Bacon Cheddar Rosemary Scones

 

Summer weekends for me usually consist of travel baseball tournaments for my son.  As we reach July, his season has come to an end and as much as I LOVE watching him play ball, I am so looking forward to quiet Saturday mornings, sipping coffee on my front porch and not having to go anywhere!  My three kids also love these mornings because they roll out of bed whenever they want and usually have something yummy to eat waiting for them.  This month I wanted to combine several of my favorite southern flavors, bacon, cheddar, butter and corn meal into one quick and easy breakfast fare.  Because we are featuring the Vegetable Cutter Attachment this month, I decided to use the grater drum to shred my frozen butter into perfectly curled butter shavings that mix into my scone batter just right.

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December Entertaining: Easy Potato Kugel

 

December brings endless parties and one family get together after another.  Christmas for my family ends up being spread out over several weeks.  After years of service with the Fire Department, my husband has enough seniority that he no longer has to work on Christmas Day if his shift happens to fall on December 25.  In the weeks leading up to Christmas, we get together at the fire station with all of the other wives and kids and share a meal, lots of laughs and the kids have an ornament swap.  This usually kicks off our holiday get together season.  Next, my sweet husband’s birthday is December 24 so at some point we get together with his mom and then his dad to celebrate his birthday and Christmas with each of them.  Then comes my family.  As the oldest of 9 children where 6 of us are married and there are now 10 grandchildren and we all live within 30 minutes of each other.  Christmas is a HUGE event for us.  My parents own their own small business and they have always closed their business for the entire week between Christmas and New Years and we spend that entire week playing board games and of course eating.  My sisters and I usually call my mom and find out what the food plan is for each day and then decide what side dish, dessert or bread we will bring.

The recipe I will be sharing with you today is so simple I almost didn’t share it with you but my daughter said it was a must.  This potato kugel can easily be a side dish or can be eaten like a hash brown casserole if you have a Christmas Brunch you are hosting.  My favorite part about this dish is that it can easily be made ahead, frozen and then reheated when you are ready to serve it.

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Yay for Fall! Apple Pie

 

For the almost 25 years that I’ve used the Ankarsrum, I’ve always told people that pie dough was the one thing this amazing machine couldn’t do. Pie dough is made by combining flour and salt, and then adding chunks of cold butter which then get “cut” into the flour (much like making biscuits) to create this crumbly (small pieces of butter wrapped in flour) texture, add a little ice water and…Boom! It all comes together to form pie dough.

As we’ve gone over many times before, you CAN NOT put cold butter in the Double Whisk Bowl or you will end up with broken gears and bent wires. In case you missed that, click HERE for a quick refresher on how to properly use the beater bowl and whisks.

I’ll be honest, it has always bothered me that I couldn’t make pie dough with my Ankarsrum. I mean come on, it can do just about everything else. Except sadly, a load of laundry! So I set out to figure out a way to make it work even using cold butter.

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