Yummy Mistake!

I had a friend come over today for pie crust 101 (more on that later). We set out to make a perfect apple pie so that she could master it and make one for her family's thanksgiving. We went over types of apples, precooking the filling vs cold filling, forming and rolling the crust, everything!

But then I got a little ADD while waiting for the filling to cook, and decided to go check my fantasy football. UGH. Apparently I got a little wrapped up in my "But I'm undefeeeeeated!!" whine, because by the time we went back to check the filling--we pretty much had applesauce.

So we went back to the store for more apples ($8 for 6 apples, inflation is killing my baking budget!). We started over on her pie, but I decided to add a little extra liquid and turn my mistake into applesauce. The result was a hearty, rustic (i.e. lumpy!) and very tasty applesauce!

I'd take a picture, but you know what applesauce looks like, and I don't want to make it into the ugly food blog hall of fame :)

Accidental Applesauce

by Carla

6-8 apples (various kinds, I used a mixture of Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Fujis)

3 tbs butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

dash of nutmeg

dash of ginger

dash of cloves

1/2 cup of water

1. Peel, core, and slice apples into small slices

2. Melt 3 tbs of butter in a large pan big enough to hold all the apples

3. Toss the apples in the butter until all apples are covered and glossy. Cover and cook the apples over medium heat for 10-15 minutes until they start to turn soft and fall apart. (At this point, go check your fantasy football. Question Ladanian Tomlinson's manhood. Curse your husband for his tight end advice).

4. Uncover and add in water, sugar, and spices. Stir with a spatula and break up remaining apples. Continue to simmer sauce and break up apples for another 10 minutes or so until it resembles applesauce.

I liked it with some chunks of apple left in it. If you like yours smoother, the Joy of Cooking recommends putting it in a food processer or blender. 

I can't wait to use my newfound homemade applesauce to make my cranberry applesauce for thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Roll

Now that we've done apple pies, what's the next thing we MUST introduce if we are truly going to usher in fall? PUMPKIN!

Last year James told me he absolutely did not like pumpkin. I made a weight watcher's recipe for pumpkin spice muffins (literally just one box spice cake mix + 1 can of pumpkin, baked into mini muffins, 1 pt each I think). He agreed to try them because they smelled so good, and his response was "There's some really yummy taste in there I can't identify" then proceeded to eat the whole pan. Fast forward a few weeks, I made a pumpkin dip (cool whip, vanilla pudding, canned pumpkin. literally ALL you can taste is pumpkin). And his response again was "There's just some really yummy taste to this!"

Uh--babe. That yummy taste is pumpkin. You like pumpkin! He then admitted that he had never tried it, and has been a pumpkin lover ever since.

I made this pumpkin roll for company Friday night, but ended up getting sick and cancelling the company. So we ate it ourselves. Just ate the last piece for breakfast actually. Yum!

Overall, good recipe. I thought it could use a little more sweetness in the cake part, but the filling was plenty sweet so I guess as long as the ratio of each bite was right it was sweet enough. After sitting and reading the joy of cooking yesterday, I've decided I also want to try this with vanilla ice cream for the filling and freezing.

Libby's Pumpkin Roll

ALL credit goes to http://www.verybestbaking.com/ As in, I copied and pasted. Even the photo.

Ingredients:

CAKE
1/4 cup powdered sugar (to sprinkle on towel)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup LIBBY'S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
1 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
FILLING
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Powdered sugar (optional for decoration)

Directions:

FOR CAKE:

PREHEAT oven to 375° F. Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan; line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with powdered sugar.

COMBINE flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and granulated sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts.

BAKE for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. (If using a dark-colored pan, begin checking for doneness at 11 minutes.) Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.

FOR FILLING:

BEAT cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

COOKING TIP:Be sure to put enough powdered sugar on the towel when rolling up the cake so it will not stick.

Apple Hand Pies

Happy 1st day of Fall!


I've been craving pie, but every time I make a pie we throw half of it away. Solution - super cute little hand pies!



