As I mentioned Friday, I planned to make Jewish cookies known as hamantaschen over the weekend. Hamantaschen are triangle-shaped cookies traditionally filled with thick poppyseed or prune spread, or other fruit preserves. They are traditionally made during Purim — a Jewish holiday festival similar to Mardi Gras — but can be found year-round in Jewish bakeries if you’re fortunate enough to have one nearby. We are not, so the past couple years I’ve simply picked up hamantaschen from Whole Foods, which were fine but nothing to get excited about.

Fortunately, Ruth of Once Upon A Feast came to my rescue with not one but two hamantaschen recipes; I went with Marcy Goldman’s recipe. With all due respect to Marcy’s Bubbie, I swapped butter for the oil (I prefer not to bake with oil), and omitted the orange zest in deference to the husband’s zest-dislike. Next time I’ll try it with the zest for a little more flavor.

The dough was simple and resulted in a soft, sweet cookie. The husband doesn’t like the traditional fillings, so I took advantage of our extensive jam collection and we made an assortment of flavors: strawberry-rhubarb (courtesy of my sister-in-law), apricot, raspberry (both from local farms), and some Ficoco — a fantastic fig and chocolate spread, think a fruity twist on Nutella.

I’m pretty certain we’ll stick with homemade from now on, these were fun and delicious!

Since only one cookie unfolded into a pancake while baking, I consider myself fully qualified to offer the following expert suggestions:

• Don’t go overboard with the filling, but don’t be too stingy either — the ones my son plopped a larger spoonful of jelly on turned out best. I think the weight of the jam helped keep the center from puffing up as much when they baked. And, they have the perfect jam-to-cookie ratio.
• Don’t be afraid to fold the edges up over most of the jam — and pinch tightly. The ones folded up more tightly also held their shape better while baking.
• I brushed the outside of the cookies with egg wash — in reading other posts, it seems this may help them stay together while baking.

There are few things better than the scent of cinnamon on a Saturday morning. While these waffles aren’t quite as decadent as fresh cinnamon rolls, they do offer more instant gratification. I had some toasted hazelnuts left over from another recipe and added them on a whim — turned out delicious. A little sweet, and warmly satisfying. (On yet another snow day.)

Recipe: Cinnamon Hazelnut Waffles

Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, finely chopped

Instructions: Preheat waffle iron.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add milk, sugar, butter and vanilla and stir to combine. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (you may have some small lumps still). Stir in the hazelnuts.

Cook on hot, oiled waffle iron. I use about 1/2 cup of batter per 4-inch-square. Makes 10 4-inch waffles. Enjoy! (Leftover waffles can be frozen and then popped in the toaster for quick breakfasts during the week.)

Cooking with Kids note: Waffle irons can be highly tempting to curious preschoolers … particularly ones who feel compelled to touch and see when you tell them it’s really hot. So for best results, I recommend letting young children help with the whisking, but distracting them in another room for the actual cooking. My son also likes to help garnish for the photographs (as seen above).

What to make when you’ve been snowed in for days? Snow cake, of course! When I proposed baking a cake the boy first suggested chocolate. I talked him into a “snow” cake instead, a.k.a. coconut.

We used Ina Garten’s coconut cake recipe, though I used unsweetened coconut instead of the sweetened she calls for. Really, this cake is sweet enough. It’s a dense cake, but flavorful and stays moist for several days, which is important when you’re making a cake for just three of you. (Though we did take some to share on a snow-day playdate.)

Instead of Ina’s cream cheese frosting, I used Smitten Kitchen’s Swiss meringue buttercream.

This is the frosting I used on the boy’s 3rd birthday cake this past summer, and it was an all around favorite — not sickly sweet, easy to make, and it held up on a humid August day — what more could you ask for? It does use quite a lot of butter … fortunately I stocked up before the blizzard, but we still needed to restock when the husband went out for a between-storm grocery run.

After frosting, we took a snowflake stencil, cut out of wax paper, and laid it gently over the top. We sprinkled a heavy layer of dried coconut (unsweetened, again) over the openings, then removed the stencil to reveal our snowflake. I had tried to talk the boy into dying the frosting light blue so the snowflake would show up better, but he insisted that a snow cake had to be white. (Duh.) I think he was right though, as it turned out just lovely. Don’t you think?

(You could easily adapt this to make a Valentine’s cake by tinting the coconut pink and making a heart shape on top.)

You can’t have cake without ice cream, and I’d had snow cream on the mind ever since reading this article in the Washington Post. When I was a kid, the only thing we ever made with snow was orange juice-topped sno cones, not particularly creative. I remember wanting to make maple syrup candy, a la Little House on the Prairie, but I don’t think we ever did. So naturally I took advantage of the 30-some inches of fluffy white snow in our backyard to make maple snow cream — delicious and equally enchanting to kids and parents alike. (Well, this parent at least!)

Recipe: Maple Snow Cream

Ingredients:

• 1 bowl full of clean, white snow
• 1 cup cream
• 1/4 cup maple syrup

Instructions: Heat cream in a small sauce pan over low heat. When warm, whisk in the maple syrup. Remove from heat and let cool. Gather snow. Pour cooled maple cream over snow, stirring to combine and break up any chunks that form. Enjoy immediately! Makes 4 servings.

