Alison's Wonderland Recipes (2024)

Are you ready to get tropical??? 😀 Since Swiss Family Robinson mentions LOADS of tropical ingredients, I wanted to use as many as possible in this menu. I don’t get many chances to make island-inspired dishes here on the blog, so this has been lots of fun for me. Let’s begin!

As the canvas for my island flavors, I chose the salmon Ernest catches in chapter four. I love that it’s such a personal triumph for Ernest. He’s one of my favorite characters, maybe because I think his father is too hard on him (Astronomy is a worthy pursuit, Mr. Robinson! 😉). Plus, salmon pairs well with so many of the fruits mentioned in the book, so it’s a great choice from a culinary perspective too!

For my fruit, I chose to make pineapple mango chutney. Since this was my first time making chutney, I looked to two recipes for guidance: a pineapple chutney recipe from Garlic & Zest and a mango version from Tastes Better from Scratch. Mango isn’t expressly mentioned in Swiss Family Robinson, but I felt it would bridge the gap well between the sweet pineapple and other savory flavors of the chutney. It’s also great at carrying spice, and although this chutney isn’t flaming hot, I wanted the heat that IS there to shine through.

Everything came together so beautifully. The salmon was tender and delicate, melding perfectly with the juicy fruit, bright bell pepper, and sharp onion. The spicy kick from the pepper flakes and sweet Thai chili sauce (one of my favorite condiments!) added just the right level of complexity. What an easy way to make a memorable dish!

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Swiss Family Robinson has been on my TBR for ages. Like, maybe decades. I think I never felt much urgency to read it because I saw the movie a kid, so I already knew the story. I finally read it a few weeks ago, and not only is it a fun read, it’s positively PACKED with food. Like it was written with me in mind! Get ready for a menu bursting with fun tropical ingredients. I’m so excited to begin! 😀

Today’s recipe is cassava rolls. Cassava bread/cakes are a staple of the family’s diet in the book. The flour itself is made from dried, ground cassava root, also commonly known as yuca (fun fact: tapioca flour is made from the starch of the same root!). I don’t work with alternative flours much, so I was excited to try something knew.

Let me say, this took LOTS of experimentation to get right. First I tried making yeasted cassava rolls, but they never really rose, even after I tweaked the recipe. Then I used my trusty soda bread recipe as a starting point. This at least gave it some rise, but the texture was dense and chewy. In the end, I added a couple eggs and subbed in all-purpose flour for 25% of the total flour to give the rolls more lift and a lighter structure. The final rolls have a rugged exterior and soft, pleasantly chewy interior with an almost nutty flavor.

To pair with it, I whipped up a quick batch of compound butter with honey, lemon, and figs—all ingredients that appear in the book!

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Since there’s an extra Thursday this month, I get to do a bonus post! I specifically scheduled my Peter Rabbit menu on a month with a bonus Thursday, because I new exactly what I wanted my extra menu item to be: a brand new tea blend!

If you’re new around here, you may not know that I have a set of custom tea blends on Adagio Teas. I used to make a new one for almost every menu, but now I have over 50 blends! So these days I only make a new tea if I’m really REALLY excited about it. Let me tell you about this tasty little brew:

In the story of Peter Rabbit, Peter’s mother gives him chamomile tea after his adventure in the garden, so naturally this tea has a chamomile base. I added some white strawberry tea because it’s one of my favorite flavors to mix with herbals (it comes through well without being overpowering). I topped it off with a sprinkling of lavender—just enough for a soft floral note.

I always recommend serving herbal and white teas iced since the flavors are so delicate. This one is SO refreshing! All the floral, fruity flavors come together to make a perfect springtime blend.

Sound delicious? You can order it here!

For the last dish in my PETER RABBIT menu, let me introduce you to these sweet little bites of heaven: mini no-bake blackberry cheesecakes! As soon as I started planning my menu, I knew I wanted the dessert to draw from the blackberries and milk Peter’s siblings enjoy at the end of the story. I tossed around lots of ideas, eventually deciding on no-bake cheesecake because my daughter loves cream cheese (her egg allergy prevents her from enjoying regular cheesecake). Plus, cheesecake is one of my husband’s favorite desserts. I made several batches during recipe testing, and he LOVED being my guinea pig! 😀

This was my first time developing a cheesecake recipe, so to make sure my proportions were right, I consulted two no-bake cheesecake recipes from Live Well Bake Often and Chenee Today. I found my filling to be a bit too loose after it set (possibly due to the additional liquid from the blackberry puree I mixed in), so I used a method I found at Simply Recipes, which calls for mixing a bit of gelatin in at the end. It set perfectly, which was a huge relief, since I would have been so sad to nix the puree. Not only does it provide a fun sweet-tart kick, but it turns the cheesecake an adorable lavender color. Bon appetit! 🙂

NOTE: THIS RECIPE NEEDS TO SET FOR AT LEAST 4 HOURS.

