brownies

While I'm on the dessert topic, what constitutes the Ultimate Brownie? I was trying to get rid of some cream cheese the other day, and so made cream cheese brownies (which is like making regular brownies, only you also pour in a second batter of 4 oz cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, and one egg). They were good, but I am not sure the sweet gooey brownie is really my favourite. Dense, nutty, maybe with a fudgy topping...but then, there are many opinions on brownies.

key lime pie

This recipe begins with tea. This year, I've been ordering a lot of tea ; I must have sampled at least 60 kinds of tea by now. Anyway, on my last shipment, they sent me a free tea that was supposed to be good ice tea; so I made it, but it was VERY strong. And I thought, you know what would make this delicious? Condensed milk. So I mixed the tea with condensed milk, and it was good.

However, I soon ran out of tea, but still had most of a can of condensed milk left over. i also had, through an accident of who-was-buying-which-groceries, a vast number of eggs. Thus signs were favourable that I ought to make some PIE.
The pie recipe itself came (if I have my story right) from a genuine Floridian, by way of my brother; he was on a choir tour in those parts, and so admired the pie that his host sent along the recipe. Here it is:

Separate 4 eggs. Blend yolks with 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk. Add 3 oz (that's 6 Tbsp) lime (or lemon) juice, a little at a time; blend till smooth. Pour into a graham cracker crust.  Whip the eggs whites and top pie; bake at 350 for 10 minutes until pie is set and whites are lightly browed. Chill and serve.

The recipe notes you can also not bother with the separating and instead top the pie with whipped cream: pfft! Anyway, my pie turned out pretty goopy. I thought maybe it was not baked long enough, but apparently there is controversy as to whether you are even supposed to bake the pie at all, so I'm guessing that's not it. I did had less than the full amount of condensed milk; also my kitchen was hot as blazes. I think I just didn't let it set long enough. It was still good though. But it wasn't attractive for pictures.

coconut is delicious

So, a while ago, I left New Haven while totally forgetting I was supposed to be cat-sitting. So I had to ask another friend to do it, and as a reward, I made her cookies.  However, James stole my cookie cookbook;  so I made do with my new favourite cookie recipe from online, namely "Choconut Cookies."  I actually modified them a bit--I didn't have enough coconut, so I added in some walnuts I had lying around. They were good--added a nice texture--but it's really the coconut that makes these so dangerously addictive.

While I'm on the subject of coconut, a while ago I made banana bread, on account of I had some old bananas. And I used the recipe in How to Cook Everything, which also uses coconut! It is certifiably delicious. 

1 stick butter, softened

1.5 cups flour

.5 cup whole what flour (didn't actually have any; I think I approximated with the dry cereal again)

1 tsp salt

1.5 tsp baking powder

.75 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas

1 tsp vanilla

.5 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I used both!)

.5 cup coconut

Mix together dry ingredients. Cream butted and beat in eggs and bananas. Stir into dry ingredients, just to combine. Stir in vanilla, nuts, and coconut.  Put into greased 9 by 5 loaf tin and bake at 350 for 45 to 60 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before removing from pan. 

yum.

Summer cobbler

It is strawberry season in New England, and a while ago they were selling some local pints and it was SO EXCITING I had to get some there and then. And then they were selling rhubarb too, so I got some of that, because it is likewise delicious. The obvious thing to do then was to make a delicious cobbler from a favourite recipe. Here it is (I wrote this up in an email freshman year that I am copy-pasting).

Pretty Darned Tasty Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler (not original title)
Courtesy of the 1986 Milk calendar (this has been around a while) for the month of June.  Published by the Ontario milk marketing Board for the Saskatchewan Farmers' Dairy. Just fyi.

1 pt. strawberries, sliced
1 lb rhubarb, cut into 1" chunks (about 3.5 cups)
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter, cut into bits
TOPPING
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour.
2 tsp baking powder
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp grated lemon rind
3 Tbsp uncooked oatmeal
3 Tbsp chopped walnuts (preferably toasted, it says; they taste fine without.)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, cut into bits
1 cup Milk (sic)
2 Tbsp icing sugar, sifted.

1.  Preheat oven to 400F. Butter a 9"x9" baking dish. (or casserole pan)
2. Combine strawberries, rhubarb, lemon juice, sugar, and butter. Place in bottom of pan.
3.  For the topping combine flour with baking powder, sugar, lemon rind, oatmeal, nuts, and cinnamon. Cut in butter until it is in tiny bits.  Sprinkle mixture with Milk. (sic). Stir together just until a heavy batter is formed.
4. Drop batter by spoonfuls over top of the rhubarb.
5. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Serves 6. 


