Bourbon salt (DIY)

Learn how to make easy DIY bourbon salt, the perfect finish for everything from roasted meats to sweet baked goods.

Bourbon salt: really, it's a no-brainer, am I right? I love finishing salts and all things salty. I love bourbon. Ergo, I doubly love bourbon salt.

And what could possibly be better than being able to DIY something you doubly love? How about if making it was easy? And I mean falling-off-a-log easy.

Booyah.You know I'm all about easy recipes.

The only thing you will really need is a little patience for this recipe because it requires you to spend a bit of time reducing the bourbon to intensify the flavor. Plus you'll need to dry the salt. But we're talking a part of one afternoon (or one evening of watching TV from the kitchen, if you're me) at most.

It's so worth it.

Bourbon salted chocolate peanut butter truffles

Dark chocolate peanut butter truffles finished with homemade bourbon salt: a decadent and delicious but also elegant and easy holiday treat.

So, remember last week's bourbon salt? Did you make some over the weekend? I sure hope so, because you are going to want to break it out and use it in today's recipe: bourbon salted dark chocolate peanut butter truffles.

Ermergahd, peeps: These are like peanut butter cups that have gone to eleven.

Talk about an amazing holiday dessert treat. Got a party coming up? Bring these truffles: I guarantee they will be the hit of the dessert table and you'll be asked at which bakery you scored them. (Although some friends these are, if they don't already know you're an amazing ninja-like cook and would never show up at a party with store-bought dessert.)

Now, let's be clear: I am not claiming these bourbon salted peanut butter truffles are one of my normally healthy-ish recipes. They're not. There's a whole lotta sugar, salt and chocolate in here. But it's the holidays, and we all deserve some decadent treats at holiday time (which we make up for during Detox January, remember?).

Yet while these are not the healthiest recipe I've ever made, they certainly meet my other recipe criterion of being easy. Yes, elegant, delicious and decadent yet also easy-peasy. How cool is that?

Bourbon apple pumpkin butter

Slow cooker bourbon apple pumpkin butter -- so simple to make in the crockpot, using fresh pumpkin.

It's the third week of October: Are you sick of pumpkin yet?

I hope you appreciate that I haven't been overwhelming you with pumpkin recipes; I've been trying to let apples and other fall favorites have their time in the sun. But I couldn't resist this recipe. It showcases not only flavorful fall apples but also finally-seasonally-appropriate pumpkin ...

... and booze!

There you go: Possibly the most perfect fall recipe yet, no?

I have no doubt you have seen lots of recipes flying around the blogosphere this month for pumpkin butter. But have you really looked at them or made any of them? It's safe to say that 99 percent of them involve cooking down some canned pumpkin.

Come on, peeps: We can do better. (Ninjas always do better.) And it's not hard.

If you're going to go to the effort to make a pumpkin butter, why not use some fresh pumpkin? Jeesh, and if you throw it in a crockpot and then immersion-blend the bejesus out of it, it practically cooks itself.

Which is exactly what I did.

"Boozy Zenith" Bourbon Pecan Cake: a recipe

This post has been a long time coming. Three weeks, in fact. Three weeks of marinating in boozy Jack Daniels goodness.

The cake, that is, has been marinating. Not this post. Or me.

I'll start out this saga by noting that this is a recipe I got from my mother and, short of "I think I cut it out of a magazine a long time ago", she has no idea where it came from, only that it was my dad's favorite. So if you think your Great Aunt Tilly invented it or something, I don't want to hear it.

In my childhood home, this was "fruitcake."

Which should have been explained to me better as a child, as I used to tell people that I loved fruitcake. And they all looked at me as if I were bat-shit crazy. I could not understand why so many people hated fruitcake, when it was so amazingly yummy.

Then at some point I tasted a real fruitcake: how amazingly revolting!

Bourbon fig jam

Enjoy easy, versatile bourbon fig jam on a charcuterie platter, paired with cheese, swirled into morning yogurt or slathered on warm toast. 

So, I guess you knew it was inevitable that I'd hit the bourbon, once I moved to Kentucky.

