Summer of Pie: Fresh Strawberry Pie

After indulging in episode after episode of Pushing Daisies I finally rolled out my first pie of Summer of Pie! We were going to a family celebration, Birthdays and BBQ, the tradition that started last year where the whole family gets together and celebrates everyone birthdays, eats BBQ (of course!) and each family brings a cake or pie. It excessive and deliciously fun!

This year I contributed a fresh strawberry pie. I searched recipe after recipe and found that the best liked pies had jello in them, an ingredient I wasn't willing to use. I opted to make a glaze out of pureed strawberries, water and corn starch. It turned out ok, but because of the pieces of fruit/seeds it wasn't super smooth and glossy and the lack of red food coloring left it rather pink in color. The flavor was good though and the layer of cream cheese whipped with lemon juice and powdered sugar balanced the sweetness of the fruit. I wouldn't say I've mastered the fresh strawberry pie just yet, but it was a pretty good attempt!

The recipes for the pie filling I used can be found here. The modifications being I kept the strawberries whole to prevent the pie from becoming too wet, and half the water called for in the recipe was replaced with pureed strawberries.

I used this pie crust recipe, which happened to be my first time using lard (which I found a little intimidating!) and it resulted in the best crust I have made to date. I partially credit Amy Thielen for this because after watching an episode of Heartland Table (which I love, love, love!) I realized I have been adding too much water, touching it too much, and not allowing it to chill before rolling it out.

To take the edge off the sweetness of the pie and add a little richness I decided to whip up the block of cream cheese I had in the fridge with the juice of half a lemon and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar. I spread it into the bottom of the crust before piling the strawberries in and I think it made the pie extra tasty. I opted to forgo the whipped cream and instead drizzled dark chocolate over the top and pipe the remaining bit of cream cheese filling on top to hold my whole strawberry in place.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of this sliced because the view of the red berry atop the creamy layer of cheese nestled into a flaky crust was beautiful! I couldn't get said picture because my plate my have been piled high with a bit of each treat that was brought...
I told you it was excessive and delicious!

A peak at Birthdays & BBQ 2015:

Blueberry Apple Butter

I often make family members my taste testers when I try out new recipes and one of my favorite games to play is to pull out all of my fruit butters and jams and make them try one after another... while I watch... and analyse what they think by their expressions... and ask a million questions. It makes them a little uncomfortable. Weirded out yet? They are actually pretty good sports about it and I give them the goods to take with them so I like to think it's a win-win. My favorite is when I announce, "this one is blueberry apple" and almost every time I get the response, "I don't really care for blueberry." I persuade said person to try it and guess what- it's pretty much the favorite of everyone who has tried it!

I love smothering a fresh baked biscuit in this sweet butter, the girls want it on their pancakes (They win today!) The deep purple color is so pretty and the flavor is outstanding. I have to make sure to hide spoons when I pull it out because my girls eat it by the spoonful!

Ingredients

Makes approximately 7 cups

7 pounds of apples, cleaned and quartered
4 cups blueberries
Juice of one lemon
2 cups sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground clove
1/8 tsp allspice

Directions

In a large pan combine apples, blueberries and lemon juice. Heat covered over a med-low heat until juices start to appear in bottom of the pan. Turn heat up to medium and continue cooking until all fruit is soft and easily pierces with a spoon, stirring occasionally. Once fruit is tender remove heat and process through a food mill, discarding skin, seeds, and tough pulp from the core. Place processed fruit into crockpot and add remaining ingredients, stirring well. Heat on high uncovered until fruit has reduced by half. Stir occasionally to keep from burning along the top edge as it reduces. Fill 8 oz mason jars and process in a water bath for 5 minutes or allow to cool and store in the refrigerator. 

Note: For a smoother texture I run the finished butter through the blender.


Breakfast time!

 

S'mores Pie

We celebrated the much-anticipated 5th birthday of my lovely Amelia with this pie/cake last night. She blew out the candle, made her wish and smashed her fingers into the gooey marshmallows, squealing with delight! I found this treat in Southern Living Magazine via Pintrest (I'm a skeptic of recipes found there, but searching down the original recipe from a legit source eased my worries.) Starting with the original recipe, I modified it a bit to omit nuts and I wanted the golden brown marshmallows to be the visual rather than the chocolate frosting.

The result was a rich, moist, brownie-like filling inside a buttery, crunchy graham cracker crust topped with chewy, toasted marshmallow. The flavors are so good! The only down side was in order to get the filling fully cooked the graham cracker crust gets very browned. I think if I were to make this again I would use half the amount of filling to keep it from over browning as well as to cut down portion sizes. It is a tasty pie, but the richness makes a small piece sufficient!