Annotations are that I didn't realize until I was making it that we didn't have regular oats, just steel-cut; I replaced them with some sort of hot cereal we had lying around (another abandoned thing), which was slightly more bitter than oats, but worked. Also I omitted the icing sugar. I also had to clean out a super gross 9 by 9 pan to make this, and I SCOURED it to be white instead of brown and felt like I had CLEANING POWERS. 

Anyway, this is delicious warm, with ice cream, to ingratiate yourself to roommates; it is also good cold as a snack. Basically, it's delicious. 

❧ Cocoa Brownies ❧

So there are two out-of-the-ordinary aspects to these brownies. For one thing, I never cook from English-language recipes, or rather non-Japanese recipes, but this is adapted from Smitten Kitchen. (You'll therefore notice that for once, ingredient amounts will be given in volume instead of mass, which I actually hate.) For another, I don't repeat recipes, because one of the few New Year's resolutions I've actually been successful at trying to keep is to attempt as many different recipes as possible and post them to this cooking site. You can follow my progress here, but you won't want to. Anyway, the point is, the fact that I broke these two fundamental rules to my cooking is pretty indicative that these brownies are good.

To be completely honest, I would probably cut down on the butter and sugar if I were making these brownies for myself, but I think that's my inner Japa talking. Everyone who's had these brownies says I shouldn't mess with them.


Ingredients

1 1/4 sticks butter (I actually used margarine and it's fine)
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 + 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

1. Allow the butter to soften at room temperature. Preheat oven to 325 F. If you are using a traditional baking pan, line the bottom and sides with parchment paper or foil. If you are improvising with a muffin pan, like me, use muffin cups or lightly grease the sides.
2. Whisk together the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium microwavable bowl. Microwave the bowl for 30 seconds (at 700 watts, in case you were wondering), then whisk further. Repeat until the mixture is smoothly mixed (although possibly gritty) and hot.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one until the batter is thick, shiny, smooth, and well-blended.
4. Add the flour and whisk until completely incorporated*. Continue to whisk for 40 more strokes. (This is actually not as bad as it sounds--if you whisk vigorously, it takes under a minute, and in any case you'll need to burn some calories to justify eating these brownies.)
   
5. Pour batter into pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Allow the brownies to cool before attempting to cut the brownies or to remove them from the pan. If you are using a muffin pan without liners, be warned: the brownies will break in half (under the muffin top line) if they are not completely cooled.
   

*I picked up this word from another English-language recipe blog. I'm kind of proud of myself but I hope I'm using it right.

cooking everything?

So, I have previously evangelized the wonders of How to Cook Everything; I know at least a few of you have this culinary tome, also, though I don't know how many do, or whether we all have the same version (I have the red one?). Anyway, the thing with How to Cook Everything is that it makes me want to cook, well, everything, and it will probably be a very long time before I am done that. So I will describe three things I made from it this week, and then you will know if it is a delicious thing that you ought to make also, or if you ought to cook some other subset of everything! I'm being sort of lazy and not giving the full recipes, but if you really want them comment and I will transcribe. Also I forgot to take pictures. :(
 So.
RECIPE NUMBER ONE: Beans and Tomatoes (p.414, if it matters).
MY STORY. So, a while ago, I got a pound of Great Northern beans, and then I was bored and cooked them and froze them so I would have beans at my disposal. And so last weekend I decided to cook with some of them.
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Pretty simple, really; you just make a tomato sauce with some (canned) tomatoes and shallots and things, and cook the beans in it for a bit. And serve with cheese, if you like.
EVALUATION: Man, Mark Bittman claims this is supposed to convert people to being bean-lovers, but I wasn't very excited by it, to be honest. I mean, I used water instead of stock for the sauce, which may have contributed, but still it was kind of boring. I ate it, but I wouldn't serve it to guests.
IMPROVEMENTS: So, I ended up jazzing up the leftovers a bit (since a recipe for a similar dish was just posted on a blog I read!) by adding some garlic salt, mustard powder, and brown sugar, in sort of dash-sized quantities, and baking at 375 for 45 minutes or so. This was actually  pretty good, though I was also very hungry. I approve of this change.

