THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP CRANBERRY COOKIE

I saw this recipe while we were on vacation in MA recently. I was intrigued with it after seeing all of the dormant cranberry bogs and decided I would make them after we got back home.

I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out since it appeared some ingredients often found in cookies weren't listed. But they were appropriately named ... they are the BEST Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookie.

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP CRANBERRY COOKIE

1        stick (1/2 cup) butter (I used unsalted butter)
1/4    cup sugar
1/3    cup packed light brown sugar
1        large egg
1/2    teaspoon vanilla
1/2    teaspoon baking soda
1        cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1        cup dried cranberries
1        cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1        cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Cream butter (I softened it for 10 seconds in the microwave on High) and sugar til smooth.

Add egg and beat.

Add vanilla.

Add the flour and baking soda that have been combined.

Add cranberries, chips, and walnuts.

Using a tablespoon size cookie scoop, place a slightly heaping scoop of dough about 2 inches apart. (no more than 12 on a cookie sheet) Flatten slightly with fingers.

Bake for 9 to 10 minutes.

Cool slightly - less than a minute and remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

CRANBERRY APPLESAUCE BREAD

After seeing all of the dormant cranberry bogs when we were on Cape Cod, I couldn't resist trying this recipe from my Blue Ribbon Recipes cookbook for Cranberry Applesauce Bread. Submitted by Derolyn St. Louis from Freetown, Massachusetts, it won a blue ribbon at the Cranberry Harvest Festival in Carver, MA. I made a few changes to reduce the sugar calories and used half whole wheat pastry flour for the flour to make it multi-grained. It tasted really good with my Greek yogurt for breakfast.The other great thing is since I made two mini loaves, I froze one to enjoy at a later date. Always a good thing!

CRANBERRY APPLESAUCE BREAD

 2      cups fresh or frozen cranberries, chopped (I did use frozen cranberries
1        tablespoon sugar plus 2/3 cup sugar (I used 1/3 cup truvia baking blend for the latter amount)
1/2    cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1        egg
1        teaspoon vanilla
2       cups flour (I used 1 cup all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour)
1        teaspoon baking powder
1        teaspoon baking soda
1        teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2    teaspoon salt
1/2    teaspoon ground nutmeg
1        cup applesauce (I used unsweetened applesauce)
1/4    cup milk (I used skim milk)
1        cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 1 large (9 x 5) or 2 small (4 x 61/4) loaf pans.

In a small bowl, toss the chopped cranberries with the 1 tablespoon sugar and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and the remaining sugar. Beat in the egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg with a whisk.

Combine the applesauce and milk in another bowl.

Add the flour mixture and applesauce mixture alternately to the creamed mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat well.

Combine the cranberries and nuts together and then fold them into the mixture.

Pour into the prepared pan(s).

Bake for 50 minutes (large loaf) or 45 minutes (for smaller loaf) or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool on wire rack in pans for 10 minutes.

Remove and continue to cool on wire rack.

CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP CAKE COOKIES

These cookies were fast and easy an reduced calories. Just what the afternoon called for (well, fast and easy anyway) when I was trying to find something to make and take to Hillcrest Thrift Shop. The volunteers like reduced calories but not reduced taste. If I had left out the chocolate chips, they would have been sugar free. BUT then they wouldn't have been chocolate chip cookies, would they?

If you aren't counting calories, please feel free to use a regular cake mix. 

CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP CAKE COOKIES

1         Sugar-Free Devil's Food cake mix (regular cake mix will work also)
1/2     cup margarine, softened
2        tablespoons milk
1         teaspoon vanilla
1         large egg
1/2     cup nuts, chopped (I used walnuts)
1         cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the cake mix, margarine, milk, vanilla, and egg in a large mixing bowl. Beat until completely combined.

Stir in nuts and chips. (Batter will be thick.)

Drop dough on ungreased cookie sheet no more than 12 on the sheet. (I used my tablespoon size cookie scoop and turned the "ball" over so that the flat size was on top.)

Bake for 10 minutes. Edges will be set and center will be soft.

Cool 1 minute on pan before removing to cool on wire rack.








 Store covered. Recipes makes 3-1/2 dozen cookies.

