REVISITING THE OYSTERS
This being cookie season it’s no wonder that this post is also about a family favorite, repeated year upon year since 2006 or so. This time, I attempted a slimmer version of our Oysters. That’s a hazelnut spritz sandwich cookie with a chocolate ganache filling – another sort-of invention of mine. The odd name came about the first year I did them. I didn’t grind the toasted hazelnuts fine enough, and bits of nut stuck in the dies of the cookie press. Lots of blobby, odd shapes resulted. We mated them as best we could. But the shapes and top/bottom format made the kids think of the shellfish, so the name stuck.
My original Oysters recipe is here.
Now there’s not much to be done to slim down the ganache – that’s just a strong bittersweet chocolate and cream, no sugar. Yes it has carbs, but a zero carb cookie is an asymptotic goal at best. Like the other cookies this week I subbed in the King Arthur Keto Wheat Flour for standard all purpose, and Swerve granulated (and powdered) sugar substitute for the white sugar. I generally use a bit less of the sugar sub than was called for in the unmodified recipe because I find the stuff to be sweeter than regular sugar. In addition, I ran out of granulated Swerve, and used a third of a cup of their confectioners’ substitute in place of that last half-cup of granulated.
And there was a small complication with the hazelnuts. They were locally unobtainable here this year, although had I known at the time I would have ordered on line from a specialty nut dealer. But fortuitously I did have enough leftover from last year and stowed in the freezer to do the recipe. I’ve used leftover nuts before and have not noticed any degradation in taste or performance, provided they are brought back to room temperature before toasting, chopping or otherwise using in the recipe being prepared.
Here are the hazelnuts after being rolled around and rubbed in a clean linen dishcloth. That flakes off lots of the brown inner membrane. While in an ideal world it would be totally removed, this amount is enough to avoid too many little brown flecks in the finished cookies, and to reduce the bitterness those membranes bring.
OK. So I made the batter. To get the right consistency I needed to add lots more cream than originally specified to achieve the peanut butter-like consistency. The dough needs to be just firm enough to pick up and pat into a log to insert into the cookie press, but still quite soft. Some years even with the “full octane” version I’ve had to add more than the recipe’s 6 tablespoons of milk or cream to get there. Perhaps the flour those years was drier than usual In any case, King Arthur does warn that recipes may require additional liquid to work properly with their Keto flour. I ended up using about 9.
I was very encouraged by the swift and easy cookie press action. One two-stop squeeze for each cookie, forming them fairly flew. Here they are unbaked.
Obviously I use one of the larger hole dies for the cookie press to avoid a repeat of “the oyster problem.”
On to actual baking. That’s where things began to be noticeably deviant from standard. Like the peanut butter cookies for this year and the two prior, these cookies sweated a lot of oil. I might have been able to reduce the shortening in them, but once a batter is mixed you can’t get it out again. They floated around on the surface of the silicon baking mat, in effect frying in that oil.
Here’s the last sheet with the stragglers. Admittedly I let that sheet go a minute or two longer than I should have – the cookies shouldn’t be that brown around the edges. And that odd man out is the last cookie – the traditional cook’s share – fashioned from the remaining bit in the cookie press that can’t make it through to true cookie form.
See those droplets on the mat? That’s fat exudate from the cookies. It’s hard to see but there’s a lake of it on the mat.
Still the cookies were cohesive and semi-attractive. Now, how did they taste?
Sadly, like the gingers, peanut butters, and chocolate chips, only a glimmer of their true selves. That ubiquitous cardboard-rye taste of the Keto flour overwhelmed the hazelnut flavor. They look ok, but to me at least they are yet another disappointment. Obviously the chocolate ganache will punch them up a bit, but that won’t happen until next week. I am delegating filling these to Younger Spawn, whose baking expertise is far in advance of mine. It’s best not to fill these too early because they do change texture as moisture from the ganache seeps into the spritz cookie.
I’m done with the slimmed portion of the cookie parade. That’s three years in a row I’ve attempted to make a less sinful cookie, and three years I’ve not been satisfied. I am afraid the answer may be not trying to re-engineer the cookie. It may be just to not make them anymore. This may well be the last year for ten types of cookies. Especially considering that the Keto flour and sugar substitute are four times as expensive as regular ingredients. Perhaps next year I will go full octane, making the originals but only as half- or quarter-batches of five types, and no longer share the largesse.
A SLIMMED DOWN GINGER
No, I’m not going to write about a red-haired friend embarking on a diet and exercise program. This is one of the holiday baking posts that intrudes on the otherwise fiber-filled menu here at String each December.
Back in 2018 I mashed together several thoughts and came up with another more or less original cookie – the Triple Ginger White Chocolate Chip. I posted the recipe for it in 2019 after two full and successful holiday cookie test runs.
The dough for it is of the same basic type as a chocolate chip cookie, perhaps a bit lighter on the brown sugar, with added cream for more richness, and three types of ginger – dry ground ginger, minced candied ginger, and ginger juice – to give it kick. As I had done them before they were delightfully sharp and gingery, lighter than gingerbread, with the white “chocolate” morsels acting sort of like internal frosting, bringing little bursts of sweetness. They quickly became a family favorite, and I’ve done them every year since.
This year, the third year I’ve been attempting to bake at least some of the cookies in lower-carb incarnations of their former selves, I tried to reduce the caloric load of this cookie. I had dismal results in previous years using various mixes of almond and coconut flour for other cookies. A few were absolute failures, but I was encouraged this year by the introduction of King Arthur Keto Flour. I haven’t used it for bread, roti, or tortillas yet, but that may eventually happen. I have tried the recipes they posted for it on their website, for pie crust and chocolate chip cookies. Neither was good enough to post links for them. I also used various Swerve brand monkfruit based non-sugar sweeteners.
The Keto flour and the Swerve granulated, brown and confectioners sugars all claim to be near analogs in baking – in theory they can be subbed one-to-one for conventional products. In practical use, not really. More like “kinda” and “maybe.” To start with I find the Swerve products are sweeter than regular sugars. And the King Arthur Keto flour isn’t as hydrophilic as normal wheat flour (it doesn’t suck up as much moisture or fat). It also browns faster, but doesn’t leap from raw to burnt the way almond and coconut flours do. In fact, it does ok for dusting and pan frying – something the other flours totally fail.
As a result I tend to tinker with conventional recipes when subbing in these products. I will scant the quantities of the fake sugars by a tablespoon or two, and tinker with the liquid and fat levels when I use the fake flour to avoid a sticky, greasy dough.
Here is the cookie dough for the Triple Gingers this year, with amendments. I used my original but I left out a tablespoon of brown fake sugar and two of the white fake sugar, and added an extra tablespoon of cream:
It looks pretty normal, although the dough isn’t “sticking” to the chips like it usually does. But I continued on. I always fridge this type of dough overnight before portioning it out and baking it.
I did the usual – scooping using my 2.5 TBS dough scoop (like a little ice-cream scoop), then dividing the lump in half and rolling it into two balls. We like small cookies at holiday time because there are 10 types on the plate. Little cookies let folks sample without being overwhelmed.
