I was out walking my dog nearly two years ago with my best friend Andrea. It was a warm, sunny May evening and I’ll never forget hearing her utter the four words no one ever wants to say: “I found a lump.” We both reassured each other that surely it would turn out to be nothing. But it didn’t. It was cancer and there was so little I could do to help her as she went through the frightening, arduous journey of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. One of the little things I could do for my friend and her family was bake.
Oh, how I baked – bread, cookies, muffins, cakes, and cinnamon buns. I nearly wore a groove into the pavement delivering baked goods from my house to hers! This story has a happy ending: she’s now in remission and her future is full of promise. Nevertheless, I still bake for her family. It has become a gesture that lets them (and other family members and friends) know I'm always thinking of them. It makes me so happy to get texts from her big kids thanking me for making their favourite treats.
I wanted to provide Andrea with the healthiest food possible during her cancer journey. Her husband and daughters are active, athletic people so I knew they would be equally glad to enjoy treats baked with their heart health in mind. Becel Buttery Taste contains 80 per cent less saturated fat than butter, has zero trans-fat and is made from simple blends of plant and seed oils (with no artificial preservatives, flavours or colours!). This margarine is also a breeze to bake with even right out of the fridge, which matters to me because I don’t always know ahead of time when some sugary love may need to be baked and delivered!
I think one of the reasons these cookies are so popular (besides being baked with lots of love!) is because they taste like old-fashioned comfort food - like a soft, chewy hug. They’re not too sweet and offer up an intoxicating aroma of traditional spices. The bonus is that they’re actually heart healthier than some cookie recipes, because they’re made with Becel Buttery Taste margarine.
These cookies are easy to prepare and they make your house smell amazing when you bake them.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground allspice
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup Becel Buttery Taste margarine
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
white sugar for coating
Directions:
Combine white sugar, flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, and ground allspice together and set aside.
Cream the sugar and margarine together, then beat in egg and molasses.
Blend in dry ingredients and stir till thoroughly combined.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate dough for at least one hour. This allows the flour to become fully hydrated so the dough is firm and easy to shape.
Preheat oven to 350F.
Shape dough into one inch balls and roll each one in white sugar to coat completely. (If freezing dough balls, don’t roll in sugar until you are ready to bake them.)
Place dough balls 2-inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Don’t flatten the balls – they will flatten as they bake.
Bake for 8 – 10 minutes. They are done if the tops have started to develop cracks across them. Do not over bake – you want them to still be quite soft coming out of the oven.
Let cool on baking sheets for 10-minutes before transferring to wire racks.
Notes:
I usually shape the whole batch of chilled dough into balls but then bake up just a dozen or so. The remaining dough balls go into an airtight container for the freezer, where they can be safely stored for three months. This makes it a whole lot easier to bake up a batch of homemade love on a moment’s notice.
Becel Buttery Taste can replace butter on a 1:1 basis in almost all of your favourite recipes!
Makes 3-4 dozen, depending on the size of your dough balls.
I recently discovered a book at my local thrift shop entitled Smiley’s Cook Book and Universal Household Guide, published in 1894. This weighty tome is self-described as a profusely illustrated (it has a half-dozen poorly-drawn coloured plates) comprehensive collection of recipes and useful information pertaining to every department of housekeeping.
The book takes great care to explain the burdens of cooking. “The woman who in addition to all the other cares of housekeeping has to provide bills of fare for the family three times a day for 365 days in the year is often perplexed to know what to serve at each meal. To provide well...requires study and forethought but it will amply repay the effort. In many homes there is a great lack of variety in the food prepared. The tendency to fall into ruts must be guarded against, as a well-planned variety is most conducive to both the health and pleasure of the eaters.” Clearly, the concepts of Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday and Wine Wednesday would not have worked for mothers of this era. Too bad for them.
Helpfully, the book provides weekly menus for each month of the year, so if you want to know the best day to serve cold mutton with béchamel sauce (a Friday supper in January), macaroni soup with braised liver (a Thursday dinner in May) or codfish and cream with buckwheat cakes (a Monday breakfast in November), you’ll be all set.
