Sarah Tries to Make a Pie

I've always found pie incredibly intimidating. It takes so much work, especially the crust. And then if it turns out lousy, it's like a total waste of time, and you have a crappy pie sitting around your kitchen. My husband is also a pie snob. In college, he had to take bakery science classes, and now he's very "academic" when it comes to pie crust. This is another reason why I'm apprehensive about making a pie, because he's better at it than me. I don't like that.

Anyway, I got it into my head to make one after reading the current issue of ReadyMade magazine. There was a feature on Emily and Melissa Elsen, the sisters who own and bake at Four & Twenty Blackbirds cafe in Brooklyn (another place to put on my list of places to visit in NYC.) When you see the picture of these girls, you can just tell: these girls know now to make a dang pie.

See all the recipes featured here.

Cranberry Sage Pie from the ladies at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, via ReadyMade

Cranberries are in the grocery store now, so when I saw this recipe in the article, I thought I would give it a try.

So my first issue was making the crust. Dustin is working nights right now, so he was asleep during the day while I was doing this, unable to "help." Left to my own devices, I had a really hard time getting the butter pieces small enough. After a while I gave up because it was getting too warm anyway. I know I'm getting a blender for Christmas, so soon I'll just be able to mix my flour and butter the Alton Brown way, a few pulses in the blender and you're done!
Anyway, I labored through the crust. It's one of those things where you know it's wrong as you're doing it but it's too late to turn back.

I'd also never chopped up sage before and I was curious about how fresh sage would smell/taste with the cranberries. It was really REALLY fragrant and I was worried it would be too much in the pie. But I can't even taste it in the finished pie, so who knows? There's also just 1/8 + 1/2 cup sugar in this recipe which I feel like is relatively low for a pie, especially since cranberries are so tart and tangy.

And they are tangy, too. The recipe suggests serving with a generous scoop of whipped cream, and I don't know how you could eat it without it. After spooning all the filling into the crust, there was a lot of juice left in my mixing bowl, and I know that's where all the sugar ended up.



Oh well, I think it looked pretty. Not like a pie in a fancy bakery, perhaps like a pie that your great great grandmother made in her wood oven and your great great grandfather put in a lunch pail in the morning before he left home to go work his ass off. Yeah, it looked like the pie of badassness.

Sweet Potato!

I took a baking hiatus for a while because I got a part-time job at JoAnn Fabrics (YAY!) Now that I got the schedule down and the holidays are so close it's like they're IN YOUR FACE, it was time to get back in the kitchen! When I found some cute cupcake papers on clearance, it was decided: I'm making cupcakes for Thanksgiving!

Sweet Potato Cupcakes from Better Homes and Gardens BHG.com

First of all, I halved this recipe to test it out on my family this weekend, before taking it on the road to the in-laws. Only I didn't notice at first that it calls for 3 eggs -- how do you split 3 eggs?! I went with 1 whole egg PLUS 1 yolk. The texture of the cupcakes turned out fine, so it worked out.
Secondly, this recipe calls for canned sweet potato, but something possessed me to make my own. Why do you learn how to multiply fractions in 5th grade? So that you can bake! I had to figure out the volume to weight equivalent for the sweet potatoes. I ended up just using 1 cup in the halved recipe.
The other problem with the sweet potatoes was that I peeled, cubed, boiled, drained and mashed them, which I think wasted a lot of the flavor in the discarded water. Next time, I'm going to peel and cube the potatoes, then bake them and mash them. I think that will enhance the flavor. This batch was a just little weak.
Can I just say that mashed sweet potatoes are the most delightful orange color? They're just great.
I made the cream cheese icing per the instructions, but instead of the orange peel I just put in some orange extract. While I think the flavors go well together, I put in too much and since the sweet potato flavor was too weak, it was a bit overwhelming.
I'm glad I did the test batch, though. Bringing underwhelming baked goods to the in-law's Thanksgiving is a party foul in my book. I will be making these again on Wednesday!

Here's the million dollar question: Why is it so hard for me to take an in-focus picture?!

Update:
When I remade these to take to the in-laws, I baked the potatoes instead of boiling them. This is definitely the way to go. The flavor of these were so much better. Also, I nixed the orange flavor in the frosting, and only used a little bit (meaning not the the mountain of frosting common on cupcakes). This offered just the right balance between creamy and sweet potato. People liked them, but not many got eaten since there was so much food!!!

