The last pie of 2010

This is my favorite apple pie. This is my favorite pie crust. This is the best instance of this pie crust I’ve ever made.

I’m sorry, I just had to state some positives to balance out what is now going to take place.

Kids, I ate everything. All of everything that exists, I ate it. I have a wedding to attend in 2 days, and….the dresses I brought don’t fit. THAT’S how much I ate. (also I’m making the wedding cake. YEAH THAT IS HAPPENING, can you not wait to hear allllll the fuck about it? because i’m pretty much never going to stop talking about it once it has been completeted.)

Also, vacation is going to end soon and then I have to go back to work. Yeah, turns out work still exists. I think it might exist, like, forever. I am telling you guys, the older I get, the less I understand. Scout’s honor that is true. What was the point I was making anyway? Oh yeah, no more pie, why am I on this planet, does anyone have a dress that will fit me, and where’s my soul at? My soul, friends. I would like it back. Happy New Year.

All-American Apple Pie
from the Pie and Pastry Bible

1 double recipe Pie Crust
2 1/2 pounds baking apples (about 6 medium or 8 cups ), peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, preferably freshly grated
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cornstarch
Remove the dough for the bottom crust from the refrigerator. If necessary, allow it to sit for about 10 minutes or until it is soft enough to roll.

On a floured pastry cloth or between two sheets of lightly floured plastic wrap, roll the bottom crust 1/8-inch thick or less and 12 inches in diameter. Transfer it to a 9-inch pie pan. Trim the edge almost even with the edge of the pan. Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of 3 hours.

In a large bowl, combine the apples, lemon juice, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and toss to mix. Allow the apples to macerate at room temperature for a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of 3 hours.

Transfer the apples and their juices to a colander suspended over a bowl to capture the liquid. The mixture will release at least 1/2 cup of liquid.

In a small saucepan (preferably nonstick), over medium-high heat, boil down this liquid, with the butter, to about 1/3 cup (a little more if you started with more than 1/2 cup of liquid), or until syrupy and lightly caramelized. Swirl the liquid but do not stir it. (Alternatively, spray a 4-cup heatproof measure with nonstick vegetable spray, add the liquid and butter, and boil it in the microwave, 6 to 7 minutes on high.) Meanwhile, transfer the apples to a bowl and toss them with the cornstarch until all traces of it have disappeared.

Pour the syrup over the apples, tossing gently. (Do not be concerned if the liquid hardens on contact with the apples; it will dissolve during baking.)

Roll out the top crust large enough to cut a 12-inch circle. Use an expandable flan ring or a cardboard template and a sharp knife as a guide to cut the circle.

Transfer the apple mixture to the pie shell. Moisten the border of the bottom crust by brushing it lightly with water and place the top crust over the fruit. Tuck the overhang under the bottom crust border and press down all around the top to seal it. Crimp the border using a fork or your fingers and make about 5 evenly spaced 2-inch slashes starting about 1 inch from the center and radiating toward the edge. Cover the pie loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 1 hour before baking to chill and relax the pastry. This will maintain flakiness and help to keep the crust from shrinking.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees at least 20 minutes before baking. Set an oven rack at the lowest level and place a baking stone or baking sheet on it before preheating. Place a large piece of greased foil on top to catch any juices.

Set the pie directly on the foil-topped baking stone and bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until the juices bubble through the slashes and the apples feel tender but not mushy when a cake tester or small sharp knife is inserted through a slash. After 30 minutes, protect the edges from overbrowning by covering them with a foil ring.

Cool the pie on a rack for at least 4 hours before cutting. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Drink & be merry

(disclaimer: these pictures were taken on my camera phone in terrible lighting, so.)

I know there’s that whole thing that people do where they joke about needing to drink a lot around the holidays so that they are able to deal with their crazy families, or whatever. I’m not entirely interested in making this post one of those stories. For one, my family isn’t that type of family–where you need to be drunk in order to handle them (mostly). If anything, you shouldn’t drink much at all, so that when your mom wakes you up at 7am christmas eve morning to go on the hilliest long run of your life (and your life has you living in san fran-fucking-hilly-mcgee-cisco) you aren’t too hungover to keep up with her. For two, I actually really like the holidays. I’m rapidly turning into one of those people who doesn’t really like Things in general, so that is saying a lot.

