And the Thanksgiving pies will be...

...a pumpkin pie and a cranberry caramel tart!

How can we not have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving? And I have really wanted to try the cranberry caramel tart from the Williams-Sonoma Pies and Tarts book.

This photo from Williams-Sonoma advertising their Emile Henry Pie Plate has inspired me to embellish my pumpkin pie. Don't worry there will be photos. This is a bloggable Thanksgiving with edible bacon salad bowls, two turkey two-ways and more. I've already set the table ( I know, it's only Tuesday) and you can see it on our Foodspiration blog.

A Tale of Two Pies: Granny Hearts Gruyere and Inverted Pumpkin Pie

There were two pies that I recently wanted to bake. One was a recipe I had heard about and one was a recipe that I wanted to make up. The pies were:

1) Granny Hearts Gruyere: apple pie with a gruyere cheese crust

2) Inverted Pumpkin Pie: a cream pie with a whipped pumpkin topping. I have been experimenting with foams and this pie was inspired by deconstructing a pumpkin pie and putting whipped cream as the pie base with a whipped pumpkin topping. The crust was a gingersnap pecan crust. This pie was my first molecular gastronomy inspired dish-more coming soon.

Here's how they went.

Granny Hearts Gruyere

I got the recipe from this website and I couldn't figure out why her pie didn't look very fluted.

I incorporated 56g of grated gruyere cheese in the crust and 20 tbsp of butter!

The crust was actually quite easy to handle and I didn't chill it overnight as recommended.

I made two fall leaves to go on top...

and fluted the pie quite nicely.

I soon discovered why the original baker of this pie didn't have a fluted result. The cheesy crust baked and bubbled and totally lost its fluted shape. It smelled amazing and still looked great.

I used granny smith apples in this and if I did it again, I would add more sugar. It was too tart and the flavors just weren't perfect. Also this pie should probably be eaten warm when the cheese crust is fragrant. We ate it the next day and it was just ok. It was an interesting experiment though! Perhaps the filling needs one more compatible ingredient...hmm.

Inverted Pumpkin Pie

I was much more pleased with the results of this pie.

The gingersnap pecan crust recipe came from this website. It was easy to prepare.

For the whipped cream filling, I stabilized the whipped cream with some hydrated gelatin and added a touch of bourbon and vanilla. I wanted the pie to slice without whipped cream oozing everywhere. It actually worked well.

For the whipped pumpkin, I mixed canned pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves, whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk and maple syrup and heated the ingredients.

I then strained the mixture (the ISI whippers can't handle particulates) and put it in the whipper. I gassed it with two cartridges of nitrous oxide and chilled it.

It tasted great! I am getting to be pretty good at making foams- not a pro but I have learned a few things.

And here is the result. I loved it! However, this was a dessert that needed explanation- without one, you might think it was a cheesecake and be horribly disappointed!

An Early Birthday Present: Cookies to Come

I received an early birthday present today from my mom and dad that came just in time for the holidays! I have had this on my Amazon wish list for a little while now and what I love about this cookie book is:

1) there's a photo of each cookie

2) the recipes are organized by texture: light and delicate, soft and chewy, crumbly and sandy, chunky and nutty, cakey and tender, crisp and crunchy, rich and dense.

3) there is a visual table of contents - with a small photo of each cookie.

Last year, Martha had a holiday cookie magazine (which I bought, of course) that was this same format but this is obviously an expanded version.

I highly recommend this book as a holiday gift for the foodie, baker, or wanna-be cookie maker in your life ($16.47 feels like a good deal here on Amazon)

A Must for Crust: Three Ways to Beautify Your Pie

Last fall, an article in Martha Stewart Living opened my eyes to the decorative possibilities for pie and pie crust. You can link to the original article here, but I wanted to share my favorite three ways.

The beauty of these tips are that they work on both homemade crust and refrigerated Pillsbury Pie Crust- which is the best cheater crust out there that will fool anyone. It rolls out so there are no creases and you can shape it as you like so it looks homemade as well.

Number One: Sugars and Washes

Before baking...

After baking...

That perfect golden crust that you see in magazines has a secret: it’s a wash. There are several types of washes that you can brush onto your raw pie crust before baking to give it a certain sheen or color. Additionally, sugars, in fine or coarse texture, can give a lovely glittery effect. Here are the 7 different treatments that I have applied to raw pie dough and baked to show the effect:
Each number corresponds to a different treatment. The sugars and washes can be combined as well. Click on the photos for a closer look.

Sugars
1) regular sugar (far left)- traditional sugar gives a fine glittery effect
2) sanding sugar (middle)- these slightly larger crystals catch the light a bit more
3) coarse sugar (far right)- these chunky crystals stand out

Washes
4) water wash- created a slightly different surface but is good to adhere sugars
5) egg wash- for a shiny golden brown crust
6) heavy cream wash- for a brillant sheen without the golden brown
7) egg yolk plus 1 Tbsp of heavy cream – my favorite wash that gives good yellow color and a nice sheen


Number Two: Cut-Out Crusts


When you cut vents in your fruit pies to allow the steam to escape, you can be a bit playful. I have used several different small cookie cutters to create delightful patterns in the top crust. Hearts, stars, florets and others look great. The trick is not to make so many cutouts that the top crust is hard to transfer. Martha even uses small leaf cutters to make an intricate top- she however, partially bakes her top crust to avoid breaking the delicate pattern.
Here is a strawberry pie that I made for Mother’s Day using hearts.


The top crust with cutouts...



And here is a reverse idea of a cut-out crust where I used the cutouts to build the crust. This was painfully slow to do but the effect was lovely.

Stacking the cutouts and "gluing" them with egg wash...

Sprinkled with sanding sugar...

Voila!

