Tag Archives: molasses

One Way Not To Drink Coffee

I <3 Coffee … This is pretty well known.

I’ve done the math …

I had an amusing revelation about my coffee-of-late — frankly it was also kind of gross …. so of course I had to share about it here!  And it is cookie related by the way …..

I recently got on a crinkle kick. Growing up, my mom made chocolate crinkles as one of our Xmas cookies, and they were AMAZING! I’m not clear if crinkles are considered strictly-Xmas cookies, however going toward my next recipe book I’ve been developing an assortment of flavours — Lemon Crinkles, Orange Crinkles, Ginger Molasses Crinkles, modifications on the classic Chocolate Crinkle… Only one problem — the powdered sugar keeps cooking into my cookies and disappearing.

Chocolate Crinkles

I made mention of this problem on my personal Facebook profile and received a remark back — that if you mix a little cornstarch into your powdered sugar it won’t melt into the cookies. So the last time I experimented with with a crinkle recipe I gave this cornstarch trick a try — and had No Luck. In fact, it seemed like it melted in MORE.  At best I had spots of powered sugar on the cookies. The worse part was that I had made up a cereal bowl size mixture of powdered sugar and cornstarch and had a TON left over!

Image result for dalmatian
My cookies kinda looked like this fella and — aside from the blotchy sugar — about as happy!
Just so we’re clear, powered sugar is also know as confectioners sugar….
Not my actual bowl of confectioners sugar, but doesn’t the picture look nice with my blog post?

Lately, to use this bowl of corn-starched powered-sugar up I’ve been putting it in my coffee. Big deal, right — it’s sugar, and the cornstarch won’t hurt me — so what?!?

What happens when you put cornstarch into something hot — like hot water? It clumps, it thickens still but it thickens to itself — I didn’t even think of that! Yeah … if you don’t want dubious coffee-tasting sludge in your coffee …. this is not a way to use up the bowl of corn-starched powdered-sugar.

Image result for Duh!

Lesson learned & laughing at myself,
Don

Slow Cooker Ham & Rice – Results

Follow-up to today’s Slow Cooker Ham & Rice Experiment …

OBEY!Wouldn’t it be handy if I could somehow succinctly sum-up my slow cooker ham and rice experiment — perhaps using a 1-10 score card system or a red/yellow/green-light indicator?

Well … I don’t have that … so let’s break it down in short order.  Ready … GO!

The Rice

Rice rice baby!
Pretty idyllic looking rice, huh? Yeah, mine didn’t turn out this nice.

In the previous post I wrote two ways to slow cook rice.  I’m going to have to try this again because my 2 parts water to 1 part rice flopped.  About half of it turned to mush.  I received a text from my mom about 4 hours into cooking saying that she does equal parts water and rice then cooks on high for 1 hour.  OOPS!  When I’ve had her slow cooker rice it’s turned out great.  I’ll have to try this the next time I need rice.

The Ham

Hammy ham ham!
Also NOT my ham …. looks like a good one though!

Cooking the ham for 8 hours was of course easy.  When I pulled the pieces out of my 2 slow cookers the work to clean it out (remove the fat, bone, etc) was straightforward but a bit time consuming … but then at times I can be fastidious.

At the beginning of this work I took a nibble and the ham seemed to be on the bland side*.  I didn’t know if this was because of the way I cooked it or if it was just a lower-salt ham**.  As my ham cooled the flavour seemed to return.  I suspect this happened as a result of the water I cooked it with steaming out.

Johnny's Seasoning Salt
The Johnny’s

Ultimately I opted to give the ham a little boost improvising a simple glaze with what I had on hand.  In a 2 cup  measure I started with a healthy splash of apple cider vinegar.  Then I added a healthy dollop of molasses followed by a hearty sprinkling of Johnny’s Seasoning Salt, then about as much warm water as the molasses.  After mixing I felt that the volume was a bit low, so I doubled everything except the vinegar.  In increments I poured this around on the meat, tossed the meat, and repeated until all of my ‘glaze’ was in.  I then cooked on high for another hour.  It didn’t ‘glaze’ of course, but it made additional elements of flavour.
(Hindsight — I could have used a cap or two of liquid smoke as well.)

In the end, it turned out pretty tasty — not fantastic, but I think this shows promise.  This is definitely worth another attempt along with some further tweaking.

(WARNING – SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION in another 3… 2…)

Well, back to work on completing my ***FIRST RECIPE BOOK***.  It’s pretty close to being done!

* It made me think of the 1979 Coppola film “Apocalypse Now” when the character Jay ‘Chef’ Hicks talked about military cook training when they boiled beautiful cuts of meat — I thought my ham was destroyed.
** If you’re not familiar with how ham is cured there are 3 common ways, 2 of which use a special pink salt which gives ham its color.

Links