TWD—Caramel Pumpkin Pie (A super long post because this is why I started blogging and can’t put it off—family photos and memories—with some great pie added!)

If you just want to see the Tuesday’s With Dorie pick for this week for Caramel Pumpkin Pie, scroll down until you find it, it’s actually at the very end of the post.  I loved this pie.  But beware, this is a long post with lots of pictures.  This is the only way I can get the posts I really want to post about done for now.   The pumpkin pie was chosen by Janell of Mortensen Family Memoirs and you can get the recipe on her blog.

The three youngest boys and I spent most of last week in Idaho visiting my parents.  The boys had two days off school for fall break and I kind of decided on a whim to make the trek and go home.  I’m glad we went.  (Kevin and Scott stayed in Utah.  Scott had a scout camping overnighter that he didn’t want to miss.  Then the morning of the campout, Scott ended up with a fever the rest of the weekend.  That’s a bummer.  So he missed the campout, but he and Kevin had some good time together.  Took Scott the the doctor Monday morning after he was in pain all the sudden that morning with his ear hurting.  He’s got a nasty ear infection.  Scott is 12 and I don’t think he’s had one since he was maybe four years old.)

The boys weren’t really all that happy when they got home from school on Wednesday and within ten minutes I had them in the car and on our way for the six hour drive.  They actually complained quite a bit and really, I don’t blame them.  That drive is not my favorite thing.  We made it through the sun blinding us in our faces by stopping in Burley, Idaho halfway through the drive right as the sun was at its worst and wandered around a Walmart until I knew the sun had gone beyond the horizon.  Sam had been really upset and screaming with the sun right in his face.  Then as we had just an hour left of the drive he really started complaining that he wanted out of his seat and that his back hurt.  (Me, too, Buddy.)  Too funny, but Sam was looking out at the darkness around that time and said so upset, “I guess since it’s dark, we’ll never find Grandma’s house now.”  I assured him that I knew how to get to their house.  He was just so adamant that there was no way since it was dark.  I explained to him that I grew up there and knew exactly how to get there.  He just sighed and said, “Well, if you say so, Mom.”

Still unsure of what in the world they would do at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and that it would be boring, the boys weren’t too thrilled.  But by the next day, Grandma had them beaming as they made Halloween edible necklaces.

The boys got a good laugh out of noticing that the hanging pots in the background made them look like Mickey Mouse.  You can’t tell, but their necklaces had all kind of round food with holes in them for stringing on them as well as some gummy teeth candy, white candy coated pretzels for skeleton bones and some colored spider rings.  Sam tried to avoid the group pictures, but I got him anyway.

 

Parker was goofing off and got bit by one of the green spiders. ;)

Taylor lost one of his top front teeth while we were home.  It kind of just popped out when he wasn’t expecting it to.  Thankfully, the tooth fairy still showed up at Grandma’s house! ;)

I think with the pots in the background, he looks more like Princess Leia in this one. hehe  My mom kept telling him with the missing tooth he looked like a Jack-o-lantern.

Love this picture of Grandma reading to Sam!

My parents have been vendors (and market managers and/or on the board in the past) at the Nampa Farmers' Market since it began in 1989.  There are still two weeks of the market left this season, so I HAD to check it out while we were home.  It is such a great farmers’ market and was great to get to go.  Since the season is coming to an end, they don’t have as many vegetables, but my mom bakes and sells the best of every kind of cookie, spends the summer making jams to sell and my dad keeps the whole thing running while maintaining their big garden.

Mom pretty much sells out of that many cookies every week.  She does themed sugar cookies each week that are just decorated so cute.

 

The blue cookies with the orange footballs are in honor of the fantastic Boise State Broncos!  There is some serious BSU lovin’ going on in the Boise area right now (and rightly so)!

They are down to last-of-the-season produce right now.

But at the peak of the season, their booth looks more like this---

 

And just a few of the cute sugar cookies from the past, Mom works really hard on these each week.

There are so many more, but I’ll stop there.  They have grown and sold everything in the past from spinach, chard and basil, lettuces, to potatoes, corn, tomatoes, carrots, beets, onions, cantaloupe, peppers.  You name it, they’ve probably grown it in the past.  Since my parents aren’t getting well, let’s say, any younger, this might be the last year they do the market.  If so, I’m glad I got to go one more time.  And the boys loved it, too.  They got hot dogs from one of the vendors and sat with their cousin, Zane, enjoying lunch.

Parker made a smoothie in a blender by pedaling a bike.

I loved these plush, homemade, stuffed pumpkins that one of the vendors was selling and bought three of them in different sizes.  I almost couldn’t choose.  I loved them all.

(I told you there was some serious BSU lovin’ here, even the pumpkins are dressed up!)

Cute sock monkeys from the same vendor, too!

My sweet, grand nephew, Gunner, (Zane’s new brother) showed up with his mom, Saharra, to woo us all at the market. 

Gunner was born 10 pounds 2 ounces.  He IS the Michelin man.  And so darn cute and cuddly!  Even Great Grandpa (my dad) had to have a turn holding Gunner.

Saturday night we had family over for a little dinner and a lotta dessert. ;)  My dad saw my recent post about the All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie I made for Kevin’s birthday and kept hinting to me how much he’d love that cake.  So I made it again—with the change in the chocolate cream middle that I mentioned wanting to make.  It’s the easy way out, but a great mousse-like pudding for the cake.

