laying out some waxed paper and buttering it. Melt marshmallows and butter in a bowl in the microwave in 30 second increments. Once fully melted, add food coloring, vanilla, and salt. Mix together. Then add in cornflakes and mix until fully covered. Put an either several globs of mixture or one giant glob on the buttered wax paper. With buttered fingers, shape the glob(s) into wreath shape(s) while they’re still warm. Add 3 red hots in a cluster (tto each). Let cool.

These cookies are from my childhood. Every Christmas, my grandma would make plates of various cookies to give out. I’d try all the different cookies, but eventually realized that I only really liked the wreath cookies. I asked to only receive that variety, which she happily obliged by making me one giant plate-sized wreath cookie. I was so happy! Please enjoy my take on her recipe. 😊

Meghan’s Peppermint Bark Popcorn

Ingredients:

• Popcorn (I air pop)
• Vanilla almond Bark
• Peppermint Candy Canes
• Peppermint Extract
• Dark Chocolate Chips
• A Smidge of Salt

Directions:

Start by popping your popcorn.

Crush candy canes (inside a bag) with a rolling pin or use a blender. (You don’t want a fine dust, but crumbles)

Melt almond bark in a double boiler slowly, at the end fold in candy cane and add just a dash of peppermint extract.

Quickly coat all of your popcorn in a large mixing bowl with the peppermint almond bark and pour out onto parchment paper to harden.

Head back to your double boiler and melt dark chocolate chips to drizzle over the top of your tray of popcorn.

Once it’s all firm, break it into chunks, fill boxes and bags and gift to all the people you love in your life!

Stephen’s No-Knead Seeded Multigrain Bread

This recipe from Edible Boston is so simple that, even if you’ve never baked bread before, you should be able to produce a pretty respectable loaf. It relies on time and patience — not finesse or know-how — to create a long-fermented dough using a mere ½ teaspoon of commercial yeast. It’s full of whole grains and flavorful seeds. It feels like a project, but a successful one(!) as the overnight ferment does essentially all the work. If you get the timing right, you can stir together a dough on Saturday morning, leave it to do its thing for 24–36 hours, and bake a loaf on Sunday afternoon, just in time for dinner. It keeps beautifully, and it’s even better toasted.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups warm water
• ½ teaspoon granulated commercial yeast
• 2 tablespoons local honey (or barley malt syrup for a richer, darker loaf)
• 2 cups organic white bread flour, plus more for shaping
• 1 cup local stoneground rye flour
• 1 cup local stoneground whole-wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons whole flax seeds
• 2 tablespoons raw unhulled sesame seeds
• 1 tablespoon coarsely ground cornmeal

Special Equipment:

• Large bowl Flexible plastic dough scraper or rubber spatula
• Dutch oven with lid
• Baker’s rack, for cooling

Directions:

In a large bowl or a hard plastic tub, stir together the water, yeast, and honey and let sit until foamy, 1–2 minutes. Add the 3 flours, salt, and seeds and stir until a craggy, ragged dough forms. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside overnight, anywhere from 24 to 36 hours — this dough is very forgiving, time-wise, but don’t leave it much longer than 36 hours without refrigeration.

The next day, preheat the oven to 475°F and place the lidded Dutch oven inside. Pour out the dough onto a well-floured surface and using the scraper or spatula fold the edges over like an envelope, being careful not to work the dough too much. Turn the dough over and, working quickly, shape it into a ball by rotating it with the palms of your well-floured hands. Liberally flour the top and bottom of the loaf and cover with a floured towel. Set aside to rise for 1–2 hours.

When the dough has risen, remove the pot from the oven and take off the lid. Sprinkle the cornmeal onto the bottom of the pot. Lift the dough with the scraper or a spatula and your hands and quickly drop it into the pot. (Be careful — the pot is hot.) Take a sharp knife and make a few long slashes through the top of the dough to allow the steam to escape, quickly put the lid on the pot and return it to the oven.

Bake, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake an additional 20 minutes or until deeply browned and cracked on top (the darker, the better). Remove the bread from the pot and set it on a wire rack to cool before slicing.

Bria’s Latkes

One of my early memories of Hanukkah is my Vava pulling latkes out of the oven. Whether she made them in there (ill-advised) or kept them warm in there while frying the others, I can’t remember. But I remember the sight of them coming out, my excitement to eat the crisp potatoes, the balancing effect of the applesauce. I have made latkes on and off throughout the years, but here is the vegan version I constructed this year for my family. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Ingredients:

• One large russet potato (about one pound)
• Half a medium onion
• 1/4th cup flour
• 1/4th teaspoon salt, more or less to taste (I do a test latke and adjust seasonings accordingly)
• The saved starch from the potato water (see below)
• Cooking oil
• Applesauce & (vegan) sour cream for serving, if desired

Directions:

Start by grating the russet potato, then soak in a large bowl of water, making sure to swirl it around to rinse it well. While the potato is soaking, grate the onion (I’m sorry... if you want to make this process easier, store the onion in the fridge for a day or so first. It may also affect the flavor, however)

Squeeze the grated potato by the handful and place in a new bowl. Dump out the potato water but keep the potato starch at the bottom of the bowl (there will be a white film of starch down there!)

Combine drained potato, onion, flour, salt, pepper, and reserved starch in a large bowl. Mix well and form into patties. Preheat a pan on medium to medium-high heat with ¼-½ inch of high heat oil in the bottom. Getting the latke cooked right can be tricky, so I suggest doing a test one. For me, it takes about 3 minutes on each side, but it all depends on your oil, heat, etc.

Serve with applesauce and (vegan) sour cream, if desired. Enjoy!