RECIPE NUMBER TWO: Rice Pudding (954, again, if you care)
MY STORY: Have I mentioned I have a lot of mediocre rice? I think I have. I also have brown sugar I haven't been using, because there are not enough desserts in my life. Finally, my apartment also has--for reasons I think relating to the summer sub-letter--a bottle of Captain Morgan's spiced rum. Guys, this is a really weird beverage. It smells like somebody wanted eggnog, and then decided not to bother with all the fuss of the creamy part. I do not think it would be good to drink. I figured it would be good for baking though; so I was happy to find a recipe that included all these things I had!
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Rice pudding is pretty simple too, though it requires some babysitting. Basically, one part rice, two parts sugar, 16 parts milk, flavouring agents; bake at 300, stirring every half hour or so, until it is pudding-esque (about 1.5 or 2 hours). I was using a "butterscotch" variation, so brown sugar instead of white, and about half a stick of butter, and also the aforementioned rum and some raisins.
EVALUATION: Quite delicious, if I say so myself; and it's also good cold later; and ridiculously easy to prepare. I would make this again.

RECIPE NUMBER THREE: Chicken with Yogurt and Indian Spices (650).
MY STORY: Don't actually have much of a story, except that I got a lot of Indian spices for that palak paneer a while back and I might as well use them.
THE RECIPE, IN SUM: Essentially, frying up an onion with everything delicious* in your spice cabinet, adding yogurt to making a sauce, and then cooking a chicken in it (covered). I think part of the point of the braising process is to get it to have a nice skin, but my chicken was skinless; whatever.
 *Specifically, we are talking about salt and pepper, Tbsp garlic, Tbsp ginger, tsp each cumin, coriander, cardamom, 1/2 tsp cayenne, turmeric, cinnamon; although honestly I was making a fraction of the recipe and was basically guessing at amounts anyway, but knowing the ratios might be useful.
EVALUATION: Guys, this is so good! This is an A-plus recipe. You should totally eat it. I cooked a ginormous piece of chicken, and I ate all of it, because it was so delicious. I recommend highly.
IMPROVEMENTS: My only comment is that I am not sure how necessary the yogurt was; mine mostly curdled into little paneer-y things, which is great because I like paneer; but I am sure this could be made into just Delicious Chicken In Spices if you didn't have/couldn't eat yogurt.

THAT IS ALL.

Modified Veriohukaiset (Finnish blood pancakes--not for faint of heart)

Apparently blood spoils fast, so I had to cook the leftover blood from yesterday ASAP.  That ruled out cabidela, as I still have to work through the turkey au vin.  I wasn't interested in buying yeast that I'd only use once, so that ruled out blood bread.  I settled on sanguinaccio dulce, but then discovered our milk smells like cheese.  Buying milk just for one dish seems kind of silly (we rarely use milk in the house), so that got 86'd, leaving modified Finnish blood pancakes, aka veriohukaiset.

Here's the recipe from the blood recipes site I referenced before:

BLOOD PANCAKES (VERIOHUKAISET) 

4 dl (deciliter) blood

4 dl milk [substituted with yogurt]

4 dl barley flour [also don't have...]

1 egg

1 Tbsp dark syrup

1/2 tsp salt

dash white pepper [didn't have any, and aesthetically black pepper might be weird]

dash marjoram

butter for frying [call me a wimp, but I settled for non-fat cooking spray]

“Mix the blood and milk together in a mixing bowl. Add the barley flour whist constantly stirring. Add the egg, syrup and seasonings. Cover the bowl and set aside for 30 minutes.

Brown the blood pancakes on a greased pancake griddle (2 to 3 minutes on each side) and serve with lingonberry jam [I didn't have any, so I used maple syrup].”

Now for some pics!  This is step #1:

Yogurt and blood--deeeelish.

Now for step #2:

Yogurt, blood, flour, egg whites, and marjoram.

My roommate would be aghast if he knew this, but I deviated from the recipe: I added walnuts.

My grandpa claimed that walnuts are good for the brain because they're brain-shaped.
He might've been messing with me, but I've been fond of walnuts ever since.

30 minutes later, I made them pancakes!  While cooking, I might've erred on the side of over-cooking--I think I was a little concerned about the blood aspect.  However, taste-wise it didn't taste very bloody--maybe it contributed to the texture or smell while cooking.  I'm wondering if I should re-do this without yogurt, just to taste the difference.  But it tasted fine, and as my roommate said, "just knowing that the blood is in it adds to the experience."

I should've taken pictures of the less burnt-looking ones.  Oops.

Just tea-time at my house ;)

Future projects:

• Belgian beef carbonnade, with parsley dumplings (that'll get rid of the parsley) and mushrooms.
• Crepes for some other time.

