Wildfire Rye Cookies with Currants

Looking for a tasty, easy, and simple snack to eat with your  milk or tea? Or a cookie to bake your Heavy Metal loved one? Then these cookies are for you!!

I saw this recipe on Kitchen Vignettes and couldn’t help but try and put my own spin on it. Aube does great work and will make your stomach hungry in an instant.

As always, put on a record before you start. I recommend the new Deströyer 666 LP, “WILDFIRE.” I’ve had the pleasure of seeing these Australians a few years ago and am thankful that they exist. Seriously…check out the new album here and be sure to GO BUY IT at your local record store. And if they don’t have it, complain to management immediately.

What you will need:

Ingredients:
1 cup of Butter (2 sticks, room temperature)
3/4 cup Cane Sugar (scant or a little less)
1 egg
1/2 tsp. Sea Salt (the Kosher stuff is top notch)
2 1/2 cups Rye Flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill flour)
3/4 cup Dried Currants

 

Tools:
KitchenAid Mixer (or a large bowl to cream butter and sugar)
Spatula
Parchment Paper
Baking pans

 

Get your bowl or KitchenAid ready (spatula for the bowl, standard beater for KitchenAid). Place the butter in the bowl along with the sugar and combine. Once creamed together, add your egg, salt, and currants and mix well.

Next, tip in your flour bit by bit until a nice dough ball is formed. Flour your work surface lightly and take the dough ball out onto it. Break in two and begin to form them into “logs” that are about an 1-1/2 or 2 inch thickness.

Once you have two “logs” wrap them separately in parchment paper and place in your fridge for one hour.

In the meantime, your record should be done with side A. Flip it, headbang, drink a beer, and then go preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Get two baking pans out and be sure to butter them or use parchment paper to prevent stick.

Grab the logs, place them on your work station and begin to cut them at about 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch thickness. This will produce plenty of cookies (I got about three or so dozen).

Once your pans are filled, place them in the preheated oven for about 15–18 minutes. Watch them the last few minutes so they don’t burn. What you want is a nice golden edge.

After they are baked, let cool on pans for a minute, then place onto a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat the cutting and baking steps for the rest of your batch.

Share, eat, enjoy, repeat! These cookies are easy and tasty. Perfect for your Heavy Metal Bloodlust…or whatever you want to to call it.

 

Buttermilk Pancakes Für Eins

This recipe evolved from the simple fact that I was getting tired of wanting pancakes during the work week yet not having enough time to flip a dozen plus pancakes.

Taking only about 15 minutes from mixing to eating, these fluffy and easy pancakes can be eaten any day of the week. Depending on how you make them, they will give you three average sized pancakes or one ridiculous pancake.

As always, get started with putting on a record. I suggest the latest offering from Enforcer. “From Beyond” is an instant classic with its catchy melodies, awesome riffs, and cool artwork. These pancakes may not be from beyond, but they will take your tastebuds places. Listen to the title track here.

 

What you will need:

Wet Mix:
1/2 cup Buttermilk
1 tbs Melted Unsalted Butter
1 egg

Dry Mix:
1/2 cup All-Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt

Tools:
One large bowl
One medium bowl
Spatula
Whisk
Pan/skillet/griddle

Prepare a pan on the stovetop. Be sure to grease it lightly with either butter or oil. Have your heat set at about just shy of medium (my stove top gauge was at 4 out 10).

Prepare the wet mix in the medium bowl. Whisk together until the ingredients are well mixed and a nice even color.

Next, clean your whisk off and mix together all of the dry ingredients in the large bowl. Once done, pour the wet mix into the dry mix and combine. Do no whisk for very long, just enough to get all of the dry mix from the sides of the bowl, for if you over mix, your pancakes will not be fluffy.

Once all ingredients are combined, dollop them onto your pan. Check their bottoms for an even brown color (usually after 4 or 5 minutes). Flip and cook for a few minutes more.

These can be enjoyed with or without toppings. I prefer without to savor the sweetness of the buttermilk, but you can do what you want. If you DO want to share these, just double the recipe.

 

 

Thy Mighty Pumpkin Cookies

BREAD FIRE DEATH IS BACK! Where did it go? Well spring turned into summer and summer turned into fall quicker than you can say, “Hellenic Black Metal.” Anyway, pumpkin time has been upon the world for about a month now. Pumpkin beer, pumpkin chips, pumpkin salsa, pumpkin cereal…I love pumpkin, but quite frankly, I don’t need to eat it in everything. I tend to keep it for bread, pie, or these: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies.

This simple recipe pairs best with Rotting Christ. Not only was their debut a masterpiece in Black Metal, but it put Greece on the map for extreme music. Listen to it here. What do pumpkins have to do with Greece? Absolutely nothing. On with the recipe my legions.

