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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.
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/
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 temperatureHowever, 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.
Skeptic7--Are you trying to blind bake the crust so that you can remove it from the pan, or is the issue that the crust is collapsing during the blind baking? If it is the second, I've had good luck using a large commercial coffee filter to line the pan and filling it with beans. I follow the Cooks Illustrated directions for blind baking in terms of time, so I lift the filter out after a certain point, and then complete the bake. The large coffee filters were a KAF suggestion in a thread on the former baking circle. I was able to buy part of a box at a kitchen supply store. I will likely not blind bake enough crusts to use up what I bought.
Avoid those ceramic "pie beads." I tried them one year, and they get too hot and mess up the crust. I've not tried the metal pie chains, but they might cause a similar issue. In this case, low-tech is best and certainly a lot cheaper!
Friday afternoon, I baked a version of the Vienna Bread that Antilope posted on the now defunct KAF site. I play around with it by adding whole grains and substituting in some honey and buttermilk. I'm not sure what I did today, but the dough was dry, and that was before I was to mix in the rest of the flour and the salt. I ended up adding more buttermilk and holding back some of the flour. I've tried baking this recipe in various pans. It's great for one of those 3-section baguette pans, which is the pan for which he developed his version. I've also baked it in an 8-inch round pan as a boule, and in a 10x5-inch pan. This time I baked it in the Kaiser 12x4-inch pan, so I have a long loaf. I'm hoping it will work for BLTs, as I was able to score some nitrate-free bacon when we went on a grocery run to the larger town north of us, and the farmers' market has lately had some wonderful tomatoes.
