It’s hard to think of anything but my cold stiff fingers right now. Our landlord has yet to turn on the heat in our building. It is currently 41 degrees. INSIDE AND OUT. Yes, he’s breaking the law. Yes, my anger is poisoning everything I do.
SO I’M RAGE-BAKING.
Gingerbread walnuts, sweet, crunchy, warm and spiced, these might just pull me back from the brink today.
(enter obligatory genital joke) but this is the first time I’ve attempted making a sweet blend. I don’t know why I’m not doing this every week. It’s so brain-dead easy and such a wonderful way to warm up a house stagnant with icy air. Serendipitously, these walnuts taste almost exactly like the shellacked nuts served at NYC’s Upper West Side mainstay,Shun Lee.
Except mine are better. Obviously. I mean, I made them. Homemade > Processed. Duh.
And on the topic of Homemade Wonders, take note: these nuts make a great holiday gift (second obligatory genital joke). I’m making a quad-batch so I can package them up and pass around some cheer. My agents, the women who run the laundromat next door, the life guards at my dungeony YMCA; the people that make my neighborhood will all get a jar.
As for my landlord?
Maybe a jarful of coal.
He’s been a bad boy.
Free of Gluten, Dairy, Soy, Corn and Processed Sugar.
- 3 pounds Shelled Walnuts
- 3 Egg Whites
- 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil (or Rice Bran, Safflower, Sunflower, etc…)
- 1 teaspoon Molasses
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- ¾ cup Palm Sugar
- 1 tablespoon Ground Ginger
- 1 tablespoon Cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- ¼ teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
- ⅛ teaspoon Ground Cloves
- 1 cup Dried Cherries
Get Busy
- Spread the raw walnuts over two cookie sheets. Place them in the oven while you preheat it to 300 degrees. When they are slightly fragrant and toasted, remove them and drop the heat to 250 degrees.
- In a large bowl whisk together everything (leaving out the cherries) until frothy and blended. Don’t worry about getting peaks of any kind out of the egg whites, just make them bubbly.
- Pour the roasted walnuts and dried cherries into the wet mixture and stir to coat everything.
- Spread the nuts back over the cookie sheets and bake at 250 degrees for one hour, or until the nuts are dry (third obligatory nut joke).
- Remove from the oven, try not to nibble until they’ve cooled. You will not win.