Winter Fruit Recipes, Bake Off Fiasco, Cookie Lesson

Up North, winter/holiday fruits are things like apples, cranberries and pears. Here in the tropics we have other fruits coming ripe which can be used to put an interesting twist on our winter and holiday tables.

Chilled Papaya Soup

Great as a meal starter or as dessert. Papaya are easy to grow here in southwest Florida, and they are tasty both green (shredded in an Asian style salad) and ripe out of hand with a squeeze of lemon, in smoothies, cakes, etc.

Sally has half a dozen trees in the yard that are four years old, 12-20 ft tall, and have been producing fruit for at least two years. They were planted from seeds saved from a store-bought papaya which was particularly tasty. There are numerous varieties of papaya. Sally's have fruit 7-12" long, green-turning-yellow-orange when ripe, and 2-6 pound in weight. The one pictured weighed 3 lbs 3 ounces.

1 medium Papaya (about 3 pounds), peeled, seeded and diced, divided

3/4 cup Lime Juice (fresh squeezed, of course)

1/2  cup Brown Sugar

1-1/2 cup White Wine

1-1/2 cup Water

Puree half of the papaya with the lime juice; reserve. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, wine and water. Bring to a simmer, add the sugar and diced papaya. Add the pureed fruit, stir, and taste. Add more lime juice or sugar, to taste. Strike a balance between tart and sweet.  Chill and serve.

If you find that the papaya isn't quite ripe when you cut into it, you can simmer the mixture for 15 or 20 minutes longer to soften the fruit, before chilling. This will also evaporate all but the tiniest hint of alcohol. A dollop of whipped cream does not go amiss as a garnish.

Lemon Dessert Scones

Another great winter fruit here in Florida are lemons, especially the milder, sweeter Meyer variety which is perfect for making Preserved Lemons, Lemon Marmalade, Lemon Curd, Lemon Pie, and of course freeze-your-own Lemon Juice. Here's another fabulous use for Meyer Lemons. This recipe is a modified Welsh Scone recipe I've used for years, which requires no baking -- but an electric skillet helps.

2 cups AP flour

1/2 cup white Sugar

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp fresh ground Nutmeg

1/2 tsp Black Cardamon seed, ground

1/2 cup Butter, cut up

1/2 cup dried Blueberries

1 large Egg, beaten

1/3 cup Whole Milk

Zest of 1 Lemon, minced

Start heating an electric skillet to 325F.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and spices. Cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or fingers until it makes fine granules. Add the blueberries and lemon zest, and stir to distribute.

In a cup, beat the egg and milk together. Pour the liquid into the flour and use a fork to stir until you get a soft dough. Turn out on a floured surface and give it about a dozen kneads. Cut the dough in thirds, and roll or pat each third into a 6" disk about 1" thick. Cut each disk into quarters.

Place the quarters into the dry, hot skillet, and cook, uncovered for 5-8 minutes per side, turning once, until medium brown. Serve immediately, or cool on a rack loosely covered.

While the scones are cooling, take time to make a batch of my 10 Minute Microwave Lemon Curd (August 24th 2015). Serve the warm scones with a dollop of still warm curd on top for a Lemony-Snicket dessert!

No-Bake Orange Cream Pie

Another classic tropical winter fruit here in Florida is the orange. This refrigerator pie combines two great tropical flavors -- orange and chocolate!

1/4 cup fresh squeezed Orange Juice

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

8 oz softened or whipped Cream Cheese

2 Oranges, zested, one of them peeled and sectioned

Oreo Cookie tm pre-made chocolate crumb crust

You can used bottled OJ, or squeeze the juice from one of the oranges listed after zesting them.  Reserve the segments of the second orange.  Stir to combine the OJ, milk, cream cheese and orange zest.  Pour into the crust and chill overnight.  After an hour or so of chilling, garnish the top of the pie with the orange segments.

Great Holiday Bake Off Fiasco!

Take the best cooking show on the planet (Great British Bake Off) and sell the concept to a mercenary American TV Network. Combine a lesser known TV/Movie couple as pretty but un-funny hosts with an arrogant American James Beard winner pastry chef, and add the grace, charm and knowledge of Britain's Mary Berry. Throw in 6 American so-called bakers chosen more for their 'backstories' than their baking skills, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Don't bother watching the remaining 3 episodes -- the first one was bad enough. Bakers who had serious trouble making two batches their own Christmas cookie recipes. Bakers who, although given weeks, if not months of notice that the Show Stopper was going to be a gingerbread construction, seemed as if they had never made and glued anything together, and had little concept of Show Stopper Quality decoration. It wasn't pretty. It was frankly pathetic. Please don't let it happen again!!

Red Velvet Cookies

They had another bake sale at Sally's office on Friday, so I made some more of my diabetic-friendly Oatmeal-Craisin Rocks with Splenda tm and Olivio tm. Since it's December I also made a batch of something more festive (and more sugary) -- Cool Whip tm Cookies using Red Velvet cake mix. Fast and simple, and Oh so tasty!  My kinda Christmas cookies.

1 Box Cake Mix (I used red Velvet, but the sky's the limit)

8 oz tub  Cool Whip tm or generic equivalent, chilled in the freezer for an hour.

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup Confectioners' Sugar for coating

Put the cake mix in a bowl, add the beaten eggs, and stir to combine. Gradually fold in the Cool Whip until the color of the batter is homogenous. Caution, this batter is really sticky!

Drop balls of batter (I used my disher) into a shallow bowl of confectioners' sugar and roll to coat each ball.   Place on parchment-covered baking sheets with room to spread, and bake at 350F for 15-18 minutes. Et violà!

The cookies are fragile when fresh from the oven. Slide them off the baking sheet using the parchment paper and allow to cool thoroughly before carefully lifting them from the paper with a spatula. Makes about two dozen cookies.

 

Here's the first dozen.

Lesson Learned: Chill the batter for 15 or 20 minutes before dishing/rolling/traying. Look at the picture below. 

 

The cookie on the left was dished/rolled and baked after the mixture sat at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. The cookie on the right was from the second batch.  While the first batch baked, I put the remaining batter in the fridge where it stiffened up quite a bit. The result -- a taller, less spread-out, nicer looking cookie.

Interesting Fruit Course

At the marina where I live aboard my sailboat ManCave,  we have a vessel called Rumours On The Water, a really nicetwo-storey styling salon/spa on a 50+ foot catamaran hull. The owner, Marsha, and her stylists host a customer-appreciation party the first week of December each year. Great food, great live music, a good time is had by all. This year, Marsha's masseuse, a lady named Savannah, made an interesting fruit-course/appetizer I thought I'd share.

 

This photo, taken without flash,  is seriously "adjusted" 

for the very low-light conditions of the outdoor, night time party.

Photo by John Peterson

Take a Waffle ice cream cone, dip it in chocolate ganache, sprinkl it with ground graham cracker (I think), then fill with assorted whole fruit -- blueberries, red and black raspberries, etc. There might even have had some chocolate drizzled on top the fruit. This is a great presentation to keep in mind for your next informal party!!