Dessert

For years up until she passed away a few years ago, my mom would send us a big container of Peanut Butter Balls at Christmas time, because they were always one of my favorite treats that she made. And in later years it was also an extra incentive for her that one of my sons loved them as much as I did (the other is not so big on peanut butter)

Here is her recipe - we made it with pecans instead of walnuts - and I think it was a good change.

• 1 cup nuts ( 100g ), crushed smallish
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup crisp rice cereal
• 1 tablespoon butter

Here are some really quick apple pie pockets that go together literally in just a couple of minutes - I can get up for 5am for my early morning Aikido class, and have one in my hand out of the oven 30 minutes later when I'm jumping in the car. This assumes you have some dough in the fridge - which I strongly encourage you to get into the habit of doing for making all sorts of pockets, pizzas, buns and more. Not only are these quick, but if you use whole wheat dough they are quite healthy too, with no fat aside from the little bit used to make the dough, and just 2 teaspoons of brown sugar per pocket.

Bleenies were one of the first "indigenous" foods I learned to make on my year on a student exchange in Soviet Ukraine. I wish for the life of me I could recall exactly how we used to make them, but I do recall it was really easy, and not really a recipe per-se but just tossing a few things together. It almost always involved some sort of soured milk product - either something like kefir that had been intentionally soured, or milk that had gone off, which happened a lot with their shoddy milk supply chain.

This recipe is one I got from a Romanian woman who served them at a BBQ she hosted last summer. It is easy to throw together, and pretty flexible too. In fact, the "recipe" she gave me did not really list the amounts of anything except the 1 litre of milk! So I've put some solid numbers on those ingredients in the many times I've made this since then.

• 1 litre milk
• 70 to 100g sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 to 2 and 2/3 cups flour (see below)

This recipe has made every person who says "I don't like egg nog" change their mind. Note that this is best when it is allowed to sit for at least 8 days.

Chocolate Pound Cake

Mix and then let cool:

½ pound soft margarine. (Do not use butter... it spoils the texture)

10 tablespoon cocoa (Be generous with it... heaping tablespoons please!)

3 cups sugar

1 ½ cups boiling water

When I was a kid, the grandmother of one of my friends used to make toffee apples and sell them to all the kids in the neighbourhood. This was an important part of the summer in the Red Row - Mrs Fiefield's toffee apples! Recently a friend was talking about making caramel apples, and this reminded me of my childhood. I finally got around to making these for the boys, and the first attempt turned out extremely well. As I perfect the recipe I'll do a video.

This was surprisingly easy to make even for someone like me who has never made boiled candy before. I did not have a candy thermometer but I did have my trusty brewing thermometer, which is accurate even up to the 150C required to make this.

Preparing pie pumpkin is pretty easy to do, and the same method can be used for squash as well. Instead of going through the labourious task of peeling it raw, just cut it up, bake it for an hour at 350F, then let it cool and finally peel it.

Here is a great recipe that my wife got from the Harrowsmith cookbook. She is still tweaking it and will post her final version when done. In the meantime she says that her variation is to omit the orange rind, and add instead 1/4 - 1/2 tsp cardamom. The last cake she made, which I served at our weekly CSA pickup since it was made with zukes from our CSA Saffire Farms, she even added 1/2 cup of teff (an Etheopian grain) for the extra nutrition -- it added the teeniest little crunch, which was rather nice. She has also used up to 2.5 cups of zucchini in this recipe and it has worked fine.

The kids love this stuff - even after knowing it has so much zucchini in it. Indeed, you'd never guess. It simply tastes like a really awesome chocolate cake.

I've been pretty big into making desserts with vegetables as the late summer harvest goes into overdrive -- making a beet cake to use up those prolific, purple roots appearing in my CSA order seemed a no-brainer.

This is my mom's recipe, which is enough for 5 pies. I give her original recipe, as well as my own version below which is good for just 1 pie if you don't need the full amount. Her recipe calls for lard but you can use vegetable shortening if you wish. I actually use my own home-rendered pork fat. Another fun thing to do is save up your bacon fat and use it, to get a wonderful bacon-flavoured pie crust!

• 5 cups flour (I use whole wheat)
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 4 tsp vinegar in
• 3/4 cup cold water (may need up to 1/4 cup more)
• 1 lb lard or shortening