Ingredients:

Graham cracker crust
 
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (about half a box)
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, melted

Filling

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup butter
4 oz semi sweet chocolate bar

Topping

3 cups miniature marshmallows

Directions:

Heat oven to 350
Mix crust ingredients together until combined and press firmly into the bottom of a 9" spring form pan, taking them about 1 1/2-2" up the side. Set aside.
In a double boiler melt butter and chocolate until smooth. Remove to heat and allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile combine sugar, flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl. Whisk in eggs, vanilla and chocolate mixture. ( I added a small amount of chocolate at a time to help temper the eggs and keep the warm chocolate from cooking them.)
Pour into prepared crust and bake for 60-75 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan. Just before serving move oven rack to lowest position and set broiler to low setting. Top the cooled pie with marshmallows and place in broiler until preferred browning is achieved. Remove outer ring and serve immediately.

After cooling the marshmallows become hard and chewy, making leftovers less appealing. I served the leftovers the next day and opted to remove the marshmallows and start with fresh, toasting them in the broiler as before.

I came across this recipe while planning a shared party for birthdays. What cake would be more appropriate for a bonfire party than a s'mores cake? That, coupled with the fact that my children are marshmallow fiends, made this cake a no-brainer for me. I knew I wanted to make a layered cake that looked a little rustic so I thought that maybe I could pull off using it for the party. It turns out this wasn't the best choice in cake for the party because it is best eaten immediately and the cool temperatures outside turned the marshmallows tough. It was very pretty though (I placed marshmallows closer to the edge so they would spill over) and the kids were impressed regardless! We made round two on Amelia's actual birthday and enjoyed it fresh from the oven in all its toasty, gooey glory!

Apple Bread

Once upon a time there was a girl who had grandiose plans to turn out recipe after delicious recipe from the bounty of hand picked apples she carried into the house. There would be pies, glorious pies! No two the same and why would there be? With all these delicious apples every recipe should be tested and tried until a masterpiece was created. There would be sauces and fruit butters to cook with and enjoy on morning toast. There would be baked apples and poached apples, caramel covered and rum soaked. Every form of apple goodness!

Once reality set in this girl quickly changed plans and decided to find some good basic recipes to use up these apples. After all, when you bring in 400+ pounds of apples you are looking at some serious time in the kitchen! This apple bread recipe was born during the time of baking, tasting and trying again until it was right. The combination of diced apples and apple sauce make for the best flavor and texture. Throw in a little cinnamon and nutmeg you can't go wrong!

I still love trying out a new recipe when our fruit is freshly picked and my kitchen isn't overwhelmed by basket after basket of fruit, it is always exciting to create something new and tasty. I also have a soft spot in my heart for basic staple recipes, which is what this has become in our house. After spending days cutting, coring, slicing and saucing apples it usually signifies the end of processing apples and the beginning of fall. I love to sit down to the first loaf fresh from the oven and do a little taste testing with my girls, after all the best part about a loaf of bread is sharing it with someone!

The Recipe

Makes 2 loaves

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon 

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup oil

1/2 cup apple sauce

3 cups diced apples (about 3 med apples)

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp sugar

Directions

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans and set aside. Combine flour, salt, baking soda, 2 tsp cinnamon and nutmeg. In a large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla, eggs and apple sauce. Add flour mixture and stir just until combined. Fold in diced apples and divide between loaf pans. Mix remaining cinnamon and sugar ans sprinkle over the top of each loaf. Bake for 65 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then turn out of pans and allow to cool completely. 

We already have a loaf wrapped up and ready to take to grandma's house!

This recipe is shared at Homemade Mondays

Pear Butter with Mulberries

What do you do when you have more ripe pears than you can eat? Make pear butter of course!

I have made pear butter a few times now and it has become a favorite around here. I shared a basic recipe that is tried and true, but this time I mixed it up a little and threw in some juicy mulberries we tucked into the freezer this summer. Why mulberries? Well because mulberries are very good for you! (That and Marinn asked that I make it purple.) Fruit butters are one of my favorites to make because they are fairly simple recipes and when you let your fruits condense down into a thick, creamy butter you get so much flavor in every bite.

Once again I had some wonderful people share their fruit with me this year so I started with fresh, ripe pears that were locally grown. It doesn't get better than that!

Pumpkin Spice Syrup

I like a Pumpkin Spice Latte as much as the next girl, but I've never felt the urge to rush out and buy them the second they release them (Which happened to be in AUGUST?! Can't we finish one season before we start the next? Do we always have to be so rushed to "get on top of the next thing?" Do we really have to have Christmas items on the shelf in JULY?!? End rant.)  I also never felt the need to recreate the sweet treat at home. (I save those extra calories for special occasions like spending too much money at Target. See how that works- Excess with excess?) That was before I was growing my own pumpkins. I ended up with an early harvest of pumpkins this year that I baked up and pureed to use for baking later this year. The thing with baking pumpkins (you can read more about that here) is you have to let the puree drain for nothing short of an eternity to end up with the right consistency for baking. While I was waiting for my pumpkin to drain, sipping a cup of coffee, the idea hit me: why not use all that pumpkin-y goodness that I drain off to make my own syrup for my coffee? (or anything else I can think of to put it on for that matter.) So that is what I did. I took all that lovely, golden colored juice and I heated it in a pan with sugar to create a simple syrup and I added some pumpkin pie spice to make it especially tasty. Heaven in a cup I tell ya! But I only had two cups because it's not fall and I plan on savoring the last days of summer!  Oh but in a couple of weeks... there will be so much pumpkin! So. Much. Pumpkin.