What are you baking for – or with — your Valentine? It turns out I’m not the only one with home-baked Valentines on the mind — Kelsey of The Naptime Chef and Jennifer of Savor the Thyme are hosting a “Food is Love” challenge. Hop over to either of their blogs for the details; enter by Tuesday, February 16, and you could win a prize from Scharffen Berger chocolates. Happy Valentine’s Day to you & your foodie families!

If I try hard enough, I can almost a remember a time when my idea of unwinding after a long work week was heading out for cocktails with girlfriends. (Okay, so it really wasn’t that long ago.) But nowadays, few things are more soothing than spending some quality time creaming butter, sugar and eggs in the KitchenAid. Sure, cooking with a 3.5-year-old isn’t entirely relaxing, but it is especially rewarding to see the boy bite into a fresh baked cookie or slice of bread with glee and to watch him proudly boast to his dad, “Look what Mommy and me made!” And there’s no better time than February (hello Valentine’s Day) to share home baked goodies with the ones you love. So I’m declaring February “Homemade with Love” month here at FoodieTots. I hope you’ll join in and share what you and your kids are baking, too. There may even be a round-up at the end of the month if you have links to share.

First up is Cinnamon Swirl Bread, the next entry in my Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge. Peter Reinhart’s bread calls for raisins and walnuts, which I like well enough, but I wanted to make a simple cinnamon bread first. This is the bread that inspired me to join the challenge, as I have strong memories of my mother baking cinnamon bread and the warm fragrance that filled the house. I don’t even remember if she ever made it more than once, but the cinnamon-sweet scent has stayed with me all these years, and motivated me to overcome my phobia of yeast.

This is a pretty simple bread, the dough smooth and pliable. In addition to omitting the raisins and nuts, I replaced the shortening with melted butter. The boy helped me knead, giving it a few enthusiastic whacks and pokes.

To add the cinnamon swirl, you simply pat the dough out into a rectangle, spread it with a generous layer of cinnamon-sugar, then roll up into a loaf. (You can see pictures of this step on Pinch My Salt’s post.) After a second rise in the loaf pans, it heads into the oven to bake.

(You can see the pronounced difference between the crappy over-stove fluorescent lighting and my Ego lights, the dough didn’t actually turn from yellow to white…) I had a stuffy nose the day I baked it, so the scent wasn’t as strong as I’d remembered, but the taste was everything I remembered.

Cinnamon swirl bread is best with a generous spread of fresh-from-the-farm butter, and maybe a little more of that cinnamon-sugar on top. Delish. Of course, if you somehow don’t finish the loaf the first day or two, it also makes scrumptious French toast. And needless to say, the boy was quite pleased with the finished product.

I’ve written a lot about apples this fall, but I’d be remiss not to mention that other star of late autumn fruit stands: the pear. From crisp Asian pears, perfect for salads, to sweet Bartlett pears, poached for dessert, and the boy’s favorite, toddler-hand-sized Seckels, we’d be hard pressed to take sides in a pear-apple face-off. We always enjoy the samples offered by Papa’s Orchard at the West End Alexandria farmers market, and the boy has been known to devour a Seckel (or two) before finishing our stroll through the market.

These sweet and savory pizzas also feature two other of my local farmers market favorites, grassfed lamb sausage from Valentine’s Country Meats and fresh ricotta from Keswick Creamery. The pizza crust was made from frozen dough I picked up from the Italian Store for pizza-making emergencies. Of course you could make your own, if you prefer. There are few better ways to get kids into the kitchen than with make-your-own-pizza night. Thanks to the kid-sized tools from Curious Chef (see below), the boy was able to help with rolling out the dough, slicing the pears, and of course, decorating the pies.

Recipe: Pear Ricotta Sausage Pizza

Ingredients:

• pizza crust for 2 pizzas
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound lamb sausage
• 8 ounces fresh ricotta
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 2 sweet pears, thinly sliced
• several fresh basil leaves, shredded
• sea salt and black pepper

Instructions: In a skillet, crumble the sausage and cook over medium heat until browned. Drain excess drippings and set aside. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Roll out pizza crusts and place on baking sheet or pizza peel, if you have one. Spread several tablespoons of ricotta over the crusts, and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil, each. (If your ricotta is particularly moist, use less oil.) Spread pears and onions around, sprinkle with basil, salt and pepper, and scatter sausage over the top. Drop a few more spoonfuls of ricotta over the pears. Drizzle with remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Bake 15-20 minutes, until crust is lightly browned. Makes 2 pizzas. Enjoy!

Curious Chef Product Review: We received the Curious Chef pizza kit to try out, as seen in the photos above. The boy was beyond trilled to have “my very own!” knife and rolling pin. The knife is made of sturdy plastic that actually can cut through an apple or pear, without fear of slicing off finger tips. Ever since our pizza making fun, when he sees me slicing something he gets out his own knife from his kitchen drawer and demands to help. The easy-grip handles make the tools perfect for small hands, and it’s nice to be able to set him up with his own cutting board and knife to keep him busy while I’m prepping the rest of the meal. Needless to say, Curious Chef gets a big thumbs up from the Foodie Tot. (My only complaint is that the white plastic isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s more kid-appropriate than stocking up on fancier, and more breakable, items from somewhere like Williams-Sonoma.) View the full product line (and safety information) at CuriousChef.com.

*Disclaimer: all reviews are the opinion solely of myself and my son, and are not financially compensated in any way.*