Pecan Pie (sans corn syrup)

Thank you again, Mrs. L for finding me a Pecan Pie recipe that was exactly what I was looking for (natural ingredients. no corn syrup. no crisco)! I'm so appreciative of my baking helpers. It makes it really fun! If you would like the original recipe, it can be found here at All Recipes.

Ingredients:

1 9" pie crust

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 c melted butter

2 eggs

1 TBS flour

1 TBS milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400%

Make pie crust.

In bowl, beat eggs until foamy. Add butter. Stir in brown sugar, white sugar and flour and mix together well. Add milk, vanilla and nuts.

Pour into unbaked 9" pie shell.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes then turn the heat down to 350 degrees and bake for another 30-40 minutes. Mine was done at 35 minutes.

It came out spectacularly!

Pie Crust (Rolled)

I'll start by saying that I'm not crazy about making rolled pie crust. It's not that it's any more work than anything else. There's just something about it that makes me have a tiny bit of "ugh, I have to make a real crust for this." Maybe, it's because it's a bit messy. I'm not really sure. But I finally worked it out so my crust comes out decently now. I used to overmix the dough terribly and now that I've been a little more patient, I seem to do o.k.

I start by weighing the butter. A one crust pie calls for 1/3cup plus 1 tablespoon of butter. More easily is to weigh out 3.2 ounces. Here is what 3.2 ounces of butter looks like (above).


In a bowl, mix 1 cup of flour with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cut up your butter into chunks and sprinkle into the flour/salt mix tossing the pieces as you go.

Using a pastry blender (or two knives criss-crossed), cut the butter into the flour.

Most recipe books will tell you to cut the butter in until the pieces are the size of peas. I don't know about the rest of you but I've never ended up with nice neat "pea sized" bits of flour coated butter in my dough. I usually get uneven, variously sized bits. And that's been o.k. This is just about what it looks like when I get to the "I'm done cutting in the butter" stage. (above)

Most recipe books also tell you to sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of cold water onto the mix one tablespoon at a time. Fluff with a fork until the dough "just" starts to leave the side of the pan. I've never gotten by with only 3 tablespoons. If I don't add at least 4 tablespoons, my dough doesn't gather. This isn't a good picture, but what I do is after the 3-4 tablespoons I try to see if I can press the dough into a ball with my hand and move it as one lump. This is what I consider done.

I get the best results when I stick the bowl and dough in the fridge for 30 minutes. It makes it easier to roll out. It's not a requirement but it really does help.

My dining room table is one slap of wood and it makes the surface nice and large to roll out a crust. I liberally flour the table and the dough and start working on it with the rolling pin. If it starts to break along the edges, you can patch it with end pieces as they stick out. It takes quite a bit of flour and a couple of flips for me to keep it from sticking to the pin and the table. If you don't flour enough, you might find that big hunks of butter pull out of the dough, and that's a pain to work back in (you usually can't)

My fully rolled crust, ready for putting into a 9" pan, with some extra bits to make some little treats with.

For a two crust pie, double the recipe and split the dough into two batches before chilling.

Kids in the Kitchen

With few exceptions, children love to cook. I don't mean giving your 4 year old a frying pan and bacon and saying "go to it!" But handing them a pan to grease or a bowl to mix or a butter knife with some peanut butter and some bread and they're ready to jump in. In the process of learning how to cook they sniff, taste, and handle all sorts of varieties of foods which also has the added benefit of increasing the types of food they are willing to eat. Guaranteed that a child who cut the veggies, sprinkled the cheese, and flipped the omelette proudly onto a plate will be much more likely to eat said omelette.

Also it's fun. They are generally supervised and it keeps them from making messes in other parts of your house while you cook.

My oldest child is 5 1/2. And now he's at the point where he could make an edible simple sandwich if asked. If I am in vision range, he can make toast. He (most of the time) even remembers to put the butter away and get napkins out for each kid.

If you've never thought to give your two year old a mixing bowl and spoon, try it! What's the worst that could happen? A bit of flour (or a bowl) on your floor? Small price for an experience that you just might find the both of you grow to love.

Night Muffins: Chocolate Cranberry

The kids need breakfast. Correction: The kids need breakfast they can help themselves to if I'm a bit groggy and lazy and don't want to march back and forth to the kitchen twelve times at 6AM.

Chocolate Cranberry Muffins (makes 24 mini plus two regular sized)

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 TBS good baking cocoa
1 egg
3 TBS melted butter
1/2 cup almond milk (just because I wanted something different, you can use regular milk)
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste or 1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup dried cranberries

Bake at 350 degrees. Start checking after 12 minutes.

