Happy Friday! I’m enjoying my morning coffee and having fun reading through all of your blog comments yesterday. So many of you are carrying on family legacies in your knitting/quilting/sewing/crocheting. I know future generations will be the lucky recipients of some of your beautiful work. The winner of yesterday’s blog contest is Melanie in Utah who wins this mega bundle of Wonderland Yarns Messenger Hat Kit! (The pattern is on the inside of the label, and this bundles makes two hats. It’s a sport weight yarn and there are 516 yards in the bundle.) Melanie, we’ll get this shipped out to you today, and I hope you enjoy it! Remember, we’re celebrating our Eighth Anniversary with eight blog contests over the next week and a half. See the end of today’s post for the details on Contest #3 and get entered.
Today’s recipe is one that our Office Manager Lynn shared with us. Her family makes this every year at Thanksgiving. We tried it this summer and it was delicious. It has a great caramel/maple taste, and we used maple syrup from the Arnold Family Farm (cousins!). I’ll bet it would be awesome on pecan pie, or with a few pecans sprinkled on top.
Lynn’s Maple Ice Cream
6 large egg yolks
1 cup pure maple syrup (the darker the syrup, the stronger the taste)
2 tsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup half and half
1 1/2 cups light cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Beat the egg yolks with the maple syrup, flour and salt. Set aside.
Bring the half and half to a simmer in a heavy saucepan. Then slowly beat the hot half and half into the eggs and maple syrup. Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and place over low heat. Stir constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon until the custard begins to thicken slightly. (Be careful not to let the mixture boil or the eggs will scramble.)
Remove from heat and pour the hot maple custard through a strainer into a large, clean bowl. Allow to cool slightly, then stir in the cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight.
Stir the chilled custard, then pour it into your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. When finished, the ice cream will be soft serve, or transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze for 2 hours or more for firmer ice cream.
Today’s Contest Question: Do you have a favorite family recipe that you make at just certain times of the year? (And if so, why not make it more often? Or would it be less special that way?) Leave a comment below and we’ll randomly draw a winner to receive our next great prize. Watch for the prize and winner on Monday’s blog post, along with Contest #4. Thanks for helping us celebrate eight years of fun!
Sheri whoneedstomotorthroughCampLoopyProjectThreethisweekend
Hands down, Aunt Mary Lee’s chili, though it’s not limited to any special occasion. It’s a cross between a Cincinnati style chili and a Tex Mex chili, and it’s really really good. She uses it to bribe me to stay longer. 98% of the time, it works. It’s just THAT powerful. **nods**
My Mom’s sugar cookies. I just make them for the holidays and decorate them with red or green sugar crystals. I only make them around the holidays because I would be knitting myself much larger sizes if I baked these all year round.
Homemade crescent rolls for Thanksgiving!!!! I would LOVE to make them more often, but can’t stay away from them and would end up weighing 1000 pounds if they were available frequently (partially because they needs LOTS of real butter slathered on them when they are warm out of the oven!!) 🙂
At this time of year (closer to fall), the stores carry (and we’ve had trees as well to have our own harvest!) Italian Plums (sometimes called a prune, although not sure why because it’s not dried?!) It’s called Prune Küchen. It’s a coffee cake base, halved plums all over the top, then a ton of brown sugar, butter, cinnamon as the topping. YUM!!!!! I can eat an entire 9×13 pan all by myself within 24 hours 🙂
My Mom Mary’s Old Fashioned Baked Beans made in a bean crock, always in Autumn or Winter.
Snickerdoodles seem to be a Christmas cookie for some unknown reason. They would be just as delicious any time of year, they just don’t get made.
My mom makes incredible brisket but we only eat it at Passover. It would be an awesome wintertime family meal, but I do think it would be less special if we made it more casually. This way we look forward to Passover even more!!
Magic Carpet Cookies from the Betty Crocker Cookie Book! My mother made them every year at Christmas because she knew they were my favorites. I make them now and always appreciate her and the time she spent because they are very fiddly, breakable cookies.
My mom makes plum bread only at Christmas. Everyone looks forward to having it and it’s special since we only have it that one time a year.
Yes indeed – brandysnaps. I only make them between Christmas and 12th Night. They’re a bit tricky but are incredibly good, especially when filled with whipped cream.
My family has meatloaf for our Christmas dinner. Weird? Everyone is usually surprised when I tell them that, but we only ever have it on Christmas, and it’s no ordinary meatloaf! 🙂 My mama also makes killer pralines around Christmas.
I haven’t actually made them yet, but my mom would make sweet potato-stuffed baked apples for Thanksgiving every year. This year may be the first year DH and I host his family’s Thanksgiving, so I’m planning to make them and continue the tradition.
My grandma used to kind of cream everything in sight for thanksgiving and Christmas. Creamed carrots, creamed cauliflower, creamed spinach. She made a white or bechemel sauce and poured it on. I make creamed carrots for thanksgiving. She also always had the jello/pudding course between dinner and dessert on thanksgiving,
Perfect. I just bought an ice cream maker.
Grandma’s Swedish Meatballs. We make them from scratch only at Christmas and they are special! Every year “we say we should make them more often”, but we never do!
We make homemade Chex mix from about mid December through the New Year. A few big batches get made each year but only around that time. It wouldn’t be the holidays if we didn’t have it.
My sister’s butterscotch shortbread cookies are made right after Thanksgiving for Christmas. While very good as soon as they cool down enough to eat, they are absolutely delicious when allowed to “mellow” for a couple of weeks, making them the best cookies to serve at Christmas gatherings or to give as Christmas gifts to the special people and families in my life.
