Tommy True's Cream Dreams

Another night, another chance to make a recipe from the stack of Helen's treasures. I wanted something quick and easy as it's Saturday night and I need to get to bed on time because I have church tomorrow. As I culled through the whole box, I found this interesting one. It is labeled (2nd grade) Tommy True's Cream Dreams.

I have to say, I wonder who Tommy True is to Helen? Is he real or is it just a cute name for the recipe? I guess I will never know.

Here is what you need to do:

(6) ounces of cream cheese (okay, Helen says you need two packages of three ounce cream cheese but I don't think they sell it that way anymore, at least I have never seen it. But you are in luck! The very smart people at Philadelphia Cream Cheese have their eight ounce packages of cream cheese marked in ounces on the package)

(4) cups of powdered sugar, sifted
(3) 1 ounce square of unsweetened chocolate
(1/2) teaspoon of vanilla
dash of salt
(1/2) c. chopped walnuts

Let the cream cheese soften and then beat well in your mixer (I used my Kitchen Aid and beat it until it was smooth)

Sift your powdered sugar. This is an important step. It gets all the lumps out of the sugar and makes it light as snow.

Add the powdered sugar to the cream cheese two cups at a time and beat well. DO NOT forget to scrape the bowl so that all the sugar and cream cheese gets mixed together. It will develop into a rather stiff dough.

Don't worry, keep on mixing and keep on making sure you scrape down to get all the sugar and cream cheese well blended.

Next melt the chocolate. I have a confession. I did not use the unsweetened chocolate squares Helen called for. It is not an ingredient I keep readily at home. I used three ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips instead. (1/2 cup of chocolate chips is equal to 3 ounces). I melted it in my microwave (I bet Helen did not!)

Add the chocolate and the vanilla to the cream cheese mixture and blend well. Scrape down again to make sure you combine all the ingredients together. It was at this point I tossed in the pinch of salt. I have no idea when the right time to add the salt was, but this was when I added it.

Additionally I did not add the walnuts. My family is pretty weird about added nuts in their desserts, so no nuts for us! (At least no nuts in the dessert! Trust me, there are plenty of nuts in the house!)

Butter a dish and spread the finished mixture in it and then place in the refrigerator to chill. Do not use cooking spray, use BUTTER.

This dessert is very, very sweet. I have not decided what it really should be used for. I think it would make an excellent filling for something, not sure what yet? It is pretty close to a cannoli filling if it were not so thick.

Tommy, wherever you are, this 2nd grade dessert of yours is quite the sweet little bit of joy. I am glad I found it in Helen's recipes.  I wonder what you are doing now?

Helen's Little Gems aka Thumbprint Cookies

Tonight I got the urge to try another one of Helen's recipes. As I poured over the many I have, this one stood out mostly because I have all the ingredients on hand. I love recipes that use staple ingredients that the average person keeps in their kitchen/pantry.

The title of this recipe is "Little Gems". I recognized it as one I have made in the past called "Thumbprint Cookies" but Helen's recipe calls for a lot more butter and I can tell you, I am totally okay with using MORE butter!!

Here is what you need to do:

3 cups of unsifted flour
1 cup of granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 cups of unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon of vanilla
strawberry preserves
pecan halves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment (Helen's note: I just spray them with Pam, forget the parchment! Isn't she adorable? It works too, I did not use parchment either)

Combine the first three ingredients using a mixer or food processor (I used my Kitchen-Aid). Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. (This worked great in my Kitchen-Aid). Beat yolk with vanilla and add to flour mixture.  Beat or process until completely blended.

Pinch of pieces of dough (about 3/4 teaspoon each) and roll into balls. Place on baking sheets. Using your finger (I used my thumb) make an indention in the center of each ball. Place about 1/8 teaspoon of jam in each and top with a pecan half. (I did not use the pecans.) Bake until light brown, about 20 minutes. Helen says to watch this carefully. Makes approximately 6 - 9 dozen if you make small cookies...Mine only made about 2 dozen because I made BIG cookies.

Feel free to substitute anything else for the strawberry jam. My favorite is raspberry preserves. I have even been known to drop chocolate chips in the thumbprint. The cookie is so wonderfully buttery that just about anything can go in that spot.

I hope you enjoy!

Helen's Fruitcake

It's Christmas time and the stores were all out of those little bricks of fruitcake that my husband loves. It made me sad because he really wanted some. I decided that after searching several stores that the best alternative was to make him one myself.

A while ago I purchased a large lot of recipes from an estate sale of a woman named Helen from Burns, Oregon. She had faithfully collected recipes for years. How the family let them slip out of their hands I have know idea but I am glad they slid into mine.  One of the recipes was her version of a fruitcake. It was contained in a sweet letter she wrote to a friend named Gail and her husband (?) Chuck. Truthfully, I made my adaptations on the recipe, but I followed the bones of it.

Here is what I did:

(1) 8 oz. container of green cherries
(1) 8 oz. container of pineapple wedges (candied)
(1) 4 oz. container of diced candied orange peel
(1) 4 oz. container of diced candied lemon peel
(1) 4 oz. container of diced candied citron
(1) 8 oz. package of dried mango
(1) package of Craisins (dried cranberries)
(12) ounces of seedless raisins
(1) 4 oz. of dried cherries
(1) 8 oz. maraschino cherries
Mix all the above in a large bowl with 1/2 cup of flour.

In a separate bowl, sift the dry ingredients together as follows:
(3 1/2) cups of flour
(1) teaspoon of salt
(3/4) teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
(3/4) teaspoon of ginger
(3/4) teaspoon of cinnamon

In separate bowl cream one pound of butter (Helen says use shortening but I used butter, because, well...BUTTER) with (2) cups of sugar.

Separate (6) eggs from their yolks and whites. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the creamed butter and sugar.

In separate bowl (I know, this recipe gets a lot of dishes dirty!) combine the following:
(3/4) cup of honey
(1/4) cup of unsulfured molasses
(1/3) cup of juice (Helen says you can use wine, brandy or grape juice. I used pear juice because it was all that I had)

Alternate adding honey/molasses/juice mixture to the creamed butter/sugar/egg yolks with the sifted dry ingredients until combined. (I did this in my Kitchen-Aid but it was a struggle because it is a large amount of batter)

Once the above is combined, take the leftover egg whites and beat to stiff peaks. Fold in the fruit and the egg whites into the batter. Okay....let's get real right here. It was HARD at this point. I had to go get my 19 year old son to do the stirring. Combining that much fruit (and yes, it looks like TOO much fruit but it's not) is very difficult into that much batter. It takes a very strong arm. I was worried when I started to fold in the egg whites but discovered it was essential as well.

Place into a greased tube pan and bake in a 250 degree oven for a minimum of 2 1/2 hours.

Underneath the fruitcake, keep a pan of hot water for the first 1 1/2 hours of baking time. Be careful taking the hot water out of the oven.

Check the fruitcake with toothpicks to see if it comes out clean. Be patient. It takes time. Depending on your oven it may take longer to bake than mine did (or shorter, start checking for doneness at 2 hours).

Take out of the oven when done, loosen the sides with a butter knife and flip out on to a plate after about 10 minutes.

The verdict? My husband likes it. Even my son, who does not like fruitcake likes it. It's too much candied fruit sweetness for me BUT my men are happy so I am happy!! Thanks Helen!