My Dad's Spaghetti Soup (hopefully)

I haven't had my dad's spaghetti soup in years and over Christmas we were discussing it when he mentioned what he planned on making once he had his kitchen back (it's being remodeled). He instructed me on how to make it verbally and I figured I could probably work it out so that it was hopefully at least 75% as good as how my father makes it.

His instructions (as best as I remembered them, I'm sure they're not exact):

Cook onions and a little olive oil in a large pot as if you were going to start a spaghetti sauce (I also added a clove of garlic minced). Add ground beef and brown. I seasoned the beef with pepper, salt, oregano, basil, and one bay leaf. I'm not sure of when he said to add the sauce spices but this worked for me. Add two cans of Pastene Kitchen Ready (these are the only canned tomatoes I use. The flavor is out of this world and it's not concentrated. I also read that they don't line their cans with the plastic bpa coating which is an added bonus for me.) Add four cans of water and cook for a while. Adjust seasoning to taste. You can tell when it gets that "sauce" flavor and the kind of tart flavor smoothes out. Add 1/2 box thin spaghetti (he said thin spaghetti or angel hair but I prefer thin spaghetti) breaking it up into lengths of about 2-3 inches. Simmer until spaghetti is cooked through. I turned the heat off and let it sit for about 15 minutes before having a bowl. The spaghetti was just perfect at that point. Top with shredded parmesan (or whatever you have).

Dye Free Sugar

Making non-artificially dyed sprinkle sugar is really easy. The range of colors you can get with natural dyes is a tiny bit smaller and admittedly not quite as glowing as with artificial dyes but you can get a nice range. If your children are a bit sensitive to certain chemical dyes (my kids have been known to enter "wild-demon-child" phases a few hours after consuming some of them) then you can appreciate having options when your kids beg for sprinkles.

Vegetable based food dyes are nice and are fairly bright but they are also hugely expensive. A three pack at Whole Foods runs at about 18-20 dollars. The last set I had was about ten dollars from the Vitamin Shoppe with a free shipping deal when I purchased Fenugreek but I haven't seen anything like that in a long time.

Dying sugar brings me back to my days as a summer camp counselor when we would use things like coffee, spinach, and beets to do natural cloth tye dyes. This batch was done with beet juice quickly so I did not boil and concentrate which is why it's more of a light magenta color than the burgundy red I would have gotten otherwise.

To make a batch like this stir in about 1/2 to 1 tsp of the juice (beet juice, cherry juice, blueberry juice, spinach juice...etc) in a half cup of sugar. Mix it well and let it sit out for about four hours stirring about once every half hour. If the sugar isn't completely dry and crumbly then you'll need to have it sit out longer. Once it's fully dry and no longer "sticks" when you mix it you can store it in a glass or plastic container.

You will get darker colors if you boil off some of the water in the juice first. At camp we would boil down beet juice on low heat until it was practically black. It would give the cloth (sugar) a deep burgundy color.

This is a really fun project to experiment with!

Toffee Chocolate Pretzels

Why yes, that is a whole stick of butter. Got a problem with that? :)

I'd been planning for a while to see how rusty my toffee recipe was and had been a bit slacky on purchasing pretzel rods but as luck has it our friend Joan provided us with a bag of mini pretzel rods last night which seemed perfect for working it out.

Toffee is a bit tricky to make in a stainless pan, which is what I use for nearly everything else. I use a coated le creuset pan that's probably older than I am that is the absolute perfect color for making candies of any kind. A cherished hand-me-down from my parent's kitchen. I rarely even have to do the "hard crack" test when I use the right pan. Unless, of course, one's spouse calls at the moment between "done" and "burnt" like what happened to me today. Luckily, I caught it in time. The line comes and goes quickly.

To make the toffee I mix 3/4 cup sugar and a stick of butter (the real stuff...no skimping). Some people use brown sugar but this is one of the things I prefer taboo white sugar for. It's so much easier to judge color. I put it on medium high heat stirring constantly and the whole process probably takes 10-12 minutes. The candy is ready when it is just about to turn that deep golden caramel color. It cooks a bit more in the pan even after you turn it off. A tablespoon of water stirred in near the end of the process and cooked off deepens the color if you feel that you are just stirring buttery yellow paste for too long without results.

This is a trial and error process. I've had some not so great batches that I've just poured on pam-sprayed foil (really what's the point when you've used a stick of butter?) and cracked up for "eh, it still tastes good" toppings or candy or whatnot. Just try it a couple of times and eventually you'll get it. :)