But, in true Ninj fashion, I'm not just drinking it or soaking holiday fruitcake in it -- I'm also cooking with it (not that the two don't go hand-in-hand at Casa de Ninj, mind you). Behold, this sweet and smoky bourbon fig jam, one of two recipes I created recently for the readers of Edible Green Mountains magazine.

(In case you didn't realize, in addition to being The Ninj on this blog, I'm also a freelance writer for a variety of other publications, both print and online.)

My article is an homage to bourbon as a winter warmer -- because boat drinks and icy glasses of white wine just don't cut it in wintertime, no matter on which side of the Mason-Dixon line you find yourself.

Bourbon brie flatbread with fig jam and prosciutto

Keep your holiday entertaining simple with this sweet-and-savory appetizer: smoky bourbon brie flatbread with fig jam and crispy prosciutto. 

Regular readers know that The Ninj is all about quick-and-easy real-food recipes, especially for weeknight dinners. But that holds true for all my recipes -- even for holiday entertaining.

I don't know about you, but whether I'm hosting or simply attending a holiday party, I like to focus on the company, the conversation and the cocktails (not necessarily in that order, heh heh), rather than fret over the appetizer prep. That's why I often turn to flatbreads for parties; it's easy to use a variety of spreads and toppings to turn a simple flatbread into a great appetizer pizza.

Clearly the good folks at Alouette Cheese think the same way I do, since they have teamed up with Stonefire Flatbreads to share some "flavorology" this holiday season. Simply put, it's their term for the art of creating unique, simple and delicious flavor combinations using flatbreads and soft cheese spreads. What could be easier (or yummier)?

Stonefire and Alouette invited me to come up with my own favorite flatbread flavorology combination: with cheese flavors like wasabi cheddar, smoky jalapeño and roasted red pepper, it was hard to choose. But of course I was pulled like a moth to a flame to the Smoky Bourbon Creme de Brie -- you know, because nothing says "holiday" to The Ninj like bourbon. Except bourbon and cheese.

Southern bourbon holiday punch

Made with sweet tea, fresh lemon and good bourbon, this Southern bourbon punch is the perfect drink for a holiday party or any festive entertaining.

I bet you've been wondering why it's been a little quiet around Yankee Kitchen Ninja lately. If you subscribe to my recipe newsletter, you may have noticed that I'm not posting as much. It's time to tell you why.

Hold on to your hats: We're moving. Again. Right before Christmas.

It's turned out to be a much shorter stay here in Kentucky than we planned, as work has called us back to the East Coast. To Maryland, more precisely -- which is the first place we ever lived together as a couple, so it's a bit like going home.

But moving is damned hard work. Which is why I haven't been able to devote as much time to you as I'd like lately. And this move is happening right smack in the middle of the holiday season, leaving me no opportunity for all the holiday decorating, baking and eating that I look forward to all year long.

But I've managed to sneak in some drinking. (Heck, I'm going to need more than a little drinking to get through all this!)

So my parting recipe upon leaving Kentucky is most apropos: Southern bourbon holiday punch, an homage to my brief return to the South and the home of the best bourbon anywhere.

Green Mountain Mule

The Green Mountain Mule pairs Kentucky bourbon with Vermont maple syrup in this refreshing riff on a cocktail classic.

Peeps: It's no secret that I like my cocktails.

Which is a good thing, given that I now live in Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world (I think it's pretty safe to make this broad claim).

However, it's now March and I'm reading reports that the sap is running in Vermont and the sugaring season has begun. Which makes me miss Vermont and its incomparable Grade B maple syrup like crazy.

So, being The Ninj, I decided to blend the specialty of my old home state with that of my new one and turn them into one delicious cocktail: the Green Mountain Mule, a riff on the Moscow Mule that pays homage to both Vermont and Kentucky.

Easy holiday cocktail party recipes

You'll love all these quick-and-easy yet impressive recipes for cocktails, snacks and appetizers for your next holiday cocktail party.

If you want to spend more time enjoying your holiday party and less time preparing and fussing over the food and drink recipes, you'll love all my ideas for quick-and-easy yet impressive cocktails, snacks and appetizers.

