Dad! Don’t read this post until Sunday!

My dad has many amazing qualities. He can make a game out of anything – including rolled up socks, the packing material from our new blinds, and a big bucket leftover from some construction project. Incidentally, bucket rides also illuminated one of my mom’s best qualities – trusting that her husband wouldn’t put her kids in the hospital and letting us have some crazy fun.

Dad . . . → Read More: Father’s Day Breakfast Idea: How to Make Homemade Pop Tarts]]>

Dad! Don’t read this post until Sunday!

My dad has many amazing qualities. He can make a game out of anything – including rolled up socks, the packing material from our new blinds, and a big bucket leftover from some construction project. Incidentally, bucket rides also illuminated one of my mom’s best qualities – trusting that her husband wouldn’t put her kids in the hospital and letting us have some crazy fun.

Dad will also support me no matter what – even if it’s listening to me hyperventalate on the phone because I spotted a mouse in my first solo apartment or eating a weird vegetarian meal I cook for him. Oh sure, he’ll eat kale for breakfast to make me feel good, but what does he really want? PopTarts and Diet Pepsi. If you were ever in his car before he retired, you know what I mean. Crumbs and cans galore! Might not be Wheaties, but it’s certainly the breakfast of one of my biggest champions.

So for Fathers’ Day 2012, I give you bacon and jam toaster tarts. Make them for the dad in your life or for yourself, just cuz it’s Sunday and breakfast should be fun sometimes. I froze these and then sent them overnight. Just take one out of the freezer and pop it in the toaster, Dad. Love you!!

Some quick notes on the recipe…First, the dough is almost exactly the same as my standard pie crust with extra salt and sugar for flavor. I also added a splash of vinegar to the water on the advice of my friend Mike, who says it will lend extra flakiness. Second, this is a great way to use up some of last year’s lingering jams. Nothing on the larder shelves caught my fancy, so I made a quick strawberry rhubarb jam from what I had around. Store-bought jam is just fine, too.

Fathers’ Day Toaster Tarts

Makes 10 tarts

Directions

1. Follow these directions to make dough for a double crust pie, adding the vinegar to the ice water and the sugar and salt to the dry ingredients. After you’ve put the dough in the refrigerator, come back to this recipe.
2. While the dough is chilling, make the icing by combining the confectioners’ sugar with 2 tablespoons of water. Whisk until smooth.
3. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. To roll the dough, you need a decent amount of space. We’re aiming for a rectangle that’s 15 inches on one side and 8 inches on the other, so you’ll need to roll your dough a little bit larger to account for uneven edges. Find your counter, clean it, and lightly flour it. Keep some flour on hand for the rolling process.
5. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
6. Take one of the dough halves out of the refrigerator. Prepare your filling, so that it’s ready to do when the dough is. Beat the egg and have a pastry brush nearby. If you don’t have a pastry brush, you can use your fingers, but it’s slower.
7. Now, roll out the dough carefully. This is one of those situations when it really helps to be a bit nuts about neatness. Do your best to keep it in a rectangle twice as long on one side as the other. I use a bench scraper to push the ragged edges flat and to help me flip the dough around every few rolls, so that it doesn’t stick to the counter. Use that flour when you need it.
8. Once your dough is large enough, use a ruler and a thin knife to measure and cut a 15-inch by 8-inch rectangle. Don’t worry about moving it yet.
9. Along each of the 15-inch sides, make a little mark with the knife every three inches. Use the ruler and the knife to connect the marks, so that you now have five long rectangles (8 inches by 3 inches). Again, don’t move anything.



10. Using the pastry brush, paint all the edges with egg wash.



11. Place about a teaspoon of filling on one the end of a rectangle. Fold the dough in half to cover the filling and transfer the tart to the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining four tarts.



12. Seal the edges of each tart with your fingers, then use the tines of a fork to crimp them. Poke a few holes in the top of each tart with the fork.



13. Brush or drizzle some icing over each tart. Don’t worry about being too neat. You won’t notice once they’re baked.



14. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly brown. Just like the real thing, you will finish these in the toaster. If you want to eat them immediately, bake them for about 10 minutes longer.



