grinding up the squash

We got a bunch of squash from the farm (our CSA), and thought, wow, we can do something with this, and that something was a recipe from the Camp Joy blog (our CSA). Even though none of theirs have worked out yet, I thought, ok, one more time.

While Cartoonist mixed the ingredients, I grated up the squash in the mini-food processor. The recipe called for two cups, and that surely would use up a a good amount of squash.

Beating the mix

Meanwhile, Cartoonist mix and mixed, and we put in different elements then were called for. We used the following:

• 1 cup of butter
• 2 cups raw shugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla and almond
• 3 cups of flours, which were half white rice and half coconut
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinamon
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups summer squash
• 3 1/2 cups of oatmeal, which we didn’t have, so put in steal cup oats.

Steel cut oats instead of oatmeal, first mistake

I’m not sure if that was our first mistake, but it was definitely not the good thing to do. The mix was dry at that point, and got even drier. The squash did not make it any less dry. I’m not sure why it was this way, and wonder if I had cooked the oatmeal it might have worked, but it was crumbly and we tasted it, and figured it didn’t taste too bad, so put it out on cookie sheets to bake.

Cumbly, uncooked steel cut oats.

The first few cookies were crumbly when they came off the sheet. We tried making them smaller, baking them longer, and a few other tricks, but for the most part, unless we made them very thin, they did not cook all the way through.

So, if we were to make this again, I’m not sure what I would change.



Roasting the apples

As I mentioned yesterday, each recipe pointed to a different one, and I thought I had caught all of them, but when looking at the vanilla cupcakes, I discovered that it called for apple sauce. (page78). OK, I thought, noting the time, 4:45, and I turned to page 78 to discover that the apple sauce called for roasted apples, (page 27), so I went to page 27. And there, finally there, I was able to stop, as there were no more references to go to.

Into the blender

So I roasted the apples (which meant cutting them up, roasting them in the oven, and adding cinnamon, honey (although she called for agave) and lemon juice. Then, although I tried to mash them up, as did cartoonist, we finally went to the blender and finished the job.

At this point it was 5:15 and we finally had all the ingredients to make the vanilla cupcakes, that would be used in the crumble, that would be used in the macaroons.

So, cartoonist mixed up the cupcake mix, with the apple sauce, and we put it in to the oven.  We saved some of the cupcakes, but took the six for the crumb base, and at that point it was 6:15pm.

Vanilla cupcakes

Finally, we were ready for the vanilla crumb base. Finally, and so we mixed it all up, and cartoonist was so excited that we started putting the ingredients in with the vanilla crumb, forgetting that this was to be used for other recipes, and so we used the whole shebang, instead of a cup’s worth. But by then it was too late, as we had already mixed everything in. So we doubled the recipe, adding more coconut, and more honey, and hoped for the best.

crumble

At 7:15, we took the macaroons out.

Was it worth it? Eh, no. they were good, but not that good. I actually liked my almond macaroons much better, and I didn’t have to make apple sauce or vanilla crumb base to make them. And it only took about 30 minutes to make those.  Those were from the Jewish Mama’s Kitchen.

Finished maroons

As Cartoonist said, those macaroons should have been DAMN GOOD, and not just ok.
Usually, if we like what we cook, we store it right away, so it doesn’t go bad overnight.
Cartoonist went to bed, and without making a move to store the macaroons, nor did I.