October 20 ~ Friendship Cake

One one of my other blogs about unusual holidays you'll learn that today is National Brandied Fruit day.  That reminded me of something I had learned about many years ago from my brothers girlfriend.  She made something called a Friendship Cake that started out with "brandied" fruit.  I never really saved the recipe she gave me so I had to do a search for it.  I found several sites with the recipe and all of them are very similar. The basic idea here is that you make a "starter" using fruits that you ferment.  Once you have the starter done, you can share it with a friend so they can make their own and then share their starter with another friend and so on and so on.
I particularly liked the recipe by Kitchen Koala as she also supplied pictures of the starter.

Cookies ~ September 23

Now is a good time to start testing out some new cookie recipes.  The last thing you want is to wait until Christmas baking time to find out you really don't like a recipe.  I have some good traditional recipes that I know I'll be using and I will share them with you as we progress, but for today I'd like to give you one that I found.  I haven't made these yet either so we can experiment together.  I purposely chose this recipe because it uses sugar coated corn flakes.  Why?  Well, my Grandchildren in NJ are the NJ State Champions for the Children's Miracle Network this year.  They have already had some wonderful adventures this year, including meeting the President in Washington, DC.  But, I'm sure that story will come up again some time in the future.  For right now, Food Lion (a grocery store here in the south) is selling special boxes of Frosted Flakes that feature four other CMN Champions from around the country.  Food Lion is donating $1.00 for every 4 boxes sold...so of course I had to buy a few boxes.  The promotion runs through the 28th if you'd like to help support Children's Hospitals.  This recipe doesn't specify Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, but why not use the best!

Tiger Cookies

• 3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups sugar-frosted corn flakes, crushed
• 1 (6 oz) package semisweet chocolate morsels

Cream butter in a large mixing bowl; gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, beating well. Stir in vanilla.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt; add to creamed mixture, mixing well.  Stir in crushed cereal.

Melt chocolate in top of a double boiler over simmering water.  Swirl melted chocolate lightly through dough, leaving streaks of chocolate.

Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.  Remove to wire racks to cool.  Yields about 5 dozen.