It's a Wonderful Knife

by Christine Wenger

  Roll the dough on a pastry board until fairly thin. Cut out circles with a 3-inch pastry cutter and place a tablespoon of the filling in each dough circle.

  Fold the dough over like it’s a turnover and use a pastry wheel to close each one. Press down hard so the truta won’t open when being deep-fried.

  THEN:

  Deep-fry the trutas in the melted butter and lard, drain, and let them cool.

  Sprinkle the cool trutas with confectioner’s sugar.

  Makes 10 dozen trutas

  Chocolate Whiskey Cookies

  My friend Jen Gianetto Rowan gave me this recipe from her great-grandmother Mary Stella Azzarelli Savona. Nana Savona was born in Messina, Sicily, in 1901, and this recipe was one of her family recipes brought over when she immigrated. Unfortunately Jen doesn’t know the year she came to America, but knows that she was young. For years, Nana Savona worked as the cook for one of the fraternities at SUNY Oswego. Nana was supposed to have been married through an arranged match, but had fallen in love with Jen’s great-grandfather and asked her parents to let her marry him instead. They agreed!

  8 cups flour

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  2 cups sugar

  ¾ cup cocoa powder

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1 teaspoon ground cloves

  ⅛ teaspoon black pepper

  1 cup shortening

  4 to 5 jiggers of whiskey (any whiskey will do, but Jen highly recommends springing for Jack Daniel’s)

  2 cups milk

  1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  Sift flour, salt, powder, and soda together in a 6-quart bowl or soup pan.

  Add sugar, cocoa, spices.

  Add shortening and liquids.

  Mix by hand (which means stick your hand in there and work it all together). The dough will be extremely sticky, especially if you’ve been “generous” with the whiskey. Add more milk a little at a time if the dough seems too dry.

  Add nuts if desired, mix in.

  Form into little balls, or, to make life easier, use a cookie scoop.

  Place on parchment-lined cookie sheet.

  Bake for 15 minutes. Remove to paper towels and frost while warm.

  CHOCOLATE GLAZE FROSTING

  1 box confectioner’s sugar

  cocoa powder

  scant milk

  GLAZE

  Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until smooth.

  It will need to be rather thick, but will still drizzle from a spoon, or the warm cookies will further thin the glaze and it will all run off the cookies.

  Rosaline Matyjasik’s Snowball Cookies

  I’ve had this recipe forever! Christmas wouldn’t be the same without these cookies. Good any time of the year, but especially at Christmas!

  SIFT TOGETHER:

  2 cups flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  BLEND TOGETHER:

  ¾ cup butter

  ½ cup sugar

  2 teaspoons almond extract (or you could use vanilla or peppermint)

  1 egg

  Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients.

  ADD:

  1 cup chopped nuts

  1 cup chocolate chips (chocolate mint chips are really good, too, or even peanut butter chips)

  Stir with wooden spoon or heavy spoon.

  Shape into 1-inch balls.

  Place on cookie sheet.

  Bake at 350 for 15–20 minutes.

  Cool slightly and roll in confectioner’s sugar (or shake in a plastic bag).

  This recipe works well when doubled.

  Snowballs can be frozen in plastic bags—just don’t roll them in confectioner’s sugar beforehand, and wait until they thaw to room temperature to do so.

  From Andrea Hauge Kaczor

  Andrea Hauge Kaczor’s ancestors hail from Norway. She states, “Our favorite Christmas pastry is an almond-flavored coffee cake called Oslo Kringle. I make it every Christmas. . . . It’s my kids’ favorite (they call it Kris Kringle).”

  CRUST:

  1 cup flour

  ½ cup butter, softened

  2 tablespoons cold water

  Mix flour and softened butter; add cold water and mix as for pie crust. Roll out and transfer to cookie sheet in two long strips about 2 inches wide and a ¼-inch thick.

  CREAM PUFF PASTE:

  1 cup water

  ½ cup butter

  1 cup flour

  3 eggs

  ½ teaspoon almond flavoring

  Bring water and butter to a boil. Remove from stove and immediately add all flour; stir until smooth. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flavoring.

  Spread on the above strips and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

  Frost when cool with the following icing:

  1 cup confectioner’s sugar

  1 tablespoon butter

  ½ teaspoon almond flavoring

  1 tablespoon cream

  Combine all ingredients together and mix until blended.

  Cappuccino Cookies

  My friend Tracy Blair Funnel states that she first had these years and years ago, and now her relatives insist that she bring them to every holiday and event. She said, “Beware, they are addictive! They also have caffeine, so you have a good excuse to make these a grown-ups-only dessert.”

  1 cup butter, softened

  1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

  2 tablespoons milk

  2 tablespoons instant coffee granules

  2 large eggs

  1 teaspoon rum extract

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  4 cups all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  chocolate sprinkles or melted chocolate (optional)

  Beat butter in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed until smooth.

  Add brown sugar and beat until well blended.