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Even though Peter Rabbit doesn’t eat any carrots in his story, I feel like a rabbit-centered menu needs a carrot recipe, y’know? However, I suppose it’s rather fitting that this recipe doesn’t have carrots in it either—just crescent roll horns disguised as carrots! 😉 This super cute idea for crescent roll carrots was originally developed by Beth at Hungry Happenings, though I did change it a bit. The idea is super adorable, and Beth also uses an amazing shortcut for diy pastry cones if you don’t have cream horn molds. The secret? Ice cream cones! I used waffle cones for mine. Since they’re bigger, than means more room for filling!

For the filling, I used my favorite chicken salad recipe, which uses poppy seed dressing from my Petunia Bowl Salad instead of mayo. It’s a bit healthier than regular chicken salad, and it’s great alternative if you have an egg allergy (like my daughter).

My kids LOVED this. And talk about a perfect Easter recipe! 😀

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The funny thing about learning to cook through food blogging is that my cooking skill hasn’t followed a linear progression. Instead of starting with the basics and working my way up, I hopped around from making soup one day to ornate pastries another. It definitely keeps me on my toes. However, it also puts me in the odd position of knowing how to make chocolate cream puffs with brandy pastry cream…but not quiche. Somehow, in the 8 years I’ve been blogging, I’ve never had an opportunity to make it. So when I sat down to plan the entree for my PETER RABBIT menu, I knew I wanted a dish that could showcase the contents of the McGregors’ garden, and quiche was the perfect candidate.

First, I reread PETER RABBIT and made a list of every plant mentioned in Mr. McGregor’s garden. The potatoes caught my eye, since they would be a great way to make the dish hearty and filling without meat (I’m trying to keep it vegetarian, since PETER RABBIT is a garden-centric story). For flavor pairings, I was inspired by the Leek and Potato Soup with Parsnip and Garlic from my cookbook. Leeks are a type of onion, and onions are mentioned as being present in the McGregors’ garden too. So I took potatoes, leeks, and garlic and made a quiche I could imagine Mrs. McGregor serving to her husband after a hectic morning of chasing off mischievous little rabbits.

I started with my go-to pie crust recipe and added in some fresh rosemary. For my quiche base, I used two recipes for reference: Easy Quiche from The Spruce Eats and Crustless Potato Asparagus Quiche from The Natural Nurturer. I LOVE how the final product turned out. Lots of rich flavors coming together in a filling, aromatic dish!

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Today we’re starting a Peter Rabbit menu…and I’ve been looking forward to it for TWO YEARS! 😀 Such a garden-centric story is perfect material for a literary food blog like mine. Plus, there are so many fun uses for a Peter Rabbit menu: kids’ birthday parties, baby showers, Easter, and more!

Originally, I had plans to include a Peter Rabbit menu in my second cookbook, but I had to drop it during the planning stage when I reduced the scope of the book to cold weather holidays only (otherwise the book would have been MASSIVE). Still, I never forgot the delicious Peter Rabbit menu I dreamed up. Now I’m realizing that dream!

Today’s recipe is inspired by the chamomile tea Mother Rabbit has Peter drink when he gets sick. I love tea-infused baked goods, and I’ve been jonesing to make some scones lately. Still, scones alone felt a bit too simplistic. I had peaches on the brain after canning some for the first time a couple months ago, so I developed a peach jam recipe too. The peach and chamomile complement each other sooo well. Yum!

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If you can believe it, today’s recipe is actually inspired by Wilbur’s slop in CHARLOTTE’S WEB! Stay with me here. 😉 When the author lists the scraps included in Wilbur’s meals at the farm, he mentions upside-down cake and baked apples. I loved the idea of merging the two together into an amazing dessert, so here we are!

