Berry Pudding Pies

When in a pinch for a dessert, here's a recent creation I came up with:

1/2 C berries, fresh or frozen (I used raspberries)
1 graham cracker crust
1 package vanilla or chocolate pudding/pie filling

Make pudding according to pie filling directions. Spread berries on the bottom of the pie crust, and spread pudding on top of the berries. Chill until set. Garnish with more berries, if desired.

I made both a raspberry-chocolate and raspberry-vanilla pie. The vanilla pie had a light "berries-and-cream" flavor, while the raspberry-chocolate was the perfect blend of crunch, berry, and chocolate. I was craving a raspberry-chocolate dessert, so that may have skewed my view a little :)

Pear Sauce in the Crockpot

Taking inspiration from Stephanie, and having an abundance of pears ripening on my counter, I decided to try my hand at making pear sauce (think applesauce, only with pears!)

Amazingly, I started cooking this before dinner, then 15 people showed up at my house for a couple hours, and, after they left, I had a successful result- this goes to show how "hands off" this recipe is.

Pear Sauce in the Crockpot

Enough peeled, sliced, cored pears to fill the crockpot. (I used one of those peeler-corer-slicer things on my pears, but found that VERY ripe pears just kind of squished in the device and made a mess. I wasn't a fan of the mess, with the company expected and all.)
About 1 cup water
Sugar to taste

Put pears in the crockpot, and pour water over them. Turn the crockpot to High until the pears start to get soft, then cook on low. open the crockpot periodically to stir & break up the pears. Add sugar each time you open the crockpot to stir- but taste it first! I didn't need as much sugar as I added.

When the pears are very soft and mostly broken up, add cinnamon to taste (optionally) and use an electric hand mixer to finish breaking up the pears. Voila! Sauce!

If you prefer a less chunky sauce, run the sauce through your blender or food processor. I prefer the chunks.

From here you can can the sauce or freeze it. After discovering I don't have a pot taller than my pint jars, I froze it in sealed bags. The pear sauce can be used as a side in lunches or dinners, or served hot or cold over ice cream. Yum!

Thanks to generous friends with a pear tree, I have plenty more pears where these came from. I'll probably make another pear pie, then use the rest to make some more pear sauce, because this was so easy.

Wassail

I had never tried wassail, but my husband insisted it was a holiday neccesity, to I was determined to make it. I was glad I did! Adapted from the Belgian Wassail recipe from MyRecipes.

6 clementines (or 2 oranges. I used what I had...)
2 lemons
1 gallon apple cider
1 C sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp whole allspice

Combine cider, sugar, and spices in slow cooker. Squeeze juice from lemons and oranges into mix, and let rinds float in the cider mixture. Cook on High for 1 hour, then keep warm until ready to serve. Strain out solids.

I let a lemon rind continue to float in the wassail as a colorful garnish. The fruity, citrusy warm spiced drink was perfect to share for Christmas dinner- and made the whole house smell good!

Peach cobbler

I made this for a get-together Monday, along with Nestle Tollhouse cookies. The recipe is loosely based on this one.

1 cup sugar
2 TB. cornstarch
10 ripe medium peaches (~4 lbs), peeled and sliced
2 TB. lemon juice
1 tsp ginger

2 refrigerated pie crusts

1 egg white
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 TB. sugar

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a 13x9-inch pan.
2. Mix sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl. Add peaches, lemon juice and ginger. Toss to coat and set aside for 15 minutes.
4. Roll out one of the prepared pie crust so that it's approximately oval (rectangular). Place dough in prepared pan, wrapping dough up the sides of the pan. The pie crust won't fill the whole thing, but do your best. Pour peach mixture on top of dough.
5. Cut remaining pie crustinto 1/4"-1/2" strips and arrange in a lattice pattern over peaches (diagonally is easiest). Squeeze edges of strips with bottom dough to seal, where possible. Mix cinnamon and sugar together. Brush strips with egg white and sprinkle with cinnamon mixture.
6. Bake about 45 minutes until bubbly and crust is golden. Serve warm.

Serves 8-12.


And, of course, the cookies:

On Blueberries

I really never in the past paid this fruit any heed. I liked blueberry muffins and all, but that was about it. The only time we'd eat them at my house growing up was covered in sugar- and that wasn't terribly often.

Last weekend, we discovered a large patch of blueberry bushes right next to our campsite in northern Indiana, and the blueberries were about 1/4 the size of the "domesticated" ones and about 4 times sweeter. I came to that realization this morning while eating a small pile of blueberries provided as part of the weekly Friday Breakfast at work. They were tart compared to the fresh-from-the-bush berries I had just a few days ago. Chalk that up to yet another plant I want to plant my future garden: blueberries!

