Apple Pie

We went apple picking last weekend, so I had a bunch of fresh apples to use up. I promised Mr. L a pie in exchange of going with us, so yesterday I made apple pie from a food network receipe. I poured the sugary juice from mixing the apples in the pie over the apples, and it came out a little juicy, so next time I might leave the juice out.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup shortening (recommended: Crisco)
Ice water
Filling, recipe follows
Serving suggestion: warm with vanilla ice-cream

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a medium-mixing bowl cut the shortening and salt into the flour by hand or with a pastry blender hands until it's the texture of cornmeal.
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of ice water over the mixture and mix just until the dough is moistened.
Repeat by adding 6 to 8 tablespoons water (one at a time) until all the dough is just moist.
Take care not to over mix.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Divide the dough in half and roll into a ball.
Roll 1 ball into a circle to fit a 9 to 10-inch pie plate.
To transfer the pastry to the pie plate, wrap it around a rolling pin and ease it into the pie plate.
Be careful not to stretch the pastry.
Trim it even with the edges of the pie plate.
Add the apple filling into the pastry lined pie plate. Make sure they are laying flat.
Cut butter into small pieces and put on top of the filling.
Roll the remaining pastry into a 12-inch circle.
Place on top of the filling.
Trim off 1-inch beyond the edge of the pie plate.
Crimp the edges as desired.
Cut slits to allow steam to escape when baking.
Sprinkle a little sugar and cinnamon over the pie.
Cover the edges with foil to prevent over browning.
Bake for 25 minutes.
Remove the foil and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until it is golden brown.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Filling:
1/2 cup to 1 cup all-purpose flour
6 to 7 cups apples cut into thin slices (recommended: Green Golden and Jonathans; I used mostly Braeburns... I think)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
In a medium bowl combine the apples, with the brown and white sugar. Add flour, cinnamon and continue mixing until they are well coated.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings

You Want Pie With That - II

I call this "I'm the biggest dork ever pie". Or, "1776: Compromise Pie".

I feel the need to give history lesson to introduce this pie. A long time ago (summer of 1776), in a place far, far away (Philadelphia, PA), a group of rebellious men (our Founding Fathers) gathered. The complained a lot and some disagreed on almost everything, but in the end, they all had the good of their chosen land at heart, and they reached a compromise. They agreed on several things.

First, that the windows of their meeting place should remain closed. This was an issue because it was an extra hot summer (and there was no A/C in those days), there was a plague of flies about, and their business was not the sort of thing that you wanted eavesdroppers to hear (in fact, there were no written records of their floor debates because, as their fearless leader so aptly put, "We must hang together, or we must asuredly all hang seperately", because, as their vocal South Carolinian noted, their plot was nothing short of treason). So... they abided the heat, and kept the windows closed.

Second, that the triangle trade shipping routes united them all, in spite of their varied geography (13 different colonies!). Important parts of that triangle trade were molasses and rum (I'd say they are still very important parts of our foreign trade, at least in my house).

Third (and perhaps most importantly - at least for a couple of members), that the stores of rum should remain open to all of their members!

Oh yeah, and they wrote and passed the Declaration of Independence.

Fast forward about 200 years. First, Peter Stone wrote a book about these events. Then, Sherman Edwards turned that book into a Broadway musical (in 1969). THEN, this musical was adapted for film (in 1972). Basically, it was the best film ever to hit screens (that statement may be what makes me a dork).

So... this great film obviously deserved a pie! The pie is something in between a shoofly pie and an apple pie, topped with a rum glaze. Shoofly because they really did endure awful flies, and apple because... well, what could be more American!? The rum for several reasons - There is a song with Rum in the title (that's a big one), that discusses the importance of rum in the triangle trade (the slave trade), AND Ben Franklin and Stephen Hopkins adore rum (and the other Adams uses this as a bit of a reward/celebration for Hopkins at one point) (and I suspect that rum is the culprit in the drunken militiamen that are mentioned later in the movie). Finally (I swear), the molasses is another reference to the triangle trade. To top off the pie, I gave it a rim of 13 stars - one for each colony (even NY, in spite of their courteous abstentions).

The Recipe:

1 c flour
3/4 c brown sugar
1 tbs solid shortening
1 c corn syrup
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup boiling water
1 beaten egg
3 baking apples, peeled, cored, and chopped, then coated in 1 tbs cinnamon
2 crusts (uncooked)

Preheat oven to 375.
Mix flour, brown sugar and shortening into crumbs.
Split the crumb mixture in half.
Set the one half aside for crumbs.
Pour the corn syrup in the other half of the crumb mixture.
Mix the baking soda in the boiling water.
When this fizzes, pour on top of the corn syrup/crumb mixture.
Add egg an mix with fork.
Pour in unbaked pie shell.
Cut stars from 2d crust.
Top pie with crumbs and then with stars around the edge.
Bake 10 minutes.
Turn oven down to 350 and bake an additional 30-40 minutes.

