Recipes from the Eyeopener
Come down to our Upscale Bake Sale this Thursday, December 4, from 12-1 in the lobby of the Petro-Canada building downtown!
Welcome to the Twelve Days of Cookies!
Here’s my Mom’s recipe for Nut Balls - we could not have Christmas without these. They are like shortbread, and melt in your mouth (in fact, Jen’s Mom calls them “Melting Moments”), you can make them with any type of ground nuts, and you roll them in icing sugar while they are still warm - if they are nice and hot, the butter comes out and melds with the icing sugar, creating a fabulous icing coating.
My Mom’s Nut Balls (also called Melting Moments)
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup finely ground hazelnuts, almonds, pecans or a combination
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
pinch salt
icing sugar, for rollingPreheat oven to 325F.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes, until pale yellow and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla.
Stir in the nuts, flour and salt until you have a soft dough. Roll into walnut-sized balls and place them about an inch or two apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10-14 minutes, until pale golden on the bottoms.
Put some icing sugar into a shallow dish and roll the cookies in them to coat them completely as soon as they come out of the oven. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 2 dozen cookies.
June 02 2008 10:15 am
Patricia on 14 Oct 2008 at 12:25 pm #
Hi! I am a first time “Leave a Reply”er, and i cannot tell you how thrilled i am to see that the first reply is one about gluten-free! I am celiac too, and so are both my teenagers. We were diagnosed ages ago (me as an infant) but i have yet to find gluten-free equivalencies to “overnight” recipes: cinnamon buns, waffles, and those delicious sounding and convenient St. John’s Jug Muffins.
Any gluten-free baking suggestions you might make would be very appreciated. The children and i are AVID cbc listeners and love your spot on Tuesday mornings. Both my kids aspire to be chefs (daughter a gourmet and son a gluten-free pastry chef). We do ALOT of cooking in our house.
Thanks for your wonderful passion and taste buds!
Buddiegirl on 14 Oct 2008 at 10:05 pm #
To this day my mother will not eat oatmeal because of all the times she had to eat fried leftovers. She does however love Sunny Boy cereal and still eats a lot of it in the winter.
We were brought up to eat hot porridge every day during the winter so that we always had something in the tummy to keep us warm all morning. My favourites were always oatmeal and cream of wheat. I didn’t like Sunny Boy and I hated cornmeal porridge although my sister always liked it with a swirl of maple syrup. Sometimes as a special treat we would eat hot oatmeal with vanilla ice cream on top getting all melted and creamy, yum. With the cream of wheat we sometimes had strawberry jam swirled in to add some excitement to it.
I look forward to your spots on Tuesday morning, it’s always fun to listen to the interaction between you and Jim and Angela and you always have interesting ideas.
Barb on 04 Nov 2008 at 1:13 pm #
A friend of mine has a very old cookbook as well. It is very cool to look through. They used cookbooks as all purpose house hold help books in years gone by. There were recipes for first aid remedies included and even instructions on how to deliver a baby!
BC Barb on 05 Nov 2008 at 7:14 pm #
Give-away-Fridays..Are these bonuses limited to Calgsry area readers only? I am hoping to be included even though I am lucky enough to live on
Vancouver Island.
JulieVR on 05 Nov 2008 at 8:42 pm #
But of course - they are open to anyone! I have yet to draw a name from Australia or the UK (phew!)
Mexbird on 21 Nov 2008 at 4:09 pm #
Just want to say how much I love your blog. I never miss a day! My kids are all grown and have kids of their own but I still cook a lot. Hope I’m not too late for Give-Away-Friday,