Wild blueberries

We found a huge wild blueberry patch near our campsite this weekend. These are the few that weren't immediately devoured:

Enjoying the harvest:

Strawberry Pie

When I uploaded pictures for this post, I went to check them out in my "Cooking Fun" photo album and realized- I started cooking food, photographing it, and blogging about it (albeit not here) one year ago! How do I know? Well, the very first picture, taken with my film SLR camera and scanned in to post online. The cookies were made with a Betty Crocker mix (that I still use on occasion!), probably with canned icing, and sprinkles. They were a hit when I took them to fourth of July festivities, so I took them to the family reunion in August as well!

This year, things are different. I have a digital SLR camera, so the pictures are better. I still made a fairly-easy dessert (or rather, I wouldn't exactly call it "made from scratch") for the early fourth of July party on Saturday, and it was well received. I was bit disappointed- it didn't hold together as I had hoped it would, so my "strawberry pie" turned into a "pile of strawberries, with a little crust" when actually scooped onto the plate. Before being scooped, however, the dessert was beautiful.
Strawberry Pie
1 1/2 lbs strawberries
1/3 C blueberries
Cool Whip
1 pre-made pie crust
1/2 bag of strawberry filling goo "glaze" *

Bake the pie crust according to package directions. In the meantime, slice the strawberries and mix them with the "glaze". If desired, reserve a few strawberries for garnish on top.
Pour the strawberry mixture into the cooled pie shell. Top with remaining strawberries, blueberries, and Cool Whip.

* If I did this again, I wouldn't use the strawberry goo glaze. It had a very-artificial taste to it I didn't like very much. Also, I used 1 bag for 2 pies, though the recipe on the back of the bag says to use the whole bag for 1 pie- this could be where my problem of the pies not holding together very well came into play.

More beautiful pictures:

The Apple Pie Experiment

Originally posted at keeping feet on 11/22/06

A few weeks ago, when asked what I would bring for the Thanksgiving get-together coming up Thursday, I volunteered dessert, and settled on apple pie. I was sure it wouldn't be too bad- I've made apple pie in the past, and at least 3 pear pies, which are the same concept. The catch? In the past, I've made French Apple (or Pear) Pies which have one crust and a crumble top. I had only used refrigerated crusts for the bottom, and the topping wasn't too challenging to throw together. Josh suggested I not use the store-bought crusts and try to make my own. I agreed with him- the crusts I had been using were somewhat tasteless.

As I started asking around and doing research, however, I discovered that crusts were not easy things to make, and most recipes called for equipment I didn't have, like a pastry cutter or food processor. This made me want to try it all the more- I like a challenge. And I always have my back-up store-bought crusts in the fridge if needed.

I looked at recipe after recipe, trying to find one that 1) didn't involve a food processor, 2) didn't involve nuts, 3) didn't involve refrigerating the crust for long periods of time. I settled on 2 recipes, because I had to make 2 pies, and if one turned out better than the other, that's the one that would come to Thanksgiving with me.

I ended up with two recipes. The Best Ever Apple Pie looked delish and looked like it would be fun to try the weaving thing, but Slashfood's Homemade Apple Pie was very well illustrated and looked easier. I figured between the two, I'd end up with something OK.

I started with the apples, obviously. I chose a variety of apples, basically because I couldn't remember which were the good ones to use. I picked up Golden Delicious, Jonagold, and Honeycrisp on Monday.
Actually, I made the crusts first, but I didn't take pictures because I was sure it would fail, and didn't want any embarrassing evidence. I don't own a pastry cutter or food processor, but had read another trick on a different website: use a cheese grater to get the butter into little pieces, then toss and mix with the flour. This worked surprisingly well. Between grating the butter and mixing it with the flour, I stuck it in he freezer to quickly chill it, because everything's supposed to be cold while making the crust dough.
After making the crusts and putting them in the fridge, I proceeded to peel & cut the apples. This is the most time consuming part of the whole process, in my opinion, and the part I like the least. I got one pie's worth of apples done (5 apples) and took a break from peeling to get the first pie in the oven.
I went to get the crusts from the oven, and retrieved the crust for the lattice-top pie. I rolled it out the best I could, and did as the recipes told me and folded it in half to center it in the pie pan.Turns out, I didn't roll it out quite big enough, but it worked out in the end. The top crust I cut into strips and wove (very gently) together (reminded me of my childhood potholder loom)
For the filling, I followed the illustrated directions and tossed the apples in the mix, then heaped them in the pie crust. I carefully put the top crust on, and was amazed at the result!