However, I still support drinking around the holidays because I support drinking in general. Most people are more fun when they drink (some exceptions: most guys I date), and it’s cold outside, and everybody could use a little rosiness of cheek. I don’t support getting WASTED, because there’s so much food to be eaten, and no one wants to be hungover and sick to their stomach when prune tarts are coming out of the oven. But have a shot of eggnog, yeah. With, like, way too much bourbon in it because your dad was in charge of making it.

I’m discovering I’m somewhat of an inverse-grinch. I find most of the year miserable and exhausting and stressful, and I enter some sort of blissful state around Christmas where everything seems ok. It’s possible that incredibly boozy eggnog is to blame. In which case I encourage you all to drink up. Drink up and be merry, because it’s Christmas. I’d try to say something more touching about being grateful to be alive and all the joys of love and that kind of shit, but I actually don’t have a soul, so. You know. That just isn’t happening. Merry Christmas anyway!

Spiked Eggnog
from Pithy&Cleaver who adapted it from my main squeeze Alton Brown

4 eggs, separated
1/3 c plus 1 tbsp sugar
2 c whole milk
1 c heavy cream
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt
1/2 c bourbon

Beat the egg yolks and 1/3 c sugar in a large mixing bowl until they’re thick and pale yellow — i.e., formed the ribbon.
Over high heat, bring the milk, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt to a boil, and then remove from the heat.
Temper the yolks with the hot milk mixture by adding the milk a little bit at a time, whisking constantly, to avoid whipping up a batch of Scrambled Eggnog.
Pop the mixing bowl over a small pot of boiling water and whisk away, until it’s too hot to touch. (Mr. Brown would say “Until it’s reached 160 degrees,” but based on mousse-making experience, I find the touch-test to be a quick substitute.)
Remove from the heat, stir in your bourbon, and put in the fridge to chill.
Beat your egg whites to soft-peak, add the remaining tbsp of sugar, and then continue to beat until they form stiff peaks.
Whisk the egg whites into your cooled yolk mixture, and serve. Feel free to use your cutest novelty cups, and top with a dusting of cinnamon and/or nutmeg.

Lazy brunch

I don’t make brunch often, which is not representative of the way I feel about brunch. I have a long history of loving the shit out of brunch, but nowadays we can’t just saunter down to the dining hall at noon on a sunday to discuss where we may or may not have spent the night and exactly what part of the puking in the bar bathroom we did or did not recall. Life was simpler back then.

Now we have to make brunch ourselves, or go lay down like 20 bones on it at some fancy mimosa-serving type place. But mostly I prefer to make it myself. I know my Sunday mornings are not usually particularly productive. I’m not exactly up with the first light of day. So, when our apartment hosted a Holiday Brunch last weekend, we tried to do as much as we could the night before so that the morning of wasn’t a crazy hurricane of eggs and pancakes and whatnot. I can see this being a good tactic for Christmas, or the day after, or some other lazy day you want to wake up and be decadent without getting your early morning hands dirty.

Well the bad news is that the morning was still a crazed hurricane of stress, somehow, but we’re not entirely sure how. I spilled some stuff and broke a plant and guests came on time and coffee was being hurriedly brewed, so I think that had something to do with it. The good news is that these 2 baked french toast recipes were totally baller. Minimal prepwork the night before and and an easy shove into the oven the morning of. They baked up crisp and caramely on top, delightfully mushy inside, and were even better the next day, cold.

I much preferred using challah to brioche, but it also might’ve just been that I liked the NY Times recipe (which is not the one pictured) better than the other one. The little bit of almond extract is downright genius. These pictures are pretty much the worst, but I was way too busy eating everything that came into my line of sight and drinking about 8 glasses of hot apple cider to take photos.

Most of the time they’re pretty lousy anyway, and furthermore, some other excuse!! Oh shit I have a turkey in the oven and the basting timer just went off. Sorry guys, gotta run to take care of some of this meat juice. Ah, if I had a nickel for every time I said that…

Morning Bread Pudding
from the New York Times

Time: 1 hour plus overnight resting

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons butter
12 to 15 slices brioche or challah bread (all should be about 1/2-inch thick and about 3 inches round; cut accordingly)
8 eggs
1/4 cup mascarpone cheese
1 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup coarsely chopped toasted almonds
About 3/4 cup fromage frais or fromage blanc, for serving.

