Day Twenty Five: Tis the Season

I’ve started the grand cookie adventure again. I’m looking for a few good cookie recipes so I can make up some cookie gift bags for Christmas.

I stumbled into this recipe last week from some comments on another blog (no idea which one, but the author was looking for a way to get moist cookies). I bookmarked it because it looked interesting, and I’ve given it a few tries this past week.

Basically, the recipe is the same as the Tollhouse recipe except that you add a small box of Instant Pudding after you cream the butter and sugar together. The first time, I tried the recipe as written on the main page with Vanilla Pudding and dark chocolate chips. They look really good, don’t they? My first bite, I almost spit the cookie out. WhatsHisFace couldn’t get enough of them though. I checked the comments on the recipe, and several folks suggested adding salt and more vanilla (and sometimes a little baking powder). I tried salting the last three sheets of cookies, and it seemed to help a little bit.

So I decided to try it again. I used a Chocolate Fudge pudding mix, peanut butter chips, and I added the salt, baking powder, and a Tablespoon of vanilla. This time, the pudding mixed up with the butter and sugars into something not unlike cement. I kept going though (because I’m stubborn like that).

It turns out that the Vanilla pudding was the 3.4oz size recommended in the recipe. The Chocolate Fudge pudding (same brand) was 3.9oz. The mixing directions for the pudding called for the same amount of milk, but the puddings obviously mixed up differently in the cookies.

I didn’t think I could add liquid at this point, and I decided to try baking one batch to see how dry they came out. They totally fooled me. The cookies came out moist, fudgy, and with just the right amount of peanut butter. I could have eaten about a dozen of them. So I went ahead and baked the entire batch. The only problem was that they dried out as they cooled. By the time I got them onto the plate and tried one, they’d turned into something about one step up from a hockey puck. (Okay, not quite that bad, but nothing like the fantastic cookie straight out of the oven.)

So I’ve got some more experimenting to do with this recipe before I’ll add it into the rotation or decide to scrap it. My first instinct is to try the Chocolate Fudge again, only holding some of the dry pudding mix out. Or maybe adding some peanut butter like one of the commenters suggested.

Day Thirteen: Wrapping It Up

And the grand finale: apple butter!

This is a twofer for me. I’ve never made apple butter, and I’ve never canned anything either. Neither one turned out to be difficult at all. And the apple butter is pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

We should have added a little more sugar probably, but I had some on toast the other morning. Mmmmmmm…. appley!

We sorta, kinda followed this recipe. Basically, you just put homemade applesauce in a crock pot with some spices and sugar. Cook it on low with the lid canted to let the steam out until it gets to be the consistency that you want. We ended up cooking it probably 12 hours, and I used an immersion blender to smooth it out. There wasn’t enough to fill my new 5 quart crock pot, so the splatter was minimal.

The canning part seemed to go well. We filled four 8oz jars, and had enough left over for probably another one if I had bought enough jars. Only one of them didn’t seal (the one I opened for the picture above), so it’ll go in the fridge. I guess we’ll find out if we did the canning right when we open the other three.

Now I’ve got the canning bug though. I think we’re going to try bread and butter pickles using a recipe from WhatsHisFace’s grandmother next. Anybody have any other good recipes for canning?

Yeah, I Know

I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. WhatsHisFace asked me the other day if I was nesting. I just seem to be in a cooking and baking mood these days.

I haven’t even posted the failures. At least I’m taking the results to work for the vultures my coworkers to eat.

Day Twelve: Homemade Applesauce

After the two pies, we had a huge amount of apples left over. We decided to try making some apple butter, but the first step of that was to make applesauce. The picture to the right is the first batch of sauce. I ended up with double this amount from about 8 pounds of the apples.

I found a recipe over on Simply Recipes that looked pretty decent. I’ve copied the recipe below and made my changes so I have it for later.

The applesauce came out wonderfully. It was a bit tart since I kept the sugar closer to a quarter of a cup. I figured that I could adjust the sugar and spices while making the butter. I had no idea that the homemade stuff would taste so much better than any of the store bought brands I’ve tried.

Applesauce

3 to 4 lbs of peeled, cored, and quartered apples.
1 tsp dried lemon peel
Juice of one lemon
3 inches of cinnamon stick
1/4 cup of dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar (can use up to 1/2 cup of white sugar)
1 cup of water
1/2 teaspoon of salt

1. 1 Put all ingredients into a large pot. Cover. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
2. 2 Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon sticks. Mash with potato masher.

Day Eleven: Me-Oh-My-Oh Pie (oh?)!

Updated: I posted this on the right day, but forgot to change the date from when it was created (11/10) to when I posted it (11/11). Stupid Blogger.

Again, my food photography skills are weak, sorry! And my oven is cooking uneven but I didn’t know that until after the pie came out. I’ll be rotating things from now on, or using the convection setting I suppose.