Creamy Dreamy Chocolate Filling, for anything that needs a cream filling

1 box (4 serving size) instant chocolate pudding mix (or any flavor you’d like)

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup milk

Put cream and milk in bowl of mixer, add pudding mix and beat with wire whisk attachment for 30 seconds.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

I put the filling in between two chocolate cake layers and frosted the top with my favorite, simple ganache which is just six ounce of chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet this time) and 1/2 cup cream, heated to just boiling.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate chips.  Let it sit for a minute, then slowly whisk it together until you have a perfect, smooth melted chocolate.  For frosting spreading consistency, let it sit for about an hour.  You can pour it on the cake immediately and let it drip down the sides, too. 

Everyone began devouring the cake and this is the only picture of it I took.  Little bit of chocolate heaven, I’d say.

My nephew, Jim, headed up a little wrestling match with all the boys.  They had a blast.

Jim’s little boy, Izaiah, is four, he’s in the gray sweatshirt.  Jim also has a new little guy, Vincent.  CUTE!

Love this shot of Zane in the air while the boys wrestled.  I believe the “match” ended shortly there after as he landed right on one of my boys and had already been told not to do that.  This wrestling probably went on for a good 30 minutes.  The boys were pooped!

See those Michelin arms on Gunner!  He’s only a few weeks old, but weighs more than his cousin, Vinny, who is three months!

And finally, for those non-chocolate eaters in the house (mom) and because I didn’t want to miss this week’s TWD just because I was home, I also made the Caramel Pumpkin Pie.  What a great, simple, (Yes, I said simple when it’s got homemade caramel in it!), different pumpkin pie.  I only veered off Dorie’s recipe by making a different crust.  A pate brisee that I love.  I really like how buttery, yet crisp it is. 

The caramel was easy to make, went off without a hitch, and tasted great.  I didn’t let it smoke too much because I’ve made Dorie’s caramel before and thought it was too bitter/burnt for my liking.  That’s the nice thing, you can take it as far as you want or make it as mild as you’d like.  I didn’t photograph the caramel, but should have.  It was a perfect amber brown.  I. followed. the. pie. directions!  It baked perfectly in 45 minutes.  I also added the streusel on top (but used pecans instead of almonds).

The only thing I was a little bummed about with the pie was that I didn’t take the time to make the crust look pretty before baking it, still it came out great.

The pie definitely had a distinct caramel flavor.  I liked it.  While I LOVE streusel on top of just about everything and it did taste good, I’d probably leave it off next time for more of that traditional pumpkin pie texture.  Only thing that made the pie even more perfect—whipped cream on top!

I wanted to come home from Idaho and make Kevin the pumpkin pie because he really likes pumpkin pie, but I just wasn’t able to get that done on Monday.  I’m sure I’ll make this one again.  There’s a big, certain pie-eating holiday coming up!  Thanks for the great pick, Janell.  And if you actually read this whole post, you rock.  Thanks.  I do these long ones mostly for my own benefit and my family.  We packed up, cleaned up and headed back home to Utah Sunday morning.  Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad!  By the time we were leaving, the boys had been having so much fun they asked if they could just live at Grandma and Grandpas and never leave.  They discovered a “giant” dirt hill out back of their garden that they had so much fun playing on.  I heard Parker say they even made a pledge that anyone who goes on the hill has to say each time.  Ok, truth be known, I never knew this hill of dirt existed, but my nieces and nephew say they even played on it when they were growing up and that they always thought it was a huge hill. 

 

Many ruined/thrown away pairs of sock later and priceless memories of fun visiting Grandma and Grandpa Scott—this is what it’s all about.  We made the long drive back on Sunday, stopped in Ogden to see my oldest friend (we lived across the street from each other when we were born, she’s exactly one month older than me.  I haven’t seen Sharon for years.  The boys just wanted to get home and didn’t want to make that stop either, but by the time we visited for an hour and  a half, they didn’t want to leave.  Sharon and her parents are wonderful and the boys had so much fun playing croquet and baseball in their backyard.  It was a perfect way to break up the drive.  Okay, I’m done, for now.    

Still to come this week—Taylor had a birthday, FFWD and 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies.  Stay tuned.

Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies—Pfeffernussen Cookies

I’m in Idaho visiting my parents.  So far, after getting here late Wednesday night, I’ve made “my” chocolate chip cookies so my niece, Kayla, could take them to her college classmates and share them. 

The cookies taste pretty good, but aren’t quite my usual favorite as I didn’t have cake and bread flour and just used all purpose instead and only had some store brand semi sweet chocolate chips instead of my favorite Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips.  But they were a big hit because everyone loves a BIG, gooey chocolate chip cookie!

But for this week’s Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies, I was flipping through my mom’s copy of Martha Stewart’s Cookies book looking for something and decided on the Pfeffernussen Cookies, really because it’s just so fun to say and I liked that they were covered in snow, I mean powdered sugar and they had nice spicy flavors.

I thought they were going to be more like shortbread or the Mexican Wedding Cookies, but they are actually kind of soft.  They are good and would definitely be a nice addition to your Christmas cookie trays.  My only small request for them would be to had some ground ginger next time.  They have every other spice in them, black pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves—but no ginger.  I thought there was just a little something missing.  So if I made them again, I’d also add some ginger.  I only snapped a few pictures of them.

The cookies are supposed to be lightly shaken in a bag full of powdered sugar.   I did some dunked in a bowlful of powdered sugar, but kind of liked how they looked when I just sprinkled some sugar on with a powdered sugar shaker, like they got just a little light dusting of snow.

 

I only slightly changed Martha Stewart’s recipe as it didn’t have any salt and called for unsalted butter, so I added a little salt, and should have added some ginger.  Still, these are some good cookies and if you’re wondering, Pfeffer means “pepper” in German and Nuss means “nut”—which refers more to the shape than the taste, since they have no nuts.

