A Patriotic Obsession at best…

I’m not sure this counts as a craving, but man, I am loving these!  I find the packaging irresistible… I had to take a picture before I finished these up.  I was hoping they would last until Flag Day but I don’t think that is going to happen.

Aedan calls these “America Candy” – another reason to love them!

Guest Posting and Additional Chinese New Year Gift Ideas!

Hey everyone! I wanted to share with you one of my favorite foodie/crafty/full of awesomeness blog, La Fuji Mama, who believe it or not, asked me to do a guest post for Chinese New Year! Check it out here! Featured there are Lucky Gifts for the Chinese New Year including a recipe for a fabulous Tangerine Peel Chicken Recipe and an orange applique baby project.

But I’m not done overloading you with citrus, oh no! There is not enough time as I’m already taking up valuable Dim Sum of All Fears free giveaway time. So here is my gift to you on this first day of the Year of the Ox! These are worth it but not as Asiany as your typical Chinese New Year gift: Orange Rolls, Orange Chocolate Fortune Cookies, and Orange Pocky!

I love Lion House rolls and I LOVE orange rolls – how smart that they put the two together?

I like this recipe compared with others because it seems to use more orange zest (!) and less sugar (!!). And it uses up food storage items (!!!) Too good to be true!

Orange Lion House Rolls

modified from a recipe by Brenda Hopkin

Ingredients:

• 1 recipe dough for Lion House Dinner Rolls
• ½ cup butter, melted
• Zest from two oranges
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 recipe Orange Icing (see below)

After dough for Lion House Dinner Rolls has risen the first time, roll dough on floured surface to rectangle about ¼ inch thick. Combine melted butter and orange zest in a small bowl; brush over dough. Sprinkle with sugar. Roll up the dough as you would cinnamon rolls. Using regular unflavored floss, cut the roll into 2-inch thick pieces. Place on lightly greased baking sheet. Allow to rise until double in size, about 40 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes, until light golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter. Allow to cool about 10 to 15 minutes, drizzle with Orange Icing. Makes 18 rolls.

Orange Icing

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice (reserve from zested oranges used in Orange Roll Recipe)
• 2 to 4 tablespoons heavy cream, or 2 tablespoons half-and-half

Place powdered sugar and orange juice in a small bowl; add half the amount of heavy cream. With spoon or mixer, mix until smooth. If icing is too thick, add more cream a little at a time. The hotter the rolls are when frosted, the thicker the frosting needs to be. Note: You can add more orange flavor by mixing in 1 to 2 teaspoons orange zest if desired.

Lion House Dinner Rolls

Ingredients:

• 2 cups warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
• 2/3 cup nonfat dry milk (instant or non-instant)
• 2 tablespoons dry yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup butter, shortening, or margarine
• 1 egg
• 5 to 5 ½ cups all-purpose flour, or bread flour

In large bowl or electric mixer, combine water and milk powder; stir until milk dissolves. Add yeast, then sugar, salt, butter, egg, and 2 cups flour. Mix on low speed until ingredients are wet, then for 2 minutes at medium speed. Add 2 cups flour; mix on low speed until ingredients are wet, then for 2 minutes at medium speed. (Dough will be getting stiff and remaining flour may need to be mixed in by hand). Add about ½ cup flour and mix again, by hand or mixer. Dough should be soft, not overly sticky, and not stiff (It is not necessary to use the entire amount of flour).

Scrape dough off sides of bowl and pour about one tablespoon of vegetable oil all around sides of bowl. Turn dough over in bowl so it is covered with oil. (This helps prevent dough from drying out). Cover with plastic and allow to rise in warm place until double in size.

Follow recipe for Orange Rolls at this point.

Jazz up the chocolate dipped fortune cookie idea for a subtle lucky Chinese New Year gift! (even if fortune cookies are a ‘western’ idea)

Orange Chocolate Fortune Cookies

Ingredients

• Fortune cookies
• dipping chocolate
• orange oil (not orange extract!)

Melt chocolate following packaging instructions. Add a couple drops of orange oil to melted chocolate and stir. Add more drops if needed until you reach your desired flavor potency. Dip half of each fortune cookie and place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or waxed paper. Let chocolate harden and serve!

Orange Pocky Sticks

And I just really like these and they were a recent find for me! I’ve had Pocky before but had never seen orange flavored. They are pretzel-like biscuit sticks dipped in orange flavored chocolate (white or milk choco) and my Aedan loves them to bits. They can be found at most Asian food grocery stores. Except for maybe this one, which I can’t find anywhere! Deluxe!

The long of it: Chocolate

This is me taking notes for the next time I make goodies for the holidays. Neal made more toffee and then tried his hand at making peanut brittle but the recipe was copied wrong and he ended up with a dark mass of gross peanuts that were rejected and shoved outdoors and was slowly devoured by local squirrels. I also made buckeye balls but they didn't make my top three list this year. So here they are:

My brother and sil gave us a bucket full of gourmet chocolate goodies. Our favorite was the chocolate and caramel covered marshmallows (would you call it a chococarmallow?) on a stick. It seems they took two big mallows and put it on a thick lolly or cookie stick and dipped it in some very good caramel and then some very good chocolate. Simple but fun and probably too good to be good for me!