Usually what happens with these drop cookie doughs is that if I make a generally round-ish ball, it melts during baking to yield a flatter nicely circular cookie. Here’s a picture of the Triple Gingers from a previous year to illustrate:
And here are this year’s. But not even the first most lumpy batch. That set went into the oven and then emerged in exactly the same shape – misshapen balls. No melting, no spreading. So when I made the second batch I flattened them with the heel of my hand. Again, no melting, no spreading. They may be blobs, but at least they are somewhat cookie shaped. Second and third batches seen before (left) and after baking (right):
Not my most attractive product, for sure. To be fair, I did notice that the King Arthur Keto chocolate chip recipe didn’t make spreading cookies either, but I thought that was because I did something wrong. Those also just didn’t taste right. Kind of like I had used rye flour and cardboard by mistake, and with the texture of a store-bought packaged cookie, and not a comforting home-made one.
Back to the Gingers… How did they taste? I sampled (of course). While they are ok, they are not as they should be. They don’t have the cardboard/rye flavor I didn’t like in the chocolate chip cookies, which is good. But they don’t have the ginger punch of my original recipe, and I suspect they will get hard quickly. They are sweet, with a pleasant caramel note, but that note reduces the ginger to an afterthought. Ugly and disappointing as they are, they are still serve-able, and will take their place in this year’s cookie line up. But obviously more tinkering is warranted. Between the differential take-up of the butter by the flour, and the performance of the fake sugar, successful adaptation will take a lot more than just dumping more ginger into this recipe.
And as a last note – remember I said that the dough didn’t hold onto the chips? I had to jam them in, which is why so many are on the surface. When I was done forming the cookies I had a puddle of extras left behind. I’ve never seen that happen before with any type of morsel-bearing cookie.
And I think I should get a medal for not snacking on them as I finished the bake.
A BUSY DECEMBER
One of my periodic “where did I go” posts, reporting on everything and sundry that kept me from regular blogging.
Baking
First because I know there are cookie fiends out there just waiting for this year’s round-up, I present Cookie Plate 2022, arranged on the fused glass bison presentation dish given to us by my sister and brother in law. I use it in tribute to the resilience of my Buffalo, NY family and friends, enduring their second (and twice as bitter) lash of winter weather since Thanksgiving. May the lights and heat stay on and may the driveway finally learn to shovel itself!
Starting from the yellow and blue stars just above the bison’s head we have:
- Keto cutouts. I used this recipe this year, no “real” flour or sugar. I did make two enhancements, though. I put finely grated lemon zest in the cookie batter, and mixed the icing using powdered monkfruit based sweetener with lemon juice (and a dash of food coloring). Light and lemony. This dough worked relatively well for the simple star shapes, but it’s a bit on the cakey and fragile side, and would not be at its best if used for a cookie cut with an elaborate design, or with one of the plunger-style cutters that also embosses an impressed design. The icing too was a bit harder to handle than the confectioners’ sugar standard.
- Mexican Wedding Cakes. I subbed the monkfruit sweetener inside and used about a third almond flour in place of the regular all-purpose flour in this recipe, but dusted with confectioners’ sugar because the substitute doesn’t do that well for dusting. So I’d call these slightly slimmed down, but not keto.
- Keto peanut butter cookies. Last year’s recipe turned out rather poorly, so I tried a new one this year. Better results. Still a bit cakey-crumbly, but the taste and texture are better.
- Earthquakes, the name by which what most folk call chocolate crinkles are known in this house. Again not much seismic cracking this year, but the brownie-bite taste and texture were spot on. The usual recipe. Full octane – no slimming.
- Cinnamon bun swirls. This one is a specialty of the Younger Offspring. Clever fingers and exacting methods make those mathematically perfect spirals. These instructions but we skip the recipe author’s icing, The cookies are sweet enough as-is. Hint for avoiding the flat-tire look – slide the long rolls of this refrigerator cookie dough into the cardboard tubes from paper towels. They firm up nicely round without flattening that way.
- Triple Ginger White Chocolate Chip. My own invention. I love these, even though they are not chocolate. 🙂 I did slim these down a bit by using monkfruit brown sugar replacement instead of the real stuff. But the white chocolate chips probably make up for that little bit of virtue.
- Bourbon Balls. A family standard that I’ve made every year since I began baking holiday cookies from recipes more or less like this one. Since they start with crushed Nilla wafers and have a cup of bourbon in them they will never be full keto, but I did slim them a bit with sugar substitute. Note that these are also good with many other nut/cookie/liquor combos, with or without the cocoa. Chocolate wafer cookies/pecans/Chambord. Almond biscotti/almonds/amaretto. Nillas/hazelnuts/rum. One hint – they improve with long curing. Make these up right after Thanksgiving and put them in a tightly sealed tin. Then hide them until the end of December. Your forbearance in not gobbling them down right away will be rewarded.
- Jam thumbprints. Another contribution of Younger Offspring. This time the clever fingers fashioned heart shape wells, which were then filled with raspberry jam. A very buttery and light shortbread compliments that fruity goodness. Full octane. When I extract the recipe from the cookie artist I will post it here, but by the time this last cookie was baked, I was distracted and didn’t make a note of the source.
- French cocoa macarons with almond buttercream filling. Oh so good, and oh so sinful. Again Younger Offspring steps up to bat with authentic technique off a memorized recipe. Even the almond paste-based buttercream was extemporary. Obviously the Padawan has far surpassed the teachers.
- Chocolate chunk. This one started with the traditional old school Nestle’s Toll House original recipe (the one that still called for 1/8 tsp of water). No slimming and no nuts in this one, but about a third of the weight of chocolate chips was replaced by Trader Joes’ Cocoa Nibs. The remaining chocolate was chopped cold, making lots of chocolate dust, and tiny fragments. That really helps the flavor distribute itself throughout the whole cookie. The big hint on this one (aside from chopping) is to fridge the batter overnight, and roll it into uniform size balls rather than employing the two spoon/drop method. Much more uniform results.
- Yes there are 11 this year. We couldn’t cut a family fave to make the goal of ten. My Oysters. A simple hazelnut spritz with whipped bittersweet chocolate ganache filling. Slimmed a bit by using monkfruit sugar instead of about half of the regular white sugar, and a third almond flour instead of 100% all purpose flour, but it’s hard to call these virtuous.
I also made a keto lemon-chocolate swirl cheesecake, with a hazelnut/almond flour crust. I forgot to take a picture of that, and now it’s gone.
Not Baking
Aside from cookies, I had some knitting and crochet projects going.
First, as a favor to my mom, an old school knitter from the days of Knitting Ladies who sat by your elbow throughout design selection, customization, swatching, and execution to gauge. I didn’t do those earlier stage support functions but I did do the last and most important one – finishing. Taking the individually full-fashion knit pieces, seaming them together and adding final details like collars. Mom had completed but had not assembled two sweaters, intended for my nieces. I helped those projects over the goal. Both are adult size. Now that they’ve been bestowed, I can break silence and post them here.
Also with almost all of the squares complete, I have begun assembly for the I’ll Be Watching You sofa cushion.
More on this as I get more strips put together. Note that some rethinking happened. Due to color assortment challenges, we added two more units to the mix to make 12 individual color layouts, and upped the cushion width from 11 to 12 units. Needless to say that required a few more squares than I originally planned.