Apple Muffins

Ingredients (12-14 muffins)

1 apple
40g sugar*
★200g flour
★6g baking powder
★3g cinnamon (optional)
♡60g sugar*
♡2 eggs
♡100ml oil
♡20ml milk

*These quantities of sugar are based on a Japanese recipe, so you will probably be dissatisfied if you don't increase them.

1. Peel and core the apple, and cut into small pieces about 5mm in thickness. Place in a bowl and cover with the 40g of sugar.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk all of the ♡ ingredients.
3. Add the apples to the bowl from Step 2, then sift in the ★ ingredients while mixing roughly and deeply (uhh lost in translation) with a rubber/silicone spatula.
4. Fill the muffin cups to about half or two-thirds full, then bake at ~355 F for 15 minutes.
   

Pear apple stew

This was very simple and delicious, so I thought I'd share.

Pear apple stew
1 pear
1 apple
1/4 cup of water
Spices: Crushed cloves, a generous helping of cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of ginger powder

Chop pears and apples.  Put spices.  Add water.  Bring water to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer until fruits are of the desired softness.  Can be served hot or cold, though I had it hot.

I'm sure most people would add sugar and butter, but I found this to be sweet enough, and I don't think the butter would've been necessary.

Fallish Food

Recently, a friend of mine linked me to this recipe for apple and cheddar scones. Also, recently the grocery store down the street was selling bruised apples for really cheap. Clearly, it was meant to be! So I made scones. I always thought cheese and apples was sort of weird, but I guess it isn't. It's hard to tell though, because actually these scones need a lot more cheese than the recipe says--mostly they taste like apples. I also used somewhat sweeter apples than you're probably supposed to, so that might also be a contributing factor. Also they're kind of gooey? Usually my scone recipes have issues being too dry, but this one was super sticky, and the resulting scones are kind of over-moist. So, maybe add some flour or something. Also I don't know why they say it makes six scones--I made eight, and they were big, and they got HUGE in the oven, so pay no attention to that either. They are delicious, though.

The other thing I acquired recently is kale! It turns out that the school "farm" (=vegetable patch) has lots of kale, and it is free for the taking, and I think I may be one of the few people really excited about this. The Dutch eat kale! The Dutch eat kale with potatoes and sausage, in a dish called "stamppot". So, it is childhood memories. Not that I was really excited about the stuff then, but now it is nostalgia. Problem is that all the recipes I could find were sort of assuming you went and bought a nice package of kale at the greengrocers, so it was nicely measured in grams, and then you had several kilograms of potatoes, and none of it seemed very applicable to me so I just winged it and boiled up some potatoes to a mashable consistency. Then I drained them, lest I have too much water, and then added some sliced-up kale with what seemed like an appropriate amount of water for it to cook in, which turned out to be really stupid because the kale shrank and I had way to much water and my already-cooked potatoes were now disintegrating into a slurry and I was getting cream-of-kale soup and it was bad, and the potato/kale ratio was all wrong. So, don't do that! Probably it's best to cook the kale a few minutes first and then add it to the potatoes. Also I kept adding more and more bundles of kale to the mixture every time I reheated it, so the lesson is basically to have way more kale than you think you need--like a bundle of leaves for every potato you use. And to cook it first, or maybe cook it with the potatoes so you can drain out excess water before it's too late. And then spice with salt and pepper and nutmeg or whatever you have lying around. And if you do have too much water, oatmeal makes it all coagulate nicely, unless you REALLY have too much like I did and you get a kale porridge. Serve the result with red wine vinegar and some smoked sausage with mustard for a good cold-weather sort of meal.

Funky rice cooker bread pudding

I had whole wheat, multi-grain bread from last week that I put in a sealed tupperware in hopes of slowing down its descent to staleness.  It didn't dry out, but it definitely got stale.  So, I made rice cooker bread pudding.  That's not the funky part, though--I don't have milk and was too lazy to get some, so I used yogurt.

Funky rice cooker bread pudding
Old bread (equivalent to 2-3 cups)
1 cup of yogurt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Cinnamon, nutmeg, a dash of crushed cloves and ginger
1/2 cup of hot water
Walnuts
Raisins
Sugar

Break bread into little pieces and put into rice cooker.  Mix in spices, raisins, and walnuts.  Beat eggs and put into bread mix; might as well add in yogurt, too.  Stir.  At this point I noticed the mix seemed a bit dry, so I boiled some water and put 1/2 cup of it in.  Add vanilla extract and sugar.  Cover.

