Tag: December

Mrs. Hall’s Shortbread

Posted December 14, 2023 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

A meal inspired by ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL can only end with this dessert: Mrs. Hall’s shortbread! Although Mrs. Hall is known for dozens of delicious dishes, her shortbread is iconic. In fact, PBS even published an official recipe for these cookies! Naturally, that’s the recipe I used in today’s post (though I did spruce it up a tiny bit with a cookie mold!). The snowflake cookie mold used here is made by House on the Hill and was gifted to me by a family friend. This was my first time using a cookie mold, but it was super easy and fun. Definitely planning on using it again to make make Christmas cookies later this month.

I love how the finished cookies turned out. They’re super buttery, and the snowflake pattern shows up perfectly! My husband and son are especially big fans. Three cheers for Mrs. Hall and her shortbread! 😀

Cranberry Candy

Posted December 29, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

A bit of a misnomer, Cranberry Candy isn’t a candy but rather a beverage, most likely named for its sugary sweetness. I chose Cranberry Candy as my STARDEW VALLEY bonus recipe because the cranberry flavor and bright red color make it perfect for the Christmas season, which my family is still celebrating (we’re Catholic, so we celebrate Christmas until January 6th).

The recipe in the game lists the ingredients as cranberry, apple, and sugar. For the apple, I went with sparkling apple cider, since Cranberry Candy strikes me as something fizzy like soda or sparkling punch. To get the cranberry flavor, I went with standard cranberry juice, but I wanted to add something more. I tried a little pomegranate juice in the mix, and I loved it! It deepens the flavor (and the color) without overpowering the apple and cranberry, creating a complexity I really enjoy. My favorite part about it is that, even though all the flavors meld together, you can isolate individual elements of each ingredient: the richness of the pomegranate, the tart astringency of the cranberry, and the fizzy brightness of the apple cider.

Whip up a batch for your holiday festivities and toast a fruitful year in STARDEW VALLEY!

P.S. Just a quick reminder, I’m taking January and February off to finish my upcoming cookbook, so this will be my last post for a couple months. Enjoy the rest of the holiday season, and I’ll see you in March! 😀

Pink Cake

Posted December 15, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

Pink Cake may sound basic, but this dainty dessert hides a secret ingredient: melon! In STARDEW VALLEY, Pink Cake is a favorite of several villagers. The in-game thumbnail shows a cute pink tube cake topped with red heart sprinkles. The ingredients are listed as flour, sugar, egg, and pink melon (a fruit unique to the game, which looks like a pink cantaloupe). I was intrigued by the idea of a melon-based baked good, so I chose this cake for my STARDEW VALLEY dessert!

For my sponge, I used a variation on a recipe for melon chiffon cake I found on Singapore Shiok. My favorite part about this recipe is that, in addition to melon flavoring, it also uses real cantaloupe. I topped it with my go-to vanilla buttercream, since I felt like adding melon flavor to the frosting would make the recipe too “one note.” And how lucky was I to find these jumbo pixelated heart sprinkles from Nerdy Nummies for my decorations? They’re just the right size, and the 8-bit look is just right for a recipe based on a computer game.

This was my first time making chiffon, and it took me two tries to get it right. Chiffon can be finicky—the key to success is to fully incorporate the flour without over mixing. Doing too much or too little can lead to a deflated cake. Keep folding until you really don’t see any more bits of flour. The final result is worth it: fluffy, delicately sweet, and packed with melon flavor.

Spicy Eel

Posted December 1, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

I don’t like fish, but I LOVE eel. I had it for the first time last year on sushi, and it blew my mind. If the idea of eating eel makes you squeamish, I’m begging you—please please PLEASE give it a try! It’s truly lovely. It has a delicacy similar to fish, but it has a meatier, heartier flavor that reminds me of chicken.

Spicy Eel is my favorite food from the game STARDEW VALLEY. When eaten in-game, it adds buffs to speed and luck, making it perfect for when you plan to spend the day racing all over the map collecting foragables or delving deep in the Mines.

Apart from eel, hot pepper is the only other ingredient listed in the in-game recipe for Spicy Eel. Judging by the dish’s thumbnail, it looks like the eel is brushed with a red sauce. I decided to make my sauce with gochujang (spicy chili paste) for my hot pepper element, taking my inspiration from tteokbokki. Basically I just played with the ingredients and consistency of the sauce until I was happy with it. It’s important to make sure eel is fully cooked (see the note in the Instructions below), so I consulted the cook temp/time in a Serious Eats recipe for whole eel and tweaked it to suit the size of my fillets.