Other Accomplishments
Let’s see. I visited my mom in Florida the second week of December. We had a good time together, and even managed to hijack the Palm Beach area family for a dim sum brunch over the weekend. Why I have no pix from the week, I don’t know. I guess I tend to live the moment and not document unless I’m a spectator. But I think the visit was appreciated, productive, and satisfying. Next time I promise to be a better chronicler.
As spectator, I cheered on The Resident Male as he prepared an epic feast for Christmas Eve. His menu is here. When Henri, our Guest of Honor emerged from the oven, he had celebrity status. Everyone documented him.
We also went to see a performance of The Boston Pops. It was a delight.
And as usual, we maxed out on holiday festivity, aside from food and drink. We lit candles (hard to see the fully illuminated menorah due to frost on the window). We did the tree. We had the fun of opening presents from each other. This year abetted by Fernando’s mom Carm, who is happy to be away from Lackawanna and the worst of the weather there.
ADVENTURES IN BAKING
As long time readers here know, I have a standing promise to provide ten types of home-baked cookies for the holidays. For the most part, we’ve been evolving a series of family favorites, and year on year are moving those closer to perfection. But this year we’ve opted for a disruption.
Keto baking. Kind of.
We’ve decided to slim down the annual carb-fest that is the holidays. We were not dogmatically inflexible about it, but we did try to make the cookie plate a bit leaner this year, without sacrificing the comforting festive level of indulgence, and leaving some unaltered so we could share them with nut-allergic friends. Some recipes were standards we modded with our own substitutions. Some were new – cognates of known faves, but composed and published specifically for no carb/low-carb baking. Not all were entirely successful, but we did have some very pleasant surprises.
Among our discoveries were the handling properties of the various flours, a disagreement with a claim of 1:1 equivalency for the sugar substitute we used, and what Xanthan Gum actually does. This post may be helpful to others who want to try this adventure. I know it will help me remember this year’s pitfalls if/when I try it again.
As usual, I was greatly aided in this endeavor by Younger Offspring, whose baking acumen now far surpasses mine. The padawan has truly become the master.
First, the group portrait:
1. Earthquakes – more commonly called Chocolate Crinkles. Full octane. We didn’t play with this recipe, this one used standard all purpose flour and real sugar. There are many variations of this recipe out there. Ours, from long time pal Kathryn, uses butter and not shortening. I now use Dutch process cocoa in it for an extra cocoa-kick. Very much like one-bite brownies and much loved.
2. Orange Marmalade cookies. Also not slimmed. After all if the recipe calls for half a jar of marmalade to begin with, there’s very little point in making emendations around that. This is a burst of fresh sunshine, sweet but not overpoweringly so, and a nice contrast to the others. I use this recipe, and with it polish off the jar of marmalade that also contributed to the apple-orange Anonymous Apple Pie back at Thanksgiving.
3. Oysters. My own invention. A hazelnut spritz so named because the first time I did them I didn’t grind the nuts fine enough, and they were weirdly blobby in shape. This year’s are slimmed down from my original recipe, with Swerve sugar substitute standing in for the granulated white sugar, and 3/4 cup of almond flour being substituted for one of the two cups of all purpose flour. I didn’t tinker with the ganache filling with a splash of Frangelico, but we did whip it to make it more airy, mousse like and less dense than usual. The result was very light, delicate, and cake like, much softer and tender than the normal spritz cookie texture. The dough however was a nightmare to put through the cookie press, with three tries and extensive profanity needed to achieve one useable cookie shape. If I do this again next year I might introduce a bit of Xanthan Gum to add more structure to the dough. Even with that painful birth, the result is quite pleasant. Worth further exploration.
4. Keto Linzers. This one is new this year. Although we substituted a reduced sugar, no fructose, whole fruit mixed berry/cherry preserve for the home-made filling, we followed this recipe. We reduced the amount of sugar substitute a bit because we are finding that it is in fact sweeter than cane sugar. The dough was very sticky and rolling between pieces of baking parchment or waxed paper is an absolute necessity, along with lots of extra coconut flour to keep the dough from adhering to the paper. The resulting cookies are delicate (this seems to be a standard characteristic of these alternative flour baked goods). These turned out nicely. A do-over if we bake keto again.
5. Mexican Wedding Cakes. A family standard, this year slimmed down. Except for the confectioner’s sugar on the outside. I used the family standard recipe, much like this one, but substituted 3/4 of a cup of almond flour for one of the two cups of all purpose flour, and Swerve buzzed down in the food processor for the powdered sugar in the dough. They flattened out a bit more than usual in baking, making buttons instead of more rounded/domed usual shapes, but are still as tasty, fitting the bill for this must-have.
6. Cocoa Macarons with White Chocolate Ganache Filling. I was just a observer on this creation. I am very impressed by Younger Offspring’s ability to leap into Fine Baking, and the associated display of piping skills. These by their nature are almond flour and egg white. The results of this recipe are spot-on in taste, with the occasional crackled top being a product of our very imprecise kitchen scale (note to self – this thing is due for replacement). The white chocolate ganache was enhanced by a dollop of raspberry liquor.
7. Cinnamon Swirls. Another specialty of Younger Offspring, these are thin and light, with a profound cinnamon kick that benefits from the addition of orange zest to the dough. Full octane – this one had no subs. The Offspring uses this recipe but leaves out the glaze – the cookies don’t need it.
8. Lemon cut-outs. In previous years we have made the Joy of Cooking sugar cut-outs, with lemon zest in the cookie, and icing made from confectioners sugar and lemon juice. This year we did a total keto cookie instead – this one, complete with icing made from the Swerve sugar substitute and lemon juice. This is the cookie that really demonstrated the difference that Xanthan Gum can make. Although the dough was slightly sticky, the gum gave it structure much closer to that of a dough with gluten-bearing flour in it. It was much easier to handle, roll, and cut than the similar no-gum dough for the Linzers. This dough also retained the cut-out shapes better during baking than the Linzer dough, which spread a bit more.
9. Not Your Average Toll House Cookie. This was our own minor modification. We start with the classic Toll House cookie dough, and we used real sugars and all purpose flour, but instead of loading them with semi-sweet chocolate chips, we used unsweetened cocoa nib chips from Trader Joe’s, plus a handful of the semi-sweet chips, well chopped. The result were these zebra-striped buttons. They are more cocoa bitter than sweet, and intense. An excellent “grown up” chocolate chip cookie that’s delicious with coffee, tea, or wine. I hope TJ’s offers the nibs again next year so we can engineer a do-again (they do have a habit of introducing something wonderful that then vanishes.)
10. Triple Gingers. Again, the ones I invented a couple of years back, but slimmed, with Swerve brown and white sugar substitutes, plus using 1 1/3 cup of regular flour plus 1/3 cup of coconut flour in place of the 2 1/3 cup of flour in the original. I also upped both the powdered ginger and ginger juice a bit. This was one of the first sub-in cookies I tried, and the one in which I discovered that the sugar substitutes are sweeter than real sugar. If I do these again, I would dial back the amount of both brown and white sugars because I prefer a lower sweetness level. (Side note – this was one cookie I had made surplus of last year and froze, so I was able to compare the full octane version and the modded version side by side. The difference was profound, so I do now firmly doubt the Swerve claim of “1:1 substitute for regular sugar in cooking and baking.”