My rice cooker is primitive, so it kept stopping the cooking process and switching to the warm setting.  It'll be done when, after sticking in a fork/chopstick, the fork/chopstick comes out pretty clean.

Serve with ice cream or honey.

The ingredient quantities might need some tinkering--I think I could've added more vanilla extract, but all in all, it seemed to work out ok.  It's pretty healthy (no butter/oil, if you'll notice); all I'd note in tinkering the ingredient quantities is to beware of the sourness of the yogurt.

Green tea frozen yogurt--suggestions?

Hi boys and girls,

As many of you know, I was in Asia last summer and I miss it very much.  I miss the yummy (and cheap food), and the funky desserts.  Mostly I really want green tea and sesame ice cream (not together!) but I'm thinking more along the lines of frozen yogurt.

I came across this recipe here for green tea froyo and plan on doing without the vanilla, but there are some problems:

• I do not have an ice cream maker
• I only have green tea bags
• I do not know what "fold in" means

To make matters more confusing, I found this factoid:

The casein in cow's milk is thought to inactivate the healthy catechins in green tea. For this reason, it's best to use non dairy milk such as soy, almond, oat, or rice milk when making these products. Start by adding a teaspoonful of matcha green tea powder to a pint of nondairy milk. The matcha green tea powder doesn't dissolve when the milk is cold. Heat the milk green tea powder combination in your microwave for two minutes and stir thoroughly to dissolve the powder. You may need to put it back in the microwave for an additional minute to get the powder to completely dissolve. Add more matcha powder and sweetener to taste, if necessary. To make green tea yogurt, add a teaspoon of matcha powder to a cup of vanilla yogurt and mix thoroughly. Again, soy based yogurt is best since it lacks casein. 

(source: eHow)

Any suggestions, insights, or willing experimenters?

Also, do you think mango and walnuts would go well with this, and in blended or chunky form?  I don't have a blender but I could always try smashing them by hand.

And anybody have any ideas for sesame froyo?  I don't want just sesame chunks--I'm interested in actual sesame flavor--but bear in mind that I don't have a blender...

If either of these pan out I'd consider other interesting desserts.  I just went to Toscanini's with a friend and got goat cheese-brownie ice cream and bourbon ice cream.  It was delicious, but overpriced.

Thanks!

Toaster-Oven Cookies

On a day I would now very much like to forget, it was discovered that I do not know how to cook in English or in US customary units. This is of no particular concern to my mother, who believes that a very good reason for my learning how to cook is to avoid becoming American, but this does present some challenges to cooking and writing blog posts accessibly.

A challenge of cooking in general, furthermore, is not having all of the necessary materials. It is often said that all of the required ingredients should be assembled before starting on a recipe, but I have realized that it is equally important to have all of the listed equipment. I made cookies from scratch last night, and the recipe calls for a kitchen scale, food processor, rolling pin, and cookie cutters, none of which I own in my incomplete studio kitchen.

The recipe is as follows:

50g peanut powder
20g chopped peanuts
100g flour
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp milk or water

1. (Optional) Roast peanuts in a toaster oven for several minutes to give the cookies a more savory taste.
   
   

   I actually didn't have peanuts, so I substituted with Unsalted & Dry Roasted Almonds (Sliced and Slivered) from Trader Joe's. Since they were already roasted, I skipped this step.

2. Chop enough peanuts (almonds) in a food processor to obtain 50g of peanut powder. Also chop 20g of peanuts (almonds) for several seconds.
   
   

   Thankfully, the bag of almonds indicated that 30g was equal to 1/4 cup, which allowed me to get around the issue of not having a kitchen scale. In hindsight this method was not altogether accurate, since the bulk of unpowdered and powdered nuts are different and I didn't notice the gram-cup conversion until after I started chopping, but I don't think it matters all that much. As for the chopping itself, I did it by hand, which is not all that fun and results in a somewhat coarse powder.
   
   

   Just getting started.

3. Mix the 50g of peanut (almond) powder, shaken (?) flour, sugar, butter, and milk/water in a bowl. After these ingredients have been kneaded together, add the 20g of peanuts (almonds) and mix. Let the dough sleep (sit?) for 30 minutes. If the dough is too dry or crumbly, add more milk/water.
   
