Recipes 33: Turkey Burgers

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 medium onion

1 pound lean ground turkey

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

3/4 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste : 4 hamburger buns, preferably whole wheat,1 tablespoon canola oil, or use pan spray

For serving: Sliced tomato, Sliced onion, Iceberg lettuce, Pickles, Sliced red pepper, Ketchup and mustard

DIRECTIONS:

1. Grate the onion on the fine holes of a grater. You should have about two tablespoons of grated onion (and a lot of juice, which you can discard). Place in a bowl with the ground turkey, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, salt and pepper. Using a fork, mix together well. Shape into four patties – the mixture will be quite moist -- and press the patties into ½-inch thick rounds.

2. Heat the canola oil in a nonstick griddle or large nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat. (Alternately, spray the griddle or pan with pan spray.) When you can feel the heat while holding your hand just above griddle or pan, cook the patties for five minutes on each side. Serve on buns, with the condiments of your choice.

Recipes 32: Raspberry Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:

¾ cup butter at room temperature
¾ cup seedless raspberry jam, can use
black raspberry
3 tablespoons Chambord or other
blackberry liqueur; you may omit this.
1 ¼ cup cocoa
1 ½ pounds confectioner's sugar
¼ to ½ cup half-and-half as needed

DIRECTIONS:
Cream together the butter and the jam and use a flat spatula to get out the lumps now or
else they will never come out later. Add the optional liqueur and cocoa and blend in. Then add
the confectioner's sugar in 3-4 bunches to blend it in slowly.
I use a mixer for all of this but you can mix it by hand if you like. Use the half-and-half, or whole milk, to add in enough liquid to keep the consistency just right. You need to keep the frosting easy enough to spread without making it too runny. Everyone's kitchen seems different to me as far as how much moisture you
will need so keep an eye on this.

Any homemade frosting beats store bought frosting by a mile. And even if you put it on a

cake made from a box mix, the cake will taste great because the frosting is so important. Not
many people make anything like this from scratch so if I take a cake with this frosting to a party I always get rave reviews, "you made this from scratch?!!," etc. And it's really very easy to make.

Recipe 31: Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups white table sugar
4 eggs, scrambled

Melt these two ingredients gently on very low heat so that they don't scald:
¼ cup butter
4 ounces (4 squares) baking chocolate

2 cups sifted flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup chopped nuts (I use pecans)

½ cup confection sugar for the decoration

DIRECTIONS:
Mix the eggs and the white sugar to combine them well. Then add the melted butter and

chocolate after they cool down a little. Then add the flour, baking powder, nuts and salt and stir
to combine. You may want to use an electric mixer just because this batter gets very stiff. You
don't want to beat the batter hard enough to incorporate air into the batter; you just want to mix it completely.

Chill the batter for a few hours or overnight, so that it will handle easily for the next step.

Roll the dough into small balls of 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter each. Then roll each ball of batter
across a plate dusted with the confection sugar to cover the entire ball.

Place each ball on a greased cookie sheet and bake in a slow oven (300 degrees) for 18-

20 minutes. You need a slow oven because a hot oven would discolor the confection sugar