I almost know what I'm doing

What goes with eggnog?

Mincemeat pies. Um, sorta mincemeat. And kinda not really a pie.

Proper 'mincemeat' really does have meat in it. In fact, the picadillo I stuffed into poblano peppers is more like traditional mincemeat than this filling is, but I've never been one for tradition. I am firmly of the opinion that "it's always been done this way" is the best reason to do it another way.

And so I stuffed biscuit dough with fruit.

(first eggnog, now mincemeat... almost seems like we're actually on top of a holiday for once)

Minced Fruit Pasties (or Turnovers, if you prefer)

What you need:

• 1 recipe's worth of biscuit dough or biscuit dough
• 2.5 small wrinkly apples, or about that much apple
• a few dried pears (or apricots, or some other fruit)
• 1/2 c dates
• zest from one orange
• 1/2 inch ginger
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp cinnamon sugar (or cinnamon and sugar to make that amount)
• 1 tsp vanilla (you can use some kind of booze here if you'd like)
• 1 egg

What you gotta do:

I had a few apples in the fruit basket that have been there for way too long. I once read "wisened" as a description for apples, and I think that's what these ones were. Fresh crisp ones would work fine too, but if you've got a couple old ones sitting around... (anyone seeing my inspiration for this recipe?)

Put your grater into a medium sized bowl, and start grating apples. Peel them? What? Why? I rarely see any reason to peel apples. The peel is completely edible, doesn't taste bad, and will add colour to things if it's red. Plus, that's extra work.

Zest the orange on a microplane grater, and then use it for the ginger. Microplanes are great for ginger.

Chop whatever dried fruit you're using into small chunks. If you've got some candied orange peel, that would work too.

My butter and cinnamon sugar are already combined, leftover from the cinnamon buns, but yours should go in now, separately if that's how they are.

Vanilla too. Or booze, your call.

Now, the dates. You can pre-chop these if you want, but dates are pretty easy to mash, so I just dumped mine in whole and went at them with a wooden spoon.

If you don't happen to have a batch of biscuit dough in the fridge because you made a double when you did yesterday's cinnamon biscuit buns for brunch, you'll have to make some.

If you do: handy! Roll it out into a rectangle.

I cut mine into 9 pieces; the pieces were the right size (about 5x5 inches), but this only makes filling for 6. I'm sure you can find something to stuff into those biscuits. A bit of sausage would be nice... Sausage biscuit rolls!

Drop a couple or three tablespoons of the filling mixture on one side of a biscuit square, and spread it out into a triangle-ish shape. No meat, but it kinda looks like there is...

Don't get too close to the edge. Fold the other half of the dough over the filling to make a triangle.

Starting at one of the corner points, lift the bottom dough and stretch-fold-roll it over the top dough. Biscuit dough is sticky enough that you shouldn't need any water or egg to make the edges stick, but if yours aren't sticking, water will help.

Stretch-fold-roll your way toward the point, then stretch-fold-roll along to the other corner.

Apparently I took no pictures of this process.

When you're done, they should look something like these:

Brush them with an egg with a tsp of water beaten into it.

Cut a slit or two in the top so steam can escape. If you to this, you are less likely to have filling explode out of the side. You can dust the tops with sugar too if you'd like.

Bake them at 400 for about 20 minutes.

I'm still working the kinks out of my new oven, but I'm pretty sure I was around 400, and mine only took 18 minutes.

They'll be lovely and shiney and golden when they're done.

And some of them will have strangely face-like features.

Tasty served with morning coffee, afternoon tea, or a glass of evening eggnog.

Stick around. We are actually going to pull off some holiday shit this year. Taneasha's thinking sweets, and I'll be making small things you can eat with one hand.

Maybe one day I'll get back to writing things you want to read with only one hand... ;)

Pair of Pear Muffins

It's been much too long since I made muffins.

I broke my blender a couple days ago, which means no more smoothies for breakfast. Until I buy a new one. Which I'm not looking forward to. I'm supposed to be packing because I'm moving at the end of the month. The last thing I should be doing is shopping for more stuff. I'm only going to have to put it back in the box in a couple weeks anyway.

Three days with no smoothies and I'm totally lost for breakfast in the morning.

I'm really not fond of eating on an empty stomach, but I'm okay with drinking. Chewing before I've had 2 cups of coffee is just weird. This is why I need smoothies. The rest of breakfast has to go into my backpack and get eaten during calculus lectures.

And what better to put in a backpack than a muffin.

Pear Pear Muffins

What you need:

• 1 c oatmeal, the quick cooking kind
• 1 1/2 c plain yogurt with a high fat content
• 1/4 c milk or pear juice (apple will do)
• 2 eggs
• 1 c grated pear
•  1/4 c melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 c flour
• 1/2 c sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 or 5 dried pears, diced small

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 375.

So far so good.

In a medium bowl, mix the oatmeal and the yogurt. It will be lumpy. Once it's combined, let it sit for a few minutes while you do the next few steps.

If you have a coffee grinder, you can grind your own cinnamon and cardamom.

Yes, that is cinnamon. Real cinnamon. Those scroll-like sticks are actually a similar spice called cassia. But that will work too. It's always tough to estimate how much of a whole spice you need to get a ground spice, but I got about 1 and a half teaspoons of powder out of this so, I'm calling it close.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spice.

By now, your oatmeal - yogurt mixture will be resembling some kind of masonry mortar.

Add the grated pear, eggs, milk, vanilla, and melted butter. Make sure the butter isn't too warm; you don't want it to cook the eggs!

Mix this into a nice wet goop, and then dump it on top of the dry stuff in the big bowl.

If you can't find dried pears, try dried apples, or dried apricots.

Add those to the bowl too.

Now, muffin mixing instructions always say to barely stir until just combined and that lumps are okay... I don't like that. I like to make sure everything is combined, especially with this recipe because the "wet" component is really quite dry.

Stir until everything is combined. It will take quite a few turns of the spoon, but be gentle as you do it. You are stirring, now whipping or beating.

This makes a few more than 12 muffins. I overfilled my muffin cups (lined with papers since the quiche issue), and still had a bunch of batter left.

If you have a second muffin tray, you'll probably get about 16 if you fill them 2/3 full.

If you don't have a second muffin tray, you'll get 12 over-filled muffin cups and enough to make a giant muffin in an oven proof bowl.

Makes me think these would also work as a quick bread.

Bake the muffins at 375 (yup, preheated the oven) for about 20 minutes.

These are delicately spicey, which is good because pear can be a very subtle flavour, and too much spice will just overpower it.

They're also just barely sweet. Which makes it totally justified to cover that giant muffin with dulce de leche. What? I'm trying to clear out the fridge!

What food do you like to use more than once in the same recipe?