  Heat milk in small saucepan over low heat. Add coffee granules, stirring to dissolve. Add milk mixture, eggs, rum extract, and vanilla extract to butter mixture. Beat at medium speed until well blended.

  Combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt in large bowl. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating at low speed after each addition until blended.

  Shape dough into two logs, about 8 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. Dough will be soft. Sprinkle lightly with flour if too sticky to handle.

  Roll logs in chocolate sprinkles, if desired, coating evenly (1⁄3 cup sprinkles per roll). Or leave rolls plain and dip cookies in melted chocolate after baking.

  Wrap each log in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

  Tracy says: I prefer the dip option. I use a nice dark chocolate and only dip the cookie a little bit. Makes a nice presentation and you can pick how much to use. Add colored sprinkles to the soft chocolate if you want a real holiday look. Might be good with white chocolate, too (although I haven’t tried that).

  Preheat oven to 350. Grease cookie sheets. Cut rolls into ¼ – inch-thick slices. Place 1 inch apart on cookie sheets (keep unbaked cookie rolls or slices chilled until ready to bake). Bake 10–12 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool. Dip in chocolate if desired. Store in airtight container.

  For dipping chocolate: Melt one cup chocolate chips in small saucepan over very low heat until smooth.

  Makes about 60 cookies

  Molasses Cookies

  I wanted to include this very old recipe, also from Tracy Blair Funnel, who reports that it’s a family recipe on her husband, Doug’s, side. The na
me of the person who it came from is lost, but another relative remembers that the baker baked them on a woodstove and gave them as gifts for Christmas.

  1 cup shortening

  1 cup molasses

  2 eggs

  1 cup sugar

  ½ cup hot water

  2 teaspoons baking soda

  1 teaspoon ginger

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon salt

  4½ cups flour

  Mix together shortening, molasses, eggs, and sugar until creamed.

  Mix separately hot water and baking soda, and add to molasses mixture.

  Sift together remaining ingredients and add slowly. Let stand in refrigerator overnight.

  Roll chilled dough mixture onto a floured surface, and use a cookie cutter or cup to cut out cookies.

  As an optional step, pat down lightly with sugar before baking (can also be done after baking).

  Place on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

  Grandma’s Mandelbrodt

  (Mandel Bread)

  My friend Jenn Kettell’s grandmother used to send each of her grandchildren a cookie tin full of her Mandelbrodt when they were in college. If you returned the tin when you came home for breaks, she’d refill it and send you more. Jenn said that she and her aunt still bake it for family occasions.

  6 eggs

  2 cups sugar

  2 cups canola oil or Crisco

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  6 cups flour

  3 teaspoons baking powder

  OPTIONAL

  8–12 ounces chocolate chips

  1–2 cups chopped nuts (pecan, walnut, or almonds)

  Preheat oven to 375.

  Beat eggs and sugar.

  Add oil and mix.

  Mix in vanilla extract, flour, and baking powder until fully incorporated.

  Fold in optional ingredients.

  Spoon dough onto greased pan and shape into strips, approximately 1½ inches wide.

  (Hint: square off each end to avoid burning.)

  Bake for approximately 25 minutes, until golden brown.

  Let cool slightly; then slice strips into even pieces, approximately ¾ inch wide.

  Lay pieces on their sides and return to the oven.

  Toast in oven for 10–15 minutes.

  Pack in a cookie tin or other sealed container. Allow the pieces to cool completely before packing. Mandelbrodt freezes well for an extended period of time.

  Grandma Theobald’s Sugar Cutout Cookies

  My friend Gayle Kloecker Callen tells me that her grandmother Mary Vargo Theobald came from Czechoslovakia as a little girl. She said she remembers Grandma Theobald for the tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches she packed whenever she accompanied Gayle’s family on road trips. Gayle loves to bake, and the recipe she uses most is Grandma Theobald’s recipe for cutout cookies at Christmas. She told me, “I grew up baking them, and I made sure my kids did the same. Even now, my grown kids make me wait to bake them until they can travel home to help. So, in honor of my grandma Theobald, here’s the recipe, and of course I included the frosting recipe, for what are cutouts without frosting?”

  1 cup butter

  1½ cups sugar

  3½ cups flour

  3 eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  2 teaspoons cream of tartar

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  Cream butter and add sugar, gradually creaming until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each egg. Stir in vanilla extract. Stir dry ingredients together; then add gradually to mixture.

  Chill 3–4 hours or overnight.

  Roll on floured surface; cut shapes.

  Bake on ungreased sheets at 375 for 6–8 minutes.

  BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

  1 stick butter

  3 tablespoons milk

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  4 cups powdered sugar

  Slightly soften butter. Mix liquids together. Alternate adding liquid with a cup of powdered sugar until the consistency is right. (Powdered sugar is only a rough estimate.)

  Makes 8 dozen cookies

  Christmas Eve French-Canadian Poutine

  This recipe came to me via my very funny French-Canadian friend Kris Fletcher.

