Candy Roaster Cookies

have you ever heard of a candy roaster squash a candy roaster squash is just a winter squash like a lot of other winter squashes they grow between 12 and 24 inches long so they're long cylinder shape almost like think of a banana in fact in some places they're called a banana squash instead of a candy roaster candy roaster is what i know them as though but they are think of pumpkin only better that's the kind of squash they are it's like a winter squash and you can grow them just like you can other winter squashes in your garden the vines go everywhere and then the fruits produce just in a similar manner as pumpkins or butternuts or other types of squash once the in the same way you tell how they're ripe the same way as you do with other squash once the vine little part dries out and gets kind of woody and hard then you know that it's ripe candy roasters can be stored for winter just like those other winter squash they need to like have a curing period kinda and then you can store them in a cool dry place separate from each other you don't want them all pulled on top of each other give them some room for air to circulate i usually go ahead and process mine and put them up so i slice my candy roasters into and i get out the seeds saving some for next year and then i roast them in the oven and that makes it really easy to dig out the pulp and then i freeze it in containers put it in the freezer and that's how i do it candy roasters really good eating if you want to just roast them and eat them that's really good way to eat them almost think of any way you can do that you're familiar with doing butternut squash or pumpkin squash or pumpkin sorry those are the same things that you can do with a candy roaster in my opinion i think candy roasters are somehow sweeter than pumpkins and they're kind of my favorite for putting up and for making pies out of and other desserts candy roaster butter is really good that's a good one and i make cookies that's what i'm going to show you how to make today in this video but first i'm going to tell you this little um one time jim cassida he's a great outdoors writer very well known he wrote a little piece and he let me share it on the blind picking acorn he has memories of his grandpa joe growing candy roaster so this is little pieces from jim cassida grandpa stored the winter squash underneath corn shocks always being careful to keep them protected from the ground with a layer of straw or corn stalks as well as making certain they didn't touch one another a few pumpkins or candy roasters perhaps showing an imperfection or looking like they wouldn't keep well might be put in the smokehouse cannery just outside grandma's kitchen i guess so that she could use them quickly you know the tasty wonders both grandma and mama worked with them were a source of pure wonder they particularly liked the fact candy roaster flesh wasn't nearly as stringy as that of pumpkins today's efforts of these two wonderful cooks runs through quarters of my mind like a sweet dream the big squash which could sometimes run 10 to 15 pounds although i've read of county fair competitions where they run to the hundreds of pounds would be roasted in large chunks or even whole in the oven it was much easier to do this way than trying to peel them while raw if a whole candy roaster was involved bits of skin would be cut away or holes poked in it so steam could escape after roasting and with the seed and stringy matter around the seed removed the meat was ready for preparation the uses varied appreciably one personal favorite was mashing up the candy roaster and perhaps adding a bit of brown sugar or molasses along with cinnamon to make a non-dessert dish used such as like applesauce it was actually as the candy part of the name suggests sweet enough to have been a dessert or it could be used to make pies quite similar to those prepared with pumpkin and candy roaster bread or muffins and cakes or as candy roast or butter the ladder slathered across a cat head biscuit which had already received a generous application of butter gave that biscuit a college education so that's a little piece from jim casa that he wrote a few years back about his memories of candy roasters in the early 90s i had an appalachian studies class in college and i really loved it it was really where i kind of always appreciated my appalachian culture because pap and granny raised us like just kind of to be not that we were better than anybody else but just to be who we are which who we are that was who we were we were appalachians you know so i already had appreciation but in that class i really gained just a great love and i guess a knowledge that everyone else didn't know about appalachia and how interesting it could be to other people where it was just my everyday life i really was awakened to the fact that others might not know but might want to know more about it so i really loved that class but part john mccabe john cabe not mckay john cabe was my teacher mr cabe he was a great teacher and i really enjoyed that class but during the class one of the requirements was near the end of the semester i guess was that you had to do a big project you had to present from the class well i remember i did mine on the leuven brothers if you don't know who the leuven brothers