As a self-professed spice wimp, this dish was a little too hot for me, but it was ultra flavorful. I’ll definitely make a milder version for myself in the future, but if you like your food to bring the heat, Spicy Eel is the dish for you! 🙂

Peanut Butter Skillet S’more

Posted December 16, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

Time for the ultimate camping recipe: a s’more! Of course, not just any s’more. This bad boy has peanut butter mixed into the graham cracker crust, a layer of intense dark chocolate, and a crown of toasted marshmallows scattered with peanuts, Reese’s Pieces, and mini marshmallows. Do I have your attention? 😉

Technically, there are no s’mores in HATCHET, but the main character often fantasizes about chocolate during his hungry times out in the wilderness. And nothing says “wilderness treat” like a s’more! Of course, plain s’mores would be too easy, so I decided to make a skillet s’more to amp up the specialness without losing the outdoorsy feel. My biggest fear was that it would be too sweet to actually enjoy, so I decided to make it a peanut butter s’more in order to add as many savory/salty elements as possible to create balance.

In my ideal world, this would be a campfire recipe just like my last post, Fire Roasted Foolbird. However, the weather hasn’t cooperated with open fire cooking the last couple weeks. If I get a chance, I’ll revisit this recipe in the summer and post open fire cooking instructions. Roasting the “foolbirds” has me eager to try all kinds of campfire recipes! 😀

P.S. Due to traveling for Christmas, I most likely won’t post a recipe on Dec. 29th. I will if I happen to have a lot of free time to work on it, but my official plan is for my next post to be for a new menu on January 6th.

Fire Roasted Foolbird

Posted December 2, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Today’s recipe leans hard into the rugged setting of HATCHET–we’re roasting foolbirds over an open fire!

In HATCHET, “foolbird” is what Brian calls ruffed grouse, which are plentiful in his part of the forest and make up a good chunk of his diet once he learns to hunt with a bow. Since grouse are hard to come by in the grocery store, I went with Cornish hens, which are roughly the same size.

It took a while for us to have good enough weather for this recipe (I am SO sick of rain right now), but it was worth it. I got to sit out in the yard on a mild November morning, enjoying the solitude as I stoked the fire and turned the birds. I felt peaceful and engaged at the same time. Even though I’m not usually an outdoorsy person, I felt like I was getting a brief taste of what HATCHET’s author, Gary Paulsen, loved so much about the wilderness.

Plus, the hens turned out DELICIOUS–smokey and juicy, with crisp skin. I stuffed the cavities of the birds with fresh sage and oregano, which grow in the area of Canada where the book is based, and they gave the meat just a touch of aromatic herbiness. Of course, the birds were also flavored with the best seasoning of all: the satisfaction of having cooked it myself out in nature with just a few simple tools…and the help of my fire-smart, Eagle Scout husband. 😉

Jo’s Gingerbread Nuts: Tiny Gingerbread Cookies from The Little Women Cookbook

Posted December 10, 2020 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book Events and Tours, Book of the Month Recipes, Holidays / 1 Comment

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Can you believe Christmas Eve is just TWO WEEKS away? After such a chaotic year, I’m so ready for the cozy familiarity of the Christmas season. For today’s recipe—the final post in my fiction-themed cookbook recipe series—I wanted to make something festive, fun, and chock-full of holiday spices. I found just what I wanted in the delightful LITTLE WOMEN COOKBOOK by Jenne Bergstrom and Miko Osada, co-creators of the blog 36 Eggs.

Their cookbook is a thoughtful, creative compilation of recipes inspired by the Louisa May Alcott classic. Many of the recipes are as close to period-authentic as possible, a detail I appreciated. Today we’re making their recipe for tiny, crunchy gingerbread cookies called “gingerbread nuts!” In LITTLE WOMEN, Jo shares some with some children who are getting antsy on a long train ride to New York. These cookies are super easy and a bit unique too!

Baloo’s Fruit and Nut Granola Bars from The Jungle Book

Posted December 3, 2020 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

It may seem backward to kick off December with a book set in the hot Indian jungle, but let’s face it, this has been a backward year. For some reason, I just REALLY wanted to read The Jungle Book right now. And I figured, why not just read what I want, even if it’s not seasonal? After all, this is 2020, the year from the chaos dimension. Plus, I’ve already done recipes for A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Little Women, and The Polar Express. I’m kinda running low on wintery classic books (If you have any requests in that area, feel free to send them my way!).

