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
Jesus’ Birthday Cake is only made at Christmas. The individual pieces are made through the year, the the full on cake? Christmas only.
Moist Buttermilk cake, with Boiled White Frosting, and freshly grated coconut sprinkled over the layers and top of the cake. Totally a Sugar bomb. It is a big cake too. Too much for normal eating.
What a good idea for Christmas!
Flourless chocolate cake every Christmas. It will also show up at other major holiday events upon occasion, but Christmas is the big one.
My Mom’s thanksgiving specialty – green beans, yellow squash, and red potatoes simmered together with her spice blend. Yum! Fills the house with the lovely scent of the holidays for me.
Grandma’s Chocolate Cake with chocolate and peppermint icing is only for birthdays.
My mom’s potato salad at Easter. I could eat the whole batch myself.
Green bean casserole at Thanksgiving and Christmas! If I don’t bring it, I don’t get to come!! I also do molasses cookies at Christmas.
I only make pot roast in the winter – it is just too warm to have the oven on before that.
I make homemade, from scratch, cinnamon rolls for Thanksgiving morning.
My husband makes the best potato salad! The first time he makes it is at Easter.
Prime rib with horseradish cream sauce and hasselback potatoes once a year for Christmas.
When I was young we would choose what kind of cake for our birthday. I would always pick Nutsy Frosting cake! Now I make it when one or both of my kids come home (which unfortunately isn’t very often). Reminds me of my youth!
My Mom had a recipe for Mother’s Best Chocolate Fudge Cake, which was always my request. Now, even if I had the recipe, it is too rich for me to eat. But your Nutsy Frosting brought back good memories!
We make white chocolate dipped pretzels together to give as gifts at Christmas. We only make then right before Christmas, even though we all love them, because this keeps them special 🙂
Deep fried brussels sprouts! Made only at Thanksgiving when we have the deep fryer set up for the turkey. Come to think of it, deep fried turkey is only a Thanksgiving thing too…
Our special family recipe is my Grandmother’s Coffee Cake. She has passed away, but we have carried on her recipe and it is usually reserved for holidays and funerals. Once in a while we just want coffee cake and it is fun to make with my kids and spend some quality time thinking about what a joy my grandmother was. I can’t help but smile from baking to eating 🙂
My mom reworked a magazine lemon cake into something special. She always made it for big family Christmas gettogethers. Even had a learn to make the cake day for family at her church kitchen. We had 12 cousins sister in laws, granddaughters and nieces come. Fun fun day.
We always have a special breakfast dish on Christmas morning. I have made it other times of the year but it isn’t the same.
In our family, Rice Chex Dessert, which does have Rice Chex, along with ice cream, coconut, and other deliciousness is a family reunion speciality. I miss the family reunion, I miss out. Even though I could just make it for myself, it probably wouldn’t taste the same.
We have a lot of signature recipes because we love to cook but my husband’s favorite dish is buffalo tacos.
There’s nothing in particular. The last couple of years, I’ve been trying out new things at holidays to start my own traditions with my husband. It’s been fun!
My family recipe is a very old-fashioned one called “coffee pie”–and yes, it is a pie made with coffee! Graham cracker crust, a sort of pudding center and meringue on the top … I haven’t made it for a while, and I think this post is going to make me pull out the recipe file and give it a whirl!
My husband loves the pasta salad I make during the the summer. It has farfalle pasta, cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, olives, and feta with a garlic olive oil balsamic vinaigrette. Thanks for the chance to win!
My mother in law’s date cookies. She made them special and oh my goodness they are wonderful.
Just the family birthday cake!
Seasonal favorites: apple crisp in the fall; pumpkin roll for Thanksgiving dessert; family fruitcake at Christmas (actually made at Thanksgiving then wrapped with cheesecloth soaked in blackberry brandy and kept in a cool spot till Christmas); asparagus anything for Easter and peach/blueberry cobbler in summer. All these just don’t taste the same if made at a different time of the year.
Oh yummy! Another fruitcake fan!
I make sweet potato dumplings at thanksgiving. My family would love to have them more often but, other than being time consuming, they would get tired of them. I enjoy having special foods only at holidays.
We make nestle toll house cookies with red and green m&ms at Christmas time. It seems like a lame christmas cookie, but everyone loves them.
Orange rolls. My mother made them for us at thanksgiving and christmas. Now I make them for my family on the same holidays. Just one little way to remember her during her favorite time of year.
ONLY @ Christmas do we make fruited wild rice stuffing/dressing. It would not be the same any other time of year, even in July when we cook a turkey w/the works on the grill.