11. Peanut Butter Cookies. Yes, we lost count along the way and ended up with eleven kinds this year. This was a new keto recipe, and by far the least successful of any we attempted. I used this one, with poor results. I used Teddy natural chunky peanut butter, an excellent local product I’ve used in baking for years (ingredients are just peanuts and salt). Note that the recipe did specify a natural style peanut butter. I followed the directions exactly, and used the amount of coconut flour indicated. The resulting dough was a bit softer/stickier than my usual, but not unreasonable to handle, and I was able to roll small balls and press them, although I ended up marking them with a fork as indicated instead of being able to use my usual cookie press (they stuck to that). BUT when I baked these, they exuded gushers of oil – so much that the cookies floated around and oven-fried rather than baked, and the oil overflowed the cookie sheet. I took them out just when they were cohesive and just a tiny bit brown on the edges, and rack cooled them – they were still dripping. After all of the oil lost in baking the result was dry and unappealing, with surprisingly little peanut flavor. I do not recommend this recipe, and don’t think it’s worth any further effort. If we go keto again next year I will look for a different peanut butter cookie.
Bonus Panforte: To round it all out, we did rescue from the freezer the second of the two panfortes I made last year. Obviously not keto – not by a long shot. Younger Offspring again demonstrated piping skills, using the leftover dark and white chocolate ganaches to adorn the top. We didn’t serve it on Christmas Eve, but we will certainly cut into it now, and save a goodly part for New Years Eve dinner as well.
So to sum up – some hits, some with room for improvement, and some misses. And yes – we do now have enough cookies to last forever. Again.
AT LONG LAST, LONG GREEN IS DONE
Not quite a record for the interval between commencement and completion, but close – but after years of languishing, my long green sampler is complete, signed and dated.
I used Au Ver a Soie’s Soie Alger silk thread, 40×42 count linen (you can see the slight distortion), and began it on 11 Feb 2012. I employed several stitching techniques including double running stitch, long armed cross stitch, plain old cross stitch, Montenegrin Stitch, and Italian four-sided cross stitch (pulled very tightly to achieve a meshy effect, and worked at two scales) . All of the designs here except the top one will be appearing in my ever forthcoming The Second Carolingian Modelbook. The top panel is from The New Carolingian Modelbook.
Long Green will languish again for a bit before I finish it off for display. Given that there is only about an inch of fabric at the bottom, due to the unfortunate destruction that happened over the years the thing sat waiting for me to resume stitching, I do not have enough fabric to frame it on a stretcher. And I really don’t want to frame it with a mat. With a stitched area of 10.5 x 34 inches (26.7 x 86.4 cm) that would be a very awkward and expensive piece. With the sewing machine out for the duration until our basement remodel is complete, I’m shelving this and moving on.
So. What to do next?
A couple of weeks ago I ran into a small DMC tote bag kit on our town’s freecycle/reuse/give-away exchange. I snatched it up. Although I didn’t want to stitch the rather boring roses intended, the kit with its big-as-logs 32 threads-per-inch evenweave was perfect for other counted work.
The bag itself was 90% assembled, and fully lined. There was an unfinished area at the bottom of the lining to allow access to the inside of the bag, to make working easier. But it was insufficient. I tried, but was unable to either hoop or work in hand as the kit stood. So I separated all of the side seams and laid the whole bag out flat:
I basted guide lines at the longitudinal center of the bag, and a half inch all the way around the edges. The total stitching area is two sides, each about 8.75 x 10 inches (21.6 x 25.4 cm). I am unsure if I will work just one design on this, front and back; or if I will do something different on each side. But the intent is to stitch, then use a decorative seam stitch on the visible parts, and a less fancy treatment on the heavier white twill lining, which won’t be very visible after the whole bag is put back to rights.
This being a rather small project, it doesn’t fit nicely in my sit-upon hoop, so I am working it in my hand held 6 inch (15.24 cm) hoop. Slow going compared to the two-handed approach I prefer, but even so this should be done quickly.
Here’s what I have so far. Two strands of standard DMC 310 black. I wanted the outlines heavy and prominent because I am considering working an open voided ground in a second color behind. At least for this all-over. And yes, it’s yet another T2CM pattern.
And finally it being eating season, both with first-run and leftover bounty, to celebrate the end of the Passover season, I transformed our leftover pot roast into a rather curious family specialty. Meat blintzes. It’s the standard blintz crepe outside, but with a mix of finely chopped leftover cooked pot roast, any remaining potatoes and carrots or onions that cooked with the roast, a handful of cooked rice, and just enough leftover gravy to keep the filling moist inside. I know of no one else who had this way of eking out an extra dinner in this manner. I suspect my grandmother or one of her sisters faced with hungry kids and a quarter pound of meat, made virtue of necessity, and passed their discovery down to me. There’s no real recipe here – it’s just doing the best with whatever leftover meat and sides are available.
So now I have about 3 dozen in the freezer, to be defrosted and pan-sauteed to finish prior to serving. Obviously these are not intended to be accompanied by sour cream. Instead, as a quick to fix/light dinner course they are usually preceded by a big bowl of chicken soup (also pre-made and stowed away against need), and are accompanied by a vegetable side dish.
If you are looking for the recipe for the blintz skins/crepes and a more traditional mixed cheese filling, it’s here. Just to be evil and make you extra hungry, I leave you with what they look like during the final sautee:
DECEMBER SLIDES INTO HOME
A hectic month and a miserable year come to a conclusion. But not without completions.
First, as promised in the last post – a family photo of this year’s cookies. I tried to have smaller batches of only ten kinds, but was foiled by a concerted group effort.
Working it clockwise (recipe links for most of these can be found in my last post.
- Noon – Lemon cut-outs, magically maniacal. Special thanks to friend Laura Packer, who sent me the twisted cutters. Oh, and bonus tiny leaf (see below).
- 1:00 – Chocolate pudding cookies. A surprise addition courtesy of Elder Spawn, who for a first fling into the communal cookie pile, did quite well with an intensely fudgy bit of delight.
- 2:00 – Orange marmalade cookies with fresh orange icing.
- 3:00 – Cinnamon swirls. A specialty of Younger Spawn, who dazzles with flavor and presentation.
- 4:00 – Mexican wedding cakes.
- 5:00 – Classic Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies
- 6:00 – Our Oysters – a hazelnut spritz sandwich, with dark chocolate ganache filling
- 7:00 – Meringues (also see below)
- 8:00 – Bourbon/cocoa balls
- 9:00 – Triple Ginger/white chocolate cookies
- 10:00 – Earthquakes – Most folk call these “chocolate crinkles” but we like the more dramatic nickname. For some reason the crevices closed up. Possibly due to overbaking this year. My cookie, my fault.
- 11:00 – Peanut butter cookies
- Center of dial – Jam thumbprints, with mixed berry jam. Another contribution of Younger Spawn.
But that’s only the start. Younger Spawn also made a magnificent Buche de Noel (Yule Log Cake), with chocolate buttercream outside, and hazelnut buttercream rolled in a rich cocoa genoise. Including the traditional meringue mushrooms and little leaf-shaped sugar cookie leaves.