Rum Sauce

1 c sugar
3/4 c water
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbs cornstarch
1/4 c cold water
1/4 c rum

In medium saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cinnamon.
Bring to boil over medium-high heat.
Boil 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat.
In small bowl, blend cornstarch and cold water.
Gradually stir into hot sugar mixture.
Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture bubbles and thickens.
Stir in rum; cook 1 minute.
Pour over slices of pie and serve warm.

You Want Pie with That - III

While searching for the Holy Grail, the Knights of the Round Table came across a Killer Rabbit, with sharp, pointy teeth (you remember that part, right?)! Thankfully, they had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Thank goodness! Afer a count of three (no more, no less, and five is right out!), the holy hand granade was hefted toward the killer rabbit.


And so I present:


Whatever Happened to the Killer Rabbit? pie


This is a traditional rabbit pie (flavored with tons of apples), topped with a baked apple/holy hand granade, and an exploded crust. I don't think it needs any more explaination. ;)


I was shocked at the taste of this. I was really worred about the actual taste of this pie, but I think that it wins as my favorite of all the things I've ever baked - seriously! This is getting added to the regular rotation of comfort food in my house.



The recipe:


For the filling:

1 rabbit, approximately 3 lb (1.35 kg), cut into joints (or 1 - 1.5 lb chicken thighs)
2 medium onions, chopped fairly small
8 oz (225 g) unsmoked streaky bacon, in one piece
1 medium cooking apple, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup dry cider
3/4 cups chicken stock
½ tsp nutmeg
1 bay leaf
1 tsp plain flour
1 tbp butter
salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste
top and bottom crusts



For the apple filling:


2 tbs pecans
2 tbs raisins
4 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp butter

Pre-heat the oven to 425°F.
put bottom crust in pie plate.
Wash the rabbit joints, and place them in a large saucepan.
Add onion and apple to saucepan.
Chop bacon into roughly 1" sections and add to the saucepan along with the bayleaf, a little salt and some freshly milled pepper.
Pour in the cider and the stock, bring to simmering point, then put a lid on and leave to simmer gently for about an hour or until tender.


While that's simmering, cut out the core and seeds of an apple (making sure to leave the bottom intact).
Combine brown sugar, raisins, pecans and cinnamon.
Fill apple with the misture, and top with a pat of butter.

When rabbit miture's cooked, remove the rabbit pieces, bacon, apple and onion (with a draining spoon) and transfer them to the pie dish.
Add flour and butter to the stock in the saucepan
Stir them over a medium heat to melt and thicken the sauce. Sprinkle in the nutmeg and simmer.
When it's reduced by about half, pour it over the rabbit.
Cover with remaining pie crust
Dampen edges and squish together.
Cut an explosion hole, and peel back in the center of the top crust.
Use scarps from edges of pie crust to decorate the apple.
Drop apple into hole in top of pie.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

You Want Pie with That - I

What a great idea! It's a pie contest! This month's theme is "your favorite movie". This was one of those totally random jumping-off points that immediately trigger a landslide of ideas for me (some better than others). In order to conserve my time and money (and keep everyone from realizing just how crazy I rally am), I decided to stick to 2 pies - one based on 1776, and one based on Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail (because I was told a few too many times that no one has seen 1776 - although they SHOULD).


So, posts follow, one for each. And make sure to check out the other entries (and maybe join yourself) at http://www.pieswiththat.blogspot.com/.

Fruit Roses Tutorial (finally)

This is a super-simple way to add a little fun to a fruit pie or tart. I recommend only using fairly soft fruits (ie. not apples), and cutting the slices as thinly as possible. It takes a little longer and a little more concentration, but it shortens cooking time, and ensures that the slices will bend more easily.

1) Core or pit fruit and cut it in half.

2) Slice each half thinly (don't worry if you can't get all the way to the ends).

3) Curl the first slice into a cone, with the skin side up.

4) Add the rest of the slices, one at a time, around the cone, overlapping each slightlyand keeping the peel facing up. It's OK that the slices aren't all exactly the same size - that's part of what makes these look more like real roses.

5) Transfer to the dish that you're planning to bake in. I like to use a knife to do this, because the fruit can be really slippery, and it's no fun to have it fall apart after all your hard work!

