Frosted Faces and Fig Newtons

Frosted Faces Foundation, in Ramona, CALIF https://frostedfacesfoundation.org/

What a lovely place! We went there last weekend to drop off all the Buffy meds and food that we had. It filled the trunk of my son's car and over flowed into the back seat.

I can't remember how to upload photos today. : (

It's a house in the country. The owners have saved one room and a bathroom just for their use, the rest of the house and garage is set up for dogs of different sizes and full of volunteers. Some were doing laundry or food stuff, most seemed to be keeping dogs company. It was really nice. We saw the room where Buffy must have stayed last summer when we were away and son went to a wedding. Nice.

I have been washing Buffy's various blankets and things. We will go up there at least one time to donate those.

We pulled out two boxes of: Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets Hydra Care Liver Flavored Liquid Supplement for Cats, 3-oz pouch, case of 12 and dropped by a friend's house who has a little kitty that is not eating as much as she should. It was nice to see Darlene too. 36 years ago when our son was born so early she came to the house and left diapers and wipes with a little "It's a Boy" balloon. I still have the balloon.

So we are getting use to not having Buffy here, but sad too.

One of our neighbors has a dog who cries, perhaps it's when they leave, or they put the dog outside. My son and I have talked about wanting to bring the dog into our house. 

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So still not quilting - but last night I made Fig Newtons!

It was really easy to do!

I started with the recipe on HGTV's site:
https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/garden-to-table/homemade-fig-newtons

Here are my notes for changes that I think needed to be made to the recipe.

For Paste:

I had dried figs and no corn syrup so I did this to prepare the fig paste:

I weighed 12 oz dried figs.  They already had stems removed and were sliced before drying.

Put figs in a bowl and pour a cup of white sugar on top, then boiling water to more than cover the figs.  I let that steep while I made the dough.  At the end I remember the cinnamon so sprinkled some cinnamon sugar I had made for toast. Stirred it to be sure it was mixed in.  I let sit for a while draining so a lot of the liquid was drained away.  Then I put in a Ninja food processor until it became a smooth mixture.

NEXT TIME: I will start with 5 oz of figs - I stuffed the cookies I made as I thought I needed to use everything I had processed and I still have about 1.5 cups of processed figs!

The dough was really nice to work with. 

• Combine in Bowl One:
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream in Standing Mixer:

• 1 stick butter
• 1/3 cup sugar

Add to standing mixer items

• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons orange juice

Add Bowl One to standing mixer ingredients

Flour board, and rolling pin out so 8 x 14 inches.  I thought I was doing well to get it  more like 8 x 16, but it would be better to make it shorter so the dough is closer to 1/4 inch.

Cut so 4 x 14

Spread about 1 cup on about 2 x 14 inches.

Fold over to cover the paste.

Then I pressed the edges to seal the paste in.

Cut so about 7 inches long.(In my case because I made the dough longer, it was 8 inches long)

Put on baking tray (with parchment) so the seam side is down.

Bake 350 for 20 minutes - crust did not really brown.

Remove from oven.  Use a sharp knife to cut into individual cookie size. Sprinkled with powder sugar.

I ended up with 32 cookies - way too many!  For many of the cookies the seam at the bottom disappeared and it looked like it was all in one piece.

NEXT time actually half or third the recipe.  Try with other fruit in the middle!

Fun!