Not to be outdone, The Resident Male rose to the occasion and presented us with a Christmas Eve feast – seared fois gras with chanterelles; French onion soup au gratin; rack of wild boar with maple/chili glaze, plus potatoes Anna and spinach souffle.
And there are more year end finishes!
My Bony Boi piece, back from the framer and suitably hung in its place of honor in the Resident Male’s office:
The Great Masking
And I also finished my three blackwork plague masks.
I used one of Ancient Elna’s specialty cams to make a multi-stitch “hold fast” edging around the outer edge of each of the embroidered components. Then I cut out the shapes with confidence that the stay stitching would prevent any unraveling. (The stay stitching will be buried in the seam allowances, and never be seen.)
After that I sewed my stitching together down the center to make the outer layer. I toyed with a couple of treatments for the center seam to disguise the mismatch, but settled on a simple line of stem stitch, done in Krenick #16 metallic braid. The Elizabethan plaited braid I had originally envisioned was too heavy.
Then I cut the actual protective layers, traced from the same template I used to lay out the stitching, plus the lengths for the ties (I favor ties over elastic). Each mask has two layers of high thread count percale (harvested from retired sheets and pillowcases) in addition to the decorative outer layer.
When that was done, I sewed my linings together down the center, pressed them, and pinned on the ties. Those get sandwiched between the right sides of the lining and decorative back double-layer, with care taken to make sure they are not accidentally sewn over when front and back are seamed together. The two fronts, with the ties pinned to the lining are shown below.
Once that was done it was a simple matter to sew front to back (right sides inside), leaving a bit of a turning space between the two ties on the left. The thing is flipped right-side-out by teasing the ties out and yanking. A press followed by a line of topstitching all the way around to set the edges and seal the turning aperture, and I was done:
Now on to the next thing. But first I have to decide what that is….
AND THE ANNUAL BAKING MARATHON COMMENCES!
Long time readers know that for decades now I’ve been making at least 10 kinds of cookies for the holiday season. Along the way other goodies have joined them. This year is no different. But how to manage it all?
Systems design and phased planning.
I’m only half kidding. I don’t sit down and do a critical path chart for cookie preparation, but I do put some thought into it. Last week I sat down and composed this year’s list. Over the years the list of must-do kinds has grown, leaving fewer slots for experimentation. This year we hit max do-over – ten kinds now proven and loved. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
- Chocolate chip cookies – The original Tollhouse recipe (minus the nuts because so many other kinds I make have them).
- Peanut butter cookies – A family favorite. More or less the one from Joy of Cooking, but using Teddy Superchunk natural peanut butter instead of the more sugary big commercial brands.
- Mexican Wedding Cakes – Another gotta-have. Buttery pecan shortbread, rolled in confectioners’ sugar. I don’t stint on the toasted pecans.
- Bourbon Balls – Another standard done every year since I began this. A no-bake cookie. But I’ve been disappointed in the old recipe of late, so this year is a change-up. I’m trying out a recent NY Times recipe. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021660-fudgy-bourbon-balls
- Sugar cookie cut-outs – Another Joy of Cooking standard, but I add lemon zest and extract to the cookie, and made the plain confectioners’ sugar/water icing with lemon juice instead of water. Tons of fun to decorate with the kids when they were small, but a lot of work for one person, now. Some changes to this one, too this year.
- Oysters – One of my own invention. Or as they say in knitting – “unvention” (personal discovery replicating something previously done by others, but not known to the unventor at the time). This is a rich hazelnut spritz cookie, served up sandwich style, with chocolate ganache filling between.
- Iced Orange Marmalade Cookies – This will be the third year in a row for these. Obviously they’ve made the cut from exotic newcomer to gotta-have.
- Triple Ginger White Chocolate – Another successful original. I started with a variation on a light brown sugar drop cookie, made with ginger juice, dry ground ginger, plus minced crystalized ginger, along with white chocolate chips, that act as “internal icing” and counter the ginger’s heat. Love these.
- Earthquakes – Most other people call them Chocolate Crinkles. They are the fudgy, brownie like chocolate cookie that is rolled in confectioner’s sugar prior before hitting the oven. During baking they crack and split, making distinctive dark canyons across the white surface. Much loved (and nicknamed) by the kids, long long ago.
- Cinnamon Swirls – A specialty of Younger Spawn, who was Padawan, has now eclipsed the master. Spawn’s swirled icebox cookies are food-stylist-perfect, feather light, and intensely tasty.
- Jam Thumbprints – Eleven? Yes. Eleven. This was a late addition, by special request. I hope it will be a learning experience. Former Padawan Spawn says that a never-fail recipe for them is in their pocket. To date though, mine have been dismal – with no useful divots to retain the jam. No recipe for this yet – I eagerly await the personal import.
Oh. And Panforte. I make this liquor-soused chocolate/nut fruitcake every other year (one recipe makes two). It sits on the sideboard supping up its nightly drink until the day before it is served, when it gets a chocolate ganache top-icing. My mods to it include using less expensive dried fruit – 40% pitted prunes, 40% apricots, and 20% berries or cherries, and NOT using whole nuts. The thing is dense, and having whole hazelnuts and almonds in there make it quite difficult to cut. Instead I use halved or smashed hazelnuts and slivered almonds.
The secret of this juggling? Spreadsheets.
I have a master workbook. Each year I add a new sheet. I copy the previous year’s cookie row or enter new data. The sheet sums up my major ingredients at the top. It feeds into a shopping list form that I can tick off as have-on-hand or to-buy. There’s also a sheet where links or hard copy references to all the recipes live.
Geeky, yes. But effective.
Most years I’ve had to do these solo, although I was spoiled for a few when Younger Spawn was still living at home and evinced interest and growing skill. And I’ve always held down a full time professional job with an intense end of year activity burst (work has an annoying way of interfering with life.). Therefore I tend to do these as two-night exercises. Make dough on night 1, bake on night two. When I can I double up on baking and making the next night’s dough, but that isn’t always possible, leading to some intense weekend sprints to catch up.
And on preparation order – I group cookies by how far in advance I can make them (without freezing). Some types stay fresh longer than others. Some require time to cure or set properly. And some are truly ephemeral, best consumed on the week that they are made. Sequence runs something like this:
First – Panforte. Lasts forever, is better if it is made early and soused with extra liqueur daily until consumed. Ice with ganache the day before finally serving it. I usually do this the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend.
Second – Bourbon Balls. They are better if they have sat to cure a couple of weeks. Always the first cookie made. Usually the same day as the Panforte.
Third – Peanut butter. The natural oil content of peanut butter keeps these soft for a very long time, they are great keepers, and lead off the baked cookie production line.
Fourth – the sturdy drop cookies. Chocolate chip, triple ginger. Not quite a long lived as peanut butter, but if tightly sealed, better keepers than the more fragile guys.
Fifth – Sugar cut-outs, Iced Orange cookies, and the spritz cookies for the oysters. Both of these can be baked ahead and stored without their respective finishing frosting or filling. Kept tightly covered, they will dry out a bit, but will gain regain moisture from their wetter components when they are finished.
