Breakfast of champions

My favorite part of Thanksgiving?  That would be eating leftover pie for breakfast the next day.  I did that this morning.  This piece is actually my dessert.  Yes, pie twice in one day.  That's why I only make pie a couple times a year.  Since my husband isn't that big a pie person, I get to eat most of it.  I can't afford to do that too often. =)

I was talking with someone the other day about baking, and she asked my what my specialty is.  I thought about it for a minute, and told her that I don't really have one.  That's true in the sense that I like to make lots of different baked goods, and I'm good at a lot of them.  But if I had to pick a favorite, it would be pastry--anything that ends up buttery and flaky.  I'm actually getting pretty good at making my own puff pastry and croissant dough.  Fortunately, my other favorite is yeast bread, and most of the ones I make are lean enough to offset all the butter.  I'll have to put some of those on the baking agenda for this weekend, I think.  But for now, I'm going to go finish my dessert.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!  No new recipes for me today, just slight variations on some old ones.  For me, the best thing about food at Thanksgiving is the pie.  I don't make it all that often, because I'll want to eat it all, and I know how many calories there are in all-butter pie crust. =)  Okay, I'll want to eat it all if it's the right kind of pie.  The pie you see above, which is Caramel Pumpkin Pie, is not for me.  I don't actually like pumpkin pie.  But my husband loves it, so I make it for him.  You can read about my previous experiences with this Dorie recipe here.  What I did differently was to make mini pies this year.  I bought a couple of really cute 7" pie plates at Crate and Barrel a couple years ago, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've used them.  

I also made apple pie, since that's my favorite.  You can read some of my ramblings about apple pie here.  I started off making my usual recipe, which isn't really one recipe, but pieces from several recipes, all put together.  The crust is an all-butter one that originally belonged to a freeform fruit tart from Cook's Illustrated.  The filling comes from my Betty Crocker cookbook.  And I do a crumb topping--my current favorite is the one from this Epicurios recipe.  My only change this time around was to rub the seeds from a vanilla bean (I got a whole bunch at Costco recently) into the sugar that I used in the filling.  The result was quite tasty.  

The best part of my day was early this morning, though, when I found out that Gillian made me this:

Wordless Tuesday - Getting ready for pie!

Sugar rush

All work/baking and no play makes Di a dull girl.  So this weekend, we had some fun. =)  B&G have been bugging me to go to the movies, so that's what we did yesterday morning.  Wreck-It Ralph was quite entertaining.  And I managed to get a good candid picture of my girls afterwards, which is rare.  Gillian and I also had a fun day today.  We went out to run a few errands, and were gone for over three hours.  A lot of that was because we stopped into Williams-Sonoma shortly after they opened, and stumbled upon a demonstration on baking pies.  Gillian was pretty impressed that we already knew how to do the stuff being presented.  She was also happy to sample the end products.  I think I'll have a helper when it comes to making dessert for Thanksgiving.

Wordless Wednesday - Stone fruit lattice pie

(recipe here)

Thankful

It's been a while since Brianna lost another tooth.  But that changed when I picked her up from daycare (because she didn't have school) on Wednesday.  She had a tooth that was just barely hanging on.  As has often been the case, I ended up having to pull it the rest of the way out for her, because it was bothering her so much.  It didn't take much.  As we were driving home, B mentioned that she wanted to write a note to the tooth fairy to put under her pillow along with the tooth.  Once we got home, she got to work on it.  She drew pictures of turkeys (see below), and wrote "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! What are you thankful for? Write bellow (sic) two things."  Hey, nobody told me that this tooth fairy thing was going to involve essay questions...