I finally did it! Cherry cordials will either make people shout for joy or gag in disgust, there is no middle ground when it comes to these treats. At least that has been my experience with everyone I've encountered. I used to HATE cherry cordials until I tried some homemade ones. And I've been dreaming about making them ever since but never got up the nerve to do so. I've seen many recipes but this one looked to be the easiest with the least potential to be a gooey mess when eating (probably one reason I didn't like store bought ones). I thought they were delicious but could definitely be improved if I were to find some good dipping chocolate around here (any suggestions anyone?).

How does one make them? My piece of advice to you is to freeze the drained maraschino cherries (without stems) individually to make wrapping the cream fondant around them a breeze. Wrap the fondant and dip and let them set. That's it! Stick them in the freezer and you'll have some for much later. I'm thinking we'll have some for Valentines Day too. Recipe at bottom of post.

The same bro and sil who gave us the chococarmallows made a ton of cookies to share on Christmas Day. Among them were chocolate cookies with Hershey Kisses inside, Mexican Wedding Balls, and huge sugar cookies.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm

Cherry Cordials
modified from Old-Fashioned Candy Recipes by Bear Wallow Books

1/2 cup butter
4 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
2 Tbs. milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
80 maraschino cherries, drained

Drain and de-stem cherries. Place on wax paper on a cookie sheet, making sure none are touching, and freeze in the freezer.  In a large mixing bowl cream butter and sugar until soft and fluffy.  Blend in milk and flavorings (I know I mention them a lot, but, Penzey's extracts are amazing here).  Remove a few cherries from the freezer at a time as they defrost quickly.  Shape mixture into half-inch balls and press a frozen cherry into center of each, or mold mixture around each frozen cherry (use extra confectioners sugar to keep from sticking to hands).  Place centers on waxed paper and refrigerate until ready to dip in chocolate. Dip into dipping chocolate and place onto wax paper.  Refrigerate until set.  Can freeze cherry cordials, remove from freezer a few hours before serving.

The long of it: Gingerbread Trains and Family Faces

We've sort of started a tradition of making gingerbread trains when we have family over for our Pre-Christmas/Post-Jackie-BDay event and while it may seem like a lot of work, it is really not too bad and the results are more than worth it. The gingerbread itself is really yummy (recipe at the bottom w/links to templates). Here are pics of us making the trains, enjoying the sugar high, and starting our family Christmas program. 

Gingerbread Trains

dough recipe and printable templates for trains from Family Fun magazine

You'll need two batches of this dough to make our four-car Gingerbread Train and all its parts -- and still have a little extra left over for nibbling. Mix one batch at a time (rather than doubling our recipe), or the dough will become too difficult to work with. Use Royal Icing to construct your festive choo-choo. **Jackie's note: use the best spices you can find! We use Penzeys for the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and it really makes a difference.**

RECIPE INGREDIENTS:
	5 to 5 1/2 cups flour
	1 teaspoon baking soda
	1/2 teaspoon salt
	2 teaspoons ginger
	1 teaspoon cinnamon
	1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
	1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
	1 cup butter, softened
	1 cup packed light brown sugar
	1 egg, at room temperature
	1 cup molasses
	1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 
1. Sift 3 cups of flour into a large bowl. Combine 2 more cups of flour with the baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, then sift the mixture into the bowl. Stir the ingredients, then set the bowl aside.

2. In another large bowl, beat the butter, brown sugar, and egg until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the molasses and beat until evenly blended, about 1 1/2 minutes. Blend in the vanilla extract.

3. Using a wooden spoon, stir the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture 1 cup at a time. The dough should be firm; if it's not, gradually stir in up to 1/2 cup more flour.

4. Divide the dough in half. Place each piece in a gallon-size ziplock bag and flatten the dough into a thick rectangle with your hands. Seal the bags and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 with a second batch of dough.

6. Heat the oven to 350°. Working with one piece at a time, remove the dough from the refrigerator and set it on a generously floured cutting board or work surface. With a lightly dusted rolling pin, roll the dough to 1/4 inch thick, about a 10- by 13-inch rectangle.



7. Measure and cut the pieces as shown above or use our templates. As you cut, set aside the scraps of dough, then knead them together into a ball. Flatten the ball into a disk and chill the dough for another 45 minutes, then roll and cut out 9 more circles.

8. Line a large cookie sheet with aluminum foil, leaving some overhang on each end for easier handling. Dust it lightly with flour.

9. Transfer the gingerbread pieces to the foil and bake them on the center oven rack until golden brown, about 15 to 17 minutes. Be careful not to overcook the gingerbread, or it will darken and shrink. Lift the foil to transfer the baked cookies to a rack. Allow the pieces to cool completely before taking them off the foil. Let the gingerbread firm up at room temperature for at least 2 hours before assembling the train. You can also store it in an airtight container if you're planning to assemble it another day.