6) Repeat as neccessary, until you have filled the dish. Depending on the nature of the baked good (and the size of your roses), you may want to use fewer or more roses. Less tightly packed means that the roses will naturally open up more, and fewer means that they will stay closer to the shape that you placed them in. In a tart that mostly fruit, I tend to keep them more tightly packed, and in a pie or cake with more filling, I tend to leave the fruit looser - go with your instincts.

With the TWD cake, I left the roses more loosely packed, and pushed them down a little into the filling to make sure that the thicker cake got in between the rose petals.

TWD: double crusted blueberry pie

This week, Amy of South in Your Mouth selected….
Double Crusted Blueberry Pie on pages 361-363

I loved this recipe! I am not a huge fan of fruit pies, but I absolutely love this crust. I made this once following the recipe, and then again with a cherry filling. And I'm tickled by the way the top crust molded to the shape of the berries. I think it's so cute!

I accidentally left out the bread crumbs, but (perhaps partially because we ate most of it before it had really completely cooled) found that there was just enough soaking by the filling to make the thick crust even more delicious (I say we, but that was really just me). Maybe that's why I had so much trouble cutting it into pretty pieces though...

Having succeeded at the blueberry (and upon finding that the crust came together pretty easily in my food processor (even though it was right at the max capacity), I used the crust again with cherry filling.

I've never made a cherry pie, or had any reason to pit cherries, so this was a new experience. It wasn't as bad as I feared, and was easily done while watching tv, but it definitely changed the color of my hands!

I have a friend who prefers a birthday cherry pie to a birthday cake (I don't understand), so this pie was hers! I even cut her name into the top (although it's hard to see in the picture).Everyone deserves birthday baked goods! Especially when studying for the bar!

Cherry filling:

4 cups cherries, pitted
1 cup sugar (1 1/4 cups for sour cherries)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions
Put sugar, flour and cinnamon in a large zip-loc bag. Add the cherries and toss to coat.

TWD: Florida Pie

Diane of Diane's Dishes chose the Florida pie for this week's recipe. It was a fantastic combination of coconut and lime! I enjoyed it, but definitely had some bumps along the way, and I'm pretty sure I'd make changes next time.

The recipe itself was pretty straight-forward. There's a graham cracker crust, topped with a layer of reduced coconut cream. This smells like coconut milk while it's cooking, and I think I might try substituting some coconut milk for some of the coconut flakes in this step in the future. I love coconut milk. It's an unhealthy obsession, I know.

You top the layer of coconut goodness with the key lime pie part. I couldn't get my hands on key limes, and I always prefer the real, fresh thing to bottled juices, so I used regular lime juice here. I am torn on this substitution. I might try it with the bottled key lime juice next time, as some people out there in internet land seem to suggest. It just feels wrong to use juice from a bottle... and I happen to find juicing citus incredibly theraputic. Still, great pie. I loved this part.

Next, it's on to the merengue. This was new territory to me. I understand the concept, and I've whipped egg whites for other purposes before, but I have never actually made merengue. I was conflicted about this topping. This is mostly because my results were less than amazing. First, I found that the egg whites deflated significantly, and just plain weren't as pretty, when I folded in the coconut. I imagine that this has something to do with my inability to fold perfectly, but I think I'll save myself the heartache in the future and just put the coconut in an extra layer, either on the top or between the lime pie and the merengue, rather than try to fold it in. It was ugly.

Then I managed to burn it trying to toast the top in the oven. This didn't affect the taste of the pie in any noticable way, but it wasn't pretty. I like my food to be pretty.

I blame the oven. I think this means that I need to buy a kitchen torch! And as long as I'm buying the torch, I might as well buy the entire creme brulee set, right? (And this line of thought it what finally let to my creation of an Amazon wish list. I feel better about avoiding these impulse purchases when I create a list that reminds me that I can buy them later.)

Banana Cream Pie

I finally got to break open my new food processor! It was one of my favorite Christmas presents, but I hadn't found the right recipe yet. It was finally used to make the nutty crust of this banana cream pie from NPR.

I thought it would be a good pie to use for the Master Baker challenge - the theme this month was vanilla, and I thought that was a good excuse to try a recipe with whole vanilla beans.

I'm also a huge fan of the candied pecans on top. My guests were picking the pecans off and nibbling on them. They were delicious. I almost left them off, thinking that they'd be too much, but I've absolutely glad that I went ahead and made them.

The pudding was a new experience for me, but it was much easier to make than I feared from the directions, and it actually went quite quickly. The directions are blissfully thorough, and warn you ahead of time.

Nut Pastry Pie Dough
Makes one 8- to 10- inch single crust.