Pfeffernussen, adapted from Martha Stewart

• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup unsulfured molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• I think they could use some ginger!

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the confectioners' sugar in a brown paper bag. I just dunked each cookie in a bowl of powdered sugar, some I even just sprinkled with powdered sugar in a fine mesh strainer and liked those best.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Place butter, brown sugar, and molasses in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture; beat until just combined. Pinch off dough in tablespoon amounts; roll into 1 1/4-inch balls. Arrange balls 1 1/2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. (Dough can be frozen at this point, covered tightly with plastic wrap, up to 1 month.)
4. Bake until cookies are golden and firm to the touch with slight cracking, about 15 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer sheets to a wire rack to cool slightly, about 10 minutes. Working in batches, place cookies in paper bag; shake until well coated. Let cool completely on wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

Want more ideas for Christmas cookies—the holiday will be here before we know it!  Check out all the links to the other Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies Bakers/Bloggers below.  Happy Baking! 

**Disclaimer—the cookies are much better in texture and flavor the next day! ;)

How cute is a sleeping baby!  One Wednesday we drove at 3 p.m. for 6 plus hours to Idaho, the last hour was horrible for Sam who kept crying “Wanna get out” and saying his back hurt.  :(  Moments later I looked back at him and he looked so peaceful.  Love this guy!  (Then he woke up about 10 minutes before we arrived at my parents, of course, crying.  We’re happy to be home!

TWD—Fold Over Pear Torte

I find some of the recipes we do in this group that don’t have a picture in the book and no one is too sure what it should look like are often interesting to see that everyone’s look totally different from one another.  So, I had no idea what this was supposed to look like, and after checking out a few blogs that have already posted theirs before I finished my post, I still don’t know just what the correct look is for the torte.  A few I looked at seem like their crust went all across the top.  Not happening here.  Here’s mine.

At one point over the last week, I was going to make half the recipe for this torte because I had half the dough left from making mini tarts for FFWD's mustard tart and because I was just a little skeptical about anyone around here really liking the torte.  Kevin isn’t big on pears.  I’m not big on custard.  But I ended up using that leftover dough for something else.  So I ended up making the full recipe, because sometimes that is just easier than doing math.

I whipped up the crust dough for this on Sunday and it chilled until I finished making the torte on Monday.  When I went to buy pears at the grocery store last week, for some strange reason, the only pears they had at that time were Asian pears.  So I got some of those.  They weren’t ripe at all, so they sat in a paper bag for three days and I was hoping they’d ripen.  I don’t think they were as ripe as they should have been yet.  Because of that, after putting together the chopped fruit and the custard and adding it all to the prepared crust, I baked that thing for probably an hour and a half.  After it had baked for 80 minutes, and the crust still wasn’t too dark at all, I left it in the oven, took a phone call and forgot to reset the timer.  So I lost track of how long it baked.  But I think it was somewhere around 90 minutes.  (The recipes suggests 60-70 minutes.)  Now you’d think that would be enough time, but the pears aren’t as soft as I would have liked.

That and when I first looked at the finished torte, I thought it looked kind of unappealing.  And I even thought to myself that the pears kind of look like chicken.  Is it a pot pie?  I didn’t say anything to anyone, and when Scott came in the kitchen and saw it, he pointed to it and said, “What is that, chicken?”  So while I think the crust looks good (and tastes good), I wasn’t thrilled with the whole torte.

 

I knew I should have just sliced the pears like you would for apple pie and I knew for my sake I should have just left out the custard.  I think this would be really good more like an apple pie, sliced Bartlett pears piled high and then maybe a crumbly topping added.  Sometimes, I really feel like making the recipes exactly as written, but know in my gut that I’m better off changing things a bit.  I followed along this time.  I tasted the photographed slice of torte, the custard is just too much of an eggy taste for me.  Scott ate the rest of the piece.  We now still have the rest of the torte that I’m not sure will get eaten.  Live and learn and I’m always glad when I participate in this group week to week and learn new things.  So don’t feel bad for me that I didn’t care for this.  I usually really like the added flavor of almond extract, but also thought it didn’t really go well with this and as usual, I left out the rum.

You can check out the other tortes this week on the TWD website and get the recipe from Cakelaw.  Her torte looks really good.  Maybe mine had too many pears.  I used three, but those three Asian pears were huge.

I used all the pears, apricots and walnuts as well as all of the custard filling and this is what it ended up looking like as it was about to go in the oven. 

And now I must tell you that as much as I REALLY want to get around to all the other TWD blogs and am already behind, I’m taking Parker, Taylor and Sam and we’re going to Idaho on Wednesday to see my parents.  They don’t have school for fall break on Thursday and Friday, so I thought we’d take the extra long weekend and make a trip home.  (Scott is staying home to go on a scout campout and Kevin will stay with him.)  So I apologize right now if I don’t make it around this week.  I’ll be back (and yes, you can say that just like The Terminator.) ;)  Catch ya’ll later.

Hunky Chocolate Chip Cookies and All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie

A week or so ago after the chefs on Top Chef Just Desserts had a challenge to make bake sale treats, and one of the chefs made a CHUNKY Chocolate Cookie that the judges loved, I was talking with my friend, Anna, at Cookie Madness about the “chunky” cookies and I could have sworn that on Bravo's website where you can print the recipe that it had a typo and called the cookies “hunky” instead of chunky.  After I mentioned that to Anna, she tried to find what I was talking about on the website and couldn’t find anything that said “hunky”.   I was pretty adamant about seeing the typo and went to the website again to prove to myself that it indeed said hunky.  But I was surprised to find that it said chunky and I was just a little crazy in the head.   I thought a HUNKY cookie would be kinda fun.  Anna jokingly dared me to come up with such a cookie. 