Sixth – This batch are more fragile and shouldn’t be made more than a week ahead of need. Earthquakes, Mexican Wedding Cakes in that order.
The ones that depend on Younger Spawn will of course have to await arrival, but if I were to slot them in regardless of Spawn-presence, the Cinnamon Swirls would go in the Fifth group, and the Jam Thumbprints in Sixth.
The instant icebox fudge comes last. Our old neighbor and adopted family member Ms. Jean taught me how to make it the very first holiday season we celebrated together. It’s a special treat that everyone loves, takes very little time, and that’s handy for using up small amounts of leftover nuts along with the chocolate. Like there would ever be leftover chocolate in this house.
Pix of these as they are finished. Or maybe I’ll wait until the end and post the traditional “family photo.”
THE COOKIE TRADITION CONTINUES
As long-time readers here know, we do ten types of cookies to welcome the holidays. We do a mix of old time favorites, with a few new types each year, and have been slowly adding the tastiest of the new cookies to the regular roster. I think this year we’ve hit on the best assortment yet.
Here’s the spread, with links to the recipes (or close equivalents) where available.
- Peanut Butter. The Joy of Cooking standard, with one household adaptation. We use Teddy brand all-natural chunky peanut butter instead of the more usual and more industrial Jiff or Skippy. It gives a better texture, and a more intense, less kiddy-sweet peanut taste. And because it was a special gift – instead of the traditional fork-press decoration for the top, I use a sun-shaped cookie stamp to celebrate the solstice.
- Cinnamon swirls. I can’t take credit for this one. Their spiraled perfection is entirely one of Younger Daughter’s specialties. She uses the CIA’s Cinnamon Bun Cookies recipe. It’s a rolled refrigerator cookie that can be made and frozen ahead of time, then defrosted and baked when needed. The frosting is optional, and in my opinion, not needed because the cookie is sweet enough on its own. She leaves it off so the dramatic spiral is better displayed.
- Orange Marmalade Cookies. New this year, this is a soft cookie with a zingy, fresh orange icing. We are adding this one to our do-again list, for sure. We made these about half the size of the original, to keep with our bite-size cookie theme (with so many kinds, having smaller cookies allows a range of grazing). If you do them as small as ours (about 1.5 inch across) you will have too much icing. Either cut the recipe by about a third, or enjoy the leftover spread on muffins.
- Chocolate Chips. Pretty much the Nestle Toll House classic, minus the nuts since so many of the other cookies are nut-rich. This year I made them thinner and crispier, by special request.
- Triple Ginger Cookies. This was my special invention last year. The only difference between last year’s and this year’s is that last year I formed the cookies by rolling the dough in balls. This year I did “wild drop” using two teaspoons. I’m still looking for a really good name for this one.
- Earthquakes. Well, we call them that. Most people call them Chocolate Crinkles. No clue as to why we had so little seismic activity on the batch this year – very little dramatic cracking. But they taste the same – intensely chocolaty, like a bite size brownie. There are dozens of recipes out there for these. Mine is from Long Time Pal Kathryn, and uses butter, not oil as the shortening. Here’s something similar.
- Oysters. Another home invention – a sandwich cookie, of hazelnut spritz awith dark chocolate ganache filling. So named because the first time I did these I didn’t grind the nuts fine enough, and they clogged the cookie press, making strange, blobby shapes. We fitted those together as best we could, and named them accordingly.
- Buffalo Bourbon Balls. Some years we make these with rum, some years with bourbon, but always with pecans. This no-bake cookie was in a circa 1960s edition of the Buffalo News. It is much like this one, although my version uses a bit more cocoa and nuts by proportion, and makes a bigger batch.
- Mexican Wedding Cakes. Another must-have, this is an intensely rich shortbread, full of ground pecans, rolled twice in confectioner’s sugar (once warm, once when cooled). Our recipe is like this one, but again, scaled up to make a larger batch.
- Cut-Outs. We start with Rich Rolled Cookies from Joy of Cooking (1964 edition), and add lemon zest to the cookie itself. Then for the icing we dissolve powdered sugar in lemon juice (not milk or water), tint it with food coloring and paint/drip it onto the thoroughly cooled cookies.
- Ms. Jean’s fudge (not shown because it’s still setting up in the fridge). This year half the batch is with nuts and half is plain, in deference to my nut-adverse friends. Ms. Jean is a family friend, a beloved neighbor and my kids’ honorary Aunt, whose specialty is sharing joy, with a double helping over the holidays. Her’s is a standard quick-fudge, made from chocolate, butter, sweetened condensed milk, a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt. The one on line most like it is this one from Cooking for Engineers, although Jean’s added a quarter tsp of vanilla and pinch of salt. Save yourself effort though – line your pan with plastic wrap to make getting the stuff out and cut MUCH easier. And have the pan lined are ready to go before you stir the milk into the chocolate.
Now, how do we manage to make all of these? Especially when I work and am not home all day? Over time, and in order. I start early in December, by making the bourbon balls. They need time to mellow, like a fruitcake. The peanut butter cookies are next because with their high oil content, they are a long-keeper. The last ones to be made are usually the Mexican Wedding Cakes because they are delicate and go stale more quickly than some of the others. Most nights that I bake I make a dough and fridge it, to bake on the next evening. On weekends I might do two or three batches in their entirety. As each cookie is finished, it is stowed away in its plastic-wrap lined tin, and its on to the next.
Oh! The holidays do come in a stampeding herd this year.
Happy Hannukah!
Last night was the first candle.
How could I end this post without linking to the latke recipe, too? 🙂
Ginger! Ginger! Ginger!
Another promise to share a recipe, listed here so that it has a stable source page and can be found again. This cookie is another of my mashups – derived from multiple sources, plus a bit of improvisation. I really like how this experiment turned out – an intensely gingery cookie, tempered by the “internal frosting” of the sweet white chips – and having now made it twice, I consider it successfully beta tested and ready to escape my kitchen
Triple Ginger-White Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 5-6 dozen cookies, depending on size.
Triple-Ginger White Chocolate Chip Cookies
(This batch was shaped by the ball method, not the two-teaspoon drop.)
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter (one stick). NOT margarine.
- 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
- 3/4 cup white granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 cup heavy cream (can sub light cream or milk if desired)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 2 Tbs ginger juice (Bottled from Ginger People, or grated fresh and squeezed from the pulp)
- 2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
- 1.5-2 Tbs ground ginger (the more, the hotter…)
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup finely diced crystallized ginger
- 8 oz. white chocolate chips
Method
- Cream butter, add sugars and beat until fully combined
- Add egg, cream, vanilla, ginger juice, beat these wet ingredients until fully combined.
- In separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients – flour, ground ginger, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until fully combined into a light cookie dough.
- Stir the chopped crystallized ginger and white chocolate chips into the dough, aim for an even distribution throughout.
- Fridge the dough for at least an hour before baking.
- When ready, preheat oven to 325-deg-F.
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment or a non-stick baking mat.
- Either rolling the chilled dough into balls, slightly smaller than a walnut, or using two teaspoons to drop the batter without shaping it, form cookies, leaving about 3 inches between each (the cookies do spread).
