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Recipe: pralines

We’re doing the happy dance over here because we finished our taxes this weekend! It’s not as bad as all that, but it isn’t a good time or something anyone chooses to do voluntarily – except for tax professionals. I will admit that taxes have gotten easier for me because I’ve learned to document and track my finances throughout the year such that it’s now a matter of tabulating the totals and entering the numbers. I like doing the incremental work so that we don’t have to spend more than a few hours getting it all together come tax time. Thanks, Past Self!

It means that we can spend our spare time skiing and doing other things – but mostly skiing! While Neva was at doggy daycare, we skied a “no dogs allowed” trail since we can’t ski it when we want to take Neva out in the snow. I had forgotten how nice it is to be able to climb hard and not have to stop for or worry about doggy issues. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my pup, but I don’t have to do everything with her. She had fun, we had fun, and we were all happy to see one another again at the end of the day.

slapping skins on for the climb

soft snow in the trees (kinda crappy out of the trees)

my reward was (half of) this amazing bacon cheeseburger at oak

And it’s not like Neva didn’t get to go play in the backcountry, because the very next day Erin and Banjo joined all of us on a ski tour! Neva is getting better about minding Jeremy and keeping clear of his skis (and those sharp metal edges). She’s actually best about avoiding them when they are moving. When we all stop to rip skins or shed layers, she starts hopping around and between the skis which is when she’s most likely to cut a paw. To help her obedience when we’re on skis, we alternate days working with her while we hike. It’s all about fun for Neva, but for us, it’s all about training her so she can be safe AND have fun for many years to come.

erin and banjo on the way up

getting neva ready for trail running season

I just booked travel to see my parents in Virginia this spring. Spring is a fine time to visit my home state because Williamsburg is thick with green leaves, flowering dogwoods, azaleas, and a host of beautiful birds. Any later than mid spring and I just can’t handle the heat and humidity. There are some staples that I always bring back to Colorado with me – like Virginia country ham, Virginia peanuts, and praline pecans. I never ate a praline on its own until a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean I never ate one. I consumed more than the legal limit when I was kid – all of it in the form of ice cream because pralines and cream ice cream was a favorite in our house and my parents used to own an ice cream store. Fast forward almost 40 years and I’m thinking “how hard can it be to make your own pralines?”

sugar, light brown sugar, salt, vanilla, pecans, cream, butter

Yup, that’s all there is to it. Basically you’re cooking pecans in caramel on the stove and agitating the caramel until it turns grainy. At that point, start dropping the pralines to form the beloved candy of the South. DO get all of your equipment ready ahead of time, as caramel waits for no one when it’s time to start dropping pralines. DO use a saucepan no smaller than 4-quart capacity because this stuff wants to, and will, bubble up during cooking. DO use a candy thermometer so you can track the temperature of your caramel.

toast the pecans

place all of the ingredients in a medium saucepan

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: huckleberry waffles

I told someone recently that we aren’t powderhounds – the types who drive around from mountain to mountain chasing down winter storms to ski the best powder. Clearly, one could do it. I follow a lot of Western ski resorts on Instagram, and some mountain somewhere is getting the goods on any given day. We just happened to get lucky a handful of times and then the rest is tracking weather forecasts for our local mountains. After our fun (but not snowy) weekend in Crested Butte, we returned home to Nederland just as – wait for it! – a snow storm dumped 11 inches on our local hill, Eldora. Is it luck or is it constant vigilance? You can mull that over while I ski the powder.

the morning commute looking pretty good

it was hip deep (for telemark) in some places

Powder days are not limited to human enjoyment. In fact, I’m pretty sure Neva loves her powder more than we do. She is just SO happy in the snow – bouncing and pouncing and digging and rolling and running and crashing. This is why we’re working so much with her this season to get her used to traveling with us into the backcountry – so that she can enjoy the snow with us, and safely.

puppy gets first tracks on the soccer field!

a little backcountry ski training with neva

skiing out on fresh powder with longs peak in the distance

All of this outdoor activity means Neva has been taking a lot of car rides. We have been working with our vet to try different medications and combinations – slowly getting closer to a solution. She is no longer vomiting, and I think that is in large part due to dramamine – or rather meclizine (which is dramamine 2), but she doesn’t like traveling in a vehicle – period. Neva’s anxiety goes through the roof when she is in the car (aka the torture-mobile), so we have a sedative for long car rides which helps her to just sleep through it. But for short drives to local trailheads, we just give her a meclizine about an hour before we leave. As we were packing up our gear for the ski tour, we found her chillaxing in the sun, on the stairs… sort of.