When it comes to upside-down cakes, I’m a total novice. I made one once but didn’t like how it turned out. So rather than try to develop my own recipe for this post, I turned to the Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Sally’s recipes are always winners for me, and I knew a sure-fire recipe would give me a good sense of how an upside-down cake should look at each step in the process. That way I’ll feel more confident developing my own upside-down cakes in the future!

As expected, the recipe was easy and turned out great. It was a HUGE hit with my 5-year-old son, who gobbled it up while chirping that it was “A-MA-zing!” I whole-heartedly agree. The caramel apple topping moistens the tender spiced cake just the right amount, and I appreciated that it wasn’t super sweet, allowing the apples and cinnamon to shine. It reminded me a bit of a breakfast bread, which has me scheming about making upside-down banana bread in the future! 😀

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One of my favorite things about food blogging is it pushes me out of my comfort zone on the regular. For example, even though I found eclairs super intimidating when I first learned to cook, I made lavender lemon eclairs after only a year of blogging because they were perfect for my Secret Garden menu. I used to be terrified of cooking big birds, but now my cookbook, A LITERARY HOLIDAY COOKBOOK, has recipes for turkey AND goose. Over time, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable pushing my culinary boundaries, and just this past month, I tried something I’ve had my eye on for years: canning.

In CHARLOTTE’S WEB, Mrs. Arable serves canned peaches to the farmers. Peaches are a great intro to canning because they are high in acid (making them a pretty safe option) and easy to process. Here was my perfect opportunity to take canning for a test drive to see if I like it! I don’t have any special tools (canner, jar rack, jar lifter, etc.), so I used tips from a few different sources to help me learn to can with the tools I already have. Here are the sources I consulted:

• “Canning Peaches Safely at Home” from Practical Self Reliance
• “How to Process Foods in a Water Bath Canner” from The Spruce Eats
• “20 Canning Mistakes to Avoid” from Because We Can (this one is a Youtube video)
  

Canning is an exact science, so I highly recommend researching before you begin. This will help the whole process go smoothly and safely. Plus, I’m a novice myself, so the recipe below isn’t the be-all and end-all of canning advice. It’s a description of my experience, which worked well for me, but I’ll probably change my methods a bit as I learn more.

Overall, I had a good experience. I think it’s a bit too much work for small batches, but it’s a great option if you have a lot of fruit, jam, sauce, etc. and don’t want to waste any. I don’t think I’ll buy any canning tools quite yet, but I have lots of young berry bushes started in the backyard. Once those are fully established, I could definitely see myself having enough berry jam for big-batch canning. I’m glad I gave it a whirl!

NOTE: Just to reiterate, I am not an expert. Fully research canning before you begin and use recipes that have been approved for canning. This post is not a comprehensive guide and does not address every variable that can affect the canning process (such as elevation or lower acid foods). Consuming improperly processed canned goods can result in botulism. Be safe out there!

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Deviled ham? Swiss cheese? RADISHES? Stick with me, folks. Today’s recipe may sound a bit “kitchen sink,” but I promise it’s delicious. 😉

While reading CHARLOTTE’S WEB, I noticed a lot of the food revolves around Templeton the Rat. He’s mostly motivated by food, which I for one find highly relatable. The whole reason he agrees to go to the county fair is because the sheep wows him with descriptions of all the discarded food he’ll find there.

Today’s kinda weird yet tasty recipe is inspired by the lunch Templeton finds wrapped in a newspaper while looking for words for Charlotte’s web. It includes a deviled ham sandwich, some Swiss cheese, and a hard boiled egg. It got me thinking about the song “A Veritable Smorgasbord,” which Templeton sings in the movie, and I thought it would be fun to merge the whole lunch together into one sandwich.

The deviled ham was easy to whip up (I used my variation on a deviled ham salad recipe from Bellyfull). Since the deviled ham already included a hard boiled egg, I didn’t use one as a topping, but you could if want some extra egginess. I decided to throw in some radishes too, since Mr. Zuckerman grows them on his farm in the book. In the end, the whole flavor profile was giving me 1950s vibes in the best way, which is kinda perfect, since the book was written in 1952.

So don’t be shy, give Templeton’s Smorgasbord Sandwich a try. It might pleasantly surprise you, much like Templeton himself. 🙂

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