Crumble Crust Dutch Apple Pie

I love pie.

 LURVE it.

Making the crust...eh....not so much.

The thing is, I'm the only one in the house who really likes pie crusts.  Sometimes I just don't want to go to all that trouble when I'm the only one who will truly appreciate it.

Naturally, when I saw this recipe for dutch apple pie from My Culinary Companion that had a non traditional crust, I was all about making it.

You know how Dutch Apple pies have that crumbly goodness on top?  Imagine that as the crust, plus crumbled  on top of the apples. 

AW YEAH!

I guarantee no one will leave their crusts on their plates with this pie.  Unless they are aliens.  Aliens are weird like that.

The only thing I didn't like about this recipe was the amount of apples.  3 cups of apples for a 9" pie pan?  That seemed rather stingy to me, especially when you consider that apples shrink when you cook them.  So I increased the apples to a whopping 6 cups!

Crumble Crust Apple Pie slightly adapted from My Culinary Companion
2 c flour
1 c packed brown sugar
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
3/4 c butter, melted
1 t cinnamon

filling
2/3 c sugar
3 T cornstarch
1-1/4 c cold water
6 c diced peeled tart apples  (I used
1 t vanilla
1 t apple pie spice

In a large bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon and butter; set aside 1 cup for topping. Press remaining crumb mixture into an ungreased 9-in. pie plate; set aside.

For filling, combine sugar, cornstarch and water in a large saucepan until smooth; bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat; stir in apples, spice and vanilla. Pour into crust; top with reserved crumb mixture. Bake at 350° for 40-45 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.  Cool completely before cutting and serving.

Xmas '12 cookies part 3: The Big Let Down

So far my Christmas Cookie Disasters haven't been so disastrous.

I wouldn't say these last too cookies weren't a disaster, they were just massive disappointments.

Let's start out with the Caramel Apple Fudge from Very Culinary.

Why do I keep thinking I can make fudge?

Isn't that the definition of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

I must have fudge insanity because I make it and every time it turns out gritty and grainy.  The fudge also took 24 hours to set up in the fridge.  I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to take that long.

I wish I could figure out what I was doing wrong while preparing fudge. I followed the directions to the letter.  Maybe fudge and baklava are my kryptonite in the kitchen.

My mom took one bite of this fudge and I'm pretty sure she spit it out.  She said it tasted like straight sugar.  She couldn't taste the caramel or the apple pieces.

Then again, I made a box of cookies for Blockette's teacher and the next day Blockette came home with a note from her teacher saying her husband thought the apple bites were "heavenly."

So I'd say the reviews on this fudge were definitely mixed!

This brings us to the Pumpkin Pecan Polvorones/Russian tea cakes/Mexican wedding cakes from Cookie and Kate.  I've been on such a massive pumpkin crush that I thought, "I'm sure if I combine my favorite cookie with pumpkin it will turn out amazing."

The thing was that the cookies themselves were not terrible.  They were a very mildly sweet little tidbit, great for a mid morning snack.

So what was the problem?

They look just like Russian Tea Cakes.

So when you bite into them...you think you are going to taste a Russian Tea Cake.

And these cookies?  They are soooooo NOT a Russian tea cake.

NOT NOT NOT...to infinity.

I was so thrown by their appearance that I wound up tossing most of them.  No one wanted to eat them and they went stale.  Boooo hiss.

It's too bad that these cookies are camouflaged as Mexican Wedding Cakes.  If they looked like something else, I think people would have eaten them instead of complaining about how they were NOT Polvorones.

In fact, the raw dough tasted better than the cooked version.  As the dough is egg free, I think I might try making these and freezing them uncooked for a low sugar snack.  Uncooked, they just look like raw cookie dough.

I got so much flack from my family over these cookies that next year, I'm going to tell them all that I made this same pumpkin version, but make the classic version instead. That way I won't have to share!  How sneaky is that?!