Number Three: Decorative Additions


In addition to cutout crusts, you can use your pie scraps to embellish your pie. As with the hearts, I used the cutout as adornments on the pie. Use wash to “glue” the raw cutouts in place on the pie and bake. You may need to use foil to cover any delicate parts of the pie that brown quickly. Don’t have a cutter? It is actually fairly easy to cut a sage-like leaf out by hand using a knife. These leaves make lovely fall additions to pies.


For custard based pies or pumpkin pie or any pie where the filling is liquid and cannot support a top crust, you can bake your adornments separately and add then once the pie is out of the oven. Last year, I baked a ring of fall leaves and crowned my pumpkin pie with them for an elaborate effect. A simpler effect might be to bake 1-3 of these leaves and add them to the pie once it is cooled.


Happy Baking!

My Favorite - Molasses Sugar Cookies

My favorite cookie of all time is a molasses sugar cookie. My grandma makes the best ones and this is her recipe.

So, I pulled out her recipe from my recipe box which is jammed full of family recipes and clippings.

I made one modification to these cookies. I used butter instead of shortening. I think my grandma does this too because her cookies are always round and flat and crispy. When I have used shortening, the cookies haven't spread as much and remained thick. These are much better.

The dough must be chilled because the butter is melted and the dough starts out warm. You must chill it until firm enough to roll into a ball. The dough ball is rolled in sugar and baked until crackly and crisp.

If you could scratch and sniff this photo, you would smell "fall": the mingling of cloves, cinnamon and ginger melded with molasses.

Yum!

Yum!

Yum!

Here's the recipe:

3/4 cup butter               2 cup flour

1 cup sugar                    1/2 tsp cloves

1/4 cup molasses          1/2 tsp ginger

1 egg                              1 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp baking soda          1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Turn off heat and stir in the sugar and molasses. Transfer to your mixing bowl and beat in the egg until mixed. Sift the dry ingredients and add to the mixture. Chill until firm enough to roll into a ball- this is absolutely important because the dough is "soupy" because it is warm. I tossed the bowl in the fridge and then got impatient and put it in the freezer. 

Once chilled, scoop out and use your hands to roll into ~ 1 inch balls. Roll the ball in white sugar until completely covered. Bake on cookie sheet with a lot of space in between, these cookies really spread, for 8-11 min. I was baking them for 10 + 1 extra min. I was also baking about 7-8/ sheet at a time so they wouldn't touch. When the cookies are done, they are flattened on the sheet- if still puffy, let them bake longer. Remove immediately with a spatula and cool on rack. Cookies will firm as they cool. Enjoy!

A Costume for Cake-like Cookies

Happy Halloween!

This year at the last minute I decided to wear a costume that would allow me to give out cookies to my co-workers. I came up with two options: Alice in Wonderland (which I have always wanted to be) with "Eat Me" cookies or Little Red Riding Hood with a picnic basket. One quick email to the crafty Costa girls and voila, I was to be Red (thanks, Holly, for the cape!) and I had a quick Pumpkin and Dark Chocolate Chip cookie recipe (thanks, Aimee!).

I originally wanted to make elaborate sugar cookies but I had a bad traffic karma week and that proved impossible to accomplish during the week. Aimee recommended this cake-like pumpkin cookie recipe that you can see here. Her suggestion to add dark chocolate chips was an excellent one. I also left off the icing since I added chocolate.

Here's the view from the picnic basket. This recipe begs the question: When is a cookie a cake? These cookies had a cake-like texture and were very moist. I made the mistake of tenting the cookies that were already cooled on racks with aluminum foil...forgetting that it was supposed to rain and therefore quite humid so it was unlikely that they would dry out overnight. As a result, the cookies were a bit moister to the touch at the surface but they still tasted good. I noticed however that when I gave them out, people were very surprised at the texture so I started calling them cookie-cakes to manage expectations! I am not sure if I would call these cookies based on the structure of the crumb. I was told once that the continuous phase of a cookie is the sugar and I don't believe this was the case at all. No matter what you call them, they were delicious and very easy to make.

Brown Butter, Pumpkin, and Caramelized Walnuts- A Delicious Match

These three ingredients are a match made in heaven and some of my new favorite flavors for fall. This pumpkin spice cake with brown butter icing and caramelized walnuts was actually very easy to make and filled the house with the aroma of fall food.

The recipe was from Martha Stewart and I used canned pumpkin, which had one ingredient: organic pumpkin. I prefer to add the spices myself. I haven't ever made a pie from fresh pumpkin and from what I have heard, it can be very tricky to get the right consistency when using fresh pumpkin. Has anyone made their own pumpkin puree and does it have significantly better flavor? For time's sake, I used canned.

I also wanted to try out my small cake pans again and I thought I would use the leftover batter to make a half bundt cake.

The batter was easy to make. With standard spices, vanilla, eggs and canned pumpkin.

The small cakes baked nicely and with a less significant dome shape than with the lavender cakes.

The half-bundt also turned out well!

I caramelized the walnuts on the stove with a bit of sugar. This works nicely for nuts in salads as well!
I placed the coated nuts onto foil and used two spoons to separate the nuts. Then, I did the something stupid. I know molten sugar is dangerous, and of course I used my hands to separate the nuts. And totally burned my finger- blistered it. So, the moral of the story is, don't touch hot sugar.

The icing was made using browned butter (shown above) and straining any burned bits, then mixed with milk, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

The results was three mini cakes with delicious icing...


and one bundt cake with less than perfect icing because I ran short and thinned it with milk. The emulsion of butter and milk was unstable and broke...but it tasted fine and by then my finger really hurt so I was done fussing with it.

The crumb was pleasantly spiced and moist! An easy and delicious treat for fall! Happy baking!