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Category: Food & Recipes

  • Went a little crazy with Pick-Your-Own? APPLE CRISP, BABY

    Went a little crazy with Pick-Your-Own? APPLE CRISP, BABY

     

    apple picking

     

    “I’ve never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.”
    ― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

     

    apples

     

    We’re totally a bunch of apple eaters.

    Not quite in the way J.D. meant, but that’s beside the point. I love buying up all the different varieties of apples at the farmer’s market each week; I love finding the most perfectly-perfect apples to pick off the trees; I love eating apples. Apples with caramel. Apples with cheese and crackers. Apples all by themselves.

     

    single apple on tree

     

    And apple crisp. Holy carp do I love me some apple crisp.

    Apple crisp is the best way to quickly and happily eat your way through an apple picking excursion gone loco. It’s not as healthy as eating your apple straight or maybe cooked into some turkey sausage, but frankly apple season is only here for a few glorious weeks of the year so eat ’em if you got ’em, you know?

    It’s also not terribly fussy like a pie or a tart— no crust to assemble— and with a pair or two of helping hands the prep goes crazy fast. Like usual, I kind of play it fast and loose with the recipe here, it depends on what size pans I have clean.

    It’s not beautiful.

    It’s a great way to use those imperfect apples.

    It’ll melt your heart served warm with some vanilla ice cream.

     

    apple crisp a la mode

     

    Homemade Apple Crisp

     

    Ingredients:

    • Apples. Firm, tart apples like Granny Smiths or Stayman are best so the crisp doesn’t seem overly sweet, but those are some of our favorite eating apples, so we tend to use Galas and Fuji and the like and pull back on the sugar a bit. The number will depend entirely on the size of your apples.
    • 1/2 cup flour (I use 1/4 cup unbleached white, 1/4 wheat. Sometimes I throw some oats in there too)
    • 1/2 cup sugar (less if you’re not using tart apples)
    • 1 tsp cinnamon
    • dash of nutmeg
    • bit of salt
    • 6 tablespoons butter (3/4 stick)

     

    Procedure:

    1. Throw your butter in the freezer. Preheat oven to 350°.
    2. Peel skin off apples and cut into chunks. Now, we have one of those apple spiral things where it peels the skin and then you can keep on going and have one big apple ribbon. This makes it easier, especially for kid helpers, but I think you get the best texture with chunks about 1/2 inch thick.
    3. Dump all your apple chunks into a buttered glass dish (go ahead & use one end of the stick to butter the dish, you’re going to wind up using it all anyway.) The ingredients listed above are appropriate for about a 8 x 8 x 2 dish; I usually make a double (15 x 12) and scale the crisp accordingly.
    4. In a bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Take your cold stick of butter and slice small pieces off (like whittling a stick) with a sharp knife over the bowl holding your dry materials. Stir every once in a while so the butter pieces are covered with dry, but don’t overdo it. You want them to stay intact and separated from each other.
    5. Dump dry-mix-containing-small-bits-of-butter over top of the apples and bump on the counter once or twice so it settles in.
    6. Bake at 350° until the top is golden and apples are soft, about half an hour. The perfect texture here is up to you. I prefer the top to be a bit more on the caramelized side and the apples softer. If you like your cooked apples toothy start checking on them sooner.
    7. Take baked crisp out of oven. Smack hands of children who attempt to serve themselves while it’s still blazing hot and not yet photographed. (Seriously, it took 3 crisps to get a pic because they kept eating it before I could take a photo of the full pan.)
    8. Allow to cool about 10min, then serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Bonus points for french vanilla.

     

    Reheats great in the microwave. Maybe for breakfast, I don’t judge. It’s got apples in it. Apples are good for you.

     

    apple crisp

     

     

    We’re only a few weeks into apple season, so I’m guessing we’ve got at least another two pick-yer-own trips left in us this fall.

    More apples recipes to use up your bounty to follow 🙂

     

    YOUR fave apple recipe? Hit me in the comments.

     

     

  • Pi Day: What’s a Piebird?

    Pi Day: What’s a Piebird?

    piebird

     

    It could be argued that there is an element of
    entertainment in every pie,
    as every pie is inherently a surprise by virtue of its crust.

    ―Janet Clarkson, Pie: A Global History

     

    Happy Pi (Pie) Day!

    Some random thoughts about pie…

    I don’t actually care for most pies, and the ones I do like don’t have a top crust (pumpkin, coconut custard). Since I don’t like normal pies, I don’t eat them, and therefore I have no real concept of what makes a good & tasty pie. This upsets my pie-loving husband to no end, and in recent years he’s given up on me and gone ahead and made his own pies.

    Pictured here is a pie of his own making. It’s stuffed with a variety of apples picked from the local orchard, and he was particularly proud of his little nest & leaves accenting the piebird.

    …and thoughts about pi

    I really like the symbol for pi, but feel the number itself is ugly.

    I have not read The Life of Pi, and never will, simply because too many people have told me I should read it. They said that about The Kite Runner too and I’m still pissed.