Scandinavian Blondies have more fun!

Scandinavian Blondies from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

At first I was looking for a peanut butter cookie recipe, but most of the ones I was liking called for 3-5 sticks of butter. I didn't have that much in my fridge and I didn't feel like going out to buy more since butter is kind of pricey at our grocery stores right now. The next time it goes on sale, I'm stocking up. I went through the cookbooks and turned to this recipe from King Arthur Flour. It was one of those serendipitous things as is not only used only 1 stick of butter, but it needed 1 cup of sugar, which is exactly how much I wanted to use up from the old bag before refilling the container, AND we had some sliced almonds that really needed used up.

The instructions for this recipe are very descriptive. For example, first you beat the eggs until "light colored and thick" and then add the salt and sugar and mix until "shiny and pale yellow." I felt these instructions were helpful, but I can see how people might think, How thick is thick? or Is this shiny or just glossy? I tried not to worry about that too much.

I went the route of the almond and vanilla extract (1/2 tsp each) variation on the bottom of the page. Almond extract is just delicious. And still had a very satisfying almond flavor so I wonder if the full 1 tsp standard in the recipe might be too much. I put the almonds on top and then added my own little thing -- some nutmeg and cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top. YUM!

After I got the batter in the pan and put it in the oven, my husband asks, "What almonds did you use?" I told him I used the ones he got from the Nifty Nuthouse that were in the cupboard. "Well did you try them? Because they might have been rancid. Nuts have a high fat content and they go bad quickly blah, blah, blah." I think the better question would be WHY WOULD YOU BUY ALMONDS, NOT DATE THEM, AND KEEP THEM IN THE CUPBOARD FOR SO LONG THAT THEY COULD BE ROTTEN!?! This is why old women are so territorial about their kitchens - Their husbands are always hiding potentially rancid food in them! But no worries, the almonds were fine.


These bars were really easy and very yummy. I maybe should have monitored the oven temp a little more or gave them an extra minute, because they were very very moist and soft, even after cooling. The almond flavor was perfect and these are so good that you could eat half the pan and not realize it until it's too late!

Cute Crafty Canisters

My husband purchased these glass canisters before we got married, and I've never been thrilled with them. There's no rubber gasket around the lid to prevent the glass from chipping into your flour! But I saw this super cute craft project in my ReadyMade magazine and I thought I'd give it a try.


This project uses glass etch cream to label glass containers in the kitchen. I got the bottle of glass etch at Hobby Lobby and it was like $9 for the smallest bottle. Now, unless I go crazy and decide to etch all the windows in my apartment (the landlord would LOVE that), I'll never use up this bottle. But still, $9? I used a coupon. You know I'm thrifty like that!

The hardest part of this project is cutting out your stencils. I'm not super great with an X-ACTO knife, so when I was at a local scrapbooking place (*shudder*) using their gear, I used their die-cuts on the contact paper to make my letters. Then all I had to do was peel the backing off, line up my stencils, and apply the etch cream.

I think they turned out pretty cute, and overall it was a really easy project. Yay!

"C" is for Cookie, that's good enough for me!

Chocolate Chip Cookies #10 from I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking, by Alton Brown

It was time for some cookies, you know what I mean? So I flipped to this recipe from Alton Brown's baking book. A couple interesting things about this recipe:

First, Brown organized this book by mixing method, rather than categories like pies, cakes, cookies, etc. He explains that most cookie recipes use the "creaming method," where the fat is creamed with the sugars. However, this recipe was under the "muffin method" section, which from what I understand means that the liquid fat (in this case, melted butter) is blended with the other wet ingredients, then added to the dry ingredients.

Second, Brown lists his recipes in a SUPER scientific way, with the ingredient info organized in charts, and the instructions in concise steps. He lists ingredients by weight and volume, however he strongly recommends using the weights. I don't have a kitchen scale so I was stuck with the volumes.

This recipe calls for what I consider to be a lot of butter, 2 sticks (1 cup), which when compared to the amount of dough it makes, seems like a lot. However, this butter is not wasted and creates a very rich cookie. Normally I can throw down cookies like nothing, but these are so filling that I could only have 2 with a glass of milk (and these were small cookies by my standards.) There is so much butter in these cookies that there is no way they would ever stick to the pan. They literally just slid off when slightly bumped.