The pie cooked just as it should have, and came out beautiful. The second pie was made similarly, but with a top crust painted with egg wash rather than lattice top.
The results:



My only dilemma left: Which pie to bring to Thanksgiving, and which to bring to small group Monday? Josh votes the lattice top pie for Thanksgiving.

Persimmons

This is an excerpt from the original post at keeping feet from 11/7/06
Sometime Sunday morning, Josh & I had decided to host the small group dinner, because it wasn't going to be at the original couple's house, for obvious reasons. When we got home from Sunday Supper, we started to scramble to figure out how we were going to cook dinner for 8 people with 24 hours notice, and not enough chairs to go around. Luckily, my parents had given us a bigger kitchen
table (with a leaf!) the week before, and another couple brought some folding chairs to give everyone a seat (we threatened that if they didn't, someone would be sitting on an ottoman.). We had just enough place settings for 8 as plates, salad bowls, glasses, and silverware go, but not enough placemats & napkins, of all things. I don't think anyone noticed. The menu decided on was chicken alfredo, and I cooked & cut the chicken Sunday night for the Monday meal, to drastically cut down the preparation time Monday. Josh made brownies, his specialty. I was delighted how well everything went once everyone got here. I was also delighted everyone found the place with my directions :) The company was good, and everything went smoothly.

Josh cooked brownies, but I had another dessert planned that didn't come to fruition (pun intended). A traditional fall/winter dessert in Josh's family is persimmon pudding. I had some at the first Christmas party I went to with his family, and have had some every holiday since. I asked a few people what a persimmon was, but the best answer I could get was, 'well, it's a fruit.' Last week sometime, I found out definitively. A recipe blog I read, Simply Recipeshad none other than the traditional pudding cake as a post just as I was thinking of it. The post has a good explanation of not only what a persimmon is, but the different varieties, and the importance of ripening the fruit. It was fascinating as I continued to research it, how key the state of the fruit is when using it in this recipe. I found another article that does nothing else but poetically describe persimmons and the importance of patience:

A bite into the spiteful flesh of an underripe persimmon is indeed like sucking on a huge ball of felt or a mouthful of emery boards or a wad of soggy tea bags. A roly-poly and supple ripe persimmon is another creature altogether, though, transforming what was a shudder-inducing experience into a seductive seasonal obsession.

So I bought some persimmons at the supermarket and am practicing extreme patience going on a week now. The problem I'm posed with: I don't know what a persimmon is supposed to look/taste like, besides these written reviews, so I'm crossing my fingers hoping I get it right, and hoping I don't jump the gun and end up with bitter fruit. I think there might be a spiritual lesson here.

Free Pears

Originally posted at keeping feet on 11/2/2006

So, I mentioned earlier that we came upon free pears on the side of the road, and helped ourselves to plenty because I had promised to make a pie. I also mentioned that these seemed like very large pears, and we grabbed quite a hefty plastic-shopping-bag-full.

Last night was my pear-pie baking evening, and my mom came over to help out, because the most time-consuming part is peeling and slicing the silly things. Well, we got started peeling and slicing, and we got through about a third of the pears and realized we already had accumulated the 6 cups of fruit called for by the recipe. I didn't have anything else to do with the fruit, so I told my mom to keep peeling and slicing while I made the first pie. By the end, we made 2 pies and had plenty left over to cook in cinnamon and sugar for a yummy treat. The first pie went to Josh's work, the second to my mom for all her help. I kept the cooked pears and had some fro breakfast this morning :)

And, after all of that, I'm out of brown sugar. And pears, thankfully.

When Life Gives You Strawberries

Originally published at Keeping feet on 8/16/2006

I mentioned earlier that my sister and her boyfriend came over for fondue last weekend. My sister was in charge of bringing fruit for dessert, to dip in the chocolate fondue, and she brought some very good strawberries and pineapple. While we were eating however, we forgot about over half of the fruit (but that was OK- we were stuffed and barely finished what we had out!) so, come Monday, I had a large container of pineapple and a pint of strawberries left over. I went to pack the fruit in my lunch for Monday and noticed that the strawberries were on the verge of going bad.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say. So what did I do?

I came home during lunch Monday and used the strawberries, our Pampered Chef food chopper, and our handy-dandy ice cream maker to make some beautiful, no-artificial-colors-or-flavors strawberry ice cream!



I followed the directions in the ice cream maker manual and it actually turned out a little too sweet. No complaints, though.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the pineapple. I used about a third of it as a topping for the ham steaks Josh grilled us last night, and that was good, but I still have a decent amount more. Any ideas?