Search Results for '("C'

[BakerAunt]

I bought a bag of organic apples (Redfree) at the Farmer's Market on Tuesday. The seller told me that they would be good for pie and would not need as much sugar as most pies. Friday evening, I baked the "Classic Apple Pie" recipe from Baking Illustrated: The Practical Kitchen Companion for the Home Baker (2004), by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine (pp. 184-185. I used my buttermilk pie crust recipe, but I used pastry flour rather than AP flour. I followed the BI recipe, except that it specifies a combination of Granny Smith and McIntosh apples. I also reduced the sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup. I increased the cinnamon from 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. I had no lemon zest and had to use bottled lemon juice. Instead of an egg glaze, I brushed the crust with milk.
I'll report tomorrow on how the pie tastes. It is still in the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

Check with the local tile and marble vendors. If there's a place that cuts marble and tile to size, they often have scrap pieces (usually where a larger piece fractured or from a sink cutout) that can be cut down to size and polished. I bought a really big piece of marble at a garage sale years ago, it was originally part of the lobby walls of a downtown building that was being remodeled, we had the marble yard cut it to fit on our 30 x 48 butcher block table. (We bought the table back when we were living in Illinois and brought with us when we moved to Nebraska.)

I have butcher block counters, so I just use those for my breadmaking. We had a nice butcher block cutting board that I think we also bought when we were living in the Chicago area that was probably 18 x 24, but it developed a crack and wound up splitting in two along one of the joints. It might have been possible to sand it smooth and reglue it, but we didn't really need it once we moved to this house in 1997, so we gave both pieces to a friend.

I have been tempted to buy a large custom cut end-grain butcher block slab, at least 20 x 30 and 5-6 inches thick so that I've got it at the right height for me, since the butcher block counters are lower (my wife is much shorter than I am) but that'd cost about $500 plus shipping.

[cwcdesign]

I checked in with The Saint before the storm hit and he said they would be OK, that they were on higher ground. I haven't heard since, but I have a co-worker whose daughter's FIL had a house in the general vicinity that got flooded. I will check back in over the weekend. He had thought he might have work on Monday (last) ?

[BakerAunt]

Since Wednesday, we have been down to one refrigerator. The energy inefficient one in the garage was picked up by the power company (which gave us a $50 credit). Today, we are supposed to get some help to move the energy efficient one we brought here. It will go into the apartment, and we will then have two until around March--which is the earliest our contractor is going to be able to start the house remodeling and complete re-do of the kitchen. We will go down to one refrigerator at that point, as the almond side-by-side will also become part of the power company's rebate program. (There is a limit of two, and they must be plugged in, running, and used to store food.) When the kitchen is finished, I'll put a new refrigerator in there, and we will be a happy two-refrigerator family again.

The upshot is that I have to be careful how much I freeze for now. I've thought of canning apple pie filling. The problem is that my husband blithely moved the canning stuff to the back of the room where we have most of our boxes piled. I hope the apple pie inspires him to help me move some things.

[Mike Nolan]

I set it up as a production line. I wash, peel, core and cut the apples a few at a time, throwing them in a big pot, then I cook the filling using the recipe I got at SFBI. I can prep around 25 pounds of apples in about an hour, less if they're on the small side. I've learned the hard way that I need to wear an apron when doing this, I've ruined several t-shirts by wearing them while peeling apples. When I'm done, there's a brown apple stain on them that just doesn't come out.

Granny Smith is my 4th choice for pie apples. If I can get Winesap, they're #1, then Braeburn, then Yellow Delicious (if fresh, they don't store well.) I've tried about a dozen other varieties, none of them were as good. (I wish the folks at U of Minnesota who developed the HoneyCrisp and SweeTango apples would come up with a pie apple, those are great eating apples, OK for caramel apples, but not very good when baked, the cell size is too large.)

Granny Smith is kind of a frustrating apple. Most of the ones in stores are picked when they're only about half-ripe, so they store well, but that affects their taste and structure. If you can find some that are riper, they'll start to show some red blush on them, those are far better pie apples.

I did get some apples of an unknown variety some years back. They were small, a bit lumpy, but made a fantastic pie! Unfortunately, the grower didn't know the variety, he said the tree was already on the farm when he bought it years ago. And I haven't seen him back at the farmer's market with them since that year, either. :sigh:

What I have learned about apples and the farmer's market is, if you find one you like, BUY AS MUCH OF IT AS YOU CAN!

