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12.23.09 |
Author:
Jennifer Bullock
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Once the holidays roll around, many of the people here at PRx start baking and bringing in homemade goodies to share, myself included. This year we decided to have a Holiday Potluck Lunch, asking everyone to either bring in a homemade item or just something tasty to snack on. We had quite the menu this year! Some of the items we had were:
- Handmade Gyozas by Sue
- Nutty Pumpkin Trifle by Jen (me)
- BFF Bread by Eva
- Shroomapalooza Soup and Patafla by Elisabeth
- Chocolate-dipped PB-Ritz Sandwiches by Jodi
We had an assortment of other goodies like cheese and pepper tamales, spinach and blue cheese salad, chips and salsa, holiday sugar cookies, egg nog and apple pie. It was quite the feast!     If you’d like to make some of these yummy dishes – here are the recipes! Nutty Pumpkin Trifle Super easy and not a very official recipe; first prepare your layers:
- Bake one box of Spice Cake (I used a 9x13 dish so the cake would not be very thick. Let it cool.
- Cook your pumpkin filling; I cooked mine in a glass pie dish – no crust! Let it cool for about and hour and a half to 2 hours.
- Toss a large bag of pecans with about a cup “or so” of brown sugar and one stick of melted butter. Bake pecans on a cookie sheet (350 degrees) for 10+ minutes. (Just watch them or find a real recipe on how to make candied pecans.)
- One large container of Cool Whip (or two normal sized ones) – make sure they’ve been in the fridge and are nice and whippy.
- Sugary syrup! Little bit of water and a lot of granulated sugar and brown sugar with a few good shakes of cinnamon melted on the stove will create a super sweet syrup.
Now you take your trifle dish – an important piece to making a trifle – and begin to fill it with your layers.
- Spice Cake layer – slice up the cake, maybe a half an inch thick max, and layer the bottom of your trifle dish.
- Drizzle some sweet syrup over the cake, be sure to get some into the nooks and crannies on the sides so you can see it in the trifle dish!
- Spread a layer of pumpkin filling over the top – again, make sure there is a sufficient thickness (half inch at least) that is viewable from the side of the dish. This is important!
- Sprinkle Pecans on the pumpkin filling. Sample a few just make sure they’re tasty. (Do I need to remind you to make sure you can see the pecan layer?)
- Cool whip layer!
- REPEAT! Cake, syrup, pumpkin, pecans, cool whip…
- A traditional trifle is a repeat of the layers, three times… however if you can only squeeze in two repeats –that is OK.
- Optional – sprinkle some shaved dark chocolate on the top Cool Whip layer.
Chocolate-dipped PB-Ritz Sandwiches Jodi’s recipe for her snack is: Spread creamy peanut butter on one Ritz cracker, and place another Ritz cracker on top to make a sandwich. Melt chocolate or vanilla almond bark or melts according to the package instructions. Dip the sandwiches in the chocolate with a fork, making sure all surfaces are covered. Remove and set on wax paper, sprinkle with candy sprinkles and let cool. Patafla Elisabeth’s Patafla recipe comes from a book called A Book of Mediterranean Food. You can find the recipe here, on page 154. She says she leaves out the gherkins, amps up the quantity of capers and adds a couple of cloves of crushed fresh garlic. Elisabeth’s “Shroomapalooza Soup” recipe can be downloaded here. BFF Bread Eva makes one of the best versions of Friendship Bread and she has a lovely PDF you can download so you can make your own BFF Bread at home. Granted, to make this recipe you either have to have a starter bag already OR know how to make a starter yourself. Now you have a few more items you can add to your holiday menu. Happy Holidays from PRx! |
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