OLD FASHIONED BREAD PUDDING from the AMISH

I guess I will have to eat the whole thing. I love Bread Pudding, but my husband doesn't like "soggy bread". He says he doesn't even like if his sandwich or toast gets wet from meat juices, etc on his plate. Oh well, his loss. I gave some to Janice and Leon and she told me it was the best she had ever eaten....even better than her mother's. That's quite a complement. 

I saw this recipe for Old Fashioned Bread Pudding in my cookbook called from Amish and Mennonite kitchens and decided I would make it anyway. It doesn't have a lot of sugar which is important to me in recipes. 

I don't think I will have any problems eating it. (Much of the instructions are my own.)

OLD FASHIONED BREAD PUDDING from the AMISH

5       slices bread, at least 3 days old (I used Sara Lee Whole Wheat Bread
1        cup raisins, optional (I used 1/2 cup of raisins)
3       cups milk (I used skim milk)
1/3    cup sugar
pinch of salt
3       eggs, slightly beaten
1/4    teaspoon cinnamon
2       tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place a 9 x 13 - inch pan with about 1/2 inch of water in it in the oven while it is preheating. Grease or spray an 8 x 8 - inch square baking pan. Make sure the smaller pan will fit in the larger pan before you start. (The recipe called for a 9 x 9 - inch baking pan, but I didn't have a larger pan it would fit in. The 8 x 8 - inch pan worked fine for the recipe.)

Lightly toast the bread. Butter it generously and then break it into small pieces (about 1/4 inch square). Arrange in the bottom of smaller pan.

Sprinkle with raisins.

*Scald the milk. (I measured the milk in a four-cup measuring cup and heated on high for about 2 minutes. Check the temperature. It needs to be 82 degrees F.) Stir in the sugar and salt. Check temperature again. Let cool if necessary to about 82 degrees F.* See note at the bottom.

Beat eggs in another mixing bowl that will hold about 4 cups of liquid. Pour just a little bit of the milk mixture into the eggs, stirring constantly. Continue doing this several times. 

Finish pouring the milk into the mixture and stir.

Pour the milk/egg mixture over the bread. Make sure all of the bread is completely wet. Press down the bread pieces if necessary.

Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the top.

Carefully set the smaller baking pan into the larger pan with the hot water.

Bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center of the pudding comes out clean. (1 hour was perfect in my oven.)

Carefully remove the smaller pan and set on wire rack to cool.

Can serve hot or cold, but I highly recommend waiting til it is cold. 

The next day it tasted so much better and looked more like bread pudding. 

Cover leftover and store in refrigerator.

* Since I wrote this post, I was doing some research and discovered that when I had originally checked the temperature for scalded milk, I misread the number. The temperature is 82 degrees C or 180 degrees F. Since I used the 82 degrees number as F and my recipe worked out great, I didn't change my number. But since I had said to scald the milk, I wanted to explain my findings after researching it further this morning. 

Older recipes called for scalding the milk because of health reasons. Now most milk is pasteurized which kills the bacteria. This said if you are making bread and the recipe calls for scalded milk, that is because the scalded milk can deactivate the whey protein in the milk that weakens the gluten and can prevent the dough from rising properly. 

Scalding milk helps infuse the flavors and can make desserts have more flavor. It can also cut down on cooking time. It is important to cool it down (110 degrees F) before adding other ingredients especially eggs (this always makes me nervous) because if the mixture is too hot the eggs will cook. Remember if you are heating the milk in a pot on top of the stove, you should stir it constantly while heating over medium low heat to prevent it from sticking to the bottom and burning.

Because of my error, I heated the milk in the microwave to 100 degrees F. I cooled it down to 82 degrees F before I started adding a little bit of it to the eggs stirring constantly. The bread pudding I made was very flavorful and so I think my temperatures were sufficient for the recipe. 

I hope this note has helped. I got some of my information at thekitchn.com.

DREAM VACATION IN MASSACHUSETTS, DAYS 6 & 7

"Time flies when you are having fun!" This is so true when you are on vacation. It seemed like we had just gotten to Cape Cod and all of a sudden, it was our last full day. Since we had not explored the western end of the Cape, that's what we did on our last full day. Leon called it "Briggling". That what he and Janice have always called it when they didn't have plans and what my husband and I might call  "goofing off". 

The only definite plan we had for the day was checking out the donuts at Honey Dew. 