Caramel Apple Pie Fudge from Very Culinary
3/4 cup apple cider
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk
3 cups sugar
2 cups white chocolate chips
3/4 cup dried apple, finely diced
1 t vanilla
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t all spice
1/4 cup Dulce De Leche

Line an 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper (13×9 inch pan if you like your fudge thinner.) Set aside. In a large saucepan combine the first four ingredients, bring to a rolling boil and stir continuously for 4 minutes (because the mixture burns easily.) Remove from heat. Add white chocolate, dried apple, vanilla, and spices; blend well, stirring for several more minutes until chocolate is almost completely dissolved. Pour into baking dish. Heat Dulche de Leche in the microwave for 15-20 seconds to loosen. Drizzle or drop dollops around in the baking dish and swirl through with a dull knife for a marbled effect. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours (or overnight), until hardened. Remove parchment paper from pan and place on cutting board. Cut into squares. Fudge can be stored in a covered container in the refrigerator for one week. Makes 16 big squares, or up to 64 little ones

For Pumpkin Russian Tea Cakes recipe see: Cookie and Kate

Xmas Cookies '12 Part 2: The Color Orange

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I wanted more color in my Christmas Cookies this year. 

Maybe I should have told my brain that "color" at Christmastime does not equal orange.

Let me state for the record that these next two cookies were were really awesome.  I was nearly going to title this series of Christmas cookie posts "The Good", "The Bad", and "The Ugly, " but I thought that would imply that these goodies weren't good.  They were very VERY tasty.  Just not terribly festive looking.

This was not the cookies' fault or the fault of those who created the recipe.  I take full responsibility.

Let's start off with the Homemade Butterfinger Bark from Cookies and Cups.

All you need are 3 ingredients: Chocolate, peanut butter and candy corn.

Candy corn?

Yes!

Somehow it works and the flavor is reminiscent of butterfingers.  They don't taste exactly like butterfingers because they aren't "crispity and crunchy."  If Butterfingers were on the chewy side then these bars would be spot on.

I made a half recipe because the candy corn container I found only had 2.5 cups of candy corn.  As it was I was happy to have made such a small batch.  These little treats were rich so I cut them small.  As a result, there were lots and lots of servings.

Oh, and if I was to give one important tip about preparing this bark, or any bark for that matter, it would be to cut them before the chocolate fully sets up.  If you wait until the chocolate has fully set it will be difficult to cut and the chocolate will separate and shatter into lots of tiny slivers that you will feel compelled to eat all of. OK so that isn't really a bad thing, but if you want your bark to have nice crisp clean lines it might be.

I used chocolate flavored almond bark to make the Butterfinger Bark.  As I only made a half batch, I had half a package of almond bark to use.

What was I going to do?  I had made Chocolate covered Ritz crackers with peanut butter sandwiched in the middle before, and they were always a big hit.  I wasn't really up to all that fussy work.  Then I saw this over at From Away.

I thought that was brilliant! 

Why not use the crackers that already have peanut butter in the middle?!

Problem solved.  You've got the salty and the sweet with minimal effort.  YUM!

Except....
they are NEON orange.

I suppose that I could have coated the entire sandwich and that problem would have been solved.  I could have even covered them in red or green chocolate, or even done some sort of decorative drizzle in red or green on them.

no.

For some reason I thought the orange would look nice.

o.O

I can't even blame this sort of thinking on my cold as I didn't get the bubonic plague from Mrblocko and Blockette until Christmas Eve.

Oh well.

At least the chocolate covered peanut butter crackers tasted good.

Butterfinger Bark(full batch) from Cookies and Cups
5 cups candy corn
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
20 oz chocolate for melting, divided in half

Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil.(or use silpat) Melt 10 oz of chocolate over double boiler or in microwave,according to package directions.  Spread melted chocolate on lined baking sheet, approximately 11"x15". Don't worry too much about the exact measurements, you just want it to be a thin layer. Place baking sheet in fridge to chill quickly, about 10 minutes. (This will be a lot less than that if you use almond bark.  That stuff sets up super quick) In a large microwave safe bowl melt candy corn, 1 minute and then stir, then in 30 second increments until melted, stirring after each 30 seconds. Immediately stir in peanut butter. Mixture will be very thick. Use those muscles! Spread it on top of chilled chocolate. Place this back in the fridge for another 20 minutes, until chilled.
Melt the remaining chocolate and spread it on top of the peanut butter layer. Chill again at least 20 minutes. (Again it will be less time if you use almond bark) Cut into triangle shaped pieces before chocolate has fully set.


Chocolate covered pb crackers from From Away
Neon orange pb sandwich crackers
chocolate to coat




Melt chocolate and dip crackers into melted chocolate.  Set on wax paper to cool and harden. Top with a sprinkle of fancy salt if you so desire. 