- Bake one sheet at a time for 13 to 15 minutes (convection ovens require the lesser time, conventional may need the upper limit). Cookies should be pale and the undersides should not be deeply browned, as shown above.
- Remove from cookie sheet and cool on rack. Can be kept in a tightly covered tin in a cool place for up to 3 weeks, provided the cookie-crazed don’t snarf them up before then.
A PI OF PIES
More or less. Here you see them. A little over three, but probably not 3.14159… pies, exactly.
I posted this photo of our Thanksgiving pies to Facebook, and several friends wrote to me to ask for the recipes. So to the best of my ability, here it goes.
The recipes for the chocolate pecan and pumpkin are pretty exact. The apple-orange pie is more of a method description. All pies here were prepared with extensive help of Younger Offspring, who was responsible for most assembly, and all crust styling. The apple-orange and pecan pies used a home-made traditional lard crust (recipe at the end of this post), but you may sub in any crust you prefer. The pumpkin has its own very temperamental butter crust. Others may also be used, but the feisty butter crust is well worth the effort to attempt.
All of these pies were made in 9-inch glass pie plates, set on heavy, rimmed baking sheets. They were baked on the lowest rack of a convection oven, and baking times are set for that. If you use a metal pan all of these may take less time to bake. If you use a pre-made shell in a disposable aluminum pan, it may take even less time. Watch your pies carefully to forestall burning.
Chocolate Pecan Pie
This recipe is a smash-up among several, including a yummy brown butter pecan pie posted at Cookie Madness, the chocolate pecan pie recipe from The New York Times, and various other pecan pies/chocolate pies clawed from my collection of recipe books. While the Cookie Madness pie was luscious, it tended to not set firmly, even when overbaked. And the NYT pie worked well enough, but was rather under-nutted and a bit short on depth of flavor. The others were variants on a light corn syrup/dark corn syrup combo, and were often much sweeter than I prefer.
Ingredients
- One 9-inch open face pie crust (no top crust), unbaked.
- About 2 cups of pecans, sorted into beautiful whole halves, and the broken bits. There should be at least 1.5 cups of broken bits. The rest are decorative, so the exact quantity is up to you. If frugality requires, just use the 1.5 cups and decorate with pastry scrap cutouts instead.
- 6 Tbs unsalted butter (NOT margarine)
- 2 oz bittersweet chocolate (about 56 grams)
- 3/4 cup dark brown corn syrup
- 4 extra-large eggs
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
- 1 1/4 Tbs cocoa (actual cocoa, not hot chocolate mix)
- OPTIONAL – 2 Tbs bourbon
- OPTIONAL – Handful of chopped bittersweet chocolate, or chocolate chips
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 tsp salt
Method
- Ready your chosen pie shell. It does NOT need to be pre-baked.
- Preheat oven to 350-deg F.
- Place pecans on a baking tray in a single layer and toast until fragrant. This will take only a couple of minutes, and they burn easily, so watch them carefully.
- Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Let it brown slightly, the color should be like light oak – not pretzels. Remove from heat and let rest for a couple of minutes until the pan cools off a bit but is still warm.
- Put chocolate into the pan with the hot, browned butter. Stir until melted and combined. Set aside on the counter to cool a bit more. 15 min is plenty. The butter/chocolate mixture should still be liquid and warm to the touch, but not hot.
- Whisk together the eggs, corn syrup, vanilla, bourbon, sugar, and salt.
- Whisk in the cocoa powder, make sure there are no lumps.
- Add the melted butter/chocolate, and stir until uniform in color.
- Place the unbaked pie shell on a rimmed cookie sheet or baking tray. Lining it with parchment or a silicon sheet will make cleanup later easier, and spare your oven if the filling splashes or bubbles over.
- Scatter the broken pecans evenly in the pie shell. If using the optional handful of chips or chopped chocolate, sprinkle that over the nuts.
- Slowly and carefully, pour your filling mix over the pecans and optional chips. You want to fill carefully so you don’t move the nuts around as you do so.
- Arrange the reserved whole half nuts over the top in any decorative manner you desire. It can be full coverage like ours, a ring around the rim, stripes, or anything you want given the quantity of nice pieces to hand. If you are pecan-challenged, you can use dough scraps cut into fancy shapes to decorate. Or just let it be plain.
- Bake at 350-degrees F for 30 to 40 minutes, until the center is just set and the pastry is nicely colored.
- Cool before serving, preferably on a wire rack. Whipped cream is the expected accompaniment.
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie
I originally got this pie recipe from the Washington Post, 23 November 1986. I do not see it in their on line archives.
The original called for one standard 16 oz can of pumpkin. Since it was written, standard cans of pumpkin have shrunken to 14 or 15 oz. depending on the maker. Scaling back the recipe to account for less pumpkin hasn’t worked for me, nor has buying two cans and having most of the second one left over. Instead we roast small sugar pumpkins in the oven until they are soft, then scrape out the flesh and freeze it in plastic bags, of 16 oz (weighed on a kitchen scale). One thawed out bag = one pie. And the roasted sugar pumpkins have a better flavor than the tinned stuff.
Warnings
The butter crust is extremely fussy to make, and even harder to transfer into the pie plate. It MUST be done the night before and fridged prior to use, and it has an alarming tendency to slump during blind baking. But it is especially tender and delicious, and really puts this pie over the top.
The recipe always makes MORE filling than fits in a standard 9-inch pie plate or a 10-inch quiche pan. I always have a “sidecar” – leftovers baked either in a mini crust (if I have extra crust left over from another recipe – the butter crust is JUST enough for one open face pie); or poured without a crust into an oven-safe ramekin and baked as a mini pumpkin “custard.”
Ingredients
For the butter crust
- 1 1/2 cups unsifted flour, preferably refrigerated
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 stick of butter, very cold (NOT margarine)
- 1 Tbs white granulated sugar
- 1 yolk from extra-large size egg, very cold (save the white for the filling, below)
- 2 Tbs ice water
For the filling
- 3 extra-large eggs plus the white left over from the crust
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup white granulated sugar plus 1 Tbs flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg (fresh grated is best)
- 1/3 tsp allspice
- 1 Tbs molasses
- 1 Tbs vanilla
- 16 oz. pureed pumpkin (canned or home-made)
- 1 3/4 cup light cream at room temperature
Method
For the crust
- Preheat oven to 425-degrees F.
- Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in butter into the flour using a pastry cutter or two knives, until the butter lumps are about lentil size. Blend butter and flour bits with fingertips to flake.
- Sprinkle with sugar and stir in.
- Combine yolk and 2 Tbs ice water. Mix this quickly into the dough.
- Press dough into a round cake, cover, and chill. The original recipe said for a half hour. I’ve found overnight is better.
- Roll out dough and fill deep dish pie pan or quiche pan. Dough will be very poorly behaved. It will require a lot of flour as you roll, and you’ll probably end up piecing it in the pan instead of transferring it as one unbroken sheet. Try to have enough overlap on the top edge of the pie plate to prevent sagging.
- Layer with a sheet of aluminum foil and fill with pie weights, beans, or pennies. (Fill to the top because the thing has a nasty habit of sagging if baked unsupported).
