lisa-s.ca

I’ve been baking a lot the past couple days for the local fair, and Miss Rachel asked if I could share the recipes, so I thought, why not. The first one I’d like to share with you is “heirloom cookies”. I wasn’t really sure how these were going to taste, but they’re actually really good. (Sorry the picture’s not really good, there was no camera so I took it with my webcam…)

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, melted (recipe says softened, I recommend melted)
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 1 to 1 1/4 cup finely ground almonds (I only used 1 cup and they turned out fine)
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1/2 cup icing sugar (for coating)
• 2 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 325F.
2. Cream butter and icing sugar in a medium bowl.
3. Blend in vanilla and almonds.
4. Combine flour and salt. (I do this on top of the wet mixture – less dishes, but you can also do this in a separate bowl.)
5. Stir the wet and dry mixtures together until smooth.
6. Shape dough into balls the size of a teaspoon or a tablespoon and place on an ungreased cookie sheet (or cover your cookie sheet in parchment paper, then it’s easier to clean). I used a small cookie scoop to size them then formed them into balls.
7. Put cookies in oven and bake for 15-18 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the icing sugar and cinnamon for the coating in a small bowl (I just used a cereal bowl.).
8. Take the cookies out of the oven and roll in the cinnamon mixture. Place on a cooling rack to cool. (Try not to move the cookies after you put them on the cooling rack.) You can sprinkle any excess cinnamon mixture on top of the cookies.

Yields about 2-3 dozen cookies. Cookies have a similar texture to a shortbread or sugar cookie.

My aunt said that my Grandma used to make this for my Dad’s family (15 kids, 5 girls, 10 boys) growing up. It makes enough to feed seven large appetites with lots of leftovers. Depending on the situation, my family could use it for two meals. Some of the measurements aren’t exact, but even so, they’re pretty straight forward. Also, I make the recipe sound way more complicated than it is. (It works something like, cook pasta, add ingredients, add topping, throw in the oven.)

Ingredients

• 1 (~900g) bag pasta, cooked and drained, we use the spirally pasta
• 1 (10oz, 284mL) can of tomato soup
• 1 (500mL) can of tomatoes
• 2-4 cups cheddar or marble cheese, diced (cubes should be ~1cm^3)
• Bread crumbs from 2-4 slices of bread
• Butter to “coat” bread crumbs

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. If you’re using one (very) large casserole dish, butter the dish and add the pasta too it. Otherwise, dump the pasta into a large bowl.
3. Add the cheese, tomatoes, and tomato soup and mix in. I like to add them one at a time, but you can add them all at once if you want.
4. If you used a bowl for mixing, butter your casserole dishes and add the pasta mixture to them.
5. Melt the butter and mix it in with the bread crumbs so that they’re damp and slightly sticky. (They fall apart easily.) How many bread crumbs you use really depends on how much topping you want. I like a lot of topping, so I normally use four slices of bread.
6. Spread bread crumb mixture over your casseroles.
7. Cover your casseroles and place them in the oven. I usually make one big one and it takes more than two hours to cook, but if you have smaller ones they will take less time.
8. Uncover you casseroles about half an hour before you plan to serve them.
9. Casseroles are ready when the cheese is melted and the center is warm (well, hot really).

It’s pretty flexible. You could add different ingredients or a different topping if you wanted and it would probably still turn out fine.