1. In a small, heavy saucepan, combine 3/4 cup sugar and butter. Place over medium low heat. The butter will melt and the sugar will dissolve; it will boil for a few minutes, then begin to brown. Adjust heat and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon so that it browns evenly. When it reaches a dark brown, remove from heat and pour into the base of a 9-inch ceramic or Pyrex pie dish. Swirl the caramel around the base and 1 inch up the sides of the dish. Place dish in refrigerator and chill until caramel is cold.
2. After chilling, place heel of bread in center of dish (or two slices stacked on top of each other). Then arrange slices, standing them against one another, around center. They should fill the pie dish snugly. In a large bowl whisk together eggs, remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and mascarpone cheese, until very smooth. Add milk and almond extract. Pour this over the bread, making sure to saturate all of it. Cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight.
3. In the morning, take pie dish out of refrigerator and discard plastic wrap. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Bake pudding 15 minutes, then sprinkle almonds over pudding. Continue baking until moist but not wet in the center, about 15 to 20 minutes more. Remove from oven and run a knife around edge of dish, loosening bread from sides. Place a serving plate over top of dish (bottom side up), and, using potholders, hold pudding over sink and in a single fluid motion, holding it away from your body, invert plate. Lift off pie dish. Scrape any extra caramel from pie dish over pudding. Serve, cutting it into wedges at the table and spooning a healthy dollop of fromage frais onto each plate.
Yield: 6 servings.

Deep Dish Brioche French Toast
from Leite’s Culinaria

Butter for greasing pan
One 24-ounce brioche loaf, cut into 1-inch cubes
One 8-ounce package cream cheese, cut into 18 cubes
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1/2 cup raisins
8 large eggs
2 cups milk
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of cloves
4 tablespoons melted butter
To serve
Powdered sugar
Pure maple syrup, warmed

1. Generously butter a 9-x-13-inch baking dish. Place half the bread cubes in a single layer, filling in all the gaps. Evenly scatter the cream cheese cubes, nuts, and raisins on top. Cover completely with the remaining bread cubes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Evenly pour the egg mixture over the bread cubes. Gently press down on the cubes with your palms to allow the top layer of bread to absorb the liquid. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate four hours or overnight.
3. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Meanwhile, remove the dish from the refrigerator and let sit 20 minutes at room temperature. Bake the French toast covered for 20 minutes; uncover and bake 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until the cubes are nicely toasted and there’s no liquid puddling on the bottom. Transfer the dish to a rack and drizzle the melted butter on top. Run a knife around the rim of the pan to release the French toast. Let sit 5 minutes. Cut into squares, arrange on individual plates, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve along with the warmed maple syrup.

How to do everything wrong at once

Also known as, How Katrina Makes Marshmallows.

It’s not that I’m any stranger to doing things wrong. It’s not my official M.O., but, well. Unofficially, I kind of have the doing things wrong market cornered.

Do you ever wonder why people don’t really make their own marshmallows all the time? I have wondered this in the past. I wonder this no longer. There is a very good reason that people don’t make their own marshmallows. It is because homemade marshmallows are FOR CRAZY PEOPLE.

I am also no stranger to being a crazy person. I am. I am a crazy person who does most things wrong. But, you know, somehow I am not the type of crazy wrongdoer who can abide by making homemade marshmallows. This shit is ridiculous.

First of all, cornstarch and powdered sugar. Everywhere. Every-the-fuck-where. All over my clothes, my hair, everywhere. Every crevice it could work itself into, it was in.

Second of all I set something on fire. Again, not my first time. But this time it was like, REALLY AFLAME, and I didn’t know what to do, and my instinct was to drop it on the floor and stomp on it, which I did, but which was very scary and not terribly efficient.

Third of all my sugar mixture was like NOT getting to 240 degrees. I was cooking it and cooking it and cooking it and it was just sitting around 210. And it was bubbling and starting to smell like it was getting REALLY cooked and i was like, wtf is up? Then I realized…it wasn’t passing 212 degrees AKA 100 degrees Celcius AKA boiling point. And THEN, I looked inside the thermometer, and sure enough there was a tiny tiny tiny bit of water near the bottom, boiling, sitting on the damn heat measurement ball. So I poured it out and then I stuck it back in there and sure enough I had boiled my sugar to 350 degrees at that point, which is WAY TOO HOT. But I was so frustrated that I said, WHATEVER, and I poured that way too hot sugar into my gelatin and hoped for the best.