[Mike Nolan]

With a pudding pie filling (lemon, chocolate, vanilla, etc), you basically have two choices for a thickener, some kind of starch or egg yolks. I usually go with the latter, it's richer.

Not sure about over-mixing, but over-cooking a starch-thickened pie filling can cause the starch to break down.

McGee (On Food and Cooking) has a lot to say about thickeners; that book is my go-to source for cooking science. I've got some graduate level textbooks on food chemistry, but McGee tends to say the same thing in somewhat simpler language.

[BakerAunt]

At the farmers' market on Tuesday, I bought a bag of organic apples (Redfree) that are supposed to be good for apple pie. In looking around, I realized that I do not have any idea where my pie cookbooks are in my boxes of many books. They were supposed to stay in the front. I will continue to look for them today, but I may need to move on to recipes from what I have on hand--standard Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens, KAF baking books, and a lot of cooking magazines.

I found a "No-Peel" Apple Pie recipe in a 2002 special issue, Comfort Cooking Recipes, from Better Homes and Gardens. I've always peeled the apples for apple pie, but of course the peel includes nutrients and fiber that would then be lost. It would save time not to peel apples.

What do people think?

[BakerAunt]

A friend and her family (she's one of my former students) live in Houston, as do her parents. I know that in the past, they have not worried about flooding, but this is different from what anyone has experienced there. I had emailed her before the hurricane hit, but I've not heard back.

I have never liked the term "100 year" flood, or drought, or whatever. I can recall in Los Angeles in the 1980s there was the "100-year drought." Then came an even worse one that only began to break last year.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

There are sites that post partial answers (at best) to questions to try to get you to sign up for their site, especially the ones with a fee. I understand why they do it, but it still is irritating.

If you over-cook a French meringue, it gets rubbery. If you REALLY overcook a French meringue, it gets solid, like meringue cookies. I suspect that does bad things to the pie.

I don't personally like adding cornstarch to French meringue, because I think it affected the taste, but maybe I added too much. Never tried wheat flour, don't know if it would even work. I suspect the meringue pies you see at the grocery store or at a bakery have some kind of starch added to stabilize them.

I've made Swiss meringue for a pie once, it's a lot more work than French meringue, but it has the advantage of being very stable and easy to pipe if you're doing multiple pies. And you don't have to bake them much because the meringue is already cooked. (You usually put the meringue on after the pie is baked.) I've seen them torched to add color highlights.

Italian meringue (the one where you dribble hot sugar syrup into the whipped egg whites), is generally not recommended for pies. I've never seen an explanation why, maybe I'll do some digging on this one.

[Mike Nolan]

I've totally forgotten about dough during first (bulk) rise more than once. Once I forgot about it for about 6 hours. I had to peel some of it off the plastic wrap over the bowl, but then I just punched it down, let it rise a bit more, then went on to shaping. Nobody noticed a thing.

I did a test once (using the Austrian malt bread recipe) where I let it rise for an hour, deflated it, let it rise for another hour, deflated it again, for a total of 4 bulk rises. It rose just fine after shaping and during baking.

[chocomouse]

Our 10 bushes are planted in a 50 foot row. My husband built a frame to support a netting. It is greenhouse shadecloth that allows 80% (I think, we bought it about 25 years ago) of sunlight through it, and we put it over the row as soon as we see the birds begin to check for ripe berries in early July. The netting is 20 by 60 feet, and all the edges are bound by heavy tape with grommets about every 5 feet, so we use huge "nails" to tack it to the ground. It goes up one side 6 feet, across the top 8 feet, and down the other side 6 feet. I can stand under it to pick. The bushes are just approaching 6 feet tall now. We had it made through a local nursery, and although it wasn't cheap, we got our money's worth in berries! Our raspberry and blackberry rows have a similar support system, with wires on the sides to help contain the branches, but no netting. We tie tin pie plates and old cds to the wire supports; their clanging and flashing light as they twist in the breeze and sun helps scare the birds away, but does not elminate their feasting. We also use "scary eye" balloons and have fake owls scattered around the garden area. To extend our season, we have 50 ft of July raspberries, and 50 ft of fall berries, which are just beginning to ripen now. Our berry supply lasts us til the next picking season, and my husband has berries on his breakfast cereal every day! Do you grow berries? Any tips?

[BakerAunt]

Mike--I was wondering if cooking the frozen fruit first would make a better pie. Thanks for the insight.

Rascals--What recipe did you end up using for your sweet potato pies?