Happiest holiday party wishes from The Ninj!

Boozy maple bacon jam

Boozy maple bacon jam. Yes, you heard me right.

This is my second post this week in which I think the title says it all and if I didn't write another word about it but instead simply gave you the recipe, you'd be perfectly happy.

I'm an advocate of homecooking for healthier eating and, more importantly, eating real food rather than prepackaged, only-microwave-cooking-required crap that is full of chemicals (and yes, I'm not perfect and occasionally indulge in Nutella but I also haven't eaten a bite of fast food in five years).

Luckily, bacon is real food, as regular readers know that I have a weakness for it and tend to throw a bit of it into nearly everything (including bacon oatmeal cookies -- yes, I went there). And I refuse to jump on the bacon-is-so-last-year bandwagon (freakin' hipsters, raining on my parade).

Yet you may notice that I haven't been packing on the bacon recipes much in 2014 (there's actually only been one, can you believe it?). Time to rectify that.

Happily, Katie from Healthy Seasonal Recipes invited me to take part in her Pure Maple link party to celebrate maple season -- and we all know that nothing goes better with maple syrup than bacon (well, I hope you know this -- it's a fact). And, even though the sap is running here in Vermont, it's still freakin' cold and snowy, so why not throw in a little bourbon to warm us all up?

(Bacon is never made worse by the addition of bourbon. This is another fact.)

Oooh! I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned the best part: you can make this boozy maple bacon jam in the slow cooker.

Panettone muffins

Panettone muffins: all the sweet, fruity flavor of traditional panettone in a simple muffin -- the perfect holiday breakfast.

Panettone is a Christmas tradition for The Ninj. This fruity Italian sweet bread is delicious and also versatile -- it's great for dessert or with a cup of afternoon tea yet even better as breakfast, plain, slathered with butter or lightly toasted.

(I'm pretty much drooling right now just thinking about it.)

I try to make one brand-new-to-me recipe each year at holiday time; for 2012, it was panettone. It was beautiful and fun to make -- not to mention yummy. This year, for my new-to-me recipe, I decided to try a riff on traditional panettone that's a little bit easier to make and doesn't require any special baking paper:

Panettone muffins.

These really are more muffin than panettone, to be perfectly honest. But if you're a fan of the butter, fruity panettone flavor, you're going to love these muffins.

The bourbony adventures of The Ninj continue

After four years in Vermont, The Ninj is on the move -- this time, back to the South.

I know it's not a very seasonal photo, but that's the custom post-and-beam barn we built on our farmette in Vermont. The farmette I've been writing about here for four years, ever since The Ninj became The Ninj. The same farmette that gave me such fodder as ugly fruit, too many zucchini and way, way, WAY too many deer  -- although the deer inspired a great venison jerky recipe, so I can't complain too much.

Well, it was our farmette, until yesterday.

If you only know The Ninj through this blog, you probably don't know that Mr. Ninj and I tend to move. A lot. About every five years or so (no joke). Work relocation, so it's always good, but still a lot of moving.

(If you need helpful tips like how to rip packing tape the way the professionals do and the benefits of box-hoarding, I'm your gal.)

So, after living in Vermont for four years, we're on the move again. The farmette is in the hands of some lucky, lucky new stewards, and we're returning to the South from whence we came but to a fun, new-to-us location: Louisville, Kentucky (a place where I can continue to say "y'all" and not be looked at judgingly and strangely).

Even if you only know The Ninj through this blog, you're probably clapping or hooting your ass off, because you just realized that the why-not-throw-a-little-bourbon-in-it Ninj is moving to bourbon country.

8 easy last-minute homemade gifts

Need an awesome last-minute gift they're sure to love? Try one of these eight super-easy homemade gifts you can make with only one day's notice.

Time is running out and you still need a couple of last-minute gifts, don't you? Well, put down the car keys and stay the freak away from the mall, peeps. The Ninj has got you covered with eight different ideas for last-minute homemade gifts that you can make with only 24 hours notice.

Snacks, condiments, even chocolate treats -- heck, some of them take less than 20 minutes.