are you need to look that up they're one of the most historically recognized brother duets of the brother duet harmony style of singing and wonderful music that they made i still listen to them a lot anyway i did my project on them with the help of paul it's back in those days of those big camcorder kind of things and we filmed it and did it all and i was so horrified to hear myself speak on it because of some of the things that the way i i guess that was one of the first times i'd heard myself speak is what i should say anyway i got over that part but um so that was what i did but other people like there was a guy i remember he did he was a cherokee indian so he did his about the cherokee he was a really interesting guy i remember he rode his um like a bike instead of driving a car he rode a bike to school every day anyway he was a really neat guy and he did his about that and as you might imagine there was a lot of people who did theirs on the foodways of appalachia just different things from cornbread to whatever well there was a lady and i have no memory of what she looked like i don't remember her name i don't remember anything about that but she did hers on pumpkins that was her whole project and as part of it she presented the class everyone with some recipes from how her family used pumpkin she called it in the recipes well even though i don't remember her name or who she what she looked like or anything like that she must have really impressed upon me something because i kept those recipes i just kept them in my rest i have a book where any kind of thing like that a handout or something out of a magazine i glue it in the like a notebook so that's in one of my notebooks and i never made the recipes but i kept them well a few years ago i had some candy roaster and i was thinking wonder what i could make with it and um something different you know i was looking for something different instead of like pumpkin pies but made with candy roaster or candy roaster butter or just roasting it and letting us eat it like that for supper or whatever so i got out one of my recipe books and i was flipping through it just looking for you know an idea of what i might be able to do and i seen that pumpkin one of hers was pumpkin cookies i think it was um let's see if i've got it wrote down she's this is what she'd put on it this is a family recipe that came from my great-aunt best shannon she served us youngins this pumpkin cookies ever halloween when we went trick-or-treating at her house so it was ain't best as pumpkin cooking cookies and so when i seen that recipe i thought well i substitute candy roaster for everything else for pumpkin so i'm going to try making her cookie recipe that i've had for 20 years and never made it and see what it how it turns out with the candy roaster oh my goodness they are so good that i i just quickly started making them all the time after that and now it's like if you i think of it as when you eat one of them it's like a taste of fall it's got all those different elements that you love about fall all in that cookie and they're really easy to make so that's a good thing too but i'm going to show you how to make those cookies right now first we're going to start with 1 3 cup shortening and i'm going to put it in the in my mixer with the sugar and don't worry about trying to jot down all these uh ingredients if you would like to make this i'll put a link below in the description so that i'll it'll take you to the blind pig in the acorn where i've shared the post before and that'll be easier for you to to write down i'm sure but first we're going to put the that's one third cup shortening and i have one and a third cup of sugar so we're going to let that cream together for a few minutes [Music] okay that's creamed together pretty good now i'm going to put in two eggs mixing well after each addition we've had chickens for i don't know about 10 years or something like that and i just love having fresh eggs but our hens you know in 10 years a lot of them got older some things happened to a few of them like that will happen if you have animals anyway so this spring katie bought six little ones i can't remember what kinds they are to tell you but anyway one of them has just now started laying eggs so we are so excited about it and i can't wait till they all are which is what we had in the beginning when we had a lot of hens and then some things happened to them and some of them got older we actually had one hen that entire time that we've had chickens and she just recently passed away but anyway i love fresh eggs okay let me put in the other egg so okay i'm gonna add my candy roaster this is one cup of candy roaster that's just been um it was roasted in the oven and then put in the freezer i'm also going to go ahead and add i have this is in my my little cannon lid here it's handy to put spices in i'm going to put this is 1 4 ginger teaspoon of ginger 1 4 teaspoon of allspice 1 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon so i'm going to go ahead and put that in also interested in this recipe is that it takes a lemon zest which i think just gives it such a brightness with all this other deep rich tones it gives it such a brightness so this is one teaspoon of lemon zest and it also calls for one teaspoon of lemon juice so