- Bake in preheated 425-degree oven for 12 minutes. Turn down the oven to 375-degrees, remove foil and pie weights, and bake for another 12 minutes. Shell will be very blonde, but will have lost the “raw” look. Set aside to cool for at least an hour before filling.
For the filling, and final baking
Note that you will probably have more filling than fits in one pie. If you have extra crust, make a “sidecar” in a ramekin or small oven proof dish. Or just pour the extra into a ramekin, small glass or other ceramic oven-safe dessert-size dish and bake as directed below.
- Preheat oven to 425-degrees F.
- Using a very large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until frothy.
- Beat in the sugars.
- Blend in spices.
- Stir in molasses and vanilla.
- Beat in the pumpkin.
- Whisk in the cream.
- Stir very slowly for a minute or two to dissipate bubbles.
- Place the pre-baked pie shell on a rimmed cookie sheet. Lining it first with baking parchment or a silicon sheet will simplify cleanup later.
- Slowly pour the filling mix into the pie pan, until it fills the shell to about 1/2 to 1/4 inch from the top. You will have leftover as mentioned above. Pour that into your sidecar container (with crust or without)
- Poke any bubbles on the surface of the pie/sidecar with a toothpick to burst.
- Bake pie and sidecar in lower third of a preheated 425-degree oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 325-degrees and bake for another 25 minutes. The sidecar should be done, with a set center, and should be removed now. Leave the main pie in the oven for another 15 minutes until the center is set.
- Let the pie cool for at least an hour before serving. Can be served warm, but it’s better if the pie sets up a bit more. A splat of real whipped cream on top is a family must-do.
Apple-Orange Pie aka “Son of Anonymous Apple Pie*”
This pie is a tribute to two friends of ours. both excellent cooks. One taught us basic apple pie procedures, and would host an annual pie-fest where she made them by the dozens, to freeze and bake throughout the year. The other was a keen researcher, and avid baker who dabbled in commercial cooking ventures. She redacted a historical recipe for an apple pie that was punched up with thin slices of candied bitter orange. I blend their two techniques together, but take the easy way out by using marmalade.
You can make this as a traditional full double-crust covered pie, but this year Younger Offspring hit upon using a lattice. I think the extra venting of the lattice yielded a firmer, less soupy, better textured filling, and minimized the boil-over that often happens with juicy apple pies.
Ingredients
- Enough pie crust for a 9-inch covered pie, or a lattice pie, as you prefer
- Six to seven firm baking apples. Cortland, Empire, Granny Smith or other tart varieties that hold shape are preferred. Avoid Delicious, Gala, Macoun and other sweet, softer eating apples.
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2-3 Tablespoons of cinnamon (to taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- About 6 oz orange marmalade. Use only a kind made with sugar, not fructose. I recommend Bon Mamman Orange Marmalade (this is a little bit less than half a jar).
- 3 Tablespoons of unsalted butter (not margarine)
- Juice from one small lemon.
Method
- Preheat oven to 375-degrees F
- Roll out your bottom crust and place it in a 9-inch glass pie plate. Prepare your chosen top crust (full closed pie, or lattice). Place both in the fridge while you prep the pie filling.
- Peel, core and slice the apples. To keep them from browning, as you work place the apple slices in a big bowl of cold water along with half of the lemon juice.
- Mix the cinnamon with the granulated sugar and kosher salt.
- Take the bottom crust out of the fridge, and liberally spread its inside and walls with marmalade.
- Take the apple slices out of the lemon water and toss them in a large bowl lined with a clean kitchen towel, to remove most of the wetness. They don’t need to be bone dry, but they should not be dripping.
- Tightly layer about a third of the apples in the bottom crust. Sprinkle them with about a third of the sugar-cinnamon mixture. Dot with chunks of about a third of the butter, and with scattered dollups of marmalade. Repeat twice more until all of the filling ingredients have been used up.
- Optional – if you like a tart pie, sprinkle about a tablespoon or two of lemon juice over the filling.
- Assemble your pie, using either a whole top crust or a lattice. If you are using a top crust, make sure to create at least three large vent holes for steam to escape. Decorate at will if you desire (but don’t clog the vent holes).
- Put the ready-to-bake pie on a rimmed baking sheet (preferably on baking parchment or a silicon mat for ease of clean-up). This pie WILL bubble over and make a mess of your oven otherwise. Guaranteed.
- Bake in the bottom third of your oven at 375-degrees for about 45 minutes, until the top and bottom are nicely colored, and juices have bubbled for at least 10 minutes. Glass pie plates make it easy to see if the bottom has browned. In all cases, and especially if you are using metal pie pans or pre-made crusts in aluminum pans, begin hovering and watching for done-ness at the 35 min mark. The pie is ready when a skewer inserted into it reveals that the apples inside are soft and easily pierced and the pastry is a pale gold.
- Cool before slicing. May be served warm, room temperature, or chilled. Whipped cream, ice cream, or other extras are always appreciated.
* If you are very good, I’ll explain “Anonymous Apple Pie.”
But that veers off into local SCA folklore.
Lard Pie Crust
This is the crust recipe I used for the apple-orange and pecan pies. It makes a very generous double-crust pie with lots left over for decoration, or enough for one less generous double-crust pie shell, plus one single crust shell. I double the recipe below when I bake pies, and use the extra for the sidecar, plus I have enough left over for a half-dozen pastries.
This recipe is closely adapted from several sources, including Sylvia’s Perfect Pie Crust, from the Tasty Kitchen blog.
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 extra-large egg
- 1 1/2 cups lard, well chilled from the fridge.
- 5 Tbs ice water
- 1 Tbs white vinegar
- 1 1/4 tsp kosher salt. 1 tsp if using regular table salt
Method
- Place the flour in a very large mixing bowl. Sprinkle it with all the salt. Cut the cold lard into cubes roughly an inch square and place them on top of the flour. With a pastry cutter, or two knives, cut the lard into the flour until the mix is uniform and the crumbs are about the size of raw oatmeal. Do not use your fingertips or the lard will warm up and the pastry will get sticky.
- In a separate small bowl, beat the egg, then pour it over the flour-lard-salt mix. Sprinkle with the vinegar, then with the icewater.
- Stir the mix until the dough comes together. Divide the resulting ball in thirds, and form into three flat disks. Wrap each one in plastic wrap or put it in a plastic bag. Refrigerate for at least an hour, better overnight. If desired, you can freeze the disks to use later, letting them thaw for an hour before rolling out.
- When ready to shape for your pie, sprinkle your VERY CLEAN countertop with flour and roll out with a rolling pin, starting at the center and working out, rotating the dough to maintain as circular a shape as possible. You may need to flour the top of the dough and your rolling pin, and use a bench scraper or spatula to free the dough from the counter as you go, especially in warmer weather or a hot kitchen. Continue until your circle is about a half-inch wider than the top of your pie plate, then transfer it to the pie pan and pat it into shape, fluting or pinching the top or otherwise decorating as desired.
- If you need to prebake/blind bake your shell, do so in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 15-20 minutes, until it just colors and no longer looks raw. Lining the empty shell with aluminum foil and using pie weights/beans/pennies for pre-baking will help keep it from slumping or bubbling up.
String-Or-Nothing 