I’m not much of a baker, mainly because I love savory food so much more than sweets. I’d choose macaroni and cheese as a treat over a piece of cake any day. But something about the holidays brings out the urge to bake cookies. Lots of cookies! In the past week I’ve made peanut butter cookies embedded with a chocolate kiss, hazelnut crinkle cookies, and Norwegian lemon bonbons. These buttery, crumbly, bite-sized cookies are a classic in my family. Every December my grandmother would send a tin stuffed with her famous Million Dollar Fudge and lemon bonbons, both of which vanished in a matter of minutes.

Why the cookies are called Norwegian lemon bonbons is a mystery, since lemons aren’t exactly a native fruit in Norway, but why they taste so good is more obvious: the recipe calls for two sticks of butter. My grandmother’s original cookie only has five ingredients: butter, powdered sugar, corn starch, flour, and pecans. I’ve since added salt and lemon zest to the equation. Either way these cookies taste best with a cup of tea in hand.

I hope you all have a very happy holiday! I’ll be back next week, hopefully with a couple of new cookbooks to review.

Norwegian Lemon Bonbons

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Since this cookie is almost all butter, splurge on a good one, such as Pelugra. As the cookies bake, your kitchen will fill with a decadent buttery, citrusy scent. It’s irresistible!

You’ll need:

1 cup butter (2 sticks), plus one tablespoon for the glaze

1 1/3 cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup cornstarch

1 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Zest of one lemon

1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Blend 1 cup of the butter, 1/3 cup of the powdered sugar, cornstarch, flour, sea salt, and lemon zest together. Cover and refrigerate for 1/2 hour. Place the chopped pecans in a shallow plate. Scoop out teaspoon-sized bits of dough, shape them into a ball, and then roll in pecans. Space the cookies 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 15 minutes, or until their bottoms are golden brown. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for two minutes before carefully moving them to racks.

To make the tart lemon glaze, beat together the remaining powdered sugar with 1 tablespoon of butter and the lemon juice. I like to drizzle the glaze over the cookies while they are on the racks (be sure to place a piece of parchment under the racks to catch any glaze that falls through). After the glaze soaks in, add additional layers. The cookies keep well for up to a week if stored in an airtight container.

Going…

Going…

Gone.

I am so excited to announce that my friend and beekeeping mentor, Corky Luster, has officially launched Ballard Bee Company—an urban pollination service. Here’s how it works: Corky comes to your yard in spring, sets up a hive, and stops by weekly to check in on the bees’ progress. In return for hosting a hive, you get a personal pollination station in your garden and some of the hive’s honey at the end of the season.

If you want to get involved, he’ll mentor you on the finer points of beekeeping. Don’t have a backyard? Not a problem. You can sponsor a hive—Corky will share some honey with you and donate honey sales from your hive to programs that teach kids the art and science of beekeeping.

All of the Ballard Bee hives are kept in the city—don’t worry, it’s perfectly legal—where the bees forage for pollen from a diverse range of sources, including blackberries, fruit trees, and backyard vegetable gardens. The resulting honey is lightly floral, golden, and absolutely delicious. Corky and his sweetie Karen hand pour the honey into glass apothecary jars and sell it to a number of Seattle-area retailers and restaurants, including Boat Street Café, Dish D’Lish, DeLaurenti and Pasta and Co. In 2010 they plan on expanding their product line to include creamed, spreadable honey (my favorite!), comb honey, and maybe even a candle line.

Pretty good buzz, don’t you think?

Thanks to TKTJ Design for providing the photos for this post.

Jon and I grew our own popcorn this year. I still can’t quite believe it. Popcorn has always seemed to me to be one of those foods that magically appears, pre-buttered, salted and slightly stale, in movie theaters and microwaves without ever having grown in the earth.

That said, I really wanted to grow corn this year and I decided on popcorn, because I figured it wouldn’t be a huge loss if the popcorn didn’t work out. But with a little hand-pollinating on our part, it did work out!

On a bright, dry day in September, Jon and I cut down the corn stalks growing next to our front porch and twisted off the little ears of corn. We carefully peeled back the papery husks on one particularly fat, promising ear and discovered that our first attempt at growing popcorn was a success—ruby colored kernels lined the cob!

We gathered the stalks into bundles and tied them to the porch—instant, free fall decoration—and then brought the ears indoors to dry.

It took a solid eight weeks until the kernels were hard, dry, and loose on the cob, but they were finally ready for their test pop. I removed the seeds one by one from a large ear, which yielded about 1/3 cup, while Jon got out our WhirlyPop pan, butter, and salt.

We put the popcorn into the WhirlyPop with a bit of oil, shut the lid, and then stood over the stove waiting. And waiting. And then suddenly…Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! I jumped up and down. Our popcorn that we grew right outside our front door was popping!

I’ve been scouring the internet for popcorn recipes (caramel corn, anyone?), and we’re planning on stuffing our family’s stockings with little packets of homegrown popcorn this Christmas. I’m also on the hunt for some ideas on what to do with all the leftover husks. They’re so pretty, I can’t bear to put them into the compost!

Growing popcorn ended up being one of the best things that happened in my garden this year. Next summer I cannot wait to try the heirloom variety ‘Two-Inch Strawberry’—it’s super cute and it pops, a quality that I now value when it comes to corn.

For tips on growing corn in a small space, click here.

via moechen

Who says vegetables can’t be beautiful? I came across this gorgeous photo by Moe Chen on Flickr this morning and was just stunned by how architectural a cabbage can look. It reminds me a bit of the Guggenheim in New York. If you stand at the bottom and look up the galleries swirl around over head.

I’ve just started exploring Flickr but I think that it will be a big source of inspiration for my garden in the coming year. It’s so easy to fall down the Flickr rabbit hole and spend hours exploring vegetable patches all around the world. The site is kind of the ultimate armchair garden tour. I set up a photostream awhile back, but will be posting more pictures of my garden and food as I take them (hopefully with the new camera I want to buy after Christmas!).