Since we had arrived on the Cape a week, it seemed like we saw a Dunkin Donut on every street corner. It wasn't like we hadn't heard of them, but seeing this many? I said something to the park rangers when we were at the visitors center for the Cape Cod National Seashore Park on Monday and Mr. Ellis said it was a MA company. While writing this post, I learned that Dunkin' Donuts started in 1950 by William Rosenberg in Quincy. 

When we were in Plymouth on Sunday, we decided we had to try one. First we had to stand in line to be waited on and then they were out of glazed donuts (what I wanted) and jelly filled (what Janice wanted). We ended up get some Munchkins - chocolate cake donut holes and miniature jelly filled donuts. We weren't impressed, but we did admit it was late in the afternoon so they might have been out there for a while.

On Wednesday while exploring the Cape we had seen a couple of Honey Dew Donuts shops.  It is another MA donut company. Not as old as Dunkin' Donuts (the first Honey Dew Donuts opened in 1973), its creator, Richard Bowden, started making donuts with his dad when he was 12. Since we hadn't been too impressed with the Dunkin' Donuts, we knew we wanted to try the Honey Dew Donuts.

Even though there was one in Mashpee that was in the opposite direction from where we intended to go that day, we went to bed Thursday night with plans to have breakfast there. The doughnuts were so good. I ate a glazed one and Janice had her jelly filled one and then went back and got a powdered sugar one. (I think she shared the powdered one with Leon. Our husbands had ordered breakfast sandwiches instead of doughnuts.)

Researching for this post, I discovered that in 1978, a Honey Dew Donuts in Plainsville, MA was the first coffee and donut shop to have a drive-thru in New England. 




Other than eating our breakfast at Honey Dew Donuts, once again we had no definite plans when we left the cottage that morning. If we saw something that looked interesting, we would stop. Route 28 continues throughout this part of the Cape and even branches off for Route 28A just like Route 6 did with 6A. The state map we had showed other roads that went closer to the beach, but didn't identify them. I also had a Discovery Map for the Falmouth Area which did give street names.

It was foggy that morning as we drove through Falmouth. Martha's Vineyard across Vineyard Sound wasn't very visible. We stopped at one area and could see two ferries, one that had left Martha's Vineyard and the other one almost there from Falmouth cross in the choppy water. We couldn't help but notice how the beach areas changed as we drove around the southern tip of the Cape. By the time we made it to the Nobska Lighthouse the rocky shore was beautiful but a surprise.

The Nobska Lighthouse at Nobska Beach in Woods Hole. The original Nobsque lighthouse built in 1828 was a stone cottage with a light tower on top of it. This tower was constructed in 1876. It is now automated.

Nobska Beach

Woods Hole is one of those picturesque New England harbor village.

A few miles after I took 28A, I saw this house and turned around to go back and see what it was. Bourne Farm dates back to 1775. It is now owned and operated by the Salt Pond Area Bird Sanctuary. We loved its look of a New England farm.

The brown area behind the front wooden fence is a freshly plowed field ready to be planted. You can see the stone fence on the right to mark the property line. You can see it better in the next picture.

In North Falmouth, we stopped at Uncle Bill's Country Store and Silver Lounge Restaurant. We stopped just for the Country Store, but after Janice and I took so long choosing what we wanted to buy, we decided to eat lunch at the attached restaurant.

"Taking the scenic route" as Janice and I call it, we saw much of the area before we finally found Wing's Neck Lighthouse. (I have zoomed in to get this picture. We were not this close to it.

Wing's Neck Lighthouse

We didn't notice until we were finished that there was a sign announcing it was a private residence and no pictures were allowed. It was a private residence from 1947 to 1999. Now it is a vacation rental. How cool would that be!

Eventually working our way back out to 28A, I noticed a tower like structure above the trees on my left. Since no one else saw it, I had to turn around to see what it was. That's how we stumbled upon the Cape Cod Canal. 

Not sure if you can tell from the picture, but that is the train track. When a train comes along, the section is lowered for the train to cross the canal. The current was really swift coming from Cape Cod Bay  . Janice and I watched a family of ducks out for an afternoon "float" down the canal. They were moving too fast for me to get a picture of them, but the little ducks were so cute.

The Cape Cod Canal connects Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay. We had crossed the canal on the Sagamore Bridge at least seven times and didn't realize we were crossing a canal. When we crossed it the eighth time going back to Mashpee and our cottage, I looked down at it to recognize we were crossing the canal. I should say the Sagamore Bridge is 4 narrow lanes and probably everyone was watching my driving over it and not looking down at the water.