Mulberry Crumb Cake

When I think of mulberries I think of the summer after fourth grade. We lived in a house with a mulberry tree in the back yard and my sisters and I assembled a 'mulberry factory' out of pieces of an old swing set. We climbed up into the tree and sent fat, ripe berries tumbling down a shoot and into a bowl resting at the bottom. We were so proud of our creation and our lovely harvest! No one seemed as excited about it as we were though. My mom was displeased with the berry stains and no one was certain if we should actually eat them. We did what any other school age child would do and smashed the berries into the driveway, spelling out our names.

Many years later I of course learned that you can in fact eat mulberries. After finding a mulberry tree at the back of our property I looked into it a little more and learned just how good those little berries are for you. High in many vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, iron, potassium, and vitamin K, all of which hold great health benefits, it's a no-brainer adding these into our diets. (You can read more of the heath benefits I learned about here and here.)

We picked until our hands were purple and I even stuck my sister up on the ladder to relive our childhood. We picked about 10 cups of berries over the course of a week or so, picking only the ripe berries each time. It was the sweetest thing watching my girls work together to pick only the purple berries and try to fill their bowl! Most of the berries went into the freezer for later use but I couldn't resist whipping something up with a few of them!

Mulberry Crumb Cake

Baking Pumpkins

My mother-in-law took Amelia to the Red Barn Farm for a little Nanny/Amelia date. She came home telling me all about the baby animals they saw and the hayride they went on. She also came home with two pumpkins; one for Amelia, and one for Marinn.

I'm sure these were intended to be for decorating for Halloween, but every time I looked at them sitting on the table I had visions of pumpkin whoopie pies dancing in my head. After about a week of refraining I got Amelia on board with the idea of cooking one up to see how it tastes.

Cooking a pumpkin is really simple! Much like the squash we cook, we simply washed it well, cut it in half and baked it face down on a baking sheet in an oven heated to 350. The only difference is with the pumpkin you scoop out the insides and add a half cup of water to the pan to make sure it doesn't dry out. (I used a melon baller to scoop it out and it made quick work of it.)

Simply bake until soft, about 45 minutes. You should be able to easily push a fork into the meat of the pumpkin. (Time will vary depending on the pumpkin size, however keep in mind that smaller pumpkins are better for eating.) Once it is cooked, remove from pan and allow to cool. Scoop the meat out and puree to use in pumpkin recipes! I found that my puree as a little thinner than the store bought so you may need to adjust your moisture content in some recipes.

Each of our small pumpkins made 3 cups of puree. It can be stored in the fridge up to one week or the freezer for longer storage.

Also, don't throw away the insides you scooped out until you remove the seeds for baking!

For toasted pumpkin seeds rinse them in cold water and soak them in a bowl of salt water over night. Drain the seeds and spread onto a baking sheet and allow to dry. Toss them with a little olive oil and sea salt and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until crispy.

We made some with a little chili seasoning mixed in that were a hit! I also tried soaking the seeds in chai tea (I hate throwing away the tea bags after one use because there is still so much flavor in them, so instead I steeped them again and used them here.) and I tossed them in olive oil and cinnamon sugar. They were a little bitter, however I think adjusting the cinnamon to sugar ratio will solve that problem.


Updated 11/15/2012

 Yay! A fix to the watery puree problem!

My pumpkin bread recipe was an easy fix when it came to the thin puree, simply cut back the water. Whoopie pies however were not so easy. I ended up mixing in an extra 1/2-3/4 cup of flour to get my batter thick enough to bake correctly. After this many years of making them, I have become quite accustom to having them made a certain way so I was less than impressed with the results.

Before going round two with the pumpkins we are preparing for Thanksgiving I decided to hit up the web for some ideas on how to fix the issue with the fresh pumpkin being watery in comparison to the canned. There were a couple of ideas so I did both, which resulted in a much thicker puree.

Fix #1
After baking the pumpkin until soft flip them cut side up and continue baking for an additional 20 minutes. This allows some of the excess moisture needed for the pumpkins to cook evenly to cook off a bit before you puree it.

Fit #2
Place pureed pumpkin into a mesh strainer and allow excess water to drain off. This step took a lifetime, but I ended up with a cup of water drained off of each pumpkin I cooked