Instant Pot Week #2 Cranberry Nut Cake

Baking probably isn’t the first thing a person thinks about when they hear the word pressure cooker but it is definitely something you can do. Baking is especially successful when you make something that thrives in a moist environment like a cheese cake or a baked custard. The pressure cooker is also good at baking things that don’t need to be crisp like cake.

I don’t usually bring out the cranberry recipes until the pumpkin spice everything threatens to take over the world at the end of September or beginning of October. This recipe, however, was screaming at me to make it and use up some of the cranberry stash in my freezer. I used a 3 cup Bundt cake pan to make this recipe but you can use a 6 inch cake pan or spring form pan if you don’t have one.

Cranberry Nut Cake

• Difficulty: Easy
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Adapted From The Instant Pot Bible The Next Generation

1 1/2 cup water, for in the liner

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup whole berry cranberry sauce

2 TBS brown sugar

2 TBS canola oil

3 TBS lightly beaten egg

1/4 tsp vanilla

Spray Bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray and set aside. Add water to pressure cooker liner, add trivet to the liner and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix well.

In a small bowl, combine the cranberry sauce, brown sugar, canola oil, egg, and vanilla. Mix well to dissolve the brown sugar.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and gently stir until ingredients are just moistened.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Set on the pan on the trivet and cover with aluminum foil. Close and lock lid. Pressure cook on high for 50 minutes. Let natural release for 20 minutes then release any remaining pressure. Remove pan from liner and let cool.

Christmas Treats #2– Spritz Cookies

Every year, I plan a massive list of cookies and treats I want to make for Christmas. The list is so big that if I started baking for Christmas in June, I wouldn’t get them done. So every year I have par down the list to something a bit more realistic. Every year, Spritz cookies get cut because they require a bit of special equipment in the form of a cookie press.

This year I decided to keep them on them list and buy a cookie press. I bought a Wilton cookie press for about $15. I have had several people tell me that the cookie press is hard to use. I found that there is a bit of a learning curve, its not hard. Here are a few things I learned about making spritz cookies. 1. Don’t grease or line your pans. It makes your cookies spread. 2. If you are tooling a long pressing cookies and all of a sudden the cookies won’t release from the press, its because your dough is too warm. Put the press and baking sheet in the fridge for 5 minutes and try again. 3. Don’t let the cookies cool more then the recommended 2 minutes. Once cooled the cookies will break more easily when removing them. 4. I discovered I like these cookies with out decorations but you can sprinkle the cookies with colored sugar before baking if you like a more festive cookies

Spritz Cookies

• Difficulty: Easy
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Adapted From Wilton.com

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

3 TBS lightly beaten egg

1 TBS Milk

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg, milk, almond extract and vanilla extract; mix well.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture; beat until well combined. DO NOT CHILL.

Put your chosen disk into the cookie press and fill it with dough. Press the cookie dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. Cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet on a cooling rack. Remove the cookies from the cookie sheet and cool completely on the cooling rack.

Air Fryer Chocolate Chip Cookies

My friend, Christina, posted this recipe for two perfect chocolate chip cookies on her Instagram feed last week.  They sounded so good but with heat in the high 80’s and no air conditioning I wasn’t about to turn on the oven to make them.  After  mourning my cookieless state for a while, I realized I could probably bake these in the air fryer so I tried it and it worked great.

I used a 7 quart Gourmia air fryer for this recipe.  The time and temperate  in the recipe are based on what it takes to get done in that air fryer.  If you have a different size or brand start with the temperature at 350 degrees and check them every 3 minutes until they are done to your liking.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Difficulty: Easy
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From Christina Lane’s Dessert For Two Instagram feed

2 TBS butter, melted

3 TBS packed brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup flour

1//8 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup chocolate chips

In a small bowl, combine melted butter, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla, until well combined.

In another small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt, mix well.

Sprinkle the moist ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir until all the dry ingredients are combined.  Divide mixture into two mounds and press to flatten slightly.

Baking in the air fryer: Put the cookie dough in the air fryer basket.   Bake at 350 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing the cookies from the air fryer basket.

Cooking in the oven.   Pre heat oven to 350 degrees. Place the  cookie dough onto a baking sheet. Press slightly to flatten.  Bake 17-18 minutes.  Eat.

Nutbutter Cookies

This is what happens when I get snowed in by a blizzard on my day off. I sit around feeling sorry for myself because all the things I had planned on doing got cancelled then I pull out my copy of Mark Bittman’s How To Bake Everything and start finding some recipes to adapt. Then I get in the kitchen and bake. I am still not happy about the snow but now I have cookies so it doesn’t seem nearly as bad. Lol.

These aren’t soft, fluffy cookies. They are actually on the flat and crisp side of cookies. They go nicely with a glass of milk for dunking. Use any nutbutter you have on hand. I used almond butter.

• Difficulty: Easy
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Adapted From Mark Bittman’s How To Bake Everything

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

4 TBS butter, softened

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup nutbutter

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking soda. Mix well. In another medium bowl, cream togethet the butter, brown sugar and white sugar, until light and fluffy. Add the nutbutter, egg and vanilla and beat until well combined. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture in three batches throughly mix them together before adding more flour mixture. Drop by tablespoonsful, 2 inches a part onto a baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool on the pan 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Popcorn Cake

Gooey,  sweet and salty perfection — Cookies And Cups

Gooey gorgeousness —  Homemade Hannah

Yum — A Solitary Feast

Just so we are clear, this is not a traditional cake decorated to look like a box of movie theater popcorn.  This cake is actual popcorn held together with a stick of butter and a bag of melted marshmallows with some kind of candy thrown in just in case it isn’t sweet enough.

Do I really need to say anything more about this cake?  This cake has been in my family since I was a little kid.  You really can use any candy here but gummy candies or chocolate work the best. Yes, you can use microwave popcorn but why would you want to?  Stove top popcorn is so easy to make and tastes so much better.   By the way,  this recipe is not small batch.

• Difficulty: Medium
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From A Recipe My Mom Gave Me

20 cups of popped popcorn,  remove unpopped corn kernels

1 stick of butter

1 16 oz bag of mini marshmallows or 1 12 oz bag regular marshmallows

1 10 – 12 oz bag M n M’s

Pop your popcorn and sift through it for any unpopped kernels.  Place in very large bowl.  In a medium sauce pan, over medium heat, melt the stick of butter.  Add the marshmallows.  Stir the marshmallows until they are melted, smooth and mixed with the butter.  Let the marshmallows sit a minute or two, off heat, to cool.  Pour the marshmallows into the popcorn, add the M n M’s and mix, with hands coated in butter until well combined.  Pack into a well buttered Angel food cake pan or Bundt pan.   Let sit for 1 hour before serving.