Driving back to Mashpee and stopping by Roche Bros again to get something to eat for dinner back at our cottage, the day would win with Janice and me beating our husbands in our last game of canasta. That meant we won 3 of the 5 nights we played. After never winning on our trip to Mesa, AZ back in April, it felt good to come out the CHAMPS! 

Our week had been a fantastic one overall. Even though we didn't get to see a lot of the things we had hoped to see, we were very happy with what we did see. We will just have to go back another time to see more.

A number of things stand out in my mind as I think about the week....

How nice everyone was. From drivers waiting and signally me to pull out on the road when the traffic was heavy ... to helping us with the mass transportation ... to the attendant in the parking garage that didn't make us pay for a lost ticket ... to the girl who told us about Sullivan's Tires in Quincy ... to John at Sullivan's Tires opening up to help us with our flat tire (He even called me while we were in Boston two days later to make sure we were okay) ... to the two ladies in the visitors' center in Plymouth who gave us a lot of information about getting around in the area ... to the construction guy who volunteered to give me directions in Boston ... to Alex, the young student from Spain we met and visited with in Qunicy Market in Boston to .... I could go on and on. 

How fortunate we were to "luck" up on places that were so memorable to us ... the Adams Historical Sites ... the Cape Cod Canal ... our first lighthouse experience (Nauset Lighthouse) ... experiencing the commuter rail ... most of the eating places where we ate ... the beach nearby our cottage ... 

Boston and the Freedom Trail. Whoever thought of "marking" the trail in that manner was a genius.

I loved their accents. (Only one person, except my husband, made fun of my accent...one of the park rangers we met.)

The lack of commercialism on the Cape. At least where we drove, we saw no chains - like fast food places or stores. On the last day we did finally see a Wal-mart in Wareham and we saw a few McDonald's, Wendy's, and DQs. One of the things I enjoy so much when we travel in different parts of the country is the area places to eat and shop. Only if there is no other choice do I eat at a place I can eat at back home.

The Dunkin' Donut shops on just about every corner.

The houses. I didn't take any pictures but I loved the quaintness of the houses with wood shake shingles usually left unpainted. Some of the people had covered the front of the house with clapboards painted a color. 

All of the rotaries (aka traffic circles or roundabouts) While I didn't really like that there were no lanes marked in the circle and there were way too many exits out of the circle, everyone managed them very well and was courteous. In fact driving the area all week, we never had any "almost" moments due to reckless driving. 

The lighthouses we managed to see.

All the beautiful flowers. As I said in an earlier post, they were about a month behind us here in Kansas City. When we left, the trees were already leafing out and many of those early spring flowers were starting to fade. I didn't get pictures of all of the pretty flowers because of driving, but I enjoyed them as we drove by everyday.

Huge forsythia were everywhere

Beautiful azaleas 

Daffodils 

The resort where we stayed

And last but not least ... our (almost) nightly canasta game. Did I tell you that Janice and I were the CHAMPS? 

On Saturday, Day 7

Check out time at our cottage was at 10:00 am, but our plane wasn't leaving until 3:10 pm. So when we saw this sign, if you follow my blog, you know Janice and I wanted to go to it. I looked for a cookbook to buy but they didn't have any for sale. 

But I did find this "steal" for a dollar. They had not even attempted one puzzle.








For lunch we stopped about 30 minutes from the airport at a Not Your Average Joe's Kitchen & Bar. Don't remember what town we were in, but we enjoyed a very good lunch there .... one last chance to have clam chowder.

The drive into Boston to Logan International Airport wasn't too bad. Everytime I saw heavy, slower traffic ahead, Jill, on the Garman would tell me to take an exit. That was very nice. 

At the airport Janice and I saw yet another Dunkin' Donut but they were out of most of their donuts. We did want to give them one more try. 

We had to change planes in Baltimore and while we were waiting to catch the plane, I walked around and saw .... yes, you guessed it ... another Dunkin' Donut. Without anyone knowing it, I bought a glazed one and brought it back and shared it with everyone. It was very good. (My husband prefers Krispy Kreme and nothing else quite compares, but it and the Honey Dew were both good donuts.)

And before we knew it we were back in Kansas City ready to plan our next vacation.

READ about our day in Boston