Cherry Pie

This past weekend, I took it upon myself to officially dub it as, Family Extravaganza Weekend. Aside from Father's Day, this weekend was also my Grandma's 89th birthday, as well as my brother Jason's birthday. Busy weekend, no? You could say that.

As has become customary, I asked Jason what he wanted for his birthday dessert. I had assumed that he'd ask for either a coconut cake or banana pudding. But, instead... he surprised me and willingly shared his selection with my dad. He chose Cherry Pie (which, is my dad's favorite dessert). I was pretty excited about this selection, because you see... Cherry Pie is probably one of the most favorite things that I make. And this Cherry Pie is a recipe that I came up with all on my own. Which makes it even more special to me. It's like my little baby.

Usually, I make a double crust and use an Emeril Pie Crust Recipe, but this time, I decided to try a pie crust recipe from my book Baking From My Home To Yours (which is incidentally on sale for 12.99 from Amazon right now!). And you know what folks? As much as I love Emeril, I gotta say... Dorie's pie crust was better. Tender and thick. And I made it without a food processor. Just me, a pastry blender and raw palms.

This time around, I decided to do things a little differently...
I decided to attempt a lattice top. Using this wonderful guide from Elise at Simply Recipes, I rolled my dough, cut my strips and started assembling the lattice top, using the instructions constantly.

And it turned out beautifully...

I brushed the top with heavy cream and then even sprinkled a little brown sugar on top to get a caramel-y color to the top. I then wrapped aluminum foil (that I had sprayed cooking spray on...learned that one the hard way, last time) around the edges of the pie, so they wouldn't brown too quickly. And away into the oven it went.

It was a delicious pie, if I do say so myself. And I am so excited that I gave the lattice top a try. It made for a much prettier pie that screamed "homemade with love!"

Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day!Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough
- makes enough for a 9-inch double crust -
Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
2 ½ sticks very cold (frozen is fine) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces 1/3 cup very cold (frozen is even better) vegetable shortening (non-trans fat), cut into 2 piecesAbout ½ cup ice water
Procedure

Put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade; pulse just to combine the ingredients. Drop in the butter and shortening and pulse only until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour. Don't overdo the mixing—what you're aiming for is to have pieces the size of fat green peas and others the size of barley. Pulsing the machine on and off, add 3 tablespoons of the water—add a little water and pulse once; add some more water and pulse again; and keep going that way. Then use a few long pulses to get the water into the flour. If after a dozen or so pulses, the dough doesn't look evenly moistened or form soft curds, pulse in as much of the remaining water, or even a few drops more, to get a dough that will stick together when pinched. If you've got big pieces of butter, that's fine. The dough is ready and should be scraped out of the work bowl and on to a smooth work surface.

Separate the dough and shape the dough into two disks and wrap them. Refrigerate the dough at least 1 hour before rolling. (If the ingredients were very cold and you worked very quickly, you might be able to roll the dough immediately—you'll know: the dough will be as cold as if it had just come out of the fridge.) The dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 1 month.

Once the dough is fitted into the pie plate, refrigerate it again. If you don't have time for a longish chill, just keep the pie plate in the fridge while you preheat the oven.

Cherry Pie
2 cans of Sweet Pitted Bing Cherries (14.5 oz cans)
1 can of Tart Cherries
3 tbsp cornstarch
½ cup Dried Sweet & Tart Cherries (about 3 ozs)
¼ cup Granulated Sugar
1 tbsp Butter
½ tsp Almond Extract
Red Food Coloring
Cream or milk
Pie crust for a double crust pie

Strain syrup from bing cherries and reserve juice. Strain tart cherries and reserve it’s juice separately. Combine the bing cherries and the tart cherries in a bowl with ¼ cup of the sweet juice (save the leftover juice), 2 tbsps of the tart juice, and the cornstarch; stir to blend and set aside.

Combine 1 cup of the sweet juice along with 1 tbsp of the tart juice with the dried cherries in a large saucepan. Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes on medium low heat to allow the dried cherries to plump up. Uncover and increase the heat to medium and simmer until mixture bubbles thickly and it has reduced to about ¾ cup, stirring occasionally (about another 10 minutes). Add your other cherry mixture to the saucepan mixture along with the butter and sugar and heat thoroughly over medium heat until mixture bubbles and thickens (about 3-5 minutes). After mixture has thickened, pull off heat and add almond extract and a few drops of red food coloring. Transfer pie filling to a medium bowl and let it cool completely.