Well, perhaps the best happened. That is, if you think the best is the stickiest thing you’ve ever touched in your entire life ever and you have touched like every sticky thing ever because you’re one of those people who touches everything. Seriously this was insane. It was unrelentingly and equally sticky to everything it touched. I couldn’t even handle it. At one point I just screamed and screamed and screamed, and from down the hall my roommate screamed back, “are you turning into a werewolf?” Oh and then I broke my candy thermometer washing it. Just for good measure. Measure, thermometer, GET IT?

Anyway the point is, fuck homemade marshmallows. Because they’re so fucking good. Like, honey and vanilla bean flavored and fluffy and fucking perfect. So it’s like TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to just spend the 99 cents on the store-bought ones and swallow your pretension and be a normal person for once in your goddamned life.

Bah.

Honey Vanilla Marshmallows
from Joy the Baker

1 cup cold water, divided
3 1/4-ounce packages unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup honey
2/3 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
half of a vanilla bean, seeds scraped out and reserved
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup powdered sugar

In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and powdered sugar.  Spray a 9×13×2-inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray and coat with  the powdered sugar and cornstarch mixture.  Set both aside.

Pour 1/2 cup cold water into the bowl of a stand mixer fit with a whisk attachment.  Pour the three gelatin packs over the cold water and let sit for about 10 minutes.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring sugar, honey, corn syrup, salt and the remaining cold water to a boil.  Stir to dissolve the sugar.  Attach a candy thermometer the the side of the pan and bring mixture up to 240 degrees F.  There’s no need to stir the mixture, just let it get hot hot hot!

When the sugar is heated to 240 degrees F, turn the mixer with the gelatin and water on low speed.  Carefully stream the hot sugar mixture into the bowl and the whisk moves.  Be careful onto to pour into the whisk and spatter the hot sugar all over the sides of the bowl.  Gradually increase the speed of the mixer until you’ve added all of the hot sugar mixture.  Beat on high for several minutes until a thick, fluffy, white marshmallow batter has formed… about 8 minutes.  Pour in the vanilla extract and vanilla bean and beat for another 2 minutes.

Spread the marshmallow mixture into prepared pan and smooth with a clean, wet spatula to prevent sticking.  Top marshmallow with corn starch and powdered sugar mixture and let set and rest for at least 4 hours, or overnight.

When  set, remove marshmallow from the pan and place on a large cutting board coated with cornstarch and powdered sugar,  Use a pizza cutter, coated with non-stick cooking spray to slice marshmallows.  Once sliced, toss the cut marshmallows in the cornstarch and powdered sugar and store in an airtight container for up to one week.

A cake as a cushion

Ever bake a cake to use it as a cushion for the pie you baked that needs to travel 3000 miles across the country in an airplane?

No? That’s not a Thing?

Well, this ginger cake deserves a better title than “pie pillow,” but I must confess that was maybe 50% of its purpose. The other 50% of the reason I made this cake is because I had exactly all of the ingredients required, and my ginger was probably best used before I sauntered off to the east coast for almost a week to celebrate my favorite holiday.

This cake should under no circumstances be eaten without fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Not that it isn’t lovely on its own, but the heights to which a bit of unobtrusive dairy propel it to, well, it would be a sin not to go there.

So listen I know Christmas and Hannukah are coming up and it’s like Baking Time America, but I might take it easy for a little while. I don’t know, maybe I’ll make some challah or something, I’ve been needing to master that (for my future endearingly-neurotic Jewish husband, or for when Jon Stewart decides to get divorced and shack up with me). And of course once I get home I’ll need to help my grandmother make our traditional Czech cookies. And I mean in general I’m sure I’ll find myself making more baked goods, but I’m just not going to plan it into my week like I usually do.

I know this is like the worst news you’ve ever heard in your life, but with some years of therapy I think you should be able to work through some of these tough emotions.

Fresh Ginger Cake
from A Homemade Life

In a bowl mix together, then set aside:
1 Cup Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt

In another bowl stir to combine:
1/4 Cup Unsulphered Molasses NOT Black Strap
1/4 Cup Sour Cream
4 Tbsp Melted, Butter cooled slightly
1/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar firmly packed
1 Large Egg
1 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
1/2 tsp Lemon Zest

Add flour mixture and stir until just combined.  Pour into a greased 8″ round pan.  Spread evenly.  Bake in pre-heated 350 oven for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.