I don’t take most dares too lightly, especially when they involve baking!

I thought about it and kept thinking I just need to make a really chunky chocolate chip cookie, full of things that would make it really chunky or hunky, but chunky doesn’t really mean the same as hunky.  When I think of hunky, I think of something that is good-looking.  Well good-looking is all in the eye of the beholder, so there’s really no telling what would make a cookie hunky to everyone. 

Then it popped into my head to literally make big, hunky cookies by using Big Hunks in the cookies.  Remember those candy bars?  They are a white, chewy nougat with peanuts in them.  I have always liked them, but haven’t even thought about them or eaten one for years.  I actually had to look at a number of stores just to find them and finally found them at the gas station/convenience store nearest to our house!

 

I have to say, these cookies turned out really well.  I tried chunks of the Big Hunk in lots of different ways in these cookies and actually liked them in all the ways I tried them, but think they looked the best with just a nice chunk of “hunk” on the top of them that I placed on the cookie as soon as it came out of the oven.  The cookies I baked WITH Big Hunk in it, oozed and spread out more, so they weren’t as pretty.  But I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t harden up into rocks in the cookies.  The Big Hunk always stayed with its same texture no matter how I baked it.  I even did a few big cookies in a 4 inch cake pan with a big hunk of Big Hunk in the middle.  Those were great.  The cookie I came up with was full of chunky chocolate and peanuts as well.  Here’s the recipe I came up with.

Hunky Chocolate Chip Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup (64 grams) peanut butter (I used chunky!)

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar (5 ounces or 142 grams)

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (4 ounces or 113 grams)

1 large egg

2 tablespoons cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour, scooped and leveled (8 1/2 ounces)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 cup roasted and salted peanuts

1 cup chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips)

2 ounce Big Hunk Candy Bar, chopped into chunks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Cream together the butter and peanut butter in the bowl of an electric mixer.  Add the sugar and brown sugar and beat for 2 minutes.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Add the egg, vanilla and cream and beat until well combined.  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Whisk to sift.  Incorporated the dry ingredients with the wet, but only beat until just combined.  The dough will seem a little stiff, but it will scoop just fine.  Stir in the peanuts and chocolate with a wooden spoon.  You can stir in pieces of the candy or save it to add to the hot baked cookies.

Scoop the cookie dough on to baking sheets.  Bake for 10 minutes.  (The ones in 4 inch pans took 16 minutes.)  Cut and/or break pieces of the Big Hunk and put them on the baked cookies.  Let them sit on the baking sheets for a few minutes.  Remove to wire racks to cool. 

   

The big one with the candy hiding inside.

  

This one is from a different cookie I tried first, but they just weren’t hunky enough to me until I used some peanut butter and peanuts in the cookie dough. ;)  But you can see how the pieces of candy melted all over the cookie.  They still tasted great and the candy bar stayed its same chewy consistency.  If you really don’t like Big Hunk candy bars, as I know some really don’t, these are still great cookies without it.  But then they are just more chunky than hunky.

And that is how my idea of Hunky Chocolate Chip Cookies came to be.  Speaking of hunks—here’s mine.

He had a birthday last week.  I made him an All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie from Hershey’s website.  I followed the recipe for the cake and the filling, but decided on a dark chocolate ganache for the frosting.  This was pretty good cake.  The filling wasn’t the greatest and I’d fill it with something different next time, but the cake was nice and moist and of course, the ganache was great.

 

I sent Kevin on a silly little hunt around the house to find his few gifts.  The boys always get such a kick out of doing this. 

We love you, Daddy!  Thanks for all you do for our family!

I helped Taylor with a little school assignment last week to make a costume for a little paper cutout.  Taylor love frogs, so we came up with Super Froggy.

While we were working on that, Sam was sitting at the table very intently cutting paper, and cutting and cutting, lots of little pieces of paper. 

I asked him what he was doing and he said, in a tone that was like, “duh, Mom”, “Making a paper salad.”  Okay.  When he finished cutting, he asked for a lid to the container and put the bowl in the fridge.  Cute!

FFWD—Gerard’s Mustard Tart (And CSN Stores Giveaway Winner!)

Double posting again—be sure to check out the yummy Apple Betty Bars below that I posted for Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies.

French Fridays With Dorie is here again.  We are in to the second week of cooking and baking along to Around My French Table.  The recipe Dorie chose for this week looks great in the book.  I was excited to give it a try.  I don’t LOVE mustard.  I would never purposely put it on a sandwich.  But I have been liking it okay when it’s in dressings or certain recipes where it isn’t the key flavor.  Looking through the ingredients in the recipe for this mustard tart, I was a little skeptical that I wouldn’t  like it with as much mustard that is in it.  Besides that being an issues, I just knew that the whole tart wouldn’t get eaten here.  I LOVE crust, but have noticed that Kevin often leaves a lot of the crust uneaten, even with the most delicious of pies.  Scott does the same thing.

So, I decided to halve the recipe, but when making the tart dough, went ahead and made the full recipe.  I plan to use the other half of the tart dough for something else (next week’s TWD recipe!).  I ended up making two 4 inch tarts and having enough filling left over that I made a crustless one in a four inch cake pan.  The egg-y, frittata like tart full of veggies was pretty good.  I could definitely taste the mustard (I used all Dijon, didn’t have grainy mustard).  I would eat a slice of this tart if I was served it somewhere, but not sure I’d make it again.  OR, I’d make it again and cut way back on the mustard, I do like having a little bit of that taste there, but maybe not quite that much. 