What You Will Need:

1 1/4 cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cup Cooked Pumpkin (I used pumpkin from my yard, but if  you must use canned, be sure it is organic…it just tastes better)
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Ginger
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 1/2 + 1 tablespoon All-Purpose Flour (Bob’s Red Mill reigns supreme in my house)
4 tsp Baking Powder
As many chocolate chips as you see fit

Tools:

2 Baking pans (greased up…I use butter to make a nice thin layer to prevent too much sticking)
Large bowl
Medium bowl
Spatula

Preheat your oven to 400º F.

Cream together your butter and sugar in the large bowl. You can do this in a KitchenAid mixer or by hand. Add eggs, pumpkin, spices, and salt. Mix thoroughly until you have a nice wet mix. In your other bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together. Once sifted well, add to your wet mix and mix all ingredients together. The extra flour turns these cookies into near mini-cakes. Quite fluffy to say the least. For the chocolate chip addition, I chose mini-chips and used just shy of a cup. This way there is not an overpowering of chocolate.

Once your dough is mixed well, take a standard spoon and begin to drop your dough on the baking pans. You should get about a dozen per pan and this recipe generally yields around three dozen cookies. Flatten the cookies a bit after you place them.

Place the pans in your oven once it is preheated. Depending on your oven, the cookies could take 12 to 15 minutes. At about the ten minute mark, check the bottoms of them. If they appear dark brown, then you should take them out before they get too burned. You want a nice golden bottom for these to be just right. But practice makes perfect of course. These keep very well in an air-tight container, but your hungry won’t let them exist for too long.

No go…go and conquer your Pumpkin Lust!

This recipe was adapted from Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Recipes by Bear Wallow Books

Scones for the King of the Dead

Here in Oregon, Strawberry season is upon us. This is a special time of year and what better way to celebrate the arrival of the great strawberry than to make scones with strawberry jam! Not just any scone, mind you, but ones that taste so good, your friends will want to keep you in the kitchen making these awesome treats every morning.

And yes, they don’t take very long at all. Between getting your ingredients organized and actual baking time, you are looking at around 40 minutes. Perfect for a nice relaxing morning.

The “King of the Dead” album by Cirith Ungol (listen to it here) works well with this recipe. The perfect album length for the process, how can you resist classic tracks such as, “Atom Smasher”, “Finger of Scorn” or the title track itself?? Simple answer: bang your head and bake some scones.

HERE WE GO!

What You Will Need:

(This is the Dry Mix)
1 cup plus 2 tbsp Barley Flour
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 1/4 tsp Kosher Salt

(This is the Wet Mix)
1 stick of Cold Unsalted Butter
1/2 cup Buttermilk
1 egg

(Finishing Mix)
1/2 cup Strawberry Jam (freshly made always is best!)
1 tbsp Unsalted Butter
1 tbsp Sugar

Tools:
Baking pan (greased up…I use butter to make a nice thin layer to prevent too much sticking)
Large bowl
Small bowl
Spatula
Whisk
Large knife

First things first, place a rack in the  middle of your oven and turn it to 350ºF.

In the large bowl, thoroughly mix all of your dry ingredients together. Once you have done this, take the stick of butter and on a cutting board, cut it into 1/2 inch squares. Take these little cubes and toss them into the dry mix. With your hands, work them into the mix. You’ll want to smash up the cubes and flatten them so that the mix now resembles crumbs. This will take about five or so minutes.

Once done with this, wash your hands, grab the small bowl, and then whisk together the buttermilk and egg. Scrape this wet mixture into the dry and with the spatula, mix well until combined.

You should now have a sticky dough. Flour your kneading area, take the dough and divide it evenly in half, and then proceed to make a large disk with one piece of the dough. It should be roughly 8 or so inches in diameter and around a 1/2 inch thick. Do this with the other piece.

Grab your Strawberry jam and spread it evenly on one of the discs. Once you have your spread all done, carefully take the other disc and place it on top of the jammed disc. If you did it right, they should be the same size and fit well together. Take your melted butter and drizzle it evenly on top. Sprinkle the sugar all over and then grab your knife and make them into eight equal pieces (like cutting a pizza or pie).

Carefully place them on the baking pan and then pop them in the oven for 11 minutes. Once your time goes off, rotate the tray and then bake them for another 11 minutes or until they are golden brown on top and the jam has spilled over.

These are best eaten fresh or later in the day. But I doubt they could last for more than a day in any household.

Adapted from, “Good to the Grain: Baking With Whole-Grain Flours” by Kim Boyce. A great book that has lots of wonderful recipes!

“The sword descends the blood shall fall like rain
Its rising tide will cleanse your world of pain
His grip will rob the living of their breath
For as he ruled in life he rules in death” –Cirtith Ungol