I mixed a few regular Apple pie recipes to get to this one, thanks to Martha Stewart and the Joy of Cooking! :)



I took the picture on my phone because I left my camera somewhere this weekend, so sorry for the crappy quality!

Apple Hand Pies
Makes 8


Crust:
2 sticks (1/2 lb) of butter, chilled
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
6+ Tbs water


1. Using two forks or a dough hook (or a food processer, on my Christmas list!) cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it resembled small peas.
2. Add water, 1 Tbs at a time, and mix until the mixture begins to form a dough. It's ready when you can ball up the dough and it sticks together without crumbling, but it shouldn't be wet or sticky. Add water sparingly!
3. Form the dough into two flat discs, wrap with plastic, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes while you prep your filling.


Filling
4-5 large apples (I use the Alton Brown apple pie mixture - honeycrisp, granny smith, golden delicious, and braeburn)
3 Tbs butter
1 cup sugar
cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg
1 egg


1. Peel, core, and coursely chop apples into 1/2 inch cubes.
2. Melt 3 Tbs butter in a large skillet or saucepan big enough to hold all your apples.
3. Stir apples into melted butter until coated, cover, and cook on medium heat for 5-10 minutes until apples are soft on the outside but still have some crunch.
4. Mix 1 cup of sugar with cinnamon, ginger,and nutmeg to taste. I like a pretty healthy pouring of cinnamon (2 tsp maybe?) and just a small pinch of the ginger and nutmeg.
5. RESERVE 1/4 cup of the spiced sugar mixture.
6. When apples are parcooked, add remaining 3/4 cup of the sugar mixture and turn heat up to high, and cook at a rolling boil for 3-5 minutes until juices become thick and syrupy.
7. When finished, spread apple mixture onto a sheet pan and cool to room temperature.


Building the pies
1. Flour your work surface, and roll out dough to about 1/2 inch thickness.
2. Using a saucer as a guide, cut 6-8 inch circles out of the dough. You can reroll out the excess dough and get as many circles as you can, but remember pie dough gets less tender as you play with it, so go easy. I got 8 circles out of the dough above, plus a little extra that I cut out with cookie cutters to make the little top designs.
3. Spoon 2-3 Tbs of apple mixture onto half of each dough circle, leaving 1/2 inch or so around the edge to seal
4. Beat 1 egg in a separate bowl, and then brush around the edge of the dough circle.
5. Fold over the circle, making a semi-circle, and seal with the tines of the fork.
6. If you're adding cutouts to the top, just paint the back with egg, and then stick it on the top of your dough.
7. Cut 2-4 small vents in the dough for steam.
8. Brush the top of the pies with remaining egg, then sprinkle generously with reserved sugar mixture.
9. Bake at 350 until pies turn golden brown, 15-20 minutes.



WHEW! This recipe is a lot less complicated than it looks with all these steps, I promise! :)

Hello Lovely

My mother ruined me for life by teaching me how to cook on a gas range. 4 years of college and 2 years of an apartment with wobbly electric ovens have been holding me back.

Meet my new darling. She came to live with us on Saturday and has performed every task I've asked of her so far. I took this picture on Tuesday night when I sighed with pleasure realizing I was using all four burners making tilapia and risotto. My husband took one look at it, shook his head, and said "You're spoiled!"

I must learn more photography skills. I tried without the flash and it didn't look so good. But tilapia looks awfully unappetizing in the flash glare. Perhaps I should not take my pictures once the sun has gone to bed.

And of course I had to take a picture of the beautiful blue flames, to prove she's the real deal!

Shrimp and Bacon Vodka Pasta

It's much too late for me to come up with a clever name for this. It started out with James wanting Penne a la Betsy, but I have vodka I really needed to use, so I decided to make a Vodka sauce, which I have never even tasted. So I researched and found that all good vodka sauces start with pancetta. Being lazy and cheap, I decided to use bacon and make it up as I went along.

