Rockin Robin's
Cooking Blog

I'm finally getting around to including my mint brownie recipe to my website. I've been busy with my annual Christmas Cookie Exchange. I made mexican wedding cookies for exchanging and they were a hit. One of these days I'll write about the cookie exchange and how to do a successful one.

The brownies are truly fabulous. They have three layers, including the brownie layer, the creamy mint layer and then a choclolate layer.

The brownies are rich so small pieces are in order. I make this every year, at my kids request, at Christmas time. I also give them away to neighbors and friends to wish everyone Happy Holidays. I get asked for this recipe often. If you like mint, you'll love this recipe.

Happy Holidays,
Robin

Doesn't this cranberry sauce look delicious? It is perfect for Christmas dinner and doesn't take much time to cook at all. In fact make it a day or two ahead and nobody will notice.

My friend Christina gave me this recipe, which I made and found to be very delicious.
It's much better than Ocean Spray's Cranberry sauce, in my opinion.

I always love it when I know what ingredients are in my dish. No preservatives, additives or artificial colors here.

Start by sorting the cranberry's and throwing out the mushy ones. You are looking for firm red ones.Toss out any white cranberry's. The more red, the more ripe they are.

This homemade cranberry recipe ingredients are:

• 1 cup water


• 1 cup sugar


• 4 cups of cranberries, come in a bag


• fresh squeezed orange juice from 1/2 an orange


• lemon and orange zest, about 1/2 teaspoon each


• 3 tablespoons of Grand Manier or other orange liqueur like Triple Sec


• 1 cup chopped walnuts


• juice from 1/2 orange


• 1 tsp. cornstarch

Directions

In a pot, add the water, sugar and cranberries. Stir well and bring to a boil. Soon you will hear the cranberry's pop. Cook for about 10 minutes over medium high heat.

Then add the juice from half an orange, the lemon and orange zest and the Grand Manier or other orange liqueur. Keep the heat to medium and stir frequently.

In a bowl add the juice from 1/2 an orange and add 1 tsp. cornstarch. Mix with a fork or wire whip until smooth. Make sure there are no lumps. Add this mixture to the pot and stir constantly for 5 to 7 minutes. You will see it thicken up.

Stir in the walnuts and let cool. You can eat this warm or cold.

If you want to give this recipe a little zip you can always add a little chopped up jalapeno. The sweet and hot flavors go nicely together. Feel free to add other ingredients like chopped celery, apples, pineapple or any thing else you can think of for added variety.

Want more great recipes? Check out my cooking website.

Cranberry Trivia

• Did you know that there are 4,400 cranberry's in a gallon of cranberry juice?


• The first person to notice that good cranberry's bounce was John Webb, a New Jersey grower. John had a wooden leg and couldn't carry his cranberry's down the stairs so he dropped them. He noticed that the firm cranberry's bounced down the stairs while the rotten ones stayed on the steps.


• If you buy cranberry's in a bag, they can go right in the freezer and will keep up to nine months.
  
  

Have a fun day,
Robin

Last Saturday, I spent the night over at my brother's house. His wife was having a girl's night sleep-over. We did some Christmas crafts, ate pizza and watched movies.

The next morning, Debbie, my brother's wife started making cinnamon roll french toast which was quite tasty. Then she pulled out this odd looking toaster. It was odd in that it had this extra cooking area attached to the toaster. Debbie said that this toaster makes egg mcmuffins. MMMM sounds interesting.

Debbie said "yeah it's really cool. You put your english muffin, bagel or toast in the toaster part and an egg and a piece of canadian bacon in the other part. In 5 minutes all of it will be cooked and you can add a piece of cheese and assemble your egg mcmuffin."

I thought, "That sounds pretty good. I'll try one."

It really did cook in 5 minutes and all of it was done at the same time which was really cool. So if you have trouble getting the timing right when you are cooking, this little gadget will make you look like a chef. The toast doesn't even start toasting right away but is delayed so the egg can cook.

So now you can make an egg mcmuffins at home just as fast as McDonalds. And it's probably healthier than McDonalds too. What a fast and easy way to feed the kids in the morning before school. Sure beats those sugary cereals.

I made my son an egg mcmuffin after school today and he loved it, only I had to do it the manual way, meaning first I cooked the canadian bacon, then the egg and then I had to time it all to be finished at the same time. A little bit of a juggle. I'm thinking I will put one of these egg and muffin toasters on my Christmas list.

Have a great day,
Robin