If you've read my previous posts, you know that I've had salt problems. The problems being that we didn't have the right kind of salt!! This was adversely effecting the quality of my baked goods. So I picked up some regular old iodized salt and THANK GOODNESS. If I had ruined these cookies with the wrong salt it would have been an unforgivable travesty.


Like I said, it was time for some cookies, and these were delicious. Great out of the oven (or reheated for a few seconds in the microwave) with a glass of ice cold milk. YUM!

Buttermilk Biscuits

I had some buttermilk left over from a hapless attempt at making buttermilk pancakes. So I thought I'd try my hand at that baking staple - buttermilk biscuits.

Buttermilk Biscuits from Baking at Home with the Culinary Institute of America.

With the advice of Alton Brown, I put all the ingredients in the freezer for about 30 minutes so they would be nice and cold when it came time to mix. The butter was so cold that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to mix it in to the specified "pea size" but I guess I managed it. After adding the milk to the dry ingredients, the dough was sooooo sticky. I thought it was over and that I had messed up big time. It took a LOT of dusting with flour for it to get to a manageable point. Then it actually rolled out pretty easily, I just kept dusting it.

I have no biscuit cutter, so I turned a 3-inch custard cup upside down and used that. It worked OK, but next time I think I'll use a washed tin can because it will cut through the dough better. Once again, the inconsistent oven temps gave me trouble. It was set to 425, but when I was about to put in the 2nd tray, it was somewhere between 475-500. DANG!

The biscuits looked really pretty. I brushed the tops with milk as the recipe suggested, and I don't know how that effects their browning. It was neat to see the definite difference between the first batch and the second (re-rolled from scraps) batch. The second were much flatter, almost squished-looking.


Here's the problem that's sending me to the grocery store: I've got the wrong salt. My husband thought that grinding up sea salt would be the same as the table salt you could use for baking. NOT SO!! And I've since heard that sea salt granules are actually a different shape than table salt, so it sticks to the food differently. This definitely explains why these biscuits as well as the pumpkin bread I tried before just seemed a little bland.

Anyway, I think it's time for some cookies, so I need to pick out a new recipe!

Goldie's Back!

Well, I meant to start my baking last Monday, but old Goldie had different plans. I preheated her to 375 per the recipe for Pumpkin Bread, but then noticed that the fiber seal that goes around the inside of the door was melting off into the oven. Party foul, Goldie. However, I suspect that the oven cleaner I sprayed her down with the week before (probably the first used on this oven in several years) somehow compromised the fibers in that seal. Luckily I had only gotten as far as the dry ingredients, so I just covered the bowl and set it aside until YESTERDAY, when Goldie has been refurbished. SO here's the recipe report:

Pumpkin Bread, from Baking at Home with the Culinary Institute of America.

I was so excited about this recipe. What says October-Fall is here-cool crisp air-leave your windows open like Pumpkin Bread?! And, as a "quick bread" (meaning no yeast), I figured it would be a good, simple bread to begin my self-taught baking journey.

When I had finished combining the wet and dry ingredients, I was a little worried about the consistency of the batter. I was expecting it to be a bit more viscous but instead it seemed rather stiff. More like a choc. chip cookie dough and less like a cake batter. The only moisture in this recipe were the pumpkin puree, eggs, and vegetable oil, so I guess that's how it was supposed to look. Also, the recipe was supposed to go into two 8 1/2 inch loaf pans, but I only had one and that filled just fine, so I left it at that.

My oven also did not want to behave. Goldie was set at 375, but when I checked her before putting in the bread, she was all the way around 425. UGH. So we waited while I set her a bit lower and left the door open for a while. Finally got the bread in, and set the timer for 50 minutes. After the timer went off, guess what? The oven was too cool now. And when I checked for doneness, I didn't observe any of the "few moist crumbs" noted in the recipe, but the crust looked good, so I only put it back in for 5 more minutes.


Upon the taste test, I was a little disappointed. I think I expected it to be much sweeter, but it does only have 3/4 cups sugar. However, the inner texture and crust were good. If I made this recipe again, I think I would add another 1/4 cup sugar, and maybe even experiment with using butter instead of vegetable oil. Mmmm.... butter.