    Did anyone else see Pi the movie? It came out in the late 90s, was shot in a really stark black & white and was mostly about obsession and trying to find patterns where there are none, trying to solve the mysteries of the universe using logic and math. It was something I really wanted to like based on the themes and it was really excellent in parts, but what I really recall is squirming through the trephination scenes (the main character suffered blinding migraines, presumably because of the pressure of all this profound knowledge he was unraveling, and he would drill holes in his skull to relieve the pressure). Maybe it’s partly because I can understand how you might get to that point as a migraine sufferer myself, but those images stuck with me in a baaaad way. Pi is one of those movies that could do with repeated viewings to really “get” what’s going on, so I am doomed to never quite understand it. Because you couldn’t pay me to see those scenes again.

     

    piebird-baked

     Pretty, yes?

    What’s a piebird?

    To Jeff’s eternal chagrin, I love little single-purpose kitchen gadgets and collectibles and doohickies. I picked up this piebird forever ago (thinking maybe it would inspire me to bake pies. Nope).

    Piebirds were preceded by funnel-shaped steam vent crust supporters, going back to Victorian times. The piebird vents steam during baking so the juices don’t seep out or boil over, like they are wont to do with a top crust with slits cut in. Redirecting excess moisture also keeps the bottom crust from getting soggy. So in theory, you’ll wind up with flaky crusts, a top crust that won’t fall, and a spill-free oven.

    You lay down your bottom crust, then your piebird on top. Fill in around the bird. Cut a slit into the top crust, then place over the piebird (threading it through the slit) so that the crust is supported. Crimp around edges and around piebird. Bake as directed.

    I’m pretty sure that when I bought this, I thought the bird would sing while venting steam, like a tea kettle. Maybe some do but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that, and mine didn’t.

    Did it make the crust more flaky or the pie more tasty? Honestly, I don’t recall, sorry. I’ll take better notes next time. But it makes for a pretty presentation and it makes me smile to see it perched on a kitchen shelf… that counts for something, right?

     

    Thoughts on pie? Or pi?

    What’s your favorite kitchen gadget?

     

     

  • Udi’s Treats: for Halloween and Fall Indulgence

    Udi’s Treats: for Halloween and Fall Indulgence

     

    Eat, drink, and be scary.

     

    A few weeks ago I opened a box full of Udi’s gluten-free gloriousness, to be fashioned into treats appropriate for a sweet Halloween.

    I tried to hold them in reserve until closer to the big day, but some Snickerdoodles went missing early on. Someone remembered our last batch of Udi’s and couldn’t help himself.

     

    Udi's french toast

     

    The Cinnamon Raisin Bread was the next to fall— it was just too perfect for french toast with eggs for a quick dinner. (We’ll likely do breakfast for dinner again tonight, but sadly we’re all out of the Udi’s bread!) Udi’s Cinnamon Raisin Bread made for a really good French toast, soaking up a lot of egg without getting soggy, and cooking through very well. I’m not, generally speaking, a huge French toast fan but this was a good blend of sweet and hearty.

    Making up a HUGE tray of apple crisp after a trip to the local pick-your-own, I had the brilliant idea of making up a small chef portion for myself.

    • cut up one large apple; wish I had an apple corer so I could have just taken that out and cooked this in the apple itself for presentation points. Place into glass Pyrex bowl. Seriously, glass Pyrex is the bomb.
    • top with some butter, cut into small pieces
    • sprinkle a tiny bit of sugar and cinnamon over
    • top with crumbled Snickerdoodle and Udi’s vanilla granola

    Soooo easy, and it was ready in about 15 minutes.

     

     

    I had grand plans for the Chocolate Chia Muffin Tops. In the baking frenzy that preceded the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, I was going to use them as the crust for a greek yogurt pumpkin cheesecake and I was pretty jazzed about it as the centerpiece of this post. Although I couldn’t find an expiration date on the box, it seems like we waited too long to use them; there was a bit of fuzzy growth going on. Boooo when it comes to pumpkin cheesecake packed with protein and chia goodness, but yay to Udi’s for using real ingredients and not packing their treats with tons of preservatives. That’ll learn us to wait.

    When Sandy hit, the power flickered, and the kids and I stepped up to perform our sworn duty: eating all the ice cream in the fridge so it wouldn’t melt. We grabbed all sorts of baked goods to stack in parfaits; this one is Cassidy’s.

     

    Udi's parfait

     

    That’s a diced Udi’s Brownie Bite, then vanilla ice cream, then a half a broken-up Snickers ice cream bar, then a crumbled Udi’s Snickerdoodle, then more ice cream, topped with Udi’s Vanilla Granola.

    I KNOW.

    The remaining Brownie Bites were topped with a homemade pumpkin cream cheese icing (cream cheese and GNC Pumpkin Spice Lean Shake with a tiny bit of food coloring). Easy peasy with a bit of protein snuck in.

     

     

    All in all, we still love Udi’s for being supah tasty— even if you’re not adhering to a gluten-free diet.

    I definitely appreciate the way their treats can be substituted into other kid-fave recipe standbys, for when gluten-free friends come to visit. And how easily you could take a package of Snickerdoodles or Brownie Bites and turn them into something festivee for sending into the classroom as a party treat everyone can enjoy.

    What sweet thangs did you make to prep for Hurricane Sandy?

    How about for your trick-or-treat pre-game?

     

     

    Disclosure: I received these Udi’s products free for review and treat making purposes. No other compensation received, and all opinions are my own.