Apparently, 122 years ago, the best meals included such delicacies as boiled cucumbers, stewed endive and creamed carrots. If those aren’t to your fancy, perhaps fried plover, boiled turkey, or opossum “scalded like a hog, exposed to frosty air for two days then parboiled and baked” would be more appealing. The book includes recipes for preparing and serving squirrels (broiled, fried or in a pie), raccoons (stewed or baked) and beef tongue (cured, pickled or boiled).
Cooking times given in a handy reference chart gave me pause. I wonder what my darling children would think about the aroma of tripe boiling on the stove for five hours? The book also suggests bacon is to be boiled. Ewwwww. And every single vegetable ever grown is treated similarly shabbily – string beans are to be boiled one to three hours; broccoli and celery 30 minutes, carrots 1/2 hour if young, an hour or more if old. Lettuce, meanwhile, is to be steamed for 15 minutes. Why the heck would anyone want to serve (or eat) steamed lettuce?
There’s a special section on invalid cookery, including such delicious treats as mutton broth, raw beef sandwiches and milk soup (milk, salt, cinnamon and sugar plus egg yolks), which is “good for delicate persons and children.”
The chapters on household management are bizarrely fascinating and make me grateful I live in an era where lax housekeeping might offend a mother in law but not cause a ritual shunning by ones friends. The book tells us that “a layer of dust is always unwholesome, and when penetrated by dampness it ferments, decays and becomes positively poisonous.” Similarly, who knew the best way to clean gilt picture frames is to blow off that deadly dust, then beat together egg whites and washing soda to brush over the frame. If that method doesn’t satisfactorily clean the family portraits, you can try mixing water, salt, powdered alum and purified nitre. Best of all, if you have a problem with flies on your frames, simply sponge them over with onion water or laurel oil.
Picnics also merit their own chapter, beginning with a cautionary note regarding the danger of an unbalanced menu: “The easiest way to avoid this is to have the ladies meet beforehand and make out a list of the things desired, and then request each one to bring her share. Or appoint one competent lady to make out the menu and assign to others.”
I'm pretty sure my most competent friends would pack pitchers of cocktails and a wedge of cheese.
I’ll leave this gem here for you to contemplate as you embark on your next round of diligent menu planning. "Children should not be made to eat foods which do not agree with them, or which are really distasteful to them.”
Right. “Pass the gin to mommy, please, children and order your own takeout pizza for dinner whenever you get hungry, k?”
I used to have regular mini meltdowns at the sad sight of abandoned pita in my freezer. My picky family only likes them when they’re really, really fresh so after one day on the counter, any that remain in the bag would get optimistically tossed into the freezer, never to see the light of day again. I used to let them languish there until they were dried out and crumbling, then I’d throw them out. Picture me repeating this process in frustration over and over again. But no more! I have found the best use ever for leftover pita and it’s also saving me a ton of money since I no longer have to purchase bags of one of my kids’ favourite snacks. These crisps are great because they’re baked, not fried, and using a flavoured olive oil gives them such a great taste that you can probably omit the salt, making them an even healthier snack, especially if you choose whole wheat pitas. My favourite is roasted garlic olive oil but I’ve made them with regular oil, spicy jalapeno oil and others, all with great success. These are so easy to make, they clean out your freezer AND the kids can help - that's a win-win-win!
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F.
Cut each pita into 5 strips with scissors or a serrated knife.
Snip end of each strip and separate to make 2 single layer strips (10 strips in total).
Place pita strips, split side up, in a single layer on parchment-lined baking sheets.
Brush with olive oil. Sprinkle evenly with thyme, salt and pepper.
Bake until crisp and golden brown, about 6 to 8 minutes. Watch them carefully as they can go from brown to burned in seconds!
Cool. Serve at room temperature, with or without dips.
Store in airtight container at room temperature for up to two weeks.
Makes about 40 crisps.
Printer-friendly version
RELATED: Get Your Sh*t Together: Do These Things Everyday