I make my Grandma Connoyer’s oatmeal cake for my dad’s birthday almost every year! I make it other times too, everyone likes it so why save it? 🙂
My favorite family recipe is my Mom’s Rhubarb Crisp. It is so crazy good! And I only make it in the early summer when Rhubarb is in season. I look forward to it every year!
For over 25 years our family has enjoyed a massive prime rib roast for Christmas dinner. We can afford this treat only once a year.
Potato salad is the family recipe on my husband’s side. Each of us tweak the originial recipe just a bit to make it our own. I make it through out the year whenever I have a craving, but the 4th of July picnic is a must!
Every fall I make pumpkin pie from scratch. Only in the fall, because I like to use fresh pumpkin, but I make it as often as I can because it’s too good for just Thanksgiving and Christmas!
Each fall, I make my famous taco soup. It’s a great thing to eat when it starts getting cool outside.
My grandmother’s nusbruchen recipe. I make it at Christmas. It is a cookie made of ground pecans, egg whites and sugar. When I was a girl I measured the ingredients and wrote down the recipe. She never used a written recipe. I am so happy I have it now.
My Grandma’s English Toffee Recipe. I have fond memories as a kid eating it at Christmas every year. I now have the recipe and also make it every Christmas for gifts for my family. I do not make it any other time of the year, because it is pure butter and sugar, so good but best as a once a year treat!
We make taco soup and white chicken chili in the winter. I also devour all of the pumpkin spice flavored things that appear in the stores.
Speculoos! Dutch spice cookies that we only make around the times of the winter holidays. In Holland, they are special to St Nicholas Day which is Dcember 6. We cheat a bit and make them for Christmas since in the US more people celebrate Christmas. They are the best cookies in the world. You make them by pressing dough into intricately carved wooden molds. Unmolding them and then baking them. My husband and I have been collecting antique molds which hang on the walls of our kitchen when not in use making cookies!
Pecan pies at Thanksgiving. I personally don’t like them but I make them every year for the family and my dad’s birthday is that time of year too and he lives them. I just don’t think they would taste the same at any other time of year.
My grandmother’s pizzelle cookies. Just after Thanksgiving I get to craving them and a few weeks before Christmas I must make them. And eat them. Sometimes there are a few left for Christmas, but mostly not…
I bake hot rolls using a recipe that my Great Grandmother Etta used.
I make Mother’s cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I really should buy extra bags of berries to put in the freezer. The sauce would be great with Easter ham, too.
No particular holiday-only dishes, but whenever I visit my grown children, they always ask me to make a favorite dish…for my youngest son, it’s Salmon Soufflee, my daughter loves the grilled open-face avocado sandwiches.
Every year on Christmas Eve, my dad’s side of the family has a soup called Manast. The original recipe calls for escarole but we use spinach instead since escarole can sometimes be difficult to find. It’s a spinach and chicken soup sprinkled with romano cheese. Always gives me warm, fuzzy holiday memories when we have it and I love sharing it with my kids now.
My family makes a dish called Puffy Cheese Bake, but only when we’re together in a big group. We used to have it a lot growing up, and it was one of the few dishes all of us kids liked.
Nana make a pudding pie for Thanksgiving, which my uncle and I fight over. My sister also loves it. If anyone new comes to the holiday, we tell them it’s horrible. It’s the only time of year she will make it,and I think fighting over it is part of what makes it taste so good. If it was around more often, it wouldn’t be so precious.
My mama makes the best New Orleanian pecan praline in the world – usually they were made for Christmas presents for our school teachers. I grew up helping her, and would gladly anticipate the “oops” candies that I would inherit. I unfortunately, do not have the special cooking gene it takes to make them, but come every Christmas I start craving them!
Lemon Ice Cream, very refreshing!
My mom has a pumpkin pie cake recipe that I only make in fall, which is a shame because it’s so good! I guess I associate pumpkins with fall!
I love to make pumpkin muffins in the fall. I don’t tend to make them year round because sometimes pumpkin is difficult to find in the store. My family would be happy for me to make them regardless of the season.
We used to make candied grapefruit peel every Christmas just because my father loved it. It took at least a full day, and nobody else really like it that much. Now we resurrect it every few years to see if it tastes any better to our more mature taste buds. It doesn’t, but we’ll keep trying.
We seem to make pineapple casserole – which is sort of like a pineapple bread pudding – at Christmas time although it is requested at Thanksgiving. And it is the BEST side dish to serve with ham!! I’m happy to share it with anyone that wants it!
Potato Latkes and sufganyot (jelly donuts) for Chanukah. Tradition!
Yes Pumpkin cheesecake. I only make it around ‘
Halloween-Thanksgiving time. It make 3 9in deep dish pies + Because it makes so much, making all the time we would get tired real fast of it.
It seems like I only bake cookies at Christmastime, so I guess the family favorite cookie recipes fall into the special occasion category. We don’t make them other times because we are not good at limiting ourselves so we would eat all the cookies!
Although dietary restrictions prevent me from eating it, my sister-in-law uses my mother’s brisket recipe. She generally makes it for Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah, and Passover. However, she’s also started making it for Thanksgiving. Keeping it at 4 – 6 times a year makes it special. I used to make Westinghouse Beans – green beans, onions, peppers, tomatoes – the recipe came from a friend’s cooking class.
My aunt’s pumpkin pie – only at Thanksgiving! It gives me something to look forward to!
We make gingerbread houses every Christmas. Only once a year because it takes that long to recover from the stress of putting those things together! lol
Yes, I make corn casserole every Thanksgiving. I’ve made it for Easter a few times too. It’s easy to make, but I don’t make it more often because it is definitely not a healthy dish.
I have a recipe for my mom’s Melting Moments cookies that is specially reserved for the holidays. A small butter-based cookie with homemade icing on top is a great treat to put in goodie baskets for friends and family!
Cheesy corn is required for all church potlucks