Anyway, I’m glad I followed my whim, because The Jungle Book is pretty darn delightful. It’s got all the fun of jungle animals having crazy adventures, but it doesn’t shy away from the harsh reality of life in the wild either. There’s danger, violence, and even death, but that’s all somehow softened by the fact that we’re experiencing it through talking animals. In many ways, Kipling’s writing style reminds me of Jack London, because in every sentence you can feel the author’s awe at the beauty and power of nature.

Today’s recipe is inspired by Baloo who, to quote Kipling, “can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey.” I wanted SO MUCH to make a traveling snack for Baloo jam packed with all his favorite foods. Something easy my kids could make and eat with me (The Jungle Book is a children’s story, after all!). I also wanted it to be healthy (because, again, children), and heavily feature Indian nuts and fruits as a nod to the story’s setting.

Polar Express Hot Chocolate with Gingerbread Marshmallows

Posted December 5, 2019 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes, Holidays / 0 Comments

In just a few short weeks, we’ll come to the end of not just another year, but a whole decade. It’s crazy to think how much things change in that amount of time. A decade ago I was 21, halfway through college, and working 3 jobs to pay tuition. I was SUPER busy. Now I’m married with 2 kids, a mortgage, and a food blog. Last year I achieved one of my life goals: getting a book published by the time I turned 30 (though I’ll admit when I first set that goal, I thought I’d be writing fiction instead of cookbooks!). And I’ve got another book coming out next September, so…still super busy. I guess things don’t change THAT much. 😆

These blessings have definitely enriched my life, but they’ve brought a lot of chaos too, which is why I want to close out 2019 with a cozy, soul-nurturing recipe–something to prepare me for Christmas and fortify me for a new decade. This got me thinking about “The Polar Express,” which I’ve wanted to feature on the blog for ages. The kids in the book drink hot chocolate on the train on their way to the North Pole, and NOTHING says “cozy and soul-nuturing” like hot chocolate! ^.^

For my inspiration, I used a hot chocolate I once drank a fancy brunch buffet at Drury Lane Theater in Oak Brook Terrace. Folks, it was downright CHUGGABLE. It was sweet but not too sweet, and even though the chocolate flavor was rich, it was more reminiscent of milk chocolate instead of the dark, intense chocolate flavor I usually shoot for with homemade hot chocolate. It was kid-friendly without compromising quality, and that hit all the right notes for me.

Since the book specifically mentions hot chocolate and not hot cocoa, I used chopped up chocolate bars to make it authentic (I recently learned that “hot chocolate” has actual melted chocolate in it while “hot cocoa” uses cocoa powder. The more you know!). I also dialed back the darkness of the chocolate. Most homemade versions call for 70% dark chocolate or darker, but I kept it at 60% to achieve the mellow, approachable quality I wanted. I kept my flavors simple too: just sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. I didn’t use any coffee or cayenne to intensify the chocolate flavor since we’re keeping this kid-friendly, but you can certainly experiment with them if you’re making this for adults (I’d use coffee or cayenne but not both).

The book doesn’t mention marshmallows, but I just finished a marshmallow recipe for my new cookbook and wanted to experiment with unique flavorings. I threw in some gingerbread spices and voilà–the perfect pairing!

NOTE: The marshmallows need to set overnight.

Veruca’s Salted Dark Chocolate Caramels

Posted December 20, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

I LOVE chocolate caramels. I don’t mean caramels with chocolate on top (though those are good too). I’m talking about caramels that have had chocolate mixed into caramel itself as it heats, so you wind up with this dark brown, lusciously chocolaty confection. It’s a weakness of mine, so when I started brainstorming ideas for a Veruca Salt recipe for my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory menu, salted chocolate caramels stuck firmly in my brain.

However, my experience with making chewy caramels is limited…and by “limited,” I mean I’ve never actually done it. I accidentally made soft caramel while making honeycomb candy for the first time several years ago, but I don’t think even that counts, since I’ve never been able to replicate the result.

Rather than try to invent something on the fly, I found a recipe from Taste of Home that looked both simple and reliable. The only change I made was adding a little kosher salt to the top, and OH YOU GUYS IT WAS AMAZING. So chewy, rich, dark, and not-too-sweet. The salt turned out to be the perfect addition, adding just the right level of complexity.

I will DEFINITELY make these again. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Do I have baking chocolate…I do! I could make these now!

Now is good.

NOTE: This recipe needs to set for at least 5 hours.