Thank goodness Brianna has always been a sound sleeper.  It definitely makes the whole tooth fairy thing a lot easier.  Teeth are one thing--they're small, and B puts hers in a little pouch that's pretty easy to find, even under a pillow in the dark.  Turns out it's a lot more nerve-wracking to try to remove an 8½x11 sheet of paper from under the pillow of a sleeping child.  The tooth fairy folded it up after writing her answers, making the return a lot less harrowing. =)

After some consultation with others online, I came up with some answers for the tooth fairy. (You can see them here.)  As for me, I'm thankful for creative kids with active imaginations.  And I'm thankful that I'm not the turkey in the picture above. (In case you can't quite tell, that's a turkey on a table, and a turkey on a spit, and a live turkey in between, looking scared.)  Oh, and I'm very thankful for pie.

I'm running a bit late for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie, but that was kind of on purpose.  This week is a rewind week, meaning that we are free to pick whatever past recipe we'd like to make this week.  Things were a bit crazy last month when Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs picked the Caramel Pumpkin Pie, and I didn't have time to make it.  So I figured Thanksgiving would be the perfect time to try it out.  Jamie loves pumpkin pie, but I don't make it very often since I don't like it.  (It's the custardy texture that turns me off; I love most other pumpkin baked goods.)  

I had some of Dorie's pie dough stashed in the freezer (from when I made apple pie last month), so I pulled it out last night and put it in the fridge to thaw.  This morning, I rolled it out, put it in a pie pan, and blind-baked it.  (I have a bunch of black beans that I reserve for use as pie weights.)  The edges of the crust started to get rather browned when I was doing the initial bake, so I made sure to shield them with foil when I baked the filling.  The filling starts with making caramel using the dry method, meaning that you just put sugar in a pan and start heating it.  It quickly starts to melt and caramelize.  I didn't want the filling to be bitter, so I was careful not to let the caramel get too dark.  Cream, butter and rum are added to make a caramel sauce.  

I changed the mixing order for the rest of the filling, first mixing the spices (cinnamon, ginger & a bit of allspice) with the sugar to make sure they were evenly dispersed.  I whisked the eggs in separate bowl, added the sugar mixture, then added the pumpkin and vanilla.  Finally the caramel sauce went in.  I baked my pie for a total of 48 minutes, at which point the edges were starting to puff up and the center was just set.  As the pie cooked, the filling settled to an even layer.  It had plenty of time to cool to room temperature before we sampled it.

The verdict?  I'm pretty sure I'll never be a big fan of pumpkin pie.  That being said, I did have a small taste of this one, and the flavor was very nice.  The rum and caramel flavors were lovely with the pumpkin, and I liked the combination of spices as well.  Jamie really liked the pie, and so did Brianna.  Gillian did try some, but decided she'd rather eat apple pie.  I'm with her. =)

If you'd like to try this recipe for yourself, you can find the recipe on Janell's blog.  To see what everyone else made for this rewind week, check out the Links!

Apple of my eye

I had the following conversation with Gillian last night as she and Brianna were finishing up dinner:

Gillian: "May I please have some ice cream for dessert?"
Me: "No, because we don't have any."
Gillian: "Well, make some!!"
Me: *laughing so hard I can't respond*


In just about any other house, the kids would be asking their mom to buy more ice cream.  But not here, no.  My kids just naturally assume that I can and will make just about anything they want.  I suppose that's a good thing. =)  But I wasn't about to start making ice cream, so I offered her a piece of this wonderful homemade apple pie instead.  She was happy. =)

Pie is one of those things that I definitely prefer to make myself.  Especially with fruit pies, I just don't like the ones you can buy in the grocery store--too much crust, not enough fruit, and way too much gloppy goo around what little fruit there is.  With homemade, you can customize things to be the way you like, and it tastes so much better as well.  The only downside to homemade pie is that I like it way too much, and am likely to eat most of the pie myself.  That's why it seldom makes an appearance outside of Thanksgiving.  But for Tuesdays with Dorie, I'll make an exception.  I missed last week's pie (though it will probably show up here the week of Thanksgiving, I think), but there was no way I was going to skip the All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie that Emily picked.  