After it has completely cooled, position a rack in the second to the bottom row in your oven and preheat oven to 400 F.

Roll our pie disk on a floured surface to 12 inch round. Transfer to a 9 inch diameter pie dish. Trim dough overhang to 1 inch. Put pie plate into the fridge while you roll out your top. Roll the top crust to 12 inch diameter. Spoon pie filling into bottom crust and then cover with top crust. Crimp edges decoratively (you may refrigerate pie for a little while at this point, if dough is very warm)and lightly brush the top and edges of the pie with cream lightly. (I also sprinkled brownsugar on top the crust). Make four slits in the top of the crust to allow the steam to escape (unless making a lattice top). Place aluminum foil strips around the edges of the pie to keep them from browning too quickly. Put pie on a baking sheet with a rim and place into the preheated oven.

After 25-30 minutes, remove the aluminum foil and continue to cook.Cook for about 50-55 minutes, until crust is golden.

Transfer pie to rack and allow to cool for 2 hours. Serve pie lukewarm or room temperature.

S'more Pie

The first time I had S’mores, I was getting ready to graduate college. I mentioned this fact yesterday while at my parents house for the Family Extravaganza weekend. My mom insists that I had S’mores in my childhood. She claims, at some point while we were camping.. . we had S’mores. But, let’s be honest here… I would most definitely remember the first time I had a S’more. I can guarantee you that.

So, yes, my first S’more was when I was 21 years old. There was a campfire involved… and I believe there was even a guitar… And there was lots of bossing underclassman around the park to find more sticks to keep the campfire burning. Ahhh… college life.

Anyway… Let’s just say I have some catching up to do with the ole S’mores concept.

Enter this Pie.

I’ve been trying to figure out the perfect time to make this pie… and luckily, the time came sooner rather than later. This weekend was a big weekend in my family… My brother Jason celebrated a birthday on Saturday, my grandma turned 89 on Sunday and it was father’s day! Throw in the U.S. Open final round (well… it was the final round, although the outcome is still unknown) and it was a Sunday packed full of family and celebrations.

As customary… I asked my brother what he wanted for his birthday dessert. He chose a cherry pie. Which was perfect because for one, I’ve been craving cherry pie, and two, cherry pie happens to be my dad’s favorite dessert, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone. Or… two occasions with one pie, rather. (More on the cherry pie later this week).

This is all fine and dandy, except for my brother Mike. You see, Mike is more of a chocolate lover… less of a fruit lover. So, I knew I’d have to make something else as well, that he could eat for dessert. And that’s when I thought of the S’mores Pie. I think this pie more than made up for his less than perfect birthday cake I made a few weeks ago....

It came together very easily. I didn’t make homemade graham crackers or homemade marshmallows. But, I did make the crust and the filling and then added marshmallow fluff to the top and broiled it for a few minutes to brown up a bit.

Not being a bittersweet chocolate fan, I actually used all semi-sweet chocolate in the filling and next time I make this.. I might use half semi-sweet and half milk chocolate. What can I say? I’m a sugar fiend.

This would be an awesome July 4th dessert. Quick (I made the pie the day before, chilled it and then just topped it off with marshmallow fluff and broiled it before serving), easy, and extremely tasty.

A slice also makes for a tasty breakfast… even cold, fresh from the fridge. Or, at least that’s what I hear.

Butter Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

I have taken it upon myself to dub myself as the official special occasion baker of the family. I don’t really think anyone minds so much. My mom is the only one who enjoys cooking and she’s not one for following recipes or trying out new recipes… she’s more of the “cooking” type, I suppose.

So, as the special occasion baker, I asked my brother whose birthday was Thursday, what he wanted me to bake for his birthday. My brother, Mike is one of the smartest, most creative people I know. I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of knowledge that is floating around in that head of his. He’s always been that way, too. But, aside from that… aside from the intelligence and creativity, he has a huge heart. And while it’s great to be smart and talented… having a big, open heart with lots of love to give is what I look up to the most in my big brother. For his birthday dessert, he simply asked for a yellow cake with chocolate icing. No problem.
The thing is… yellow cake is a color of cake… not a flavor! So, I waffled between a vanilla cake (which typically turns out white in color) and a butter cake (the more traditional yellow color). I finally decided on a butter cake after finding this recipe.