Oh, and it’s no surprise that I don’t really like leeks, since they are in the onion family.  So I skipped the leeks and cut up some carrot, red and green peppers and some cremini mushrooms and I browned them up in a skillet with a clove of garlic and some olive oil first.  I used some dried thyme for the herb as I didn’t have any fresh and I don’t care for rosemary.  The tart really did taste good.  I love the idea of putting lots of veggies in and making such a simple lunch with the mini tarts.

 

This is so fun to be cooking some new things here.  Steppin’ out of the comfort zone.  Next week—some Spicy Vietnamese chicken noodle soup!

 

And now for the announcement of the CSN Stores $75 giveaway winner—I chose a winner randomly from the entries received and the winner is---Sarahe!

sarahe said...

looks wonderful!
If i won I would get some new baking pans...mine are kinda sad :(

October 06, 2010 7:17 PM

Congratulations, Sarah, I will be contacting you for the correct information to get the $75 promo code from CSN Stores to you!  Yay!  (Thank you, CSN Stores for allowing me to have this giveaway!)

Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies—Apple Betty Bars

Can I just say—whoa, the weeks just fly by being involved with TWD, FFWD and TWCC!  Having fun though and that’s what matters, right?

When I thought about what cookie I wanted to share next, I also kept thinking about the Sugar Free Spiced Apple/Pear Butter I’d made recently and that made me think about some really good crumb bars I’d had back in Kansas at another one of the classes I’d taken from Chef Paige.  The bars Paige made for the class were blueberry, but she mentioned that you can really use any jam or fruit you’d like in the bars, so I decided to go with the seasonally perfect apples.  I made these bars once back in May and used apricot preserves on half and some store bought apple butter on the other half.  I was using up things we had in the fridge to get ready for our move to Utah.  Both bars were good then.  Paige’s blueberry bars were delicious.  I almost made the blueberry ones, but ultimately decided on apple.  I have a freezer full of blueberries I froze this summer, so I’ll make those next.

What I really love about these bars is how sturdy they are.  You turn the bars out of the pan and they come out perfectly every time.  (Butter will do that for a cookie! ;)  I didn’t even chill the bars, just cooled at room temperature for a couple hours.  They slice perfectly and you can decide what size you want the bars.  The recipe suggests using quick oats, but I was out and used old-fashioned oats with great success.

Stack up the bars.  No problem there.

These taste great as they have the spiced apple butter as well as some chunks of apple.  Any fruit/jam/filling you use and these cookies are great for Christmas trays, exchanges, or any entertaining.  You could also add walnuts or pecans to the cookie base/topping if you’d like.  Thanks for the great recipe, Paige!  If you want true cooking expertise along with great recipes shared by a real genuine person, check out Paige’s blog, A Cooking Life.

Apple Betty Bars, adapted by Katrina, Baking and Boys! from Chef Paige Vandegrift’s Blueberry Betty Bars

Cookie Base and Crumble Topping:

2 cups all purpose flour (8 ounces)

1 ½ cups quick oats (4.5 ounces)

½ cup granulated sugar (3.5 ounces)

½ cup light brown sugar (3.5 ounces)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup melted butter (1/2 lb.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Add the melted butter and stir until well combined and crumbly. Set half of the crumb mixture (about 14 ounces each) aside and press the other half into the bottom of a quarter sheet pan or a 13x9 inch baking pan. Bake until puffed and golden—10 to 15 minutes. Set aside.

Apple Filling:

3 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and chopped to ½ inch dice

1 cup spiced apple butter (I used homemade) (9 ½ ounces)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine the apples and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add the apple butter and stir together.  Cook in a saucepan over medium heat until apples are tender, 10-15 minutes.  (I used a glass bowl in the microwave cooking in 2 minute intervals and stirring until the apples were tender.)

Spread the apple filling over the baked crust. Scatter the remaining crumble over all. Bake until golden brown—25 to 35 minutes. Let the bars cool. Turn them out of the pan and then back onto a cutting board. Cut into bars. Place the bars on a double thickness of paper towels for a few minutes to absorb excess butter. To serve, sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired.

***If you’d like to make the bars with the blueberry filling, here’s Paige’s recipe for the filling:

6 ounces mixed berries, fresh or frozen

6 ounces blueberries, fresh or frozen

4 ounces sugar

juice of half a lemon

Place berries in a medium saucepan along with the sugar and lemon juice.  Bring to a simmer.  Cook until thickened—you will have 1  1/4 cups of thick berry sauce. 

Want more cookies?  Check out the links to all the other Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies bakers below.

Cream Puffs

After last week’s somewhat-of-a-failure with the first recipe from Dorie’s new Around My French Table cookbook for French Fridays With Dorie for gougeres (cheesy cream puffs), I wasn’t about to let the fact that my gougeres puffed up in the oven (twice) and then deflated when I took them out rule me defeated in pate a choux or cream puffs.  So on Sunday, I found a recipe for sweet Cream Puffs on the Joy of Baking website and decided to make dessert instead of using more expensive cheese for the gougeres.  Same concept, but I was able to fill them with two different kinds of sweet cream—French vanilla and chocolate.   Kevin loves cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles and the like.  (They are not my favorite thing, in fact, I didn’t even taste the ones I made on Sunday.)

But get a look at this---

That’s right, uh huh, my cream puffs puffed!  (Doing the happy rap dance.)  The choux pastry recipe from Joy of Baking is different from the gougeres.  But only slightly.  There is no milk and there is a tiny bit of added sugar.  I love that these were brushed with a little egg wash that made them shine.

