Reflections on the Ninth Week of Winter – Recipe Roulette

 

    I didn’t think tucking the Old Farmer’s Almanac into Spence’s Christmas stocking would make a difference in how I spent Valentine’s Day, but it did.

    He perused the almanac in his reading, soon-to-be-sleeping, sofa position: head and shoulders supported by two pillows, knees elevated on five, and fat cat George wedged between the almanac and raised knees. “Here’s a recipe for you,” Spence said. He marked a paragraph with his thumb and stretched his arm to give me the book.

    His thumb pointed to “Cinnamon Stars.” No dairy. No soy. A cut-out cookie I could actually eat. “You need almond meal and parchment paper,” I said. “I don’t have either.”

    Spence reached for the almanac. “I can get them for you.”

    In January, he bought the almond meal and parchment paper.

    I put them in the cupboard, wrote Cinnamon Stars on my 2017 project list, and wondered if the cookies would work with a gingerbread man cookie cutter, the only one I’d kept when we moved to the country.

    Life intervened, and before making time to try the recipe, I pureed the last garden pumpkin. Pumpkins had thrived this year so I’d already made pumpkin soup, pumpkin oatmeal cookies, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin muffins–repeatedly. Time to try something new. On February 6, I chose the “quick and easy . . . healthful snack” Pumpkin Oat Bars posted by Portland Girl on recipe.com/.

    With equal parts oats and pumpkin puree, one large egg, dark brown sugar, and spices, I only had to substitute almond milk for the mixture of milk and cream. I stirred, baked, and removed the pan from the oven after the designated thirty minutes. Light pumpkin and cinnamon aromas tempted me, but I let the bars cool, ate lunch, then cut a bar for dessert.

    It looked more like fudge than the granola bar I’d expected. I took a bite. Chewy, uncooked oats floated in a gooey pumpkin-spice colloid. Had the egg cooked? I put the pan back in the over for another forty minutes.

    The bars remained pumpkin-oat goop. Yuck.

    Figuring that decent ingredients had to make decent bars, I nibbled them five different times during the day with the hope they’d improve. They didn’t. Maybe Portland Girl had forgotten to list an ingredient or two.

    I dumped the “bars” into the garbage and vowed not to waste my time on a new recipe again.

    But, Spence had already bought almond meal and parchment paper especially for me.

    So this past Monday, I revised my vow to never trying a recipe from the website posting Portland Girl’s Pumpkin Oat Bars, dug through a two foot deep carton in the basement to find a small heart-shaped tin, and leafed through the almanac to get the Cinnamon Star recipe.

    The recipe called for three and a half cups of almond meal. I had two cups. Undaunted, I multiplied all the ingredients by four sevenths.

2 2/7 egg whites

1/7 teaspoon salt

1 5/7 cups confection sugar

4/7 tablespoon lemon juice

6/7 teaspoon cinnamon

    Measuring proved trickier than the math. I estimated, stirred, and put the batter in the refrigerator to chill overnight.

    Valentine’s Day, after oohing and aahing over the red cyclamen and romantic card with glittering butterflies that Spence gave me, I spread a sheet of parchment paper on the kitchen table, sprinkled powdered sugar on the paper, and rolled a dollop of batter. The sticky batter clung to the rolling pin and parchment paper.

    Uh oh.

    Had I messed up the balance by estimating measurements?

    I sprinkled more powered sugar, placed a second sheet of parchment paper over the batter and tried again. The batter flattened. I peeled off the top paper, cut a heart, and carefully wedged the spatula under the cookie. It smooshed.

    I rerolled, cut another heart, and scraped the extra batter away from the edges. Not trusting the spatula, I gently pulled the paper off the bottom of the heart. Another mashed blob.

    Back to the spatula, I learned to only squash one side of the heart when lifting the cookies. I reshaped the messy side with my fingers and persisted to the last bit of dough, which I rolled and patted into a circle without cutting. After spreading the confection sugar and egg white mixture on top of the cookies, I shoved them into the oven and figured I could always feed them to the wastebasket.

    When I opened the oven twenty-five minutes later, overwhelming almond aroma burst out. The cookies looked fine.

    After they cooled, I bit into a heart. My teeth crunched through fully-baked batter, and sweet almond flavor exploded in my mouth. Forget the wastebasket. I sat in my Adirondack chair and savored every indulging bite of the four cookies I ate on Valentine’s Day.