The icing… well, that was interesting. I wanted to make a buttercream. But, for whatever reason, like a dumb ass, I just made the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Dark Cocoa Box. Once I made it and tasted it, I decided that this wasn’t the frosting that I thought I was making… No, I wanted to make this frosting. But, I couldn’t find this recipe in my folder. This is one of those times that instead of being glad that I don’t have a computer at home…. I was quite frustrated. So, I had to find another buttercream recipe and decided to try one of Dorie’s buttercream recipes: Chocolate-Malt Buttercream. Except… I couldn’t remember if my brother liked Malt (incidentally, he does), so I left the malt out. I ended up using the dark frosting for decoration.

Anyway… long story short… This cake and frosting was a miss. The cake was dry and tasteless and the frosting was sweet and gritty (from the brown sugar). I think that not using the malt, made the frosting have less flavor, I should’ve amped up the chocolate since I was leaving the malt out.

I’ve not had a lot of luck with cake textures. It seems that I do well with chocolate cakes, they are usually pretty moist, but for whatever reason, I can’t get a really moist cake texture from any other cake. The cakes previously had still been good, but honestly… not as good and moist as a boxed cake. Which seems so weird to me. Homemade should be better, right?

The worst part is that when you bake for a special occasion you want it to be something really great. So, it sucks that my brother’s cake wasn’t really all that great. I’m not quite sure if it was the recipe or me (though, let’s be honest… the cake recipe was a 5 star recipe on Southern Living…. It must have been me), but I’m not giving up on cakes just yet.

Happy Birthday Mike! I’m sorry your cake kind of sucked.

Also…. As a side note, my blog also had a birthday of sorts… May 23rd was the one year anniversary of my blog! C-R-A-Z-Y!

For the Chocolate-Malt Buttercream

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup malted milk powder
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup boiling water
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted, butter, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
To Make the Buttercream: Melt the chocolate with half the brown sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from the heat.

Whisk the malt powder and cocoa together in a small bowl, pour over 3 tablespoons of the boiling water and whisk until smooth. Whisking the melted chocolate gently, gradually pour in the hot malt-cocoa mixture and stir to blend—it should be dark, smooth and glossy; set aside.

Working with the stand mixer, preferably fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining brown sugar and beat for 2 to 3 minutes more, until well blended. Beat in the salt and vanilla extract, then reduce the mixer speed to low. Scrape in the chocolate mixture and mix until smooth. Still working on low speed, gradually add the confectioners' sugar. When all the sugar is in, increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for a couple of minutes. Lower the speed and add the remaining tablespoon of boiling water, then increase the speed and give the frosting another quick spin. It will be light and should be thick enough to use immediately. If it doesn't hold its shape, beat it just a bit more.

Birthday Cakes

So, Friday was my birthday. 28 this year. Crazy. It's going to be a good year, though. I can feel it! I always like even number years.

So, anyway, for my birthday this year, I toyed with the idea of my cake being something kind of extravagant. Like a hummingbird cake or a red velvet cake. But, in the end, I choose my old favorite... Chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. From the box and the tub. How can something so simple taste so good? You'd think that slaving away on making a cake from scratch would produce a way more superior cake, but in my experience, it doesn't. Those boxed cakes are so moist. Yum. Thanks Mom, as always you make delicious and beautifully (avant garde-ish, I might go so far as saying) decorated cakes.

Well, anyway... it got me thinking about my first birthday cake (which I obviously don't remember, just seen pictures of it). It was a Raggedy Ann cake that my Aunt Loretta made. My cousin Steve was born on the exact same day, so he had a Raggedy Andy cake.

I wish you could see the detail on these cakes. Amazing. Check out the matching tablecloth, too.

Notice my brother and dad hamming it up for the camera, on my day. Hmph.

Somethings never change. Once a messy eater, always a messy eater.

Caramel Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

Meet my parents. They just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary a couple weekends ago and since they were out of town for the actual date, I decided to host a dinner party in their honor this past weekend to celebrate.

They have quite possibly the cutest love story I've ever heard. You wanna hear it? Okay, I'll give you the short version.