I made the yummy “cheater” filling for half of these with the recipe for the Boston Cream Whoopie Pies filling, which uses French vanilla pudding mix, milk and heavy cream and whips into a perfect creamy filling for the whoopie pies AND these cream puffs.  This recipe for cream puffs only makes 12, so I filled six of them with the French vanilla cream and after making some ganache for the tops of them (4 ounces 60% chocolate chips and 1/2 cup cream), I had a bunch of the ganache left over after dipping some of the tops of the puffs in it, so I spooned up a good 1/3-1/2 cup of the ganache and added it to the rest of the vanilla pudding cream and folded it together to get a really good whipped chocolate cream.  Kevin and the boys had a hard time deciding which they liked best.  While I didn’t taste an actual cream puff all made up, I’d have to vote for the chocolate cream filling as the best.  (Surprise!) ;)

 

Which one would you go for?

One of each, please.  You got it.

I would make these again in a heartbeat for a shower or party or just because Kevin and the boys really liked them.  And I’m happy to have perfected pate a choux/cream puffs!  I might even try those gougeres again sometime, I really think they just weren’t baked long enough to keep that crispy exterior from protecting the inside (even though I baked them for the recommended time, I’d bake them longer next time.)

Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget if you haven’t already to enter the giveaway from CSN Stores going on right now, until Friday, October 8 at noon, MST.  (US and Canada residents only please.)

The awesome folks at CSN Stores have given me the opportunity to offer one of my readers $75 to use in any of their over 200 online stores. What do you think about that? As much as I dream of having a fabulous new table with upholstered dining chairs, that just isn’t something I want to spend money on only to have them ruined by four rambunctious boys. Know what I mean? Our kitchen has about a ten foot island in the middle with attached swiveling bar stool chairs all across it. They are ten years old and before we bought this house were not treated very nicely. (The family in the house before us had four teenage boys and a little girl!) They need replaced and are high on our list of things we want to get for our house. What would you pick if you had $75 to spend at Cookware.com. While we’ll hopefully be able to get the new chairs for the kitchen island soon, hands down my favorite place to spend too much time browsing and too much money is at CSN Stores’ Oh the kitchen appliances, tools, dishes, bakeware and on and on it would be so fun to have.

Want to have a chance to win the $75? Leave me a comment on this post telling me what you would buy if you were the randomly chosen winner. Check out CSN Stores and the millions of products they have to offer. You can enter until Friday, October 8 at 12:00 p.m. MST. Contest open to US and Canadian residents only. Make sure you leave a way to be contacted if you’re the winner. (Thanks, CSN Stores!)

And now—Tuesdays With Dorie for this week. Lynne from Honey Muffin chose Double Apple Bundt Cake (pages 184-185) and you can get this great recipe on her blog. The cake has apple butter in it as well as some grated apples.

I made homemade spiced apple/pear butter! Oh my gosh, it’s so good. A few weeks ago, I made some peach butter and thought that was really good, but in a taste test, I like the apple butter even more. I never realized how easy it is to make! When I decided on Saturday to make the cake and realized I didn’t have any apple butter, I decided to just make some, even though the only apples we had at the time were a few Red Delicious and a couple past-their-prime little Gala apples. I found this super easy recipe on Squidoo.com. I only made half the recipe, which meant I needed 2 1/2 pounds of apples.

I chopped and measured as I went and after cutting up the four sad, little Galas and three Red Delicous apples, I was still short a little, so I cut up two Asian pears I had and threw them in with the apples. This could not have been more simple. Into the crockpot the diced apples and pears went along with some cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg. A little apple juice went in as well and the crockpot was set on low. I went to bed and the apples stewed all night. The recipe suggests not adding sugar until the apple butter is finished (or close to it) so you can test it’s sweetness. Well, after blending the apples in a blender and tasting it, I thought it was sweet enough and didn’t add any sugar. So this is also sugar free apple butter.

Easy, Sugar Free Spiced Apple Pear Butter, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Squidoo.com

3 red delicious apples, peeled, cored and chopped

4 small Gala apples, peeled, cored and chopped

2 Asian pears, peeled, cored and chopped

(2 1/2 pounds of any apples/pears you’d like)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 cup apple juice

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low for 10-12 hours with the lid vented slightly. Blend until smooth. Taste and add sugar, agave, or sweetener of your choice if desired. Mine didn’t need anything. If you use Granny Smith apples or another more tart apple, you will probably need some sugar.

You can also cook the smooth apple butter to the consistency/thickness you desire by leaving it in the crockpot a few more hours after it’s blended without the lid on, which helps remove more of the moisture.

I made the bundt cake and followed the directions exactly. I love when a bundt cake comes right out of the pan! I omitted the raisins and used walnuts. Interesting fact—kitchen scales are better for measuring ingredients. Example—one cup of walnuts. I normally just put them in a measuring cup to the top of the cup. This time I threw the cup on the scale just for fun and looked on the bag of walnuts to see that 120 grams equals one cup.

The cup was overflowing with nuts before it reached 120 grams. I went with the scale measurement. I prefer weighing ingredients in recipes. Just sayin’.

I called the cake done at 46 minutes. I gave it a light glaze made with about 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar and 3 good tablespoons of apple butter whisked together until smooth.

I served it with a little of the apple butter on the side (Dorie said. ;) and some chopped walnuts and homemade Concord raisins. (I left the raisins out of the cake because I knew the boys wouldn’t like them, but I would have liked them.)

