Chai Pi

Last year in honor of March 14th or Pi Day (remember Pi is 3.1415), I made several pies. In fact, I made so many pies I was too tired to blog about it. I made pecan, apple, lemon pudding and pumpkin pies. We also ate pizza (pie) for dinner. 

It was so fun I decided I HAD to make pie again this year for March 14th. This was also a great time to work on my new baking quest: making a dessert with just a little sugar on top. Fruit pies don't use that much added sugar anyways (except for lime or lemon) and after a year of making pies, I felt confident it was going to go well. I felt so confident that I looked at a few recipes and then made my own.

Except...the crust wasn't as pretty.

Last year my Pi decorated apple pie was super cute (see it close up below). I thought it was so cute, I made it the background on my Facebook page.

For some reason this year, the Pi symbol I tried to put on it moved around on me in the baking process and ceased looking like a Pi and more like the word Chai. 

Chai the Hebrew word for "life" and you pronounce it while bringing up phlegm from the back of your throat. That's why I named it the Chai Pi. 




Anyways, the Chai pie turned out fantastic! The crust was flakey. The filling wasn't too runny. You could tell that it was not as sweet as my regular apple pie, but it was delicious. Most importantly my husband with diabetes loved it!

I guess life does taste good! ;)

Now Bake That!

No really, heres' the recipe:


Betsy's Sugar On Top Apple Pie

Crust:
2/3 cup + 2 tbsp butter, diced and chilled
1/2 cup almond meal
1 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp kosher salt
6-7 tbsp ice cold water

Filling:
6-8 apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp orange juice

(optional) Topping:

1 tsp Turbinado sugar (a.k.a. Sugar in the Raw)

Method:
Dice up the butter and then put it on a covered plate in the freezer. Fill up a cup with ice water and let it chill. Measure the dry ingredients (almond meal, flour and salt) and pulse it in the food processor. Add the butter and pulse again until it's coarse crumbs. Measure your ice water. Then with the processor running, slowly add the ice water until the dough balls up on one of the sides of the processor.  Stop the processor right away. Take out the dough, flatten it into a disk. Handle the dough  as minimally as possible. Place the disk in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 400. Peel, dice and core the apples. Toss the apple pieces in the cornstarch and spices. Then toss the apples in the orange juice. Set aside.

Pull your dough disk out of the fridge and split in half.  Roll the dough and place the bottom crust in a pie pan. Fill the pie with the filling. Roll out the top crust and place on the top of the pie. Trim, fold and pinch the edges. Score the top of the pie. Using aluminum foil, make a crust shield and cover up the edges of your crust. Sprinkle top with turbinando sugar.

Place pie in the oven. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 and bake 40 minutes. Pull off your crust shield and then bake another 5-7 minutes more. Let pie cool for an hour before serving. 

New Year's Resolution take 4: Sugar on top!

I'm back!!! 

The reason I haven't been blogging is I started to feel very guilty that I was baking all these awesome desserts that my husband with Diabetes shouldn't be eating. I still baked, but it was mostly for holidays, potlucks or I brought the sweet stuff to work (much to the frustration of those dieting).

I toyed with making sugar-free desserts, but I had a big problem. I don't like fake sugar and it doesn't like me back. I find most alternative sweeteners to be disgusting/icky after taste, make my stomach hurt and/or they give me a migraine. 

So I'm taking the middle road. My New Year's baking resolution for 2016 is to make desserts that are (mostly) sweetened with fruit and to make it taste amazing, put a little of something sugary-sweet on the top!

I started my new journey with Banana Oat Bars. (click the link for the recipe) The recipe recommends some optional mix-ins. I choose to add ground walnuts to the batter for some protein (carbs+protein is a good plan for anyone with blood sugar issues) and my sugar-on-top ingredient was mini chocolate chips.

The recipe can easily be adjusted to be made paleo, kosher parve, vegan, gluten free and nut free. You could also skip my sugar-on-top option and be on the clean-eating wagon. Whatever works for you.

The reason to make these bars:
1. I could give them to my kids for breakfast -- guilt free!
2. They tasted like gooey banana bread. Nuff said.

Now Bake That!

Blazing hot blueberries

Another month, another type of donut. At the end of July, I wanted something summer-y. Seasonal. I selected sour cream-blueberry drops. I know, "drops" sound like candy or cookies. Really they are donut holes. Blueberry filled, cinnamon flavored donut holes.

Like last month, I used the recipe book: Donuts by Elinor Klivans. 

I had some issues with the dough. It ended up really dry. I just mixed in some milk until the dough was not so dry. Actually, the dough was super sticky. I tried to use a metal spoon to scoop it out as directed, but found it easier to use a cookie sized, ice cream scoop. You shove three blueberries in the middle, making sure the dough completely covers the blueberries so they don't make a suicide jump into the oil while you fry them.
Then pop them in the oil for a little swim and afterwards, sprinkle them in powdered sugar.

They ended up absolutely fantastic, but just to warn you….the blueberries are blazing hot! Like little blue fire bombs. When you get over burning the roof of your mouth, they tasted like sweet, fried, blueberry muffins. 

I made a batch of plain ones next and they were excellent too. Then I figured cinnamon flavor would be really good with butterscotch chips. The next batch I traded out the blueberries in one batch. You guessed it. Blazing hot butterscotch! Also amazing.