Basically, My mom was 16 and my dad was 23 and just gotten home from his stint in the army. They had a mutual friend who introduced them at the county fair. That was probably in August/September. At the time, my mom had a boyfriend, so even though the mutual friend had given my dad my mom's phone number, he didn't call her. Fast Forward a few weeks, and they're all hanging out at the town square, cruising around and whatnot. Now, my mom is riding in the car with her boyfriend, sees my dad in his car and she gives him a little wave. That wave is why my brothers and I are even here, folks. That one little wave sparked a relationship that is 40 years long and still going. He took that wave as a sign and finally called her. They were married a couple months later in January. Talk about a whirlwind romance. They probably only really dated for 3-4 months and got married. Not engaged. Married.

It's a great story. And ever since I've been little and dreamed of my future husband, I always kind of think that it's going to happen like that. That there is just going to be this immediate connection with someone, where you know it's right. I don't think it happens that way for everyone... but, I have a feeling it's going to happen that way for me. It's in my blood ;)

So, yeah, back to the dinner party. I wanted to make a cake to celebrate and I saw this cake on Jennifer's awesome blog a few weeks ago and when I saw it, I immediately bookmarked it for this occasion.
I did alter it a bit, though. Instead of making the caramel filling, I cheated and used caramel in a squeeze bottle. I squirted it over the bottom layer, put it in the freezer for a bit to harden up and then I put some of the frosting over it. I doubled the frosting to make sure I'd have enough and I still have a ton of the frosting left that I need to figure out something to do with. But, oh my god, y'all. This frosting is amazing! Honestly, the cake part sucked. It was really dry and flavorless (maybe I overbaked it?), but the frosting.... ohhhhh the frosting. It made up for the tasteless cake part. And I mean, honestly.. isn't the cake just a vehicle for the frosting?

Happy Anniversary mom and dad! Before you know it, you'll be celebrating your 50th!

German Chocolate Pie

This is April at her wedding reception... notice the look of quiet calm in Greg's eyes as he thinks... oh wow, I just married this girl and she's yelling out "wooo cheap trick."

April is my oldest friend. We met way back in 3rd grade in Mrs. Pomeroy’s class. She and I were pretty good friends off and on throughout elementary school and then I don’t think we really had any classes together from middle school until about Junior year of high school. Our Junior year, we had a few classes together and that's when the friendship really took off...

Let me just tell you the kind of relationship we have… in high school English, we would sit beside each other and everyday, I’d look at her at some point and I’d say… “April, I feel like I might have a fever… do I feel hot to you?” and she’d put her hand on my forehead and reply with whatever EVERYONE wants to hear in response to that question (and which incidentally, our moms never replied back to us)… “Wow, you do feel hot, I think you do have a fever!” And she’d say to me… “I’m not feeling too well either… how do I feel to you?” And I’d put my hand on her forehead and immediately say… “Oh yeah, you’ve definitely got a fever.” And then we’d crack up. It’s silly, but it kind of tells you something about our friendship. We trust each other and we always know what to say to make the other feel good.

I have so many great April stories, I couldn’t even begin to go through all of them… from going to see the midnight showing of the Exorcist (re-released) with winter scarves on (it was like 60 degrees outside), to making up ridiculous drinking games to sporting events… “ok, everytime they show Lou Holtz: Amy drinks and everytime they show Philip Fulmer: April drinks!” to riding around West End with finger puppets. Oh and the drinking…. Ohhhhhh the drinking we’ve done together.

And now, as adults we are closer than we were even in high school. She is my running partner (check out our running blog! 26point2ers), one of my very best friends and just a really good person. She’s someone that everyone likes. I mean, seriously, I’ve never met someone that knew her that didn’t like her.

Her birthday was November 17, but I didnt get to celebrate it with her until this past weekend. Finding a dessert to make her was a pretty easy decision. She, like me, basically likes anything and everything sweet and chocolatey. But, I knew that German Chocolate Cake was one of her absolute favorites. Now, it’s not easy to travel 200 miles with a big ole cake and with her husband not liking coconut, it wasn’t really practical to leave her with a whole cake to herself, but my mom had this recipe clipped from a magazine from forever ago for a German Chocolate Pie, so I decided to make it!

Honestly, I was less than thrilled. I envisioned a more fudge-y like pie and it turned into a more pudding-y type of pie. Which sucks, because with a great friend like April, you want it to be perfect… but I’m pretty sure she forgives me…. She’s cool like that.

April, lover of german chocolate, coconut, and pink ponies.

Happy Birthday, Ape!!!