Honey Oatmeal Pie

Warning: big fat brag to come.

The honey pie is the one dead center on the table

I won a blue ribbon at the State Fair for this pie this year ::pop my collar:: I'm quite pleased with that fact alone, but even better is that the honey pie category was the one of the few in which this year's Grand Champion pie maker (and one of the top ribbon winners for DECADES at the State Fair) entered and did not take 1st place.  So good on me :-D.

Bragging done now.

I think the "secret" to this pie is three-fold...

1) Use very flavorful honey.  The best is going to be a locally harvested honey rather than a commercially-available national brand.  I use a wildflower honey from a producer two counties south of where I live. You can use this locator to find local producers in your area.

2) Use quick-cooking steel oats instead of conventional rolled oats.  Rolled oats will come out, well, mushy-feeling.  You know, like oatmeal.  The steel-cut oats will be chewy and a bit like finely chopped nuts.

3) Use bourbon in your pie crust.  Oh yeah.  Trust me.

I totally understand using a prepared crust (in fact, I have posted several times about using those guys without *any* shame *at all*), but I have sworn off store-bought crusts personally.

Not because I am a crust snob though.  I am a homemade crust convert because a) as a competitive baker, it seemed appropriate to learn how to make them and because b) I found a recipe I cannot screw up and because c) all brands of store-bought crusts I have found have artificial dyes in them which we have cut out of my son's/our diet.

So use whatever you like, but really, the homemade crust will make a difference...not so much because of the homemade-ness of it, but because you can put bourbon in it.

And really, the pie itself is so freaking easy to make that you have plenty of energy for making homemade crust.

Finally, you may not, absolutely not, make this pie on the bottom shelf with something else baking away above it.  I didn't have a fancy scientific convection-current-tracking setup in my oven, but I'm *pretty* sure that having something on the top shelf forces heat back down into the pie that would otherwise move and circulate more freely.  I am *completely* sure that if you try this, you will wind up with a pie volcano.  I screw up so you don't have to.

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Cheddar Jelly Thumbprints

I've made several variations on this recipe, swapping in and out different cheeses and different jellies, over several years.  My personal favorites are the sharp-cheese/spicy-jelly combinations but a milder, sweeter colby-apple jam version won me a 2nd place ribbon (and 3 lbs of butter) at the State Fair last year.  Feel free to play with flavors here!

I've served these as appetizers and desserts, and they prep ahead (and even freeze) fabulously.  Roll the cookie balls, roll them in nuts and freeze them.  Thaw before baking so that you can make the little indentations for the jelly.  

I also <3 that you make the dough in the food processor...so fast, so easy.

A neato-torpedo trick I picked up from Cooks Illustrated is to use a wine cork to make the "thumbprints"...very tidy, very precise.

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Bizcochitos

Have you ever had half a container of something you'll never consume again but hate to just pitch the rest?  I needed a couple cups of sweet red wine for a marinade and had rather a lot left over (and sweet wines tend not to get drunk at my house).  Cue the New Mexico official state cookie, Bizcochitos, to the rescue.

You don't have to use wine...in fact, there are a great many recipes for this cookie out there.  Some use sweet white wine, some sweet red, some a fortified wine like cream sherry or Madeira, some brandy and some just call for orange juice.  The really neat thing here is how to handle a rollout cookie when you don't want or have time to roll out dough.

Ordinarily, you would refrigerate the cookie dough for a few hours, then roll out and cut into 2" circles.  Firstly, this dough is very soft and tender which means it's a you-know-what to roll out.  Secondly, I hate rolling out dough, even easy-to-handle dough.  So I tried this as a slice-and-bake.  One recipe's worth fit perfectly into an 8x8 plastic wrap lined baking dish.  I fridged the dough as a solid square, then cut the square into 4 "logs", then sliced the logs for cookies.  The only issue is that the "logs" are square rather than round, but after fridging, you could roll them a bit to round them out if you really wanted.  Either way, much easier and tidier than rolling out and cutting shapes.

Note too that traditionally these cookies are made with lard.  Not having any on hand, I used a combo of shortening and butter.  Substitute 2 cups lard for the other fats if you want.

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Eclair Cake

This was one of my husband's grandma's specialities.  She made it annually for Easter dessert, so he starts getting jones-y for it about this time of year.  And I confess to jonesing for it myself lately. 

It's one of those back-of-the-box recipes that there are a million variations of on the interwebs, which form two of its obvious virtues...it's fast and easy to shop for and make, and it works for whatever flavor combinations you want.  You can use as many low-fat, sugar-free components as you like or as few.  You can go the vanilla pudding/chocolate frosting route, or play with flavor combinations like lemon-strawberry, double chocolate death, coconut-pecan, butterscotch-vanilla or pistachio-cream cheese. 