  She said that it’s been a family favorite from the first bite.

  NOTE: All quantities are to taste. There’s no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to poutine. Just play around, sample, and tweak to your heart’s delight.

  French fries—a bag of frozen, or homemade if you have nothing else to do on Christmas Eve

  cheese curds

  cooked turkey or chicken, cut into smallish cubes

  cranberry sauce

  cooked peas

  gravy, preferably turkey or chicken (Homemade is best, but if you have to use frozen or canned, do what you must. It’s Christmas Eve. No one is going to judge.)

  Cook the fries by whichever method you prefer. (I myself prefer to toss the frozen ones in the oven, the way it says on the bag.)

  While they are cooking, break the cheese curds into small pieces, cook the peas if necessary, dice anything that needs dicing, and heat the gravy.

  When the fries are piping hot, scoop half of them into a big bowl. Add half of all the other ingredients. Repeat the layers.

  Ring the dinner bell and tell Santa to come to the table. Enjoy with a cold beer or hard cider.

  Grandma Flossie’s Fabulous Chocolate Fudge

  My friend MJ Compton remembers her grandmother making this fudge every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Somehow, between working long hours at an industrial laundry, bowling leagues, and holiday banquets, she was able to give each of her twenty-six grandchildren (yikes!) a batch as part of their Christmas gift. MJ remembers Grandma Flossie sewing Barbie-doll clothes for all the granddaughters as Christmas gifts, too.

  3 cups sugar

  ¾ cup margarine

  ⅔ cup evaporated milk

  1 12-ounce package semisweet chocolate chips

  1 7-ounce jar marshmallow cream

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Combine sugar, margarine, and milk in heavy 2½-quart saucepan.

  Bring to full rolling boil, stirring constantly.

  Continue boiling 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring.

  Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted.

  Add marshmallow cream and vanilla extract.

  Beat until blended.

  Pour into greased 13-x-9-inch baking pan.

  Let cool and cut into 1-inch squares.

  Read on to see what’s cooking in Christine Wenger’s first Comfort Food Mystery,

  DO OR DINER

  Available now from Obsidian!

  Chapter 1

  What on earth did I do?

  A thrill of excitement shot through me as I stood in front of the Silver Bullet Diner. It was still hard to think of it as my diner, but the wad of keys in my pocket assured me that it was.

  It was mid-March in upstate New York, Sandy Harbor to be exact, and the snow was falling in big fat flakes, adding to the six-foot banks around the parking lot. Still, the bright red neon of the diner’s name and the blue neon proclaiming AIR-CONDITIONED and OPEN 24 HOURS shone through the snow and lit the way for patrons arriving for lunch.

  It was my diner now.

  Maybe it wasn’t excitement that I felt, but more like anxiety. In diner lingo, maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. Or maybe I was having buyer’s remorse.

  Probably all of the above!

  As I surveyed my new kingdom on the frozen shore of Lake Ontario, I mentally listed all the things with which I needed to familiarize myself.

&nb
sp; A huge gingerbread Victorian house located to the left of the diner and closer to the water had been recently vacated by my aunt Stella. It was also now mine. It had almost disappeared in the heavy snow, with its pristine white paint and dark green shutters. It had a major wraparound porch that I planned to use in the summer. I’d sit in a forest green Adirondack chair and watch the waves of Lake Ontario lap at the shore.

  I looked over at the twelve little white cottages that dotted the lakefront. It looked like the big Victorian had a litter.

  They were called—care to guess?—the Sandy Harbor Guest Cottages.

  My mind flashed back to the two weeks every summer that my family rented here. We always rented Cottage Number Six, on the front row of the first chain of cottages. My sister, my brother, and I would stay in the water from sunrise until sunset. Mom and Dad had to drag us out of the water, slather us with sunscreen, feed us, and listen to our pleas to go back in.

  Now all twelve cottages belonged to me, and I’d be renting them out to the next generation of fishermen and families who’d enjoy them.

  The Silver Bullet was the centerpiece of my little kingdom. Smiling, I saw that the parking lot was filled with cars that were frosted with a couple inches of snow. Customers entered the diner in groups, laughing and talking and looking forward to a good meal. They left the same way they came, but now sated by delicious comfort food and finishing their conversations before brushing the snow off their cars.

  The scent of baking bread drifted on the crisp winter air and mixed with other cooking scents. My mouth was watering just thinking of what I was going to order later.

  Slogging through the snow to the side of the diner, I savored every aspect of its outside appearance: the curved lines, the metallic diamond-shaped edging around the windows, and the porchlike entranceway. The Silver Bullet looked like it had just been towed into place, not like it had been there since 1950.

  I looked for the cement cornerstone, which I’d always thought was so romantic, but it was buried under several feet of snow. I knew what it said by heart: STELLA AND MORRIS “PORKY” MATKOWSKI, MARRIED 1950, TOGETHER FOREVER IN OUR LOVE.