Autumn Comfort ~ Warm Apple-Buttermilk Custard Pie

Adapted from myrecipes.com

I'm on a roll with two new recipes in two days! Yesterday was one of those first wonderfully cool, rainy early fall days that always makes me want to heat up the oven and crank out baked goods. All I got done yesterday was the Enchilada Soup, so the baking had to wait until today. So far, this is all I have gotten done today, so I really need to kick it into gear because we need to replace our furnace, and if you saw our basement right now you would think I'm a hoarder. I have no aspirations to become a reality TV star, so cleaning the basement is a necessary evil that I must do, and soon. In the meantime, I've got a very interesting looking apple pie in the oven that I can't wait to try.

This recipe originated in Cooking Light magazine in March, 2003. I got it on myrecipes.com but first saw it on Pinterest. Pinterest really has opened up a whole new world of things to try! At first it sounded like apple crisp in a pie crust, but the buttermilk custard totally threw me. For the crust, I made the Pat-A-Pan crust from the Amish Cook's Baking Book that I told you about here: http://notcandlesagain.blogspot.com/2010/11/pumpkin-pie.html It's the one you make right in the pan. You can use the pre-made crust like it says in the recipe, but I personally think those are nasty and prefer to make my own. Your own favorite crust recipe will do just fine.

Instead of Granny Smith apples, which are an excellent baking apple. I chose to use Jonathans because, well, it's fall and Jonathans were in the store, and I love them.

Aren't these pretty?

Here's the recipe from myrecipes.com:

Crust:
1/2 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie crust dough
cooking spray

Streusel:

1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 Tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces

Filling

5 cups peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples (about 2 pounds)
1 cup sugar, divided
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Heat your oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare your crust. For the pre-made crust, spray the pie pan with cooking spray and place dough in pan. Flute the edges and fold under. Keep refrigerated while prepping the rest of the pie.

For the streusel, lightly spoon 1/3 cup flour into dry measuring cup and level with a knife. Okay, isn't this how we always do this? Baking 101... Anyway, combine the flour, brown sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon into a medium bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or fork (The recipe says use 2 knives.. I've got pretty decent knife skills but lets not press our luck!)Work this until it resembles a coarse meal, then put it in the refrigerator until you're ready for it later. I had trouble with the butter sticking to my pastry cutter, but eventually it worked.

Next, peel, core and slice your apples. Heat a large nonstick skillet and melt a chunk of butter - about a tablespoon. Add the sliced apples, 1/4 cup of the sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Let this hang out and cook down for about 10 minutes or until the apples are tender, stirring occasionally.

While the apples are cooking, make the custard. Whisk the eggs, flour, salt and sugar together, then stir in the buttermilk and vanilla. Spoon the cooked apple mixture into the pie crust, then pour the custard mixture over the apples.

I used a deep dish pie pan and measured the 5 cups of apple slices, and I still had quite a bit of the custard left over.

Bake the pie at 300 for 30 minutes, then sprinkle the streusel topping over the top and bake at 325 for 40 minutes more. When you pull the pie out to sprinkle the topping on, just pull the rack out but leave the pie there, don't pull it completely out of the oven. The custard did bake over a bit, so be sure and put your pan on a foil lined baking sheet to catch the drips. It smelled heavenly in the oven until the spilled custard started burning on the bottom of my oven. Yuck.

I forgot to take pictures until I pulled it out of the oven. Looks pretty good! Be sure and refrigerate the leftover pie.

Yep, pretty good! Not overly sweet, using a sweeter apple would help with that, and I think next time I will add more cinnamon. Let me know what you think!

Summer Blueberries & Rhubarb... Bluebarb Slab Pie

Adapted from Becca at Crumbs and Chaos (crumbsandchaos.blogspot.com)

Rhubarb and I have a love/hate relationship. I love it to death but I hate how much sugar it takes so it doesn't pucker my entire face off. The solution is often to mix it with other fruits, like strawberries. The recipe I adapted for this mixed raspberries with the rhubarb - but while I was thinking about how I really didn't want all those seeds, I remembered that I have bags and bags of blueberries in my freezer. Blueberries and rhubarb are super easy to freeze, you don't have to do anything to them except wash and dry them, throw them into freezer bags and you're done. My rhubarb plant is in it's second year of growing, so I'm super excited to finally be able to harvest a little of it.

I was a little bit intimidated when I first looked at this recipe, but then when I really read it I could see that it was actually quite easy. You make the crust - a yummy pie crust, then the fruit filling, and top it off with the brown sugar and butter crumble, then bake the whole thing all at once. Using a food processor to make the crust and crumb topping made the whole thing a lot easier. Just make sure you let the pie cool completely before you make the icing.

Let's get started!

Heat your oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13 inch pan. If you are using a baking spray, open your dishwasher and hold the pan inside while you spray. It contains the mess and will get cleaned up next time you run it.

Crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 stick cold butter, cut into cubes
1 Tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
1 tsp vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp cold water

The butter and water MUST be cold - if I'm channeling the Barefoot Contessa, I will even put my flour and the blade for my food processor in the freezer before I start.

Fruit Filling:

2 cups sugar (I used 1 cup sugar and 1 cup Stevia in the Raw)
1/3 cup corn starch
5 cups fresh or frozen blueberries, thawed and drained
3 cups sliced rhubarb (fresh or frozen)

Crumb Topping

1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick cold butter, cut into cubes

Icing

1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
5 tsp milk

Make the crust first by putting the flour, butter cubes, sugar and salt into your food processor.

Pulse until it looks like coarse crumbs, then add the vinegar and water until it looks doughy. Mine still looked crumbly, but you can see the little clump with my fingerprints on it - it holds together like a crust.

Pat it down evenly in the bottom of your prepared pan.

Set the pan aside mix up the filling. Mix the sugar and cornstarch together and toss it with blueberries and rhubarb in a large bowl. I put my blueberries in still frozen, and it worked fine.

Spread the fruit mixture evenly over the crust.

Now make the crumb topping. Put the flour, brown sugar and cold butter cubes in the food processor.

Don't worry about cleaning the little bits of crust out, it won't matter once it's baked. Pulse a few times until it's nice and crumbly, then sprinkle it evenly over the crust.

Bake until bubbly, 50-60 minutes.

Let it cool completely, then make the icing and drizzle it over the pie. Yum!

Toll House Pie

I'll make this quick because I'm suffering from post-holiday-can't-get-my-butt-in-gear syndrome. If you want an easy, but delicious dessert, this is your baby. I've been hearing my friend MaryBeth talk about this pie for awhile now, and she has graciously shared the recipe. At first I had a hard time imagining a chocolate chip cookie inside of a pie crust, but this works. It really does! I could see topping this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but everyone liked it all by itself.

Toll House Cookie Pie

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup walnuts, chopped

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 9-inch pie shell


Heat your oven to 325 degrees F. In large bowl, beat the eggs at high speed until foamy, about 3 minutes.

This is what mine looked like:



Beat in flour, sugar, and brown sugar until well blended, then beat in the butter.


Since this only has 1/2 cup of flour, the consistency will be light, like chocolate chip cookie dough is before you add all the flour:



Next, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts, and pour (mine was thick so I used a spatula to scoop it) into your prepared pie crust:



Bake 55-60 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Finished pie:




Yum! Thanks again, MaryBeth!

Pumpkin Pie... Round 2 & Pastry Flour

Okay, true confession time. When I was typing the recipe in my last post I realized that I had misread the ingredients for the pie filling. Instead of 3/4 cup brown sugar, I thought it said 1/4 cup. Blame it on the bifocals. Yeah, that works for me. That, along with the fact that I had completely forgotten to try my new pastry flour, is the reason why I decided to make another pie. The one with not enough brown sugar looked pretty, but it did not really taste very good. If I had tasted the filling I would have noticed it wasn't right. I don't know why I didn't, I usually am all over tasting stuff. Needless to say we each tried a piece and the rest ended up in the trash. If I had a nickel for every time I had to throw something in the trash because I screwed it up, well, I would definitely be able to quit my day job. So... here we go again!

Here's the scoop on the pastry flour. Arrowhead Mills Organic Whole Grain Pasty Flour. I found it at Whole Foods. See there in the background how I already have my oven preheated to 450 like a good girl? Yep, I'm doing it right this time.



This is a whole grain flour made from spring wheat, which is softer and has less gluten than the hard winter wheat used to make all-purpose flour. It is supposed to be better for pastries and cakes because of it's lighter texture. I like that it's whole grain. I admit I don't really care about it being organic, but I know that is important to some people so I consider it a plus. My favorite thing is that it's made from wheat grown in Colorado. I love anything to do with Colorado.

I can tell the difference in the color of the dough with this flour.



When I partially baked the crust, I noticed the edges had already started to brown. I usually use one of those pie shields to keep the crust from over-baking, but since this filling recipe fills even a deep dish pie pan almost to the top, a pie shield would leave it's mark in the finished pie. That will never do, because it has to look pretty. The good thing is that the crust didn't puff up during the pre-baking process. I'm much happier when I don't have to do an intervention with my food.



I made the same pumpkin-eggnog filling as before, only this time I made sure I did it right and tasted it. Yum. I also am 2 for 2 on getting it into the oven without spilling. Yay me... yeah right. Guess who forgot to reset the oven timer after she turned the heat down to 300? I guess I really did need to practice before turkey day after all. All is well though, with a little babysitting it all turned out just fine.

This pie is much prettier than the other one.



All dressed up and ready for tasting.