I got the recipe years ago from my college roommate. It was an old family recipe. Most folks who see it for the first time are a little hesitant (that’s shredded cheese in the crumb topping), but almost everyone who tries it is a fan. I remember my Mom putting a slice of cheddar cheese on top of her pie years ago, and we used to eat cheese and apples as a snack. This recipe combines it all into the pie.

Give it a try, but be prepared for folks to bug you to make it again and again.

Apple Crumb Pie

Filling
5 Cups of Apples (cored, peeled, sliced)
2/3 cup sugar
dash salt
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup flour
Instant Pie Shell or unbaked homemade crust

Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter (softened)
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Mix filling together, pile high in pie shell.

For the topping, combine the sugar, flour, and salt. Cut in butter, then mix in cheese. Dot over the apple filling.

Bake at 425 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Notes:

• Slicing the apples uniformly and on the small side allows all the apples to cook through. I usually use Granny Smith apples, but I think it made a better pie with these apples. I might experiment with some other sweet/tart apples in the future.
• It helps to have the butter only slightly softened. If it’s completely room temperature, it seems to be harder to work up the crumb.
• I use a pie shield to keep the crust edges from getting too brown.

Day Ten: Starting Out

One of WhatsHisFace’s coworkers has an apple tree in his yard. He brought us a big bag of apples – maybe 15 or 20 pounds. I’ve got no idea what type of apples they are, but they’re tart and sweet. And just about half of them had various bruises and spots like in the picture. It made for slow going since I couldn’t pull out my Pampered Chef apple peeler, corer, slicer thing.

I used them to bake some pies and make up a few other things. I’ll post those pictures coming up along with the recipes.

By the way, sorry about the blurriness. The picture looked fine on the camera view screen.

Alton Brown’s Swiss Steak

I really gotta work on my food photo skills. Trust me – it tasted a lot better than it looks.

We were struggling with what to make for the friends on Saturday. I was wrestling with the stomach thing and it was winning. So I couldn’t cope with the whole grocery list, menu thing. WhatsHisFace trolled the freezer and located 10 mystery steaks * and we remembered seeing an Alton Brown Good Eats show where he made Swiss Steak. We had all the ingredients, so the game was on.

I’d add more garlic the next time, but other than that – it was very tasty. Add a salad and some mashed potatoes, walla – dinner.

* He bought a meat package a while ago and we lost the inventory sheet. The steaks were 1/4lb a piece and individually frozen. We had no idea what they were – hence mystery steak.

Alton Brown’s Swiss Steak

I really gotta work on my food photo skills. Trust me – it tasted a lot better than it looks.

We were struggling with what to make for the friends on Saturday. I was wrestling with the stomach thing and it was winning. So I couldn’t cope with the whole grocery list, menu thing. WhatsHisFace trolled the freezer and located 10 mystery steaks * and we remembered seeing an Alton Brown Good Eats show where he made Swiss Steak. We had all the ingredients, so the game was on.

I’d add more garlic the next time, but other than that – it was very tasty. Add a salad and some mashed potatoes, walla – dinner.

* He bought a meat package a while ago and we lost the inventory sheet. The steaks were 1/4lb a piece and individually frozen. We had no idea what they were – hence mystery steak.

Shortbread Cookies (Again)

Turns out Hubby isn’t a big fan of maple. So I decided to try the Maple Shortbread Cookies recipe only substituting some other flavorings. The only ones I had in the cupboard were vanilla and almond extract. Since it’s snowing again and it was crazy out there yesterday with everyone doing last minute shopping, I decided to make do with what I had.

They both turned out pretty tasty, but I didn’t use enough flour in the vanilla batch. The maple extract was a little thicker than the vanilla or almond extract, so I needed to add another tablespoon or so of flour to keep the cookies from spreading.

So if you’re not a fan of maple – give them a go with an extract of your choice. Just add a little more flour, and you should be good to go.

Oh – and I used light brown sugar this time for both batches. It makes a lighter cookie which goes better with the lighter almond and vanilla flavorings.

Shortbread Cookies (Again)

Turns out Hubby isn’t a big fan of maple. So I decided to try the Maple Shortbread Cookies recipe only substituting some other flavorings. The only ones I had in the cupboard were vanilla and almond extract. Since it’s snowing again and it was crazy out there yesterday with everyone doing last minute shopping, I decided to make do with what I had.

They both turned out pretty tasty, but I didn’t use enough flour in the vanilla batch. The maple extract was a little thicker than the vanilla or almond extract, so I needed to add another tablespoon or so of flour to keep the cookies from spreading.

So if you’re not a fan of maple – give them a go with an extract of your choice. Just add a little more flour, and you should be good to go.

Oh – and I used light brown sugar this time for both batches. It makes a lighter cookie which goes better with the lighter almond and vanilla flavorings.