1/2 cup finely chopped, raw, unsalted walnuts
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1½ tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
1 large egg, lightly beaten

FOOD PROCESSOR METHOD: In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, pulse the nuts, flour, sugar and salt until just combined. Add the butter and egg and pulse until the dough balls on the blades. Remove the dough and shape it into a ball. Wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

HAND METHOD: Put the nuts in a medium bowl with the flour, sugar and salt. Mix well. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles dry cookie dough. Mix in the egg to moisten the dough. Shape the dough into a ball. Wrap the dough tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Press dough into the bottom of a pie pan, cover with parchment paper and pie weights, and parbake at 350 degrees, for 20 minutes. Let cool.

Vanilla Pudding
Makes 3 cups.

2 cups whole milk
1/2 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
1/2 cup sugar, divided
tiny pinch salt
1/2 cup egg yolks (about 6 yolks)
1/4 cup cornstarch
4 tablespoons (½ stick) cold unsalted butter, cubed

In a large, heavy, non-reactive saucepan (aluminum reacts and will cause a pudding to turn dingy grey), combine the milk, 1/2 cup of the sugar, the vanilla bean and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the yolks, remaining 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch until smooth.
Have the whisk, a ladle and a large glass or ceramic dish handy. Heat the milk mixture in the saucepan until it just comes to a boil, whisking it a bit as it gets steamy. When you see the first bubbles boiling up, take the pan off the heat and place it on a potholder next to the egg mixture. (To make life a little easier on yourself, put the egg bowl on the right if you're right-handed, or on the left if you're left-handed. Use your stronger arm to whisk; use your weaker arm to ladle the hot milk.
During the next steps, stir constantly or the eggs will coagulate and you'll have scrambled eggs.This is quick work.Take a ladleful of hot milk and pour it in a thin stream into the eggs, whisking constantly. Continue stirring, and add a few more ladlefuls of hot milk to the eggs in the same way.The tempered eggs are now ready to add back into the hot milk.
To do this, whisk the hot milk constantly and pour the tempered eggs in slowly. When fully combined, put this mixture back on the stove top over medium heat and continue to whisk constantly.The mixture should be ready to come back to a boil very quickly.When the custard nears the consistency of pudding, take very short pauses in stirring to look for signs of a bubble surfacing (it is more like a single volcanic blurp). Don't look too closely, or you'll risk getting spattered with hot pudding. Just stir, pause briefly, stir, and so on.
When you see the first blurp, remove the pan from the heat immediately and whisk in the cubes of butter.Whisk until fully combined and immediately pour the pudding into a large glass or ceramic dish to cool it down. While the pudding is still very hot, stretch plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding. Smooth out any air pockets to make the pudding airtight. This will prevent a skin or condensation from forming on top of the pudding. Refrigerate the pudding until completely cold — at least 4 hours.

Stir the cold pudding and retrieve the vanilla bean. Squeeze out the excess seeds (those little black specks) in the interior of the pod with your thumb and forefinger — pinch and slide your fingers down the length of the bean, freeing the black seeds as you go. Do this with each half of the bean, returning as many seeds as possible to the pudding. Stir the pudding again and pour it into the crust. Smooth the top with a spatula.

Candied Nuts
Makes 2 cups candied nuts.

1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tablespoons whiskey
1 3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups raw unsalted pecans or walnuts

These look like glossy versions of the original nut, but they are robust with candied flavors. Use any kind of honey — clover is fine — because the vanilla and whiskey dominate the flavor anyway.
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
In a large bowl, mix together the honey, whiskey, vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Add the nuts and mix well.
Spread the coated nuts on a large well-greased baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes. Stir and scrape them up every 5 minutes with a spatula and return the pan to the oven until the nuts smell good and are deep glossy brown. Be careful not to burn them.
Remove the pan from the oven and scrape the nuts up with a spatula occasionally as they are cooling or they'll stick together and to the sheet.
When the nuts are cool, dry, and set, store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks.

And Finally ... the Pie!
Makes one 9-inch single-crust pie.

3 cups vanilla pudding (page XX)
pastry for a 9-inch single-crust pie, blind-baked
4 to 5 medium-size ripe bananas
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed
lemon juice
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
candied pecans or walnuts

Select ripe bananas without any sign of spots or green near the stem.
Slice the bananas ¼ inch thick to get about 4 cups and immediately toss them in the lemon juice to prevent them from browning. Stir in the sour cream gently. Layer the coated bananas in the pie crust, and flatten them gently.
Layer the pudding on top and smooth it with a spatula.
Refrigerate the pie, covered with plastic wrap, for at least 2 hours before cutting.
Serve wedges of pie cold with Candied Pecans; their salty accent is quite nice next to the custard and bananas. Store loosely covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.