Now Bake That!

Why cupcakes should be fried

We had friends come over game night. Yes...we be geeks here. I have mentioned it before...but for new readers, my husband plays Dungeons and Dragons. Old school. Supported by dice, books, character game sheets and imagination. I honestly don't play. Yet I don't escape the geek label at all, I just prefer my role playing games with computer graphics. I'm a visual person. Anyway, game night is just as much about throwing dice to defeat monsters as being foodies. Seriously, there are more posts back and forth on Facebook figuring out what to eat than figuring out the date we are playing, which house and who is going to DM (for non-gamers, that means be the dungeon master, but a verb).

When one of my gaming friends found out I was making donuts this year, she gave me two donut cookbooks. This month she requested chocolate and bacon donuts for game night, so I yanked out of the books she gave me.

I have to be honest though. I am getting tired of this quest already. I could bake cookies every day if I didn't have such a full schedule, but making donuts is quite the production. It requires extra set up and the clean up is insane. I mustered up some motivation, but I was starting to feel like that half-asleep guy from the old Dunkin' donut commercials. Time to make the donuts....

I made the buttermilk cake donuts from this book: Donuts by Elinor Klivans

Once I took a bite I realized something. These donuts remind me of something else I love...yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. It is sort of the same thing. But it's FRIED cake with chocolate glaze and then guess what? BACON. or sprinkles.












I also used a new oil this time, safflower oil. Which is supposed to be sorta-healthy and good for frying. The results: the donuts were not greasy! Finally! 

Now bake that!

Hush up for hush puppies!

I know that hush puppies are not *technically* donuts. If you haven't guessed so far, I do take family requests for food to heart. So when my husband asked for hush puppies, I couldn't, just couldn't, say no.

Though I don't agree with her personal/political views, Paula Deen does know how to make something fried. I used her Hush Puppies recipe off the Food Network website. 

They were okay. I don't think it was the recipe. I think I just don't like onions in my cornmeal. I also thought they could be more crispy. Next time I will make them smaller and forget the onions.

Now Bake That!

Long John Junior Bacon

Once again, Saveur magazine was my guide to this month's donut adventure. I made mini Long Johns with bacon or... 

Long John Junior Bacon! Sounds like something I would get at Jack n' the Box or something.

I hear you ask, why mini? Simple. I wanted to try them various ways. Some with custard filling, some without, some glazed with chocolate, some with maple glaze, some with bacon, and some without. 

First things first: THEY WERE AMAZING. I was very sad when I realized that I was done making them. Second, I can't think of one good reason not to put bacon on them. Even if you have to have turkey bacon, tofu bacon or kosher beef bacon, they were perfect perched on top of the donut. Crunchy, salty with sweet and chewy.

As for the recipe, it was a little weird compared to other recipes so far. I had to melt crisco with boiling water. I also used a whole packet of yeast, which seemed like a lot for a batch of donuts. They didn't even rise that much. I only use one teaspoon with several of my bread recipes and it turns out great. I'm thinking I can cut back on the yeast for  raised donuts too. 

The best tip was for how to fill the donuts. I used a skewer and poked two holes on opposite sides of the donut, pushing the dough inside to the edges to make a well. Instead of using a pastry bag to pipe in the filling, I used my cookie press with the decorating tips. The press looks like a caulk gun. Not just for bathrooms boys and girls! Anyway, the main reason I use the press is I think makes it easier to control. In addition, I'm a mom of boys, it is just a whole lot of fun to shoot food from a caulk gun.

The Maple Glaze recipe was also from another section of the very same Saveur magazine. My glaze turned out paler compared to the picture in the magazine, so I must of did a poor measuring job or something. Not that it mattered, it was still delicious. The maple flavor is subtle. It is more of a maple aftertaste, which was perfect with the bacon! Didn't overpower it. Just FYI, the recipe makes a lot of glaze.

My friend and I brainstormed other good uses for that leftover maple glaze. She came up with cinnamon rolls, french toast or drizzled on bread pudding. All wonderful ideas. I just grabbed some graham crackers I gave those a whirl. They were yummy.

Now Bake That!

Another good old college try

My parents are visiting this weekend and though I have already tried old fashioned donuts, my mom told me that was her favorite. I had to try again. Maybe this time I will get it right.

I scoured the internet for a different recipe. I just couldn't find one that I wanted to try. So I decided to give the same recipe another go, (Old fashioned sour cream doughnuts) but instead of peanut oil that I did in January's adventure, I did canola like I did in February. I also came up with a plan. I would try it rolled, non-rolled, refrigerate first and non-refrigerated. I would try two different glazes (the one that came with the recipe and my family recipe.)

Trial 1: rolled, non-refrigerated: The donuts didn't look right. The glaze recipe that it came with was my mom's favorite. I liked the family version.
Trial 2: not rolled, non-refrigerated: I formed the donut with greased hands instead of rolling. This time the donuts looked right. 
Trial 3: Not rolled, refrigerated: They tasted similarly, it was just easier to shape by hand.
Trial 4: Not rolled, refrigerated, higher temp: I was wondering if I upped the temperature from 325 degrees to 350 would help the flavor. It didn't seem to matter.

None of these adjustments seemed to help too much. I didn't like them again. They were a little greasy. However, by the last batch, they looked pretty!

Now Bake That!