Kathleen Isabell

Great flavor. I used bacon fat instead of lard and canned chipotles for the peppers. Thank didn’t have tomatillos though. The sauce was very tasty but runny. Perhaps if had used fresh tomatoes it would have been more like a sauce than a soup. I added some rice to soak up the yummy sauce and it was great.

This is one of those great recipes that is flexible to individual tastes while remaining true to the spirit of the original recipe. Accordingly, I made some slight changes and substitutions. The results were wonderful. The combination of ingredients makes this one-dish meal a scrumptious and filling comfort food. I made the following changes: (1) I used smoked turkey sausage. (2) I added ¼ c. chopped onion, which I sautéed along with the sausage. (3) I had left-over home fries, so I used those instead of the raw potatoes. I just heated them up with the cooked sausage and onion, and set it all aside while I prepared the sauerkraut and beer. (This way, I was able to skip the last step of cooking the potatoes for 10 minutes at the end.) (4) I didn’t have any whole-grain mustard, so I added ½ tsp. ground mustard and ¼ tsp. celery seed. I could have used a little more of the seasonings, I think. (5) Because I used potatoes that were already cooked, there was a little bit of liquid in the skillet at the end. I just turned off the heat and let it stand 5 minutes, and most of the liquid was absorbed; all of it after a few more minutes. I will definitely make this again!

I did make some minor changes. I used salted butter so I cut the salt back to 1/4 tsp. I could still taste just the slightest bit of salt and it was perfect. I used my stand mixer and did not whisk the dry ingredients separately, just put them into the wet ingredients without combining first. It really doesn't matter, I think it's just a "chef thing" to dirty another bowl LOL! I didn't refrigerate the dough, so my baking time was 10 minutes, not 12. I've got an oven thermometer, so my oven is spot on -- they were perfect! I used butterscotch chips instead of chocolate chips since that's what I had on hand. I made my cookies a little smaller perhaps, a little smaller than golf balls, and spaced them 3" apart. I got 42 cookies that way. Also, some people were disappointed that theirs were fluffy & cake-like & didn't flatten out. Mine looked that way too, but were very crunchy anyway once cooled, not soft at all. I took some to some friends who participate in a charity group making hand-made bed pads for cancer patients out of clean used sheets. There were only six or seven people there this morning and they devoured the dozen & a half cookies in no time! Most were senior ladies who only ate one, and the empty bag ended up near the only gentleman in the group -- hmmm. He pleaded not guilty. :)

I followed the recipe almost exactly with the following exceptions: I used light sour cream, and I also didn't rinse the poppy seeds, because ordinary culinary poppy seeds are normally free of any opioids that need to be rinsed off. I did make one mistake, which is that I greased AND floured the pan. I don't recommend flouring the pan as it makes the sides of the cake look dull. I had not baked a cake from scratch in close to 20 years, and this cake turned out GORGEOUS -- too pretty to frost, really. I baked it in a bundt pan, so it took just under 45 minutes to be done. I drizzled the lemon-orange filling over the top as a glaze, so it was a bit sticky since it wasn't meant to be a glaze, but the flavor was amazing and really complements the cake. I served it at a brunch for friends and it got rave reviews. This is definitely a repeat for me!