Yeah, you heard me right, friend: a homemade gift people will actually want in less than 20 minutes.

Let's get gifting!

10 best recipes of 2014: readers' choice

Here's a list of the best recipes of 2014 found on yankeekitchenninja.com, as chosen by you, my readers. What a yummy year it was!

As we say goodbye to 2014, I wanted to share with you a roundup of my top 10 most popular recipes, as chosen by you, my readers, as judged by the stats in Google Analytics.

I love that the majority of your favorite recipes are all of the healthier variety (well, you know, except for the bourbon-salted peanut butter truffles but -- come on -- I don't want to meet the person that didn't go cray cray over that one), because it means that we share the same passion for real food that tastes good, is easy to make and helps you maintain a healthier lifestyle. Yay for us!

I'm already gearing up to bring you more great recipes in 2015; I can't to see which ones you love as much as I do. Plus, check back later this week as I'll be posting my top 10 favorite recipes of the year that you may have overlooked.

Without further ado, here are your favorite Ninj recipes of 2014, ranked in order of popularity:

Ham and leek bread pudding: a recipe

(I wish that little chive wasn't sticking out like a flag...)

When I baked this bread pudding for the first time last year, a friend of mine from Louisiana told me that I couldn't call it bread pudding because there was no bourbon in it. (Actually, she shouted that out in horror.)

Trust me: this bread pudding doesn't need bourbon to be wicked good.

This recipe comes to you third-hand. I adapted mine from Deb's at smitten kitchen, and she adapted hers from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home. So feel free to adapt it again to suit your own tastes.

DIY smoked trout

Learn how to smoke trout, salmon, veggies, salt or just about anything else quickly, easily and with no mess on the grill or even on the stovetop.

Let's talk about smoked trout. Or smoked salmon. Or any kind of smoked fish. Do you love it? I do. Whether I enjoy it as part of a charcuterie board or a cheese plate at a cocktail party or added to a pasta dish or salad (like my bagels and lox pasta salad!), I'm a smoked fish junkie.

So the "I can do that!" DIY side of my brain kicked into high gear when I discovered an affordable little stove-top smoker a few years ago.

Yes, a few years ago. Believe it or not, I got this stovetop smoker, made by Camerons Products, for Christmas more than two years ago and just never got around to using it.

(To be fair, we wound up beginning a big cross-country move just after Christmas that year, so smoking fish for fun wasn't really my top priority.)

But I dusted off the box earlier this year and smoked some fish. And then some more fish. And then some salt. And now, since it's so easy, there's pretty much no stopping the smoking train around Casa de Ninj.

If you do nothing else this year that I've told you to do, do this: buy this stovetop smoker -- or give one to someone as a gift. It's the coolest thing ever, I swear. Not to mention that it's crazy easy to use and you can smoke all sorts of stuff with zero mess.

Here's exactly how it works:

Chocolate and goat cheese pastries {+ a giveaway}

Enjoy these easy yet elegant pastries, filled with dark chocolate and creamy goat cheese, for breakfast, at tea time or as a light dessert.

We regularly -- and without question -- pair cheese with wine, right? Similarly, we know how good a glass of red wine and some dark chocolate can taste.

So why is it that we don't often think of pairing cheese and chocolate together?

Clearly we've been missing the boat. In a big way.

In honor of Valentine's Day (which, frankly, is not a big deal around Casa de Ninj) and, perhaps more importantly, the end of Detox January (which I vow will not simply become Retox February), I've created a little treat -- dark chocolate and goat cheese pastries -- that you can enjoy for breakfast, with afternoon tea or as a light dessert.

Or, if you're Mr. Ninj, all three.

Regular readers know I'm a big fan of sweet and savory combinations, like my salted cardamom oatmeal cookies or the holiday favorite bourbon-salted peanut butter chocolate truffles. So when my friends at Vermont Creamery and Lake Champlain Chocolates suggested pairing chocolate and cheese for Valentine's Day, my interest was a little more than piqued.