Apple pie is my favorite.  Without question.  I love apples, so I've been happy with all of the apple desserts we've been making for the past month or so.  What made me really happy was having my favorite apple show up at Central Market a couple weeks ago.  I love tart apples, and will happily eat pretty much anything related to a Macintosh apple.  But my favorite of these is definitely the Macoun apple.  (Thanks to Nancy for recommending them to me a couple years ago.)  And they arrived just in time for me to use them in this pie!  

Do any of the rest of you try to get the apple peel off all in one long strip?  I used 5 apples for this pie, and wasn't being that careful, so I only managed it with one apple. =)  My girls think it's cool that I can do that.  Nice that they like something that I do once in a while...

For pie, I like to slice my apples thin and pile lots of them into the pie shell.  I somewhat followed Dorie's recipe for the filling--I used the sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg as listed.  (I love freshly grated nutmeg--I use my microplane to grate it.)  I used flour instead of tapioca for the thickener, since I can't stand tapioca.  (I stood in front of it in the grocery store, but just couldn't bring myself to buy it.)  I also left out the lemon zest--I used it in the apple torte a couple weeks ago, and thought it overpowered the other flavors too much.

I skipped the crumbs to put in the bottom of the pie shell, too.  I have another method for avoiding soggy apple pie--dried fruit.  When I was growing up, my mom always put raisins in apple pie.  I love raisins, so that was fine with me.  It wasn't until I was baking on my own and tried making apple pie without them that I realized that they actually suck up a lot of the extra juice, keeping the pie filling from being too runny.  Cool.  I mostly use raisins, but dried cranberries are also tasty, and I'm sure dried cherries would be good if you like cherries.

I was already deviating a lot from the original recipe, so I did use Dorie's pie crust recipe.  I was only going to make a single crust, but started measuring out the ingredients for the double crust recipe (since it's listed first on the page).  I figured I'd go ahead and make the double version since I was getting out the food processor anyway, and freeze half for later.  Yes, the recipe does call for a double crust.  But besides adding raisins, the other thing my mom always did was put crumbs on top of the pie.  I thought about trying crust on top, but since I make pie so seldom, I wanted to go with my favorite. =)  I've tried different toppings over time, but my current favorite can be found in this recipe from Bon Appetit.  

Once last thing that I do that wasn't in the recipe...  To bake the pie, I first put it on a parchment lined baking sheet (to catch the juices that will inevitably bubble over).  Then I put the sheet directly on the baking stone in the bottom of my oven.  Baking on the stone ensures a nice browned bottom crust.  If you do this, you should make sure that the oven and stone are preheated for quite a while.  (I had good timing--I had the oven on for dinner before baking the pie, so the stone was already pretty hot. I just had to turn the oven up to 425ºF.)  I'm not used to turning the oven down partway through, and ended up baking my pie for 50 minutes at 425ºF.  That isn't a problem with my usual pie crust, which doesn't have any sugar in it.  For Dorie's, which does, I'll make sure to lower the temperature next time, since the edges of the crust got a little dark.  It was late when the pie finished, and I prefer to let it cool to just warm before serving, so I didn't get to try any until the next morning.

The verdict?  Well, if you don't already know, pie for breakfast is the best. =)  I'd much rather eat it for breakfast than for dessert, really.  (My husband thinks I'm a bit crazy. No, not just for that, either.)  As expected, I loved this pie.  I'm still a bit undecided on the crust.  Dorie's crust is definitely more tender than my usual, but mine is more flaky, I think.  Both are good.  And hers makes better pie crust "cookies."  Everyone else here loved the pie, too, even Brianna.  She loves crust, and was even willing to eat some of the raisins.  

