Delicious, not too sticky or sweet, and we’ve never had a fail with this recipe. Preheat oven to 325 degrees; line an 8- or 9-inch pie pan with pie crust. Mix all ingredients except pecans and pour into pie pan. Top with pecans (you can spend a lot of time arranging them prettily, or just plop them on), and lightly dunk the pecans in the … Continue reading Kate’s Pecan Pie
Despite what we said in the introduction, we know our cheesecake recipe has previously appeared in a copyrighted work; but even though Nela’s Cookbook was a wonderful combination of recipes and memoir, we have no idea whether Aunt Nela got the recipe from Mamcik, or vice versa, or whether they both got it from someone else. Aunt Nela was our paternal grandmother’s younger sister – … Continue reading Cheesecake
Mom’s favorite. No contest. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients except cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla and pour into baking pan.* By the way, the walnuts were never optional in our house – Mom loved walnuts. You also can use pecans, if you prefer them. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour 10 minutes. While cake is cooling, cream butter and … Continue reading Carrot Cake
Melt chocolate over hot water, or in the top of a double boiler; remove from heat. Stir in sugar and corn syrup. Next, blend in the bourbon. At this point, you may need a larger bowl. Combine the crushed wafers and chopped nuts, and pour the chocolate mixture over them. Mix well. It’s usually wise to lightly coat your fingers with the softened butter at … Continue reading Mom’s Bourbon Balls
Oh, man, we loved this when we were kids. We also loved it when Mom made us afterschool treats of anchovy paste on buttered toast points … yes, we also loved chocolate chip cookies and Lucky Charms, but Eastern European treats have so much of that lovely salty fatty umami that one just craves sometimes. We honestly thought this was lost until the kids came … Continue reading Mamcik’s Paté
Because both our grandmother Mamcik and Great-Aunt Nela made this recipe (it also appears in Nela’s Cookbook, and I’ve copied her citrus topping here), it most likely came from the kitchen of their childhood home, Ilgovo, in Lithuania. I keep telling myself I should ask Nela’s children (along with whether they know what happened to four of their seven siblings who survived childhood – we … Continue reading Mazourka
Our recipe for this is in Mamcik’s handwriting, in faded blue ink on a folded piece of yellowing paper. Like so many of our family recipes, it is more “notes to remind you how to do it” rather than exact instruction. For example, it doesn’t say a word about how to construct and assemble this famous dessert, so we’ve added that. It also doesn’t include … Continue reading Sachertorte
We cleaned out the garage recently, and when we opened one of the boxes to see whether it was dumpster-bound, we saw two of Mom’s old recipe boxes we didn’t even know we had. We had most of the recipes copied, and many have already been published here, but we found a couple that we thought were lost forever. Mamcik’s paté recipe is here, as … Continue reading from Mom’s recipe boxes
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line 9 x 13 baking pan with parchment paper and lightly butter the paper. In a food processor, process shortbread cookies into fine crumbs; add butter and pulse until blended. Press crumb mix into baking pan and bake at 300 degrees for 10-13 minutes or until just lightly browned. Cool for 10 minutes, then spread all but 3 tablespoons raspberry … Continue reading Raspberry Cheesecake Bars
Another way to use all the lovely summer peaches at the markets. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2-quart baking dish. Melt butter and combine with breadcrumbs. Add cinnamon, brown sugar, and salt to crumb mix. In separate bowl, combine peaches, lemon juice and rum flavoring. Cover the bottom of the baking dish with one-third of the crumb mixture, and top with half of … Continue reading Peach Brown Betty
Around Our Table 