andiesenji

A few months back I picked up Marlene Koch's "Unbelievable Desserts with Splenda, at Sam's Club for $12.88. It is a small book but has a lot of great recipes using Splenda, including a fresh peach custard pie that I made on several occasions when the peaches were in season. I also made in once with apricots. Excellent. I also made a citrus chiffon cake which I took to a party and everyone loved. However, the best recipe so far, and one which I have made several times, is the Unbelievable Chocolate Cake. It has only 160 calories per serving, 22 grams carbs, 8 sugar, 3 gms protein and 7 grams of fat. for a Diabetic exchange it equals 1 1/2 servings of carbs, 1 fat. I haven't checked its availability on Amazon, but in my opinion it is a great little book. Regular retail is $19.95 so the deal at Sam's was very good.

Splenda's new product, Splenda Sugar Blend for Baking, is half and half, sugar/Splenda. It is excellent for use where plain Splenda is not quite right. It weighs out the same as sugar, which is helpful for recipes based on weight instead of volume (as are most of mine). It works great in beating egg whites and I have made a classic 7-minute frosting which turned out great. You can label it "reduced sugar" frosting. I don't really have a recipe written down as I have been making this for 50 years but this site has a standard recipe. 7-minute frosting I am also a Type II diabetic.

You can use any kind of liquor as long as the proportions are the same and you can substitute it for the sherry too. The amount of alcohol is critical as that is the preservative that keeps the stuff from spoiling or getting moldy. My aunt said that she used Galliano one year when she had a bottle that someone had given her and she had no other use for it (doesn't drink anything except an occasional Ezra Brooks bourbon and water). She said that she often uses "whatever is handy" meaning that if someone leaves a bottle of something at her home after a party, she feels free to appropriate it for her baking. That is, anything but scotch. She says that it may be sacrilege to some but the smell of it always reminds her of her husband's old boots. (He was a petroleum engineer.)

I have tried getting a peach charlotte out of a regular cake pan when a helper assembled it in one by mistake. Not a pretty sight. I use them for desserts that have ladyfingers or decorative elements around the sides that stay in place when the springform is eased away from the sides. Some things just are easier to do with a springform and I like having the option of using them.

Okay folks, Here is the recipe for pork mincemeat cake from my aunt. I spent over an hour on the phone with her while she dictated the recipe. I typed it out then called her back and went over it line by line to make sure I have it exactly as it should be. Should I also post it on the fruitcake thread? Meemaw's Pork Mincemeat Christmas cake. Pork Mincemeat 1 1/2 pounds (prepare at least a week ahead) See below for recipe. currants or sultanas 15 oz chopped pecans 2 cups vanilla 1 Tablespoon rum or brandy 1/4 cup (or a mixture of the two) butter melted 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 cups eggs, separated 3 extra large baking soda 1 1/2 teaspoons water 1/4 cup cake or pastry flour 3 cups 1. Preheat oven to 275°. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan (can use bundt pan) 2. in a large bowl, combine mincemeat, currants or sultanas, nuts, vanilla and liquor - set aside 3. In a large mixer bowl, combine butter, sugar and egg yolks: beat well. Combine baking soda and water, add to mixture. 4. Sift flour over mincemeat mixture, stir to mix well. Combine contents of both bowls; mix well. (Batter will be stiff) 5. In small bowl of mixer, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold into batter. 6. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake at 275° for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, or until done. (Cake will pull away from sides of pan) 7. cool slightly, remove from pan. Cool completely and wrap to store. (Wrap in cheesecloth - *spritz with rum, brandy, flavored brandy or flavored liquor - then wrap in plastic wrap or aluminum foil) Place in cake tin. Cake keeps very well. * I keep a small spritzer bottle in the kitchen just for liquor - the alcohol will evaporate rapidly from cooked foods and will evaporate in about 3 days when used on baked goods like this cake - for people like me who have an allergy to alcohol. This method uses much less alcohol than pouring it on the cake and there is less chance of having soggy lumps saturated with liquor. There is a commercial rum and brandy mix that is usually only available during the holidays. With the addition of vanilla - about 1 teaspoon to 1 cup of the liquor, this gives a very nice flavor to this type of cake. Cherry Heering or Peter Heering the cherry liquer is also an excellent flavoring for fruit cakes. ------------------------------- MeeMaw's Pork Mincemeat 1 pound lean cooked pork cut into strips 1/3 pound pork fat cut into strips 1 pound dried apples cut into pieces 1 pound Sultanas or golden raisins 1 pound mixed peel 1/2 pound citron 1/2 pound dried pineapple 1/2 pound blanched almonds zest and juice of one large orange zest and juice of two lemons zest and juice of one grapefruit 1 teaspoon cinnamon, freshly ground 1 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground 1 teaspoon allspice, freshly ground 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground 1 teaspoon kosher salt 2/3 cup sweet sherry 1/2 cup brandy 1/2 cup rum Gather the first 8 ingredients on a tray or platter. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Using a food grinder with the coarsest blade, alternate ingredients as you put them through the grinder so they are combined in a Dutch oven or roasting pan large enough to hold everything. After grinding, mix well with your hands. Add the next 8 ingredients, cover tightly and cook for 2 hours. Remove from oven. Place a metal colander in a large pan, line with cheesecloth and spoon the mixture into the colander. Stir gently, turning the mixture over to drain away most of the liquid fat. Return the mixture to the cooking pot. Add the sherry, brandy and rum, stir well. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly for about 20 to 30 minutes. Ladle into sterilized jars, cover tightly and store in a cool place for one week prior to use. Once opened, store in refrigerator.