The boys each ate a piece. We called Cindy and asked if she wanted some cake. She came over at 9:30 Sunday night after she got off work and took home half the cake. Yay for sharing! She also got to take home six cream puffs that I made.

Come back for the post to see if the cream puffs worked out better for me than the first week of French Fridays With Dorie last week when we made gougeres (cheese puffs) and mine had a few issues. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to tell me what you’d want to spend $75 on at CSN Stores if you want to be entered to win!

Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip Streusel Muffins

I said what I meant and I meant what I said—I was going to play around with the recipe for the Caramel-Banana Muffins and this morning I did just that.  The batter for these muffins has not only butter, but some cream cheese as well and I really liked what it did for the banana muffins.  I knew it would be a great batter for other flavors as well—so today I made pumpkin muffins and they are really good.  Great if I must say so myself. ;)

I love a streusel topping on just about anything (okay, maybe not a baked potato or meatloaf, but you know what I mean.)  I made a lot of topping because I really wanted to be able to pile it on each muffin. 

The muffin itself is perfectly moist and not too spicy.  I wanted the pumpkin flavor to shine through more than the spices and I think they have a great balance.

Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip Streusel Muffins, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

Streusel Topping:

½ cup pecans, toasted and chopped

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons oats (roughly)

2 tablespoons all purpose flour (15 grams)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons mini chocolate chips (40 grams)

Muffin Batter:

3 ounces cream cheese, softened (I use 1/3 less fat)

2 ounces unsalted butter, softened (4 tablespoons)

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup pumpkin puree

1 ¼ cups all purpose flour (150 grams)

¾ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners. Set aside. In a medium sized bowl, combine the streusel topping ingredients, except the chocolate chips. With your fingers, rub the ingredients together until butter is well combined with the rest. Add the chocolate chips and stir together. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the cream cheese, butter and sugar. Beat until well combined, 2-3 minutes. Scrape sides of bowl. Add the egg and beat well. Beat in the pumpkin and vanilla until well combined. It will look a little curdled. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and sift together with a wire whisk. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and stir together just until combined with a spatula. Do not overmix. Fill each muffin cup about 2/3 full. Pile the streusel topping onto each one. Press it down slightly. Bake the muffins for 16-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let muffins sit in tin on wire rack for 5 minutes, then carefully remove each one to cool completely on rack.

If you want to go more simple without all the topping, these would still make a great muffin with just some pecans or chocolate chips mixed in with the batter.  Oh the possibilities!

FFWD—Gougeres

Here we go!  A large group of us have begun cooking and baking through Dorie Greenspan’s new book, Around My French Table.  I know, I’m a little crazy right now as I also just started with the 12 Week’s of Christmas Cookies group, which are also posting on Friday.  So be sure to check out that post, too, for some great Christmas cookie ideas and links to even more from the rest of the group.

Our first recipes for the month of October for French Fridays With Dorie were chosen by Dorie herself.  She has put together a fun menu this month.  Today we start with gougeres, I don’t even know how to pronounce it.  There is an accent over the first e.  BUT, essentially, these are cheese puffs—and I’m not talking about the ones from Frito-Lay. ;)

I have made them twice (half a recipe each time).  The first time I made them, I don’t think they came out very well.  These were sort of flat—not puffed up and they were concave on the bottom.  I’d say I don’t know what I did wrong, but while I was making them the first time, the appliance repair guy showed up to fix our gas problem with our new cooktop.  I’m excited that we got a new cooktop, but right now, it’s been about a week since I’ve had a working one.  We waited for him to order a new regulator for the cooktop and the moment I started making the gougeres downstairs on our “spare” stove a couple days ago, he showed up.  Yes, I’m having fun running from the downstairs stove, cooking things, then carrying everything back upstairs (it’s more of a trip that you’d think with the distance and all the heavy pots and pans I’ve been carrying).  BUT, I’m not complaining because not many people have two stoves and the ability to adapt when necessary.  MUCH worse things have happened and I’m not going to complain.  BUT, when he showed up with the new part, I had just finished the first step in making gougeres by boiling the milk, water, butter and salt and added the flour and stirring vigorously.  Though when the doorbell rang, I wasn’t sure I’d stirred vigorously enough.

I ran upstairs with the pot in hand and answered the door.  Happy to see the repair guy with the part we needed, I set the pot down to talk to him a minute.  I figured it was okay because that it right where the recipe says to put the dough in an electric mixer and let it sit a minute before beating in the eggs.  But that minute might have really been 5-10 minutes.  Then while I was standing in the kitchen and the guy was taking the cooktop apart, I talked with him and one by one began adding the eggs and let them beat.  Also at the same time, I was listening to a kid or two yell at me about something or other and calling Kevin so he could conference call with the repair guy about the cooktop. 

I plopped the tablespoonfuls of cheese puff dough (having used gruyere cheese) on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven.  I timed the puffs just as the recipe said and even remembered to turn the oven down.  This is also when the guy realized the company he ordered the regulator from sent him the wrong one.  It didn’t fit.  This was on Wednesday.  The repair guy wasn’t happy and had told me about his day of things going wrong.  He didn’t come until 6 p.m. or so, and was really hoping installing this regulator and having everything work well was his changing point for the day. :(  Nope.  To top that off for us, he was heading out of town Thursday afternoon, so even though he reordered our part next day, he wouldn’t be around to install it until this coming Monday.  AND we don’t even know if this will for sure solve the problem with the cooktop.  It’s not regulating the amount of gas to each burner correctly and when you turn the first one on, it sound like a blow torch, a big one, ready to scorch anything and everything around.  Then when you turn on subsequent burners, with each one, the flame almost dies completely.  Anyway, where am I going with this?