At first I was a little stumped as to how best to mix the creamy, savory goat cheese with the richer, sweeter chocolate -- other than just snarfing them down separately, of course. I tried to think classier. Which made me realize that both since both cheese and chocolate get melty and even more awesome when warm, why not tuck all that awesomeness inside a pastry?

Booyah.

As with many of my recipes, this one is easy peasy, even though it makes quite an elegant impression. The pastry puffs up like you wouldn't believe, and while the goat cheese and rich chocolate does indeed, as I had hoped, get all melty and awesome in the center, there's not so much of it as to overwhelm the whole pastry effect. It's very less-is-more.

Crockpot apple pie oatmeal

Crockpot apple pie oatmeal -- cook a delicious, hearty, no-sugar breakfast while you sleep. 

Yes, it's true: oatmeal that tastes like baked apple pie, made effortlessly in a crockpot while you sleep.

Peeps: I may have come up with the world's most perfect breakfast.

Regular readers know that I am continually on the hunt for quick-and-easy yet healthy-and-delicious breakfast ideas. Coming up with new ones gets more and more challenging, yet who likes to eat the same thing over and over?

Not The Ninj, that's fo sho.

I've made overnight oatmeal in the crockpot before, which is extra easy (with no risk of a scorchy mess) when you use the water-bath method. It's simple: Put all your ingredients into a heat-safe bowl (I find that a one-quart Pyrex measuring cup is the perfect size) and put the bowl inside a large (6-quart) crockpot. Fill the crock with water to just above the ingredient line in your bowl, being careful not to fill too high; you don't want cooking water flowing into your oatmeal! Cover it and cook on low while you sleep and -- VOILA! -- breakfast is ready when you awake.

It's also the best way, in my opinion, to eat steel-cut oats, which can be a little too tough and chewy if not cooked for a really, really long time. 

So while crockpot oatmeal is awesome anytime of the year, this particular recipe is really customized for fall with the inclusion of chopped apple, apple pie spices and apple butter (or, since I made a ton of it last week, bourbon apple pumpkin butter) -- and, of course, sweetened with maple syrup. If you want it to be more pumpkiny, simply substitute pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice: yummy, pumpkiny breakfast nirvana.

Slow cooker apple bread pudding

Make these individual apple bread pudding cups right in your slow cooker. With no dairy or refined sugar, they're a perfect on-the-go breakfast this fall.

Oh look: It's still September so The Ninj is still not talking about pumpkin.

Well, at least until next week.

You know I'm devoted to seasonality and September is the best month for apples: crisp, tart, crunchy, sweet ... GGGAAAAHHHH! I love apples! Even writing about them gets me excited to make something from apples.

So I made individual apple bread pudding cups in Mason jars in my slow cooker. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!  But before we talk about the recipe, you have to hear the backstory on this one first. 

A friend of mine wanted to make my slow cooker bread pudding for a dinner party but was having a hard time finding a heat-safe loaf pan that would fit in her crockpot (mine is oval-shaped, so it's not an issue for me). That's when it occurred to me that I could put my crazy-hoarder-lady supply of canning jars to good use and make individual bread pudding cups.

OMG. Too stinkin' adorbs. I was practically peeing myself with excitement.

Homemade eggnog

Make your holiday extra special by making your own homemade eggnog, with or without booze -- it's easy!

Welcome to eggnog week! Yes, week. I've got some baking-with-eggnog holiday recipes coming up later this week, but today we're starting with the basics.

Step away from the store-bought carton of eggnog: it's wicked easy to make your own. And yours will not be full of chemicals and gross-ass preservatives. So yay for you.

We love eggnog around Casa de Ninj. With or without booze.

(Can you believe I just said "without booze"? I barely recognize myself after that.)

The boozy version is fun and great but sometimes -- say, when you're baking or when you are 10 years old -- you need a straight-up, non-alcholic version.

There's much back-and-forth debate over cooked versus uncooked eggnog (it has to do with the eggs and the risk of salmonella) -- I'm not going to get into it. Just know that this eggnog recipe is a cooked one, so entirely safe for everyone in the family.

And it really is super easy, which you know if one of my primary recipe criteria.