I want to add that shortly after I became a member in April of this year, I fractured a vertebra in my low back plus rupturing two discs. One of the things that kept me sane when the pain in my leg was so severe I couldn't concentrate on reading a book, was being able to read the posts from people here who are as passionate about food as I am. Sometimes I had to get up and walk around or lie down in my recliner between posts, but the subjects kept my interest and distracted me from the pain. It was a lot better than taking Oxycontin.

Or go down the street and have a meal at Knott's Berry Farm, Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant. I had dinner there year before last during the Christmas holidays (I relocate to OC for two weeks during the holidays, staying with friends in Yorba Linda.) It was quite good. I have eaten there many times over the years and forget during the interims just how homey and satisfying plain home-style food can be. When the kids were still at home we used to go to Knott's for Halloween then have dinner at the restaurant. We also went to Disneyland every Christmas season.

Not old, old, but Spago in West Hollywood is not bad. And of course there is always Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Blvd. That one has been around forever, well, since 1919. You never know who you will see there. The waiters are (famously) somewhat terse, but people expect it. When I relocated to Southern California in 1959 that was the first restaurant I went to in Hollywood. My dad took me and I saw Jimmy Stewart at one table, Maureen O'Hara at another and as we were leaving Aldo Ray walked past us. I was excited to see real movie stars. Then I went to work for a doctor that treated a lot of people in the industry and soon learned they were just regular people with jobs that put them in the public eye. During the years I worked as a personal chef I even worked for quite a few.

Check these out. I have the tilting turntable which I like very much. However if you don't need one (much easier on the back) you can get one of the flat ones at a very reasonable price. I bought mine here: Shop here.

To me sweet rice is one thing, it is sticky, but the "Calrose" short grain rice grown in California is also very "sticky" in that it clumps together easily and it is not sweet. It is often used in sushi. You can read a bit more about it here.

Last February, when I first tried the Frieling line of springform pans, I immediately tossed out all my old Kaiser pans and replaced them with the Frieling and the new Kaiser leakproof pans. I have used them with and without a waterbath and love them. They cost more but in my opinion they are worth every penny. Buy one and try it, which is what I did, and see for yourself. Chef's Catalog has them. I bought the Kaiser La Forme leakproof pans at Discount Cooking. I also tried the Nordicware leakproof but it did leak, the only one in this line I use is the extra deep (5 inch deep pan) I also bought the square and rectangular springform pans in the Kaiser La Forme line. They aren't completely leakproof but otherwise work well.