   

   I used margarine instead of butter. I also actually added 4 tbsp of sugar here instead of 2 tbsp, because the recipe indicated that the cookies made with 2 tbsp would be barely sweet. The suggestions were to add marmalade (à la scones), honey, or extra sugar, and I went with the extra sugar because I do not have marmalade or honey. 4 tbsp, though, is still probably not sweet enough for most of you. For reference, 200 ml of flour is supposed to be equivalent to 105 g.

4. Roll out the dough to about 7-8 mm in thickness, and cut with cookie cutters.
   
   

   I know that a simple alternative to a rolling pin is a glass, but remarkably I do not have a single one in this apartment. (I do drink things, it's just that I only have mugs.) And so I basically pounded out the dough with my palms to the right thickness, although this isn't particularly recommended because the coarse peanut/almond bits can be a little painful. A glass would also have been helpful as a makeshift cookie cutter, but in true Japanese fashion I replaced that with the bottom rim of a rice bowl. Harhar. This resulted in 38.5 small (~3 cm in diameter) cookies.
   
   

   In case you were wondering.

5. Bake the cookies in a 300-watt toaster oven until the cookies become golden brown, then cool on a wire rack.
   
   

   This took about 15-20 minutes of baking, but my toaster oven was too small to accommodate all 38.5 cookies at once, so I had to split it into two rounds. Some of the cookies came out a little harder than the recipe suggested, which leads me to wonder whether the margarine-butter substitution was a bad idea, if I didn't have enough liquid, or what.

The last step was the reason I was initially drawn to this recipe--I do have an oven, but it's not very efficient to heat it for a small batch of cookies, and the baking tray I have is not oven-sized. A toaster oven is really easy to use and the cleanup is minimal.

By the way, this is the original recipe, even though in all likelihood it will not help you: http://cookpad.com/recipe/914586

As American as Dutch apple pie

Things you didn't know about Germany #059:

They don't have pie. 

Things you didn't know about Germany #182 (irrelevant, but interesting):

German chocolate cake is not from Germany, but rather from an English guy named Sam German. 

Things you didn't know about Germany #059 (revised):

They didn't have pie, until I created pie.

Pie. I created pie.

Guys, it turns out pie isn't actually that difficult to make! I managed to make delicious Dutch apple pie even while overcoming the following challenges:

• Germans don't have pie pans.
• Germans don't have brown sugar.
• My recipe was all Fahrenheity (not a huge challenge, but inconvenient). 
• I am a man, and thus my brain is wired for eating pie rather than creating it.

I know you guys can find recipes for pie crust and apple pie all over the internet, so I'm going to offer some pro-tips for creating a pie without flaws.

Crust (double):

• Substituting 1/2 cup of hazelnuts for 1/2 cup of flour is an excellent idea.
• Refrigerating the crust before rolling it is absolutely necessary.
• Rolling between two sheets of wax paper minimises the need for flour (does anyone else hate the texture of flour? Seriously, it makes my skin crawl.)
• If you use a real pie pan, it has a lip on the edge for your crust to rest on. If you don't have such a pan, there is no such lip, and your crust will look bad at the edges. It will also drop down into the oven, unless you have a cookie sheet under your pie pan.

Filling: 

• Big pieces of apple are really good in pie, but giant pieces of apple make your top crust really really uneven. The high parts get a little burned. Don't make giant pieces of apple.
• Cut up 2 T of butter into tiny pieces and put it on top of your apples before adding the top crust. 
• Dark brown sugar is tastier. I had to bring brown sugar all the way from America.
• If you pour 1/2 cup of cream into the centre after about 30 minutes of baking, you have Dutch apple pie. 

I think Jill enjoyed the pie. The pieces held together better after the pie cooled.

Photo credits Halyna Mishchanyn, who also enjoyed the pie.

Cake Caroline

Dear Dustin, Jeremies, Anna, et al:

This cake is very yum and also easy. I made it for my dad's birthday last week, and people ate it.

(technically called) Orange Cake

½ cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 ½ cup flour

½ cup buttermilk

½ cup orange juice

1 tsp grated orange rind

1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg.

2. Cream together butter and brown sugar in mixer until smooth. Add egg and beat well.

3. Sift dry ingredients together.

4. Combine buttermilk, juice, rind and vanilla in a bowl.

5. Alternately add portions of dry and liquid ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing well.

6. Pour batter into buttered 9” x 13” pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until springy when touched, and edges are starting to turn golden brown.

7. Frost while still warm.

Frosting:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp grated orange rind

2 Tbsp butter, melted

Orange juice

Mix sugar, rind and melted butter. Add orange juice just to moisten, until frosting is a spreadable consistency.