December 21, 2011: Chocolate Caramel Pecan Turtle Pie Recipe

This recipe – which would make a wonderful holiday dessert – is courtesy of my dear mother-in-law, Judy. It’s special enough for Christmas dinner and the combination of ingredients will please the chocolate lovers as well as the traditional dessert lovers in your family.

Chocolate Caramel Pecan Turtle Pie

Filling:

1 14-ounce bag vanilla caramels

½ c. butter

½ c. heavy whipping cream

2 cups pecan halves, roasted

Chocolate cookie pie crust or regular pie crust, blind baked

Topping:

1/3 c. semisweet chocolate chips

2 T. butter

2 T. light corn syrup

½ t. vanilla extract

Prepared whipped cream topping

To prepare filling: add caramels, butter and cream to a heavy, medium-sized saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring often with a whisk, until caramels and butter melt. Remove from heat and whisk until completely smooth. Stir in pecans.

Pour mixture into prepared pie crust. Cover and chill three to four hours, until completely cooled and firm.

To prepare topping: stir chocolate chips and butter in a heavy, small saucepan over low heat until melted and smooth. Remove from heat and stir in cream, corn syrup and vanilla until thoroughly blended. Pour over chilled pie and chill an additional hour. Just before serving, decorate with dollops of whipped cream.

Serves 10

October 12, 2011: French Apple Pie Recipe

What’s National Apple Month without a recipe for that favorite American staple, apple pie? Although my husband isn’t big on desserts or sweets of any kind, he absolutely adores apple pie. This is one time he didn’t mind me cooking for my blog – he couldn’t wait until I got to apple pie!

Apple pie is really one of the simplest desserts you can make. There are very few ways you can go wrong, other than under-baking or perhaps not using enough flour so that the filling is too runny. If you don't care for the streusel topping in this recipe, simply substitute with a top crust; brush it with a bit of milk and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

I did invest in an apple peeler/corer machine a few years ago and it certainly makes apple pie preparation much, much easier. If you plan on baking a lot with apples, I highly recommend these simple devices. In addition, baking weights and pie crust protector rings are very handy gadgets for the pie baker.

French Apple Pie

Topping:

4 ounces (1/2 stick) butter

½ cup flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

½ t. cinnamon

Filling:

3 cups peeled, sliced baking apples, such as Granny Smith (about 4-5 medium)

2/3 cup sugar

¼ cup flour

½ t. cinnamon

½ t. nutmeg

2 T. butter

Pastry for one 9” pie crust (find my pie crust recipe here)

Combine all topping ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly.

For filling, mix together sugar, flour, cinnamon and butter in a large bowl. Add apple slices and toss to combine. Place in pie shell (if you want it to look professional, carefully place overlapping slices in concentric circles). Cut butter into small pieces and distribute evenly over top of apples. Sprinkle topping over pie filling.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 50 minutes, or until apples are tender (check with tip of a knife in center of pie).

Tip: Your apple pie filling may overflow; place a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil on the bottom rack of your oven before baking to catch drips.

October 11, 2011: Streusel Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Are you starting to think about your Thanksgiving dinner menu yet? It might be early for some of you, but I start planning weeks in advance for my favorite holiday of the year! Of course it’s my favorite because I enjoy cooking and Thanksgiving is a great excuse to spend two solid days in the kitchen preparing yummy food my family loves eating.

Since I had lots of pumpkin after canning three large ones at the beginning of this year, I decided to try a new recipe with some of my pureed pumpkin stash. This one came out quite nice, but did take a long time to bake. Will this be the pumpkin pie that makes it onto my Thanksgiving table this year? Hmm…I’ve got a few more recipes to try out before making the final decision.

Streusel Pumpkin Pie - I used white sugar in the streusel topping because I ran out of brown; that's why the topping is very light colored here.

Streusel Pumpkin Pie

One pie crust (find my pie crust recipe here).

Filling:

¾ cup packed brown sugar

½ t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

1 t. ginger

¼ t. allspice

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1 t. grated orange rind

2 cups pureed pumpkin (or one small can pumpkin)

1 can evaporated milk

Note: You can also use 2 t. pumpkin pie spice in place of the other spices listed.

Blind bake the pie crust in a 9” pie pan as directed in my pie crust recipe.

Combine all filling ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk well. Pour into prepared pie shell. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking 30 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with topping:

Topping:

4 ounces (1/2 stick) butter

½ cup flour

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

½ t. cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly. After sprinkling topping on pie, return to oven and bake another 15 – 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in center of pie comes out clean. Note: The recipe called for only 15 final minutes of baking but it took a full 30 minutes for my pie to be fully cooked.

October 10, 2011: Pie Crust Recipe

Over the weekend I made a couple of different pies and of course I made the pie crusts for them from scratch. I’ve used several different recipes for crusts but found this one to be the best for support heavy fillings. It’s a bit denser than you might expect but it is easy to roll out and doesn’t tend to break apart so it’s a good recipe for the beginner pie maker.

Pie Crust

3 cups flour

1 t. salt

8 ounces butter flavored Crisco (half stick)

1 egg

1 T. sugar

1 t. vodka

Cold water

Combine flour and salt. Add shortening and cut into flour mixture with a pastry blender or two knives, uncles mixture resembles coarse meal. The smaller the particles of shortening, the more tender your crust.

Combine egg, sugar, vinegar and enough cold water to make one cup of liquid. Pour over flour mixture. Mix with a fork just until combined. You may have to add more water to get the mixture to hold together; it will still be somewhat crumbly, however.

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface. Turn a pie plate upside down over dough and trim edges to one inch larger than the rim of the pie plate. Fold dough in half and gently ease it into the pie plate. Use your fingers to crimp the edges.

Tip: If your recipe calls for blind baking, place a piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the crust. Add baking weights or dried beans and bake at 425 degrees for about 10 – 15 minutes. The parchment paper makes it easy to remove the weights when you take the crust out of the oven.

Makes enough for two 9” pie crusts.

June 27, 2011: Rhubarb Custard Pie

The other dish that reminds my father and I of my mama and her cooking is rhubarb custard pie.

When I was growing up in Wisconsin, we grew rhubarb in a big patch behind the garage, in the shade. I remember playing with my friends from the neighborhood and daring each other to see who could eat the most rhubarb raw. If you’ve never tasted raw rhubarb before I can tell you it’s at least as tart as a lemon with a texture resembling that of a raw potato. In other words, not good… not at all! But we were kids and I guess it was something to do to pass the time during those hot summer days.

Each summer we had lots and lots of rhubarb and Mom’s favorite way to use it up was by making this pie. It’s still one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I never got Mama’s recipe written down but my friend Kathy shared this one with me and I give it a big seal of approval as being really close to what Mama used to make.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

One recipe pie crust
4 cups chopped rhubarb
3 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup flour
¼ t. nutmeg
½ t. vanilla extract
Dash salt

Prepare pie crust and place it into pie pan. Gently place the chopped rhubarb into the crust. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs. Add remaining ingredients and pour over rhubarb in pie shell. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes; then reduce heat to 300 degrees and bake an additional 20 – 30 minutes, until set. Cool completely and store in refrigerator before serving.

Notes: I ended up baking this pie far longer than the recipe called for - a good additional 20 minutes. I would recommend increasing the beginning temperature to at least 350 degrees. I would also increase the flour to 1/3 cup as it came out a bit runny (but still delicious).