The filling on this one is wonderful, with just the right amount of sweetness and spice. The crust... well, let's just say I am disappointed. It looks good and is flaky enough, but I think the whole grain makes it more coarse rather than that nice delicate flakiness you expect in a good pie crust. I also think the whole wheat flavor is too strong. The crust should complement the filling, not compete with it. If you use a lot of whole grain products you might like this, but I'm really glad I tested this now before I crank out all my Thanksgiving pies next week.

If anyone out there wants to borrow a cup or two of pastry flour... call me.

Pumpkin Pie

Is anybody else staring into space with your mouth hanging open in shocked disbelief that Thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow? That means the next time I blink my eyes it will be here, so I had better start thinking about getting ready. My job is always pies, so today I am doing a dry run of my pumpkin pie. Nah.. I really don't need practice, I just can't wait another week to eat pumpkin pie. Of course I'm mad now, because I found "pastry flour" at Whole Foods last week and wanted to try it, but just now realized that I completely forgot about it. Oh well, I had King Arthur flour in my cannister and that always works just fine.

I have several different pie crust recipes, and I'm always looking for the perfect one. Today I pushed the "easy" button and made the Pat-A-Pan Pie Crust from one of my favorite books, The Amish Cook's Baking Book. This is a great crust if you are teaching your kids to cook because you make it right in the pan, and you get to put your hands in it, but it doesn't terrorize your kitchen by leaving a huge mess. It's flaky and crispy, and super easy. It only works for a single crust pie though, you can't double it and it's too tender to roll out or transfer to another pan. For single crust pies and/or if you're in a hurry it's perfect.

Pat-A-Pan Pie Crust

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 Tablespoons cold milk

Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a 9-inch pie pan and mix with your fingers until evenly blended. Mixing anything with your hand is fun, so do it. In a measuring cup (use a 2-cup one for this) mix the oil and milk with a whisk until it looks creamy.



Pour oil/milk mixture over the flour mixture and mix with a fork until is completely moistened.



Now pat the dough with your fingers until it is even on the bottom and all the way up the sides. The book says now to flute the edges, but I don't think this crust really works very well for that because it's not a real firm dough, in fact it will feel a bit oily when you have your hands in it. I'm using an old vintage deep dish pie pan which I love because all I have to do is press the dough into the already fluted edges, and it's good to go.



Now you can either prebake the crust if you need to, or partially bake it. I always partially bake my crusts when I'm making a single-crust pie, I think they just turn out more flaky on the bottom, and I hate a doughy bottom crust. To partially bake your crust, heat the oven to 450. Prick the crust all over with a fork, then place a sheet of heavy-duty foil in the pan and press it down against the crust inside the pan so it covers the entire crust. Bake it for 6 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional 4 minute. Set it aside to cool while you prepare your filling. Keep a close eye on this, if it starts to puff up just poke it more with that fork.

Now for the filling. I use the Pumpkin Pie recipe from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham. No, she is not Richie's mom. This book has been my "baking bible" for years, but I am guilty of going rogue for this one because I substitute eggnog for the evaporated milk. Even if you don't like eggnog don't be afraid to try this. You can't really taste the eggnog, but it gives it a nice but subtle extra layer of flavor and creaminess that you can't beat. Don't even bother with the recipe on the back of the Libby's can, it's nowhere near as good as the woman who is not Richie's mom's recipe. Trust me on this, you won't be sorry.

Pumpkin Pie

1 partially baked pie shell
2 cups pumpkin puree, either cooked fresh (I have no idea how to do this) or canned. (I use 1 can of Libby's, be sure you get straight pumpkin and NOT pie filling.)
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk or heavy cream (or eggnog)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp allspice

(or use 3 1/2 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice instead of the individual spices)

Heat oven to 450. In large bowl, beat together the pumpkin and eggs. Add the milk/cream/eggnog and sugar, then the salt and spices. Beat until smooth. Pour into the cooled pie shell and bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 300 and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until the filling is almost set. A sharp knife inserted just off center will come out clean, with traces of custard on it. The center should not be completely firm. In my oven, 35 minutes was a little bit too long, so start at 30 minutes and then you can always leave it in a little longer if needed.



Even with this deep dish pie pan, the filling really fills it up. I baked this on a foil lined pan in case I spilled it because it's hard to get it in the oven without spilling. I did good this time, no spills! You would never know I could get anything in my oven without spilling, as evidenced by the number of crusty burned spots that reside on the bottom of my oven.

Finished pie:



Pumpkin pie is never complete without a healthy dollop of whipped cream. I love the "extra creamy" Cool Whip, and my brother's family swears by the canned Reddi Whip, which is actually real whipped cream. The best ever though, is the homemade whipped cream that my grandma used to make. There's no right or wrong, just whatever you like and have time for. I remember one holiday gathering when I was a kid, my Aunt Margie literally buried my slice of pie under a small mountain of that sweet, creamy goodness. She said it was because I needed to put some meat on my bones. Well, thanks Aunt Margie, it worked...