For the original recipe, head over to Emily's blog.  And be sure to check out this week's Links to see what everyone else did with their apple pies.  As for me, I'm going to go eat another piece of pie for today's breakfast. =)

Fall cleaning

We’ve lived in our house for almost 9 years. We moved in on Halloween in 2001. A lot of the reason we picked the floor plan that we did was the kitchen. I love my kitchen. It’s set up in a U-shape, with an island in the center. There’s plenty of room for a big kitchen table, too. After living in apartments for quite a few years, it was so nice to have lots of kitchen cabinets, plus lots of shelves in our pantry/laundry room. I’ve always done a lot of cooking and baking, but even with all my stuff, I figured it would take quite a while for me to fill up all of the storage.

Well, this past weekend, I officially ran out of room in the pantry. Well, at least until I came up with a new solution. When we got back from grocery shopping Saturday night, I went to put things away. The problem was, there wasn’t really anywhere to put some of it. Since I do so much baking, I routinely keep extra bags of the most common flours and sugars in reserve. I also have small quantities of a whole bunch of different ingredients that I use less frequently. I didn’t help matters by getting a variety of specialty flours in my first ever KAF order a couple weeks ago. And then there’s the chocolate...especially the assorted chips, both chocolate and otherwise, that were threatening to spill off their shelf. Didn’t leave much any room for other stuff like pasta and canned goods...

So first thing Sunday morning, I headed to Target. (I wanted to go early before they got busy, plus I had some time while cinnamon rolls were proofing.) I came home with six new storage bins, 3 large and 3 small. I was able to organize all my reserve ingredients, as well as a bunch of the chocolate and most of my decorating supplies. (I had no idea I had such a collection of colored sugars until I put them all in one place!). The plastic bins take the spot vacated by my collection of cooking magazines. They used to be stored in magazine boxes there, but after the recent issue with a puddle on the pantry floor, it seemed like a good idea to relocate them to higher ground, away from the washing machine. (We’re still working on a permanent home for them.)

Once everything was neat and organized, I move on to my other Sunday tasks. A bunch of us had plans to get together on Twitter to bake this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. Cakelaw of Laws of the Kitchen picked the Fold-Over Pear Torte for us to make this week.  This recipe required a bit of organizing as well; it's one of the more involved recipes we've made in a while.  First you need pie crust.  Then you need to fit it into a springform pan.  Next there's lots of dicing and mixing of fruit, then mixing of custard filling.  Finally, the torte is all assembled and baked.

I went with apples simply because I don’t really like pears. I’m not that excited by the flavor of pears, but what I really dislike is the texture. For lack of a better idea, I made my torte with apples. Instead of the dried apricots, I used dried cranberries, since I thought they’d be a nice complement to the apples, and I skipped the nuts. For the crust, I thought about using Dorie’s recipe, but ended up going with a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that I like. It’s an all butter pastry dough that was originally part of a recipe for a freeform tart. It’s flaky and buttery yet sturdy, so I thought it would hold up well in the torte. For the custard filling, I stuck pretty close to the recipe, with one small change. I used the tablespoon of dark rum and one teaspoon of vanilla extract. In place of the rest of the vanilla and the almond extract, I used a teaspoon and a half of Calvados.

I also wanted to dress things up a little bit.  This weekend I picked up some cute mini cutters in fall shapes at Sur la Table.  One of them is an apple, which I thought would be perfect for decorating this torte.  I cut several apple shapes and several maple leaf shapes out of some scraps of pie dough.  I put them on the sheet pan next to the springform pan containing the torte.  I brushed them with water and sprinkled them with turbinado sugar.  I put the sheet pan in the oven and let everything bake for 15 minutes.  Then I carefully transferred the shapes to the top of the torte; the custard had set enough so that they wouldn't sink.  I baked my torte for almost 70 minutes, tenting the middle after about 45 minutes so it wouldn't get too brown.