What resulted was a slightly sweet, slightly smokey, very flavorful vodka sauce that James liked even better than Penne a la Betsy (but isn't everything better in the variation with bacon??)

Shrimp and Bacon Vodka Pasta

1/2 lb pasta (we used spaghetti. use whatever you have)
6-8 slices of bacon (we used turkey bacon) cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 lb raw shrimp, peeled without tail

1 pinch smoked paprika

1 dash cayenne pepper

1 dash salt
1/3 cup vodka
1/2 cup half and half
1 1/2 cups prepared tomato sauce

1. Boil pasta per directions

2. Fry bacon over medium heat in a skillet until it starts to get crispy, but not completely finished.

3. In the pan with the bacon, stir in shrimp, paprika, pepper, and salt. Cook shrimp until opaque and pink. Remove shrimp (but not the bacon!) from the pan.

4. Add vodka to bacon, bring to a boil, and let it simmer until reduced by half.

5. Add half and half and tomato sauce. I used a storebought (GASP!) spaghetti sauce. If you're using the pure plain stuff, add some seasonings here.

6. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

7. Combine shrimp, pasta, and sauce, and serve!

Fruit Pizza

I've had fruit pizza several times and I've always hated it. I think the version I've always had was the sugar cookie crust with cream cheese "sauce" and then the fruit on top. Something about how dense it was always turned me off.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at a friend's house recently, tried her fruit pizza and wanted seconds and thirds! It was a little lighter, with a thin crispy crust, so good! Here's the one I made, but I didn't alter her recipe at all except for the fruit, so full credit goes to my friend Tenneal.

Fruit Pizza

Recipe from Tenneal Reus

1 refrigerated ready to use pie crust

1 tsp cinnamon sugar (3/4 tsp sugar and 1/4 tsp cinnamon)

1 1/4 cups of half and half

1 pkg Jello Vanilla Instant Pudding and Pie 4oz

1 c thawed cool whip (they make it in a spray can now! That's what I used!)

2+ cups of fresh fruit, sliced

Preheat oven to 450, unroll pie crust and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake for 8 to 10 min, cool completely
Pour half and half into medium bowl and dry pudding mix, beat until well blended. Gently stir in whip cream.
Spread pudding mixture over top of pie and top with fruit, refrigerate until use
Enjoy!

Penne a la Betsy

Happy Mother's Day!

We had both families over yesterday to celebrate mother's day and I used it as an excuse to make something wonderful and fattening that I've been wanting to try.

If you haven't been to Pioneer Woman's cooking blog, you're missing out. Check it out. Then buy a case of butter at Sams, because your adventure is about to begin! For Mother's Day dinner I made her famous "Penne a la Betsy," a tomato cream sauce with shrimp and penne pasta. It was a huge hit. I might try it again at a later date with half and half or something, but most likely I'll just save it for very special occasions.

This picture is from PW's site, mine got eaten too quickly and I forgot to take pictures!

Penne a la Betsy

Full credit for the recipe and the photo go to Pioneer Woman

Since there isn't a printable recipe on PW's site for this, I copied the instructions from Dinner and Dessert. Thanks!

Ingredients:

¾ pound penne pasta

3 tablespoons butter, divided

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 pound large shrimp

1 small white onion, finely chopped (I used shallot)

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup white wine1 (8-ounce) can plain tomato sauce

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped

basil leaves, to taste, chiffonaded

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Boil water and cook pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile, while water heats and pasta cooks, make the sauce. Melt 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet. Add the shrimp and cook for a few minutes, until opaque. Remove to a plate to let cool. Heat 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in the skillet. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally.

While the onion and garlic are cooking, chop the shrimp into small, bite-sized pieces.

Add the wine (or chicken broth) to the pan and allow to reduce for a few minutes.

Stir in tomato sauce. Add the heavy cream and stir well to combine. Add shrimp back to the skillet and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add the parsley and basil and mix well.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add the sauce to the pot and stir well to combine. Serve.