On Tuesday, I tried a new recipe, "Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies," that appeared in the R.S.V.P. column of Bon Appetit (January 1998), pages 28 and 30. The recipe was requested from Provisions, a sandwich shop on Nantucket. According to the requester, this cookie ended her husband's "lifelong search for the perfect peanut butter cookie." I baked a half recipe, and used my trusty #40 Zeroll scoop, instead of rolling them into balls by hand. (I got 27 cookies.) The only change I made was to substitute white whole wheat flour for 1/3 of the regular flour. It had an unusual mixing technique, in that the eggs are added, one at a time, AFTER adding half the flour mixture. The other half is added once they are incorporated.

I checked it against the recipe in my old Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (1976) which is the one I remember baking the most years ago. They are close, but this one has twice as much vanilla, a quarter cup more flour, and uses baking powder rather than baking soda, and thus uses twice as much salt. The BH&G book also makes the cookies smaller, as it claims a yield of 4 dozen. I do not bake Peanut Butter Cookies too often, given that the regular peanut butter (in this case, Jiff) is not exactly healthful.

The cookies are very good, with a kind of "sandy" consistency. The peanut butter taste is not as strong as in some cookies I've had, but that is fine. I think the vanilla mellows it, and perhaps the kind of peanut butter used also affects taste.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--this is the pan I use: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/texas-muffin-pan

I usually bake six large muffins rather than twelve small ones because I know that I'm going to eat two anyway, so why grease twelve cups when I can grease six? I do, however, make the smaller ones when I have company. I also like the large top for streusel. I do have the burger bun pan. (Actually, I have two.) I'll have to give muffins in it a try.

When I use frozen blueberries, I add them frozen to the batter, then put it in the muffin pan and bake. I've had more problems with frozen blueberries as pie filling. In that case, I think that I would thaw and drain them first.

I had not realized until this year how much blueberries can vary in water content. We got to Indiana late, due to our move here, so we missed the first ripening blueberries. The ones that ripened after that are smaller and less juicy, but they actually made a much better blueberry pie. I will keep that in mind in the future when determining how much thickener to add. I also found in the past when canning pie filling that I should always put in extra blueberries, since the water content varies so much. I think that Laura pointed that out to me. I'll have to look to see if that thread is one that was saved to this site.

Ah, here it is: https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/canning-blueberry-pie-filling-thread/

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I have a very nice whole wheat blueberry muffin (on the KAF site). I confess to putting a wonderful streusel mix on top.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/100-whole-wheat-blueberry-muffins-recipe

I cut the sugar to 2/3 Cup. When I bake it as 6 large muffins, I use this streusel topping (from a recipe that came with my Texas muffin pan), and I cut the sugar to 1/2 cup, since the streusel is sweet and delete the cinnamon in the muffins:

1/3 Cup light brown sugar
2 Tbs. flour
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1 Tbs. unsalted butter at room temperature

However, the muffins are fine without the topping, and I've even reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup without the streusel. I do like to sprinkle a bit of sparkling sugar over them.

I also have one that uses flax meal. I substitute in 1 cup of either white whole wheat or regular whole wheat flour. A bit of lemon zest can be added. These muffins I finish with a little of the KAF white sparkling sugar, just to give the a bit of sparkle:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/blueberry-flax-muffins-recipe

I usually cut sugar in muffins to 1/3 cup for a dozen muffins, but sometimes I'll use 1/2 cup. For me, any more sugar makes it a cupcake.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: added information
• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

A standard depth 9 inch pie pan will hold about 2 pounds of beans, an 8 inch pie pan about a pound and a half. That's when the pie pan is empty, ie, without a pie crust or the parchment, it'll take a bit less than that when you're blind baking a pie crust.

I haven't measured my 10 or 12 inch pie pans, and a deep dish pan will take more beans than a regular depth pan, of course. You do need to fill it pretty much level with the rim.

You either need to store them in a heat-proof container or have something heat safe you can pour them into after blind baking a pie crust, because they will take a while to cool down and you want to let the pie crust start cooling by removing the beans shortly after taking the blind baked pie crust out of the oven. Some blind baking instructions have you remove the beans before the pie crust is fully blind baked, putting the pie crust back in the oven. I pour them into a big metal mixing bowl, then back in the tupperware container after they're cool. Bugs don't seem to like dried bean much, and especially not after they've been used for blind baking.

Once you use the beans to bake a pie, you don't want to cook them (like for bean soup), but you can reuse them many times. Go buy a 5 pound bag of beans at a big-box store.

Somewhere I've got some notes on how much pie crust (by weight) you need for various sizes and depths of pie pans. I don't want to lead anyone astray by guessing.