I blame the gougeres not turning out perfect on the repair guy. ;)  I baked them the exact time the recipe suggested.  We’re going on over a week with no upstairs stove and although quite annoyed by it, we do feel super lucky and blessed to have the one downstairs.  That’d be a lot of eating out if we didn’t have that. ;)

So here’s my flat concave cheese puffs.

I’m embarrassed to show this when I’ve already looked at a few who have posted for FFWD and theirs look great, just like the photo on Dorie’s book.  I have done exactly as the recipe says besides the extra few minutes of the batter sitting before adding the eggs. 

So today I decided to buck up and try them again.  I used fontina cheese this time.  Again, followed the recipe exactly, and this time where it says to let the dough rest in the mixer for a minute, that is what I did, then added the eggs one at a time and beat, beat, beat.  I was excited when I looked at the puffs halfway to switch the baking sheet around and they were more puffed than when I’d made them a few days earlier.  I called them done at 24 minutes.  Here’s the second attempt.

Just slightly puffier.  But as I have been writing this up, they have fallen back down again and are concave underneath.  Sigh.  I have decided that I think they are not baked long enough to maintain that puff by crisping up the outside more.  The other night, despite their not-so-puffiness, the boys ate one or two each with their dinner.  Scott mentioned that they tasted eggy.  I agree.  This second batch isn’t quite so eggy tasting and I like the fontina cheese better.  What goes well with cheese puffs?

I’m looking forward to the mustard tart for next week!

Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies—Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Oatmeal Cookies

I’ve joined another baking group.  It’s only for 12 weeks.  Only.  This will keep me extra busy, but it’s cookies.  I can’t turn down an opportunity to make more cookies!  A group of great bloggers decided to post a new cookie every Friday for twelve weeks leading up to Christmas.  You can never have too many options for those Christmas cookie trays, can you?  Well, we’re here to help.  Check it out here (I’ll leave a link to all the other blogger’s posts for the week as well) every Friday for the next 12 weeks.  I think that’s pretty cool and am excited to see everyone else’s posts!  These next 12 weeks will coincide with the new French Friday's With Dorie group as hundreds of us begin cooking and baking our way through Dorie Greenspan’s new book, Around My French Table.  So be sure to check out both posts each week!

For my first cookie, I decided to make one of my favorite cookies--Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Oatmeal Cookies.  I’ve made these cookies many times.  Check the link back to the origin of these cookies that Anna at Cookie Madness, Rita at Clumbsy Cookie and I collaborated on a couple years ago.

 

Besides being different because the egg in these cookies is hard boiled, the cookie dough for these is also made in the food processor.  Cold pieces of butter are added to the flour and pulsed until mealy.  Then you pulse in the sugars, oats and other ingredients.  The egg is added last and binds the dough together.  I have found this makes, well, amazing cookies, hence the name. ;)

Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Oatmeal Cookies, by Katrina (Baking and Boys!), Anna (Cookie Madness) and Rita (Clumbsy Cookie)

4 oz. cold unsalted butter (1 stick)

4 1/2 oz. all purpose flour (1 cup)

1/2 cup quick oats, or if using old-fashioned oats, grind down in the food processor a little

4 tablespoon granulated sugar

3 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon honey

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 hard boiled egg. chopped (either hard boiled or a lightly beaten egg cooked in microwave in 10 second intervals)

1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In bowl of food processor, pulse flour and butter until mealy.  Add sugars, honey, salt, soda, cinnamon and vanilla.  Pulse again until mealy.  Add oats.  Pulse. Add the egg and pulse until combined. Remove to a medium size bowl and work in the walnuts and raisins with your hands.  Dough will be a bit crumbly, but will come together as you form it into a ball. Form the dough in to 2 ounce balls.  Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake about 15 minutes.   Do not overbake, I only baked mine 13:30 minutes.  Let cool on baking sheet five minutes, then remove cookies to cooling rack.  (I thought these were good just slightly warm, but are great completely cooled, too!)  Makes 9 cookies about 2 ounces each.

One of the reasons I really like these cookies, besides the great taste, is that I think they stack up nicely and are great for wrapping up 4-5-6 of them in cellophane with a pretty bow and giving away.  There are also so many different things you could add to these cookies—any nuts you’d like, any dried fruit, chocolate chips, white chocolate, toffee bits, the list is endless and they all work great—I’ve tried many things.

There is also a recipe for Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies and some with added toffee bits and pecans that were just heavenly.  And another we did a couple years ago that I need to remake again is also the Amazing Hard Boiled Egg Double Chocolate Cookies.  These cookies are really great. 

I had the pleasure of going to lunch and meeting a fellow blogger that I hadn’t met yet.  Suzanne from Thru The Bugs On My Windshield was in town from her home state of Texas and we decided to meet and have lunch.  She had already been to The Red Iguana and was raving about it on her blog just a few days before we were deciding where to meet up for lunch.  I didn’t have to twist her arm much and get her to agree to go there again so I could try it out.  The Red Iguana has received much acclaim as Salt Lake City’s best Mexican food for many years.  They have seven different mole sauces on their menu, some great salsas and chile sauce and a killer menu of Mexican food.  I had the tuna fish tacos and they were great.

The food was great, but it was even more fun to meet Suzanne.  Thanks, Suzanne!  Check out her blog and what amazing pictures she takes as well as the yummy recipes she shares.    Since I’d made some of the oatmeal cookies I’m sharing here today for the first week of our 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies, I wanted to share some with Suzanne.  So I wrapped up a nice stack of them for her (and forgot to photograph it for your viewing pleasure).  Perfect edible gift giving if you ask me.