If you are the type of person who enjoys making buttercream frosting from scratch, go for it!  If you make pudding from scratch, go for it!  If you make graham crackers from scratch, get some help!  Btw, I think making a pudding out of this pie filling recipe but using 3 cups of milk instead of water and 1/3 cup strong espresso instead of lemon juice/zest would make O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G eclair cake.

And what made this recipe worth blogging about was the realization that you CAN FREEZE THIS!!!!  You could thaw it to serve, or serve frozen like ice cream cake.  Oh jah.  Perfection.

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Walnut butter bar cookies

Sorry this post isn't timely any more.  Parenting intrudes on my blogging some days ;)

I love these guys.  Finely chopped nuts top a dense, rich, buttery shortbread cookie and the recipe goes together fast.  In the time it takes your oven to pre-heat, you'll have the batter put together.  The cookie batter is made rather like chou pastry, in the saucepan you melt the butter in (if you melt butter on the stovetop).  It's not especially freeze-able, but it comes together so fast you don't need to worry about prepping ahead.

Recipe is from Reader's Digest's A Family Christmas (as all my holiday cookie recipes were this year LOL) That book calls these "toffee cookies", but I don't perceive "toffee" in this cookie so I choose to rename them.


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Fast Candy Chip Bar Cookies

As a kid, I spent what probably added up to months of my life baking cookies.  It was the only indoor activity my best friend and I could suggest that would guarantee parental permission to play inside during nice (read: sweltering, chokingly humid) weather.  For that and other reasons, I baked.  A lot.

I don't bake so much any more as an adult.  Partly because while I can put together entire meals days in advance, I can't seem to remember to soften butter to bake with.  Partly because the mixer takes up too much room in the dishwasher and requires its own wash cycle, either by machine or by hand.  And partly because I no longer find dropping dozens of cookies from a spoon or rolling dozens more into individual balls and flattening them one by one with a water glass relaxing or fun or a nice way to pass the time.  Mostly I just find it tedious.

So I LOVE cookie recipes that eliminate all of those issues.  This is really just the Toll House Chocolate Chip cookie recipe, but tweaked a bit.  I'm going from frozen butter to cookies in less than 30 minutes.  Shazam!  Pretty much all cookie batters freeze well unbaked, and this one is no different so that's extra points!  Freeze it on a baking tray if you have the room, or in a lump to spread into a baking pan after thawing.

My dad always made the Toll House recipe with melted butter rather than softened with the result that the cookies were somehow butterier than usual.  A perk of this method (besides yummy cookies) is that you can start with butter that's still freaking FROZEN and have cookies fast.  With liquid butter, you can also ditch the electric mixer to make the batter.  The texture you get from the melted butter also offsets the slightly tougher texture that can come from using whole wheat flour; as the butter incorporates more smoothly than softened solid butter, minimizing the risk of overmixing the batter which is a greater problem with higher gluten whole wheat flour than regular all purpose flour.

And lastly, by making these as bar cookies, there's no tedious cookie shaping.  Perfect!

Please note: I used cherry-flavored chips in this batch because I was overcome with Holiday Baking Brain Disease at the store when I bought these artificially-flavored droplets of partially hydrogenated Red No. 5 and I had to use them in *something*.  I also added 1/2 tsp of almond extract, which I highly recommend whether you use faux cherry food-like product in your cookies or not.

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Pfefferneuse Cookies

I don't sprechen much Deutsch so while due diligence has been done on spelling and noun morphology, please forgive the errors that certainly remain.

When I told my husband that I planned to make pfeffernuse (pronounced feffer-noose), he looked alarmed.  I think he related the name to the famous German game meat stew hasenpfeffer and thought I was proposing he eat rabbit-meat cookies.

What the two recipes have in common is pfeffer, "pepper" (not rabbit, hasen).  These are little spice cookies that do indeed include pepper along with cinnamon, cloves and candied citrus peel.  This the traditional "peppernut" flavor combination, but you can use this recipe as a jumping-off point for several flavor variations which I'll include at the end of the recipe.  I've made some of these variations before, and some are notes for things to try in the future.  The original recipe is from Reader's Digest's "A Family Christmas".

They are the perfect make-ahead holiday cookie as they must be baked 2-3 weeks before eating.  They come out of the oven hard but soften with storage.  They are ideal if you want to make holiday cookies but don't want to be baking in the thick of December.

Today's I Screw Up So You Don't Have To...when you toss the cookies with confectioners sugar at the end, don't knock excess sugar off the cookies by throwing them on the floor.  Or by letting a 3yo help you with that step. 