If you want a fun evening following a day at the convention center, why don't you see about driving over to Newport Beach, which isn't all that far away and spending an evening at The Newport Beach Brewing Company. the food is a bit eclectic and quite good. The atmosphere is fun and I think you will enjoy it. I don't drink myself but have taken some young friends (from Australia) there after an event at the convention center. They had a great time. Distances are not all that far in OC, and depending on the time of day, if you can miss the commuter crowd, it doesn't take all that long to get there. Another place in Newport Beach is Aubergine, which is considerably up the scale from the other place. One reviewer compared it to the French Laundry, which was the reason I decided to try it in the first place. The food was French with the usual California flair. We found the service was excellent but another person whom I recommended said the food was great but the service was so-so, but considering his attitude about most places, it could be just his view of it. I have taken out of town guests (from South America) there after an event at the convention center and we had an excellent meal. I don't drink but Ronaldo was very impressed with the wine list and he is in the business. They had multiple course tasting menus at the time I was there, which was a couple of years ago. Contact Info: (949) 723-4150 (949) 723-4003 (fax) Location Info: 508 29th St, Newport Beach, CA 92663

There is a new Splenda product that is 1/2 sugar, 1/2 Splenda and it works great in egg whites.

Actually the treatment forces the injected salt solution out of the ham and allows the maple syrup to percolate back in. I really think it works on the cellular level because it even changes the texture of the ham. Some people think it will turn out similar to a "Honey-Baked" ham but it really isn't. It is quite different and I am anxious to know how it turns out for you. Last year I gave the directions to a young lady who was a student at Cal-Poly Pomona and she cooked it for a group of friends at school, the first time she ever made anything except burgers and hot dogs. She said right in the middle of the dinner one of the boys stood up and said the ham was better than his mama's and would she marry him........ It was a joke, of course, but she was thrilled with the compliments. She had planned on leftovers but there wasn't a scrap.

You said it! I have a Blodgett with steam injection and I forgot and opened the doors soon after I started using it and just missed blistering my face from the blast of steam that shot out of the opening. Fortunately it has the tandem doors that open out to the side so there was only a narrow strip in the middle that was open when I realized what was happening and quickly shut it. Had it been a conventional oven with the door opening down, I probably would have been scalded. I use the giant bindry clips to keep parchment from flopping around from the breeze. The big ones are wide enough to fit easily over the rim of a sheet pan and the "handle" part will fold down and lay flat on the outside bottom of the pan. Before I figured this out I did have some accidents that were not pretty. As I mentioned in an earlier post I use a metal shield to keep the fan from affecting semi-liquids as they are setting. I could bake them without convection but I have found they come out better with convection, even when using a bain marie. Incidentally, I dumped all my old spring form pans last February and bought the leak-proof ones made by Frieling. What a difference, no sticking and no wrapping with foil to keep the water out and the batter in.

I make a bread pudding with a low carb bread and Splenda instead of sugar. No one can tell the difference. I serve it barely warmed but with a warm sweetened cream slightly whipped with Splenda and cinnamon.