i'm going to use the lemon that i got the juice from to or the zest there's my one teaspoon of lemon juice [Music] i'm gonna mix well so you can see at this point that it's really kind of a liquidy mixture you can see that it's really really liquidy but now we're going to add in raisins this recipe calls for one cup of raisins put them in there and it calls for one half cup of nuts you can use pecans you can use whatever you want i think even almonds would be good what i love is black walnuts so the black walnut tree is native to appalachia so you'll have a lot of recipes especially sweet recipes cookies and cakes and pies and things that that call for black walnuts so that's what i love in these cookies so that's a half a cup of black walnuts okay i forgot to put in my vanilla a mint ago when i was putting in all the spices so i'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla [Music] okay now i'm ready to add my flour this is two and a half cups of flour actually it's two and a half cups of self-rising flour you could use all-purpose flour or plain flour as granny calls it if you want to but then you would have to add some leavening to it i'm going to scrape down the inside of the bowl and give it one more mix okay now you're going to drop them by a spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet and we're going to bake them at 400 degrees i'm going to scoop the mixer over so that i can put my cookie sheet right here and depending on how big you want them uh like i've i've dropped them with a bigger spoon before a tablespoon and they're bigger cookies they do spread some though so you just need to remember that so today i'm going to make them kind of on the smaller side you can see the little yellow flecks in there of that lemon rind and i don't know who ain't best shannon was but my goodness she had a she had a good cookie i may have said her name backwards now i can't remember what it was for sure but anyway this is definitely a recipe it may it took me 20 years to actually made it make it but i'm so glad that i kept it for 20 years and then did make it and i wish i could go back to that class and find out more about the lady that shared it i really don't truthfully remember if it was a lady or a young girl that was a college class that had all mixed ages in it from older adults to probably folks younger than me and i was in my 20s then but um anyway it's definitely a recipe that's perfect for this time of the year perfect for any time of the year but it's really good okay i'm gonna pop these in the oven at 400 degrees and let them cook for about 10 minutes you might just keep my advice to people when they're baking is to always keep an eye on your own oven the first time especially because ovens temperatures vary so much i know my oven cooks a little faster it seems like than a lot of the recipes i use and then sometimes i'll try a recipe that i find and it seems like it takes mine a whole five or ten minutes longer to get done so the best practice is the first time you make a recipe just use your own really pay attention and then you'll know oh those cookies in my oven take this long then from then on you'll know so now i'm going to pop these in the oven so the cookies are out of the oven and you can see some smaller some larger but you can tell they're the kind of cookie that spreads and while i was baking them i just had the thought i've never thought of before i'm positive you could make this batter and then make a bread out of it put it in a loaf or a cake put it in a loaf pan or a cake pan and bake it like that if you didn't want cookies but you can see the inside of them is really chewy and just a really good texture if that's the kind of texture you like i guess if you don't it wouldn't be but anyway you can see the raisins and the black walnuts it's just a really great cookie i hope you enjoyed learning more about candy roasters in appalachia and seeing how to make candy roaster cookies if you don't have access to candy roasters pumpkin would work just as well in the recipe after all that was the original intent of the recipe was it called for pumpkin and if you don't have fresh pumpkin canned pumpkin would work just as well so i hope you give the cookies a try and if you do i hope you like them as much as we do are there other recipes from appalachia that you'd be interested in learning more about if there is please leave a comment below and tell me about them maybe i can make a video about those someday i appreciate you hanging out with me today and if you'd like to help me celebrate appalachia i hope you'll share this video with your friends and neighbors and that you'll subscribe to my channel but most of all i just hope you'll continue to drop back by as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 11,426

Rating: 4.9922929 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachia, Appalachian Mountians, Appalachian Food, Food from Appalahcia, Appalachian Foodways, Appalachian foods and recipes, Appalachian food history, Appalachian food summit, celebrating appalachia, Blind Pig and The Acorn, Pap, growing candy roaster squash, candy roaster squash seeds, candy roaster pie, candy roaster recipes, squash recipes, vegetable dessert recipes

Id: rcLArJ4uMNE

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020