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Filbertines

This recipe is from A Family Christmas, a hodge-podge sort of book from Reader's Digest that has Christmas stories, crafts, menus, recipes, poems, essays and other Christmas-related oddments in it.  The cookie section is hands-down the best bunch of Christmas cookie recipes I know of.  Lots of easy to make, shippable cookies that just sing "Winter!"  This cookie is very suitable for shipping as well as for prepping ahead and freezing.  Freeze the cookie dough balls after they've been rolled in chopped filberts, and thaw them while you preheat the oven when you're ready to bake.

Filberts, also known as hazelnuts, are delicious little guys.  They have a sweet, unusually spicy sort of aroma in the oven.  They're a pain to crack out of the shells, but I was pleased and surprised to find chopped hazelnuts in the baking aisle at my grocery store.  And for about the same price as walnuts and pecans!  If you have food allergies to work around, you can use another type of nut.

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Healthy Sweet Potato Pie

I am told this pie was delicious, but alas, I didn't get to try any before my 1.5yo penetrated the kitchen countertop forcefield and pulled the cake dome down, ruining both the cake dome and pie.

Before Destructo Toddler

The recipe came in a mailer about women's health or heart health or something like that from a local hospital (who would be sending you recipes chock full o' fat and calories if they were really serious about drumming up business).  It includes several Miracles of Modern Chemistry.  I've retained one or two calorie/carb-reducing elements and reverted the remainder to "real food" which is IMHO where "healthy" really lives.


After Destructo Toddler

Because there are no eggs in the recipe, it can be stored at room temperature for a few days rather than in the fridge.  You can also freeze it for future service, and perhaps even serve it frozen in an ice-cream-cake sort of way (didn't get to try that one, but I had planned to).

If you happen to bake a lot of pies, these are very nice for weighting a prebaked pie shell to prevent bubbles in the crust.  I used dry beans for a number of years, but the ceramic beads do a better job.

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Peanut Butter 'n' Candy cookies

Or, How Prepping Ahead Makes Cooking With Kids Fun Instead of Stressful!

My older son's favorite phrase right now is "Mama, I haf an IDEA!"  Today's IDEA was to make cookies.  We picked out a peanut butter and chocolate kiss cookie recipe, but we didn't have any chocolate kisses.  We did have caramels and bags of Halloween candy (yeah, yeah, I cracked the H-ween candy already, but only for this recipe!) so I give you peanut butter and assorted-candy cookies LOL  This is a great thing to do with any leftover candy bars after Halloween.

It took about 15 minutes to prep while the boys watched a little Sesame Street.  Then Boy #1 helped me combine ingredients and shape cookies while Boy #2 got to play with all the toys that Boy #1 usually snatches away from him...good times all round!  I found the toddler help most useful in rolling formed cookie dough balls in sugar and putting them on a baking tray (I needed to rearrange them for baking ofc).  The finished product is not going to win any pretty food awards, but somehow the cookies are tastier when they're ugly b/c your kids helped you make them.

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Grape Pie

I've never had one of the world-famous Naples, NY Concord Grape Pies, so for all I know, I am suggesting absolute heresy here and have made a pie that tastes like mud compared to theirs.  But I think my attempt has turned out nicely.

All the recipes for Grape Pie I could find a) call for Concord grapes and b) call for peeling every one of those little boogers even though the peels go into the filling.  Oh hell no.  I did some reading on the interwebs trying to puzzle out why on earth anyone would want to be peel multiple pounds of grapes to make pie and the best I can figure is that 1) Concord grapes have seeds and they must be peeled in order to cook the pulp enough to deseed them without losing the color, flavor and volume of the peels (which would get sieved out with the seeds if left in the cooked mixture) and possibly 2) that the peels, when cooked, might impart a bitter flavor to the filling. 

Fortunately, I am cursed/blessed with a lack of actual Concord grapes at my local grocery and instead have "seedless black" grapes ("Midnight Beauty" variety).  As they are seedless, I have solved the first concern.  As I am willing to gamble a bit and they are ultra-sweet, I have dispensed with the second concern.  Awesome.

Depending on your variety of grape, how sweet they are and personal preference, you may want more or less sugar than what I used.  After simmering the whole but lightly crushed grapes for a bit to release their juices, I started with 1/2 cup sugar and added a few tbsp at a time until I reached a sweetness level I was pleased with.  I thickened with a combination of flour and cornstarch, adding a bit extra cornstarch at the last minute when the filling looked a bit runny.  To incorporate it nicely, I made a slurry with red wine (happened to have an open bottle) rather than the customary lemon juice.  I don't think I'd crack a bottle just for this purpose again, but it worked out nicely I think.  The grapes still had a bit of tartness and I didn't think it necessary to add to that flavor dimension with lemon while the wine did enhance the grapey-ness of the pie. 