I make bourbon balls at Christmas, my family loves them!
Chinese sticky rice is made in the spring and fall. It’s glutinous rice with pieces of sausage, peanuts, and sometimes mushrooms mixed together, wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed. They can be made any time or available at authentic Chinese dim sum. It’s time-consuming to do at home and it’s an all-hands-on-deck project. However, the customized end results are worth it.
Million dollar cookies. A form of sugar cookies, I could eat them all day. We only make them at Christmas time.
My Mom made a cranberry Jell-o salad that was topped with a cream cheese/sour cream spread. It doesn’t keep too well, and only my brother and I are still big fans, so I tend to make it for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas.
I make rum cake for Thanksgiving and usually make a couple after that, but usually don’t make any more after Christmas. I think January is the latest I’ve made it. It just tastes better during the holidays.
Just made watermelon preserves. Seasonal because of the watermelons of course. Brought back so many memories!
Green Bean Casserole. I know it sounds lame but it is literally the only recipe that my mother (not at all a cook) passed down to me from her grandma. We make it on holidays and some birthdays. My husband’s family makes Navajo Tacos, which I honestly never heard of until I met him. Yummy!
Butter cookies. We bake a bunch all the kids do the decorating and frosting of them and we pass them out to friends and neighbors for the holidays.
I love anything with pumpkin starting in the fall – pie, cookies, cupcakes, scones, bread, you name it!
I make my great grandma’s Dutch spice cookies every year at Christmas. They were my Dad’s favorite. He passed away a year and a half ago. I wasn’t sure I was going to make them again this past Christmas, the first without him. I happened to share that story with my students one day and they encouraged me to make them and that we could eat them together in class in remembrance if him. It was pretty great!
My husband isn’t a cake lover, so early in our marriage he talked me into making him a birthday pumpkin pie! The tradition stuck. I make pumpkin pie only 3 times a year—Hubbie’s Oct. b-day, Thanksgiving and Xmas (yep, that’s his favorite Xmas dessert, too) 🙂
Frosted cut out sugar cookies that are a recipe of my great grandma, who I unfortunately never got to meet. I only make them at Christmas and Halloween – I don’t think they’d be as special if I made them all the time. Plus, they are a lot of work!
My favorite family recipe is one I inherited from my husband’s family. It’s become a Thanksgiving tradition. We get two cans of peach slices in light syrup, cut the peaches in half, and combine them with a can of cherry pie filling. We add a teaspoon of allspice, stir it all together, and warm it in the oven. It’s yummy!
Additionally, I’ve become the Thanksgiving pie maker. I make two pies each year. Best one so far – maple pumpkin cheesecake. I’m thinking about trotting that one out again this Thanksgiving.
We only make these at Thanksgiving because it’s tradition and the one time we can be sure the entire family will be together.
I really enjoy making my Mother’s lemon meringuine pie
recipe for my sister when she visits–because it is her
favorite!!!
We have a jell-o recipe that’s standard Christmas food. Orange jello-o with shredded carrots and crushed pineapple. Way better than it sounds!
Sometimes we have it at other times, but always at Christmas.
My grandmother and mother and now myself make pound cakes at Christmas time to give to friends.
Cornbread dressing at thanksgiving!
We make something that we call ‘gack’. It is graham cracker crumbs, mini marshmallows, dates and just enough milk to hold it all together. Form this mixture into a log shape in waxed paper and chill. Slice and serve with whipped cream. We only make it during the Thanksgiving to Christmas season. I don’t really know why we only make it then, but I don’t even think about making it any other time of the year.
I make my husband an oatmeal cake every year for his birthday. The instructions say it will stay moist and fresh for days, but so far it has never lasted more than 12 hours before being totally wiped out. To make it more than once a year would be very dangerous. 🙂
For Thanksgiving and Christmas we make cranberry sauce with apple juice concentrate and honey — no matter how big a batch we make, the kids will eat all of it within two days. It would be fun to make it a few other times and serve it over ice cream or pound cake, I think.
Chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving. My Mum used to make this for Christmas, but I do it for Thanksgiving turkey. I’ve added some herbs to her basic recipe, but I still have and refer to my scribbled down notes that I wrote as she gave me instructions over the phone.
Not really.
My family makes apple crisp in winter, and we make it sparingly because it’s rather high-calorie and we eat a lot of it, but it’s not a tradition with a particular day. We have religious food that we make for that holiday (like Gefilte fish on passover) that isn’t necessarily a family favorite (like I won’t touch Gefilte fish) but we seem to have it because of tradition.