The verdict?  The torte was good, but not my favorite.  I'm just not that fond of custardy desserts.  Gillian enjoyed it a lot, as did Jamie.  He commented that he really liked the contrast of textures between the filling and crust.  Brianna wasn't a fan, but I'm beginning to think she just doesn't like cooked fruit all that much.  I was disappointed that my crust didn't brown more.  I think that's because the oven temperature was lower than what I usually use for pie, and the dough doesn't have any sugar in it to aid in browning.  (Something to keep in mind for the future.)  I'm not sure I'll make this again, but I'm glad I tried it.

If you'd like to try this one for yourself, you can find the recipe on Cakelaw's blog.  To see what everyone else did with this recipe, check out this week's Links.

Friday with Dorie

This has been an odd week.  Usually I'm sitting here on Monday night trying to finish up my TWD post so I can get to bed.  But this week, because of the holiday, our fearless leader, Laurie, allowed us to post late, which I appreciate, since I didn't even make the recipe until yesterday.  Nothing like leaving your holiday baking to the last minute... =)

I don't really like pumpkin pie.  I like lots of other pumpkin things, but don't really like the custardy texture of the pie.  (Yes, texture again, just like with the rice pudding.)  And pecan pie doesn't appeal much either--too sweet.  But my husband Jamie likes both, so I figured that he would help me eat this week's TWD recipe--Thanksgiving Twofer Pie.  Basically, the idea is that you put pecan pie filling on top of pumpkin pie filling, and hopefully make everyone happy.  =)

One nice feature of baking later in the week is that I was able to check out some of the cool things that other people did.  One that particularly caught my eye was Pink Stripes.  I really liked the idea of making mini pies, since I love crust, and that way if I didn't like the filling there wouldn't be as much of it. =)  For the crust, I used a favorite recipe of mine from Cooks Illustrated.  For those who subscribe to the website, it can be found here.  It's an all-butter crust that uses the technique of fraisage (smearing the dough against the counter) to make a strong, flaky crust.  After the dough chilled, I rolled it out and used my biggest round cutter (about 3 3/4 inches in diameter) to cut out circles of dough.  I carefully pressed them into the cups of a muffin tin that I had sprayed with baking spray (Pam for Baking, Cathy!)  I then put the muffin tin in the freezer while I prepared the fillings.  

I pretty much followed the recipe for the fillings.  The pumpkin one came together quickly in the food processor.  I did make one change to the pecan mixture, which was to use Lyle's Golden Syrup instead of corn syrup.  I spooned the pumpkin mixture into each of the muffins cups.  For most of them, I made sure to leave room for the pecan mixture, but I did make two just pumpkin, for my children who don't really like nuts.  =)  Then I placed several pecan halves on top of the pumpkin and spooned the syrupy brown sugar mixture on top, making sure not to fill the cups too much.  Since my ratio of filling to crust was different than in a regular pie, I had some of the filling mixtures left over, so I filled a couple of 4-ounce ramekins with the excess.  

I deliberately didn't pre-bake the crusts, since I didn't want the top edges to brown too much.  So to make sure that the bottoms browned well and didn't get soggy, I placed the muffin tin directly on my preheated baking stone.  I baked my mini pies for 10 minutes at 45o degrees F, and then turned the temperature down to 300 degrees F and baked them for another 20 minutes.  They turned out great.  I let the pies cool for a few minutes in the pan, but then carefully loosened them and transferred them to a rack to cool completely.  I was afraid that if I left them in the pan, they'd get stuck.  

The verdict?  I was surprised to find that I really liked the combination!  This was definitely a case of the result being more than the sum of the parts.  And I liked the mini pie variation a lot.  As expected, Jamie liked them a lot, too.  We had Thanksgiving dinner with some friends of ours, and they seemed to enjoy them as well.  At least, they didn't complain when I offered to leave some of the extra pies there! =)

Thanks to Vibi of La Casserole Carrée for choosing this week's recipe.  Even though she's not American, she was kind enough to select something that the American members of Tuesdays with Dorie could make for the Thanksgiving holiday.  You can find the recipe here, on Vibi's blog, or of course in Baking From My Home to Yours.