The interwebs also suggested various ways to prepare the filling in advance of actual pie-making, as the residents of Naples, NY do (I mean, if you're gonna peel a bazillion pounds of grapes one by one, you might as well make it worth your while and save some of this stuff up).  One suggestion was to can the filling like jam.  Another was to freeze the filling in pie plates (without a crust), then slip the frozen pie-shaped jam disk into a fresh crust and bake as usual when you're ready.  I can't vouch for either of this techniques personally, but if you experiment, let me know how it goes!

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Grapenut custard

I had this dessert at the Scargo Cafe in Dennis, MA while on vacation attending my brother's wedding.  Delicious!  And I'm assured by Massachusetts-ians that this is a bona fide regional specialty rather than some BS branding strategy hatched by the State Department of Tourism (Indiana Hardwoods, anyone?). 

This is a great way to use up a large number of eggs, if you find yourself with a surplus (you know who you are out there, you chicken-raisers).  I think this could be made with whatever cereal you want, though using, say, Cocoa Krispies would detract from the authenticity of the dish.  If you want to make a half recipe (this does make a lot, but it keeps well in the fridge), halve all the ingredients...I'd use 5 large eggs or 4 jumbo...and bake this in an 8x8 dish.  Start checking for doneness after 60 minutes. 

The Scargo Cafe's recipe is found here, but I thought it was lacking in, er, directions. Here are my directions. 

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French Cherry Pie

I saw this recipe in a 1940's or 1950's issue of the Indianapolis Star (no longer have the publication info, drat!).  The "French" elements of the pie are the subtle addition of almond flavor (as in the French cherry and almond dessert clafouti) and perhaps the wretched excess of frosting a pie (though of course, it is far more an American characteristic to be wretchedly excessive than a French one, but I digress).

You can use this glaze on whatever cherry pie base you like...homemade all the way, canned pie filling, even a whole store-bought pie (super-fast homestyle tweak)...and call it a French Cherry Pie.  I use the Better Homes and Gardens Cherry Pie recipe and add the Indy Star recipe glaze to that.


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Walnut Crust Honey Pie

A honey-based shoofly pie with a crisp walnut and cinnamon crust in place of pastry.  Yum!  I use dark wildflower honey rather than clover honey for the fuller flavor, but any honey is tasty-good.

I suggest Egg Beaters b/c it can be a pain to halve a single egg, as called for in the filling, whereas Egg Beaters can be conveniently measured by the tablespoonful.  Also b/c the rules of the State Fair Culinary Arts competition (in which I have entered this recipe) forbid the use of actual unpasteurized eggs in baked goods ::eye roll::

Letting the crust cool before filling is important b/c it helps prevent the Honey Volcano (I screw up so you don't have to) and gives your oven time to cool down to proper, non-burning pie-baking temperature.

This pie will freeze nicely after baking, though the crust might not be quite as crisp after thawing.

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Cookie Freezer Stash

Color plate from The American
Woman's Cookbook, 1944

I feel naked without dessert in the house.  Just gastronomically naked.  So I like having frozen cookie dough to make dessert fast when we find ourselves in a dessert emergency situation.  But when I want fast cookies, I don't want to have to roll, cut out, shape, drop, dust or engage in any verb other than "bake".  OK, maybe "slice", but that's my limit!  As it turns out, just about all drop, shape-into-balls, roll-in-sugar, slice and bar cookies freeze beautifully in their unbaked dropped, shaped-into-balls, rolled-in-sugar, sliced and barred states.  Yay!

The lime cookies are my signature cookie, although the recipe isn't mine.  It's from Herbst's The Joy of Cookies, but the author does NOT share the secret that these little gems can be prepared in vast batches, shaped, rolled in sugar, flattened and frozen for future cookie needs.  This recipe doubles very nicely.

The Molasses Softies are oldies but goodies too, from Natalie Haughton's Cookies.  I amend the recipe slightly to include my dad's trick of rolling "brown" cookies (like peanut butter drops or these molasses guys) in brown sugar instead of white sugar...it's a much richer flavor and more complementary to the "dark" sweetness of the cookies themselves. 

The coconut kisses are new to me though not new on the cookie block, again from my husband's grandma's 1944 home ec cookbook, The American Woman's Cookbook.  Only four ingredients and no mixer required...perfect!