andie, that sounds quite clever and good. Care to share the method?Thanks, Squeat ← Following is a copy of the post with the recipe on 10/1/04 I should add that I did an 18 pound ham a while back and cooked it for almost 5 hours at this low temperature. It was almost like ham candy. Even people who don't like ham went back for seconds. All About Ham, Ham goodness Oct 1 2004, 05:26 PM Post #4 I grew up eating home cured ham and nothing has ever tasted as good. Occasionally my relatives who still live on the farm send me a ham for the holidays. These are really big hams, nothing like the little ones in the market. No dye to color the ham pink. It is more a dark red. I have developed a "recipe" or method for turning a barely edible "loss-leader" supermarket BONE-IN ham into something quite acceptable. However it involves finding some inexpensive maple syrup - I buy the jugs of the stuff at Costco but Trader Joes sometimes has a sale on the "B" syrup which has more flavor. You need a lot of it because the ham has to be covered at least half way with the liquid. First you take your ham and trim off as much of the outside fat as possible. Then you take your trusty chef's fork or if you don't have one use an ice pick, and stab the thing all over, stab deep, right down to the bone. If you have a shank end and the shank is quite long, saw it off so you have something that will be easier to turn. Then rub the ham well with dry mustard, use gloves and really massage it into the surface. Then put it into a pot that is not too much larger in diameter than the ham but leaves you enough room so that you can lift the ham out easily when you need to turn it over. Start it with the shank end up, don't lay it on a side. Add the maple syrup until it comes up well past half way on the ham, if you have enough, cover it. put it in a slow oven, keep the temperature around 275, certainly not over 300. At the end of an hour turn it over and put it back in for another hour. Repeat until the ham has been in the oven a total of 4 hours. lift it out of the pot and put it on a wire rack over a sheet pan or in the sink so the excess liquid can drip off. Then transfer to a dry roasting pan, turn the oven up to 350 and put it back in the over 30 minutes to brown. When the syrup is cool, strain it and store it in the freezer, you can use it for another ham. You can do this with a spiral sliced ham, one of the cheap ones that are usually way too salty, but you have to have it tied fairly tightly so the slices won't separate during the cooking.

I like roasted beets, with or without duck fat, although I have to admit that the duck fat adds a lot of ooomph to the beets. I like Harvard beets too. However there are some varieties of pickled beets that do have an earthy, almost a moldy, aroma/flavor that I can't stand. Other people can't seem to taste it. Just as some people sense the taste of cilantro as being soapy, it is an individual characteristic.

Sorry, it was 58 to 81, not 71. global cooling and there are lots more such as this. Just wait a few years and the pendulum will swing back the other way.

I also recall that those two winters in Minneapolis were the coldest in my experience. I thought Wisconsin was cold (after having grown up in the south) but the Minneapolis winter was beyond belief. I was very thin back then but wore so many layers of clothes I probably looked like the Michelin Man.

Do you mean Wihlfahrt's book? I have the third edition. It's way up on the top shelf of the bookcase. I haven't opened it for years. I collect cookbooks and tried to buy a first edition at an estate auction a few years ago but was unsuccessful. Some guy was more determined to have it than I was. I have the big blue book, Formulas for Bakers, that I also got when I was in school. When I was at Dunwoodie there was only one other girl in the class. A lot of the men were in the service, sent there for training as the institute had a contract with the government to train bakers. I graduated from high school in 1955 and was at Dunwoodie for the 18 month course. Since my mother owned a bakery I didn't have to go through the placement program (now called externship at most schools.) I don't recall the other book, somewhere in my boxes of junk I still have my notebook from school. And I have a pile of the bulletins from the AIB that we used to get in school.

The internist just called me from the office, he stopped in and the exchange told him I had called about the article regarding treatment for lactose intolerance. The medication is over the counter, the name is "Digestive Advantage" - He said he thinks the vitamin store chains carry it and most drug stores should have it soon. I don't have the problem myself but have friends that do. The doc said that it certainly can do no harm and has the potential to do much good. A similar product that became available last year is named Dairy Care but the lacto-strain in Digestive Advantage is more stable at greater ranges of temperature and moisture resistant, etc., so has a longer shelf life and remains active in the bowel longer.

From 1958 through 1971 there were dire predictions of global cooling!

Too bad you missed it. It was the next to last drive-in with car-hop service to close. The one on Van Nuys Blvd in Sherman Oaks was the very last.

Imminent? You don't find 100 years imminent, docsconz? I find the very idea of no more maple sugar to be quite disastrous! Therefore, I shall stockpile the precious stuff .... ← I just bought 6 jugs at Sam's Club. Some is going to be used to cook a ham in the method I developed for improving the cheap loss-leader, too salty ones that are offered during the holidays. Some is going into pumpkin/pecan butter - recipe posted in another thread. Somehow I feel that there are folks in Canada who are kicking their heels with glee!