15. Store in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Maybe I’m late to the party, but I just realized this morning that I don’t have to fill my big canning pot with an insane amount of water every time I can. I have been trying out various small batch (3-4 jars) canning solutions, but they are all pretty hacked and inelegant. It’s such a downer to make a quick batch of jam only to wait (and wait and wait) for my canner to . . . → Read More: Vanilla Rhubarb Jam (Small Batch Canning in a Large Batch Pot)]]>

Maybe I’m late to the party, but I just realized this morning that I don’t have to fill my big canning pot with an insane amount of water every time I can. I have been trying out various small batch (3-4 jars) canning solutions, but they are all pretty hacked and inelegant. It’s such a downer to make a quick batch of jam only to wait (and wait and wait) for my canner to come to a rolling boil. Yesterday, I bought cute, squat half-pint jars at our local hardware store and realized that they only take about 6 inches of water to cover properly. Hurray! That will boil so much faster than the 12 inches I need for regular half pints!! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. I’ve been crafting racks for smaller pots out of everything I could think of, but they all end up floating to the top and upsetting the jars. Seriously, folks… Lesson learned.

The jars were my second awesome find this weekend. The first was a big handful of rhubarb from the Somerville Winter Farmers Market. Rhubarb is a weird thing, but I love it. It’s treated like a fruit, but it’s really a vegetable. It has been cultivated in China for centuries due to its medicinal qualities. Interesting fact and tie in to our recent trip to Hong Kong – In 1839, China threatened to end the rhubarb (and tea) trade if Queen Victoria continued to allow opium into China. The Rhubarb Compendium has more interesting factoids, if you’re interested.

One cautionary note about rhubarb…Although the leaves look like tasty swiss chard, they’re poisonous, so don’t eat them. This is the one time I fully support tossing out the dark leafy green part.

For this jam, I modified a recipe from Canning for a New Generation to fit what I had on hand, namely vanilla beans rather than oranges. Did I break Unbreakable Rule Number 3? No, and here’s why.

1. The National Center for Home Food Preservation gives a recipe for stewed rhubarb with only sugar and rhubarb. Since the original jam recipe was only rhubarb, oranges, lemons, and sugar, I’m could take out the oranges AND the lemons without compromising acidity.
2. The vanilla I added was just a tiny bit, so I am assuming that the lemon juice more than offsets any acidity damage. I have also seen similar recipes from trusted online sources (such as Food in Jars)

On to the recipe! This is a simple one. Just a few ingredients and minimal fussing. There’s just enough sugar to be sweet, but not cloying, and the vanilla smooths out the rhubarb’s tartness. Adding the lemon hulls into the jam towards the end ups the pectin, which results in a firmer jam without having to include commercial pectin. Yum yum yum!

Vanilla Rhubarb Jam

About 3 half-pint jars

Directions

1. Get your canning gear ready. (Steps 3 and 4) There are two special steps this time. First, because the jam doesn’t process for very long, you need to sterilize the jars. Second, put a couple of small plates in the freezer. We’ll use these to test the jam later.
2. Wash the rhubarb, remove any bad spots, and cut it into 1/2-inch slices. Toss into your favorite pot.
3. Juice the lemon. Measure out 2 tablespoons of juice and pour into the pot with the rhubarb. Save the hull and seeds, but you can toss any remaining juice.
4. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise. Use the tip of your knife to scrape out the seeds and drop them into the pot. Save the pod.

   

5. Add the sugar to the pot and cook over medium-high heat until enough juices are released to cover the rhubarb. Stir frequently. At first the pot will be totally dry, but it should only take 10 minutes or so.
6. While the jam is cooking, put the reserved lemon hull, seeds, and vanilla bean pod into a jelly bag. If you don’t have one, you can tie it up in cheesecloth or even a (clean) stocking. You just want the jam to be able to leach out all the goodness without the lemon seeds ruining things.
7. Once the rhubarb is covered in its juice, turn up the heat, drop in the bag you just made, and bring everything to a strong boil, stirring constantly. Try to keep the mouth of your bag out of the liquid, so that it doesn’t fill up with jam. I either tie it losely to the pot handle or hold it in my non-stirring hand.
8. After 5 minutes, turn off the heat and grab one of the plates from the freezer. Put a small dollop of jam on the plate and stick it back in the freezer. After a minute or so, take it out and draw a line through the jam with your finger. If it leaves a trail, it’s done. If the line fills in right away, it needs to be cooked more – bring it back to a boil, boil for 3 minutes, and retest.

   

9. Take out the bag and scrape off as much jam as you can. Bring the jam back to a simmer briefly, just to make sure it’s hot enough to can.
10. Fill your half-pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace, and process for 5 minutes. (Steps 6 through 22)