I got behind on posting one post, which just led to a downward spiral of not posting anything so here's quick recap of what's been happening in the kitchen the past couple weeks.
Sweetie Pie
I found a recipe for a Sweetie Pie so obviously had to try this out, I didn't even know this existed. It's basically a yummy combination of layers of chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconuts flakes, pecans and graham cracker crumbs all gelled together by pouring condensed milk over the whole thing and popping in the oven. Yes, please!
Raspberry Sour Cream Pie
Joel and I experimented with a raspberry pie recipe. To put our own twist on it we decided on making a Cinnamon Graham Cracker Crust with a raspberry sour cream filling and a cinnamon graham cracker crumble. The filling was light and airy and went well the sugary cinnamon graham cracker. The crumble on top was a little much - having it on top and bottom overpowered the raspberry filling. Next time we'll go sans crumble to highlight the freshness of the berries.
Adapted from Original Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/raspberry-sour-cream-pie/
Battle of the Crusts with Caramel Salted Apple Pie filling
Next up, I wanted to play around with some different crust recipes. I've been using an all lard recipe and have been reading about the benefits of the all-butter crust. I found two really popular recipes and decided to put them in a head to head contest against each other. Both would have the same salted caramel apple pie filling so it was a fair comparison. It was Super Bowl Sunday so I had a good excuse to just go all out!
First - the Dough.
#1. All-Butter
Many thanks to my co-worker and pie connoisseur, Isaac Holub for giving me his recipe. It was super simple to make; flour, water, bit o' salt and butter (TIP: cut in small pieces and keep C-O-L-D).
vs.
#2. Butter meets Crisco meets VODKA (yep!)
Many thanks to Smitten Kitchen for this recipe. Again, the key is to keep the fat cold, cold cold. The vodka will cook off in the oven but will provide your crust with the liquid it needs.
Now - the Filling.
I snagged this recipe from Four and Twenty Blackbirds (bakery in Brooklyn). Their trick is using a mandolin for the apples so you have layers upon layers of very thinly sliced apples with salted caramel in between each layer. This is by far the most lengthy recipe I've followed thus far, but I have to say well worth it.
Unfortunately, we had a teensy accident. Joel was so nice to give me a hand (2 different homemade crusts with 2 pie fillings in one evening was a lot, while also keeping an eye on the chili and thinking about doing Spanish homework). He was slicing the apples with a small, cheap, plastic mandolin and something slipped and he sliced off a good chunk of thumb. There was a lot of blood and we found the piece of thumb on the floor. Of course I was worried about Joel but I was also worried about my pie dough that was being left out too long in the hot kitchen:) Anyway, Joel survived and spent the rest of the evening on the couch and his thumb is healing nicely.
It was the first time I tried a lattice crust, it's like a fun puzzle with food!
I was very pleased with the final results of the pies. So then, back to the crust competition.......Crust #1 was great and Crust #2 was great! I don't know if it was a mental thing but I thought I could taste a small hint of vodka in Crust #2 so I think I'm going to stick with cold water in lieu of vodka for the future. All in all, it was a success (minus the loss of thumb....RIP thumb skin)
Salted Caramel Apple Pie ---- Again.
I was so pleased with the first ones and I wanted to try a variation on the crusts above so I took elements from each crust and made a new recipe.
I added shortening & sugar to Crust #1 (Isaac's) and took out vodka from Crust #2 (Smitten Kitchen's).
I rolled it out in between two sheets of parchment paper. Prior to parchment paper I'd just been using wax paper, but omigod what a difference this made. It was by far my most successful roll out yet. And the crust turned out great!
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