feeling pretty mellow

I really like that little girl. Not only does Neva share my love of snow, but she also shares my love of huckleberries. Whenever I make something with huckleberries, she always gets a few. If I empty a bag of frozen huckleberries, I’ll turn the bag inside out and let her lick the juices. So it was when I emptied a bag of frozen huckleberries last summer for a kitchen experiment. I wanted to see if there was a difference between huckleberry waffles made with fresh huckleberries versus frozen huckleberries. But really, I just wanted huckleberry waffles.

butter, flour, buttermilk, baking soda, baking powder, salt, sugar, cornstarch, eggs, frozen and fresh huckleberries

fresh hucks on the left, frozen on the right

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: cornflake chocolate chip cookies

Remember what I said about everything being relative and how enduring terrible windstorms made the horrible windstorms seem not so bad after all? Right. The winds were only gusting to 55 mph the other day, so we packed up the pup and some gear for a little ski tour. It always feels worse in the parking lot because parking lots offer zero shelter, but once you are in the trees, it gets better. Except this time the couple of inches of fresh snow turned into a ground blizzard even in the trees. Still, we were happy to get outside and get the lungs pumping. Neva couldn’t care less about blowing snow or mature conifers dancing in the wind as if it were a rave. That pup is clearly happiest romping through the snow. None of us can give up snow.

a ground blizzard starting up

Sometimes we ski down with Neva on a leash, which requires that the skier maintain a steady speed and remain in complete control so that no puppies or people are harmed. Other times, Jeremy will ski down first while I hold Neva on leash. When he gets to a stopping point, he’ll call out and I’ll tell her to go find Jeremy and let her go. She tears off like a maniac and usually ends up wherever he is. A couple of times though, Neva has veered off into the woods. The last time she did it, she got stuck in a big snow drift and when I called to her, she ran back to me then ran to Jeremy upon my command. Treats don’t seem to have greater value than “sweet sweet freedom”, but we figured out what does (for now): her tennis ball. I tucked it into Jeremy’s pack before we left the house.

The whole way up, we worked on “heel” and “trail” to keep Neva from wandering in front of our skis or pulling orthogonally. It’s hard for her to control herself because the snow makes her SO EXCITED, but she is improving each time we ski with her. On the way back down, we ripped (climbing) skins and locked into ski mode. Neva did great running alongside Jeremy. For steeper sections, it’s more fun for all involved if we can take the hills unattached (no leash). I had Neva’s leash in my hand and before Jeremy took off down the hill, he produced the orange tennis ball. Suddenly, all of her world became that ball. He skied off and I told her to wait. She sat in the snow, but her front legs were trembling with eagerness and you could hear Neva whimpering over the howling wind. The moment Jeremy came to a stop, her front paw began to twitch. He waved to me and I said, “Go!” as Neva flew down the hill leaving cold smoke in her wake. I think I’m going to order 60 more of those orange balls (she likes the orange ones, the yellow ones aren’t as interesting for some reason).

now that’s a happy girl

Once home, Neva took a big drink of water, ate some snacks, and then sprawled out in a sunny spot on the floor for a well-deserved nap. As Jeremy reached for a chocolate chip cookie on the counter, I stopped him mid-reach. “Not that batch,” I pointed, “THAT batch.” I had been recipe testing cookies over the weekend because I hadn’t made chocolate chip cookies in years. It’s a wonderful feeling to have a recipe you can always count on. I used to bake a cornflake chocolate chip cookie recipe all the time when I lived at sea level. It’s a recipe I got from an ex-boyfriend’s mother that was a hit with all of my co-workers, graduate department, and colleagues for over a decade. Then I moved to Colorado and the cookies didn’t bake right anymore. I made several adjustments and tanked several batches for the first year. After a while, I gave up. You hear this from a lot of people who moved from sea level to high altitudes – they just stopped baking cookies.

With another decade of baking – this time at elevation – under my belt, and this great article on the science of chocolate chip cookies from The Food Lab (it’s Kenji week here at Butter headquarters), I decided to give it another shot. It’s not the ultimate chocolate chip cookie that I am after, I just want my cornflake chocolate chip cookies to not suck.

vanilla, cornflakes, flour, dark chocolate, eggs, sugar, baking soda, salt, dark brown sugar, butter

The first rule for high altitude baking is to stick with the original recipe. Sometimes they turn out with zero alterations, other times it’s just a small tweak, and then on rare occasion it requires a massive overhaul of the original recipe. I basically went with a mashup of Kenji’s recipe and my cornflake chocolate chip cookie recipe – which is a chocolate chip cookie with crushed cornflakes in the dough.

whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together

crush the cornflakes with a rolling pin

chop the chocolate

**Jump for more butter**