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Cafe au lait jello

I ordered a small iced coffee this morning at Dunkin' Donuts (my sin wagon of choice).  Unexpectedly, the chap at the drive-through window handed me a vat of coffee big enough to bathe in and said it was on the house.  As nice as a freebie is, I can't drink that much coffee (after the two at-home cups ::blush::) without serious damage to my stomach lining but I hate to waste free anything.  So we have grown-up jello for dessert tonight :D

This is a good idea for using up partial pots of coffee, or you can make some coffee special for it if you really want.

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S'mores on a stick

This is NOT my idea.  I cannot claim it in any way.  But I learned enough in the making of it not to take some notes and share them.  Dipping chocolate has ever been my foe, and I learn something new every time I try and fail and retry and fail less badly LOL  If you don't count the time I spent screwing up the first batch of chocolate, going to the store to get more chocolate and starting that part over, it only took me about 20 minutes total to make these.  These can be made a couple of days ahead, if you're making them for a party.

First the DOs:

• DO push the pretzel sticks into the marshmallows until they stick out the other side a bit
• DO thin the melted chocolate with a tbsp of shortening
• DO buy extra chocolate chips, just in case of screw-ups
• DO use parchment paper or a silicone mat to put the dipped sticks on

Now the DON'Ts:

• DON'T use anything except shortening to thin the chocolate (not butter, milk, water, or oil...better to use nothing at all if you don't have shortening)

OK, there's just the one DON'T but it's important.  If water or milk or butter or oil gets into the chocolate, it will "seize" or start to turn fudgy and you will have delicious faux fudge but totally undippable chocolate.  This is true for candy coating as well. 

The set-up is more important than the recipe.  Have your pretzel-stuck marshmallows assembled before you start melting chocolate.  Put them on baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone mats.  Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, preferably one wide enough to put your hand down into safely to dip the marshmallows (I have had bad luck with melting chocolate for dipping in the microwave, so I don't try any more).  I rolled just the sides of the marshmallows rather than dipping them straight down as I was worried that the marshmallows would pull off the sticks.  Keep the heat on low under the double boiler to keep the chocolate warm and thin (if you don't have a double boiler, I suppose you could melt the chocolate and put your work bowl over a heating pad to help keep the chocolate from cooling and thickening too much, but I can't swear to the viability of this equipment work-around).  Work with one stick at a time, dipping then rolling then putting it back on the baking sheet before doing the next one.



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Lower Carb (and freezer friendly) Lemon Custard Pie

My husband adores lemon meringue pie, but I rather dislike meringue (making it as well as eating it, and it doesn't freeze well to boot).  Cool Whip is the absolute right answer to all meringue-associated problems.  Yes, it's cheating.  In case you haven't read any of my previous pie posts, I cheat at pies and do so with great celebration (I have all that extra time to celebrate, you see, since I don't spend any making homemade pastry or meringues). 

So, on request for a no-sugar version of lemon meringue pie, I give you Splenda lemon custard pie with sugar-free Cool Whip topping and nut crust.  Making the custard with splenda instead of sugar actually speeds the process up...sugar takes eons to melt and thicken properly, while the Splenda version took less than 5 minutes to achieve the proper thickness.  The flour and cornstarch still contribute carbs, but the result is much lower than what you would have with sugar.  You can, of course, use sugar, tbsp for tbsp, in place of Splenda.

Btw, for those playing at home, I saved 2 tbsp (ETA: needed 4 tbsp) of the almond grindings for a chicken wing recipe (Almond Sesame Wings) I'll make in a few days.  Put the "almond flour" in a small tupperware and stashed it in the fridge.  I like to plan ahead.

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Raspberry Rhubarb Pie

I haven't made or blogged many desserts lately, although I've been eating dessert aplenty ::blush::  I got the idea for the raspberry-rhubarb combo from a recipe in Bon Appetit, but turned it into a 10" pie rather than their suggested weensy crostata. 

I don't usually spend a lot of time making food look pretty, but this pie begs for a lattice crust.  Being the happily acknowledged crust-cheater that I am, I took a store-bought double crust and used a little cookie cutter thingy to cut diamond shapes in 1 layer to mimic a real, woven, lattice crust top.  Much easier to handle that way. 

The pie can be frozen before or after baking.  Thaw it before baking if you freeze it uncooked.

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Chai Spiced Rice Krispie Treats

My husband complains that I do "weird" things to familiar foods and don't warn him, so his mouth expects the usual flavor but is instead hit with something surprising (and delicious, I might add).  His tastebuds don't like surprises apparently.  The cocoa powder here is mostly to warn your tastebuds via your eyeballs that these are not run-of-the-mill Rice Krispie Treats.
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