Xmas Cookies '12 Part 1: Peppermint Crinkles and Macaroon Kisses

This year was not a banner year for Christmas cookies.  Nothing turned out totally disgusting, but there were several disappointments.

I made Gingersnaps,  and Chocolate Crinkles like I do every year.  Those were great, as usual.

Then I decided to make Taste of Home's Macaroon Kisses instead of Santa's Whiskers.

Yes I did take a picture of them in a bag.  If I didn't they would fall into my mouth.

The Macaroon Kisses were scrumptious.  Even my husband, who refused to even try one for several days because he doesn't like coconut, LOVED them.  I loved them too.  I mean what's not to love coconut and dark chocolate?  I mean come on.  (OK I know there are freaky people on this planet who don't like coconut and/or dark chocolate.  I'm pretty you guys are mutants.)

As much as I loved the Macaroon kisses, I missed the Santa's Whiskers.  I thought the cookie plate looked a bit drab without them.

I had hoped Cookin' Cowgirl's Peppermint Red Velvet Crinkles would be a good color replacement for the Santa's Whiskers, but as you can see the red is not very noticeable. They wound up looking too much like the regular crinkles.

I preferred the red velvet peppermint version to the classic chocolate one.  They stayed moist and fresh tasting for much longer.

Although, they did give me a bit of a scare.  You see the box of cake mix I grabbed was a Duncan Hines Decadent Red Velvet Cupcake mix.  When I opened the box I thought there was a smaller amount of cake mix than your usual cake mix.  So I examined the box closely.  This particular box only makes 12 cupcakes.  Those of you who regularly make cupcakes know that this is about half the amount of cupcakes that you could get from a standard run of the mill cake mix. 

I didn't want to make a half batch of these cookies so I made the recipe for Red Peppermint Crinkles as listed but added additional flour.  I'm guessing it was around 1/2-1 cup of flour.  I didn't measure it.  I just kept adding flour until it was the consistency of Chocolate Crinkle dough.  Then I chilled the dough for a few hours so it was a bit easier to work with.

I'm sure that my additional flour made the cookies less red.  Thankfully, it didn't effect the taste one bit. As I mentioned earlier, the Red Velvet Peppermint crinkles stayed moist for a long time.  The slight crunch of crushed candy canes was perfect.  I had worried that it would taste gritty.

Although, I did crush my candy canes a bit more than those shown on Cookin' Cowgirl.  I think maybe the candy cane pieces on her cookies were to make the cookies more photogenic?  I'm not sure I'd want to chomp into a rock of hard candy while eating a moist chewy cookie.  Maybe that's just me.  Grind your candy cane to whatever floats your boat.  I'd say I crushed the mints to somewhere between coarse sea salt and turbinado sugar.

So while these two cookies weren't exactly what I was looking for this year for the "perfect" cookie platter, they were still scrumptious.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more Christmas cookie adventures!

Macaroon Kisses from Taste of Home
1/3 cup butter, softened
3oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup Sugar
1 egg yolk
2 t almond extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
5 cups flaked coconut, divided (This is one bag of coconut. I used sweetened coconut)
48 milk chocolate kisses (I used dark chocolate kisses because they are da'bomb.  I also think I wound up using about 52 kisses.)

In a large bowl, cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and extract. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in 3 c coconut. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until dough is easy to handle. Roll into 1-in. balls and roll in remaining coconut. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie. Cool on pan for 2-3 minutes or until chocolate is softened. (I did this for the first batch and the tips of the kisses sank, so I removed them from the cookie sheet immediately.)  Remove to wire racks to cool completely. (My wire racks are not designed for a smaller cookie like these, so I let them cool on a few layers of paper towels instead.) Yield: about 4 dozen.

Red Velvet Peppermint Crinkle Cookies from Cookin' Cowgirl

1 box Red Velvet Cake Mix(Don't be like me and buy the Decadent Duncan Hines Red Velvet cupcake Mix.  Make sure your mix yields 24 cupcakes, or a full size cake)

6 T butter

2 eggs

1 tsp peppermint extract

1/2 C crushed peppermint or candy canes

1 C powdered sugar

1 tsp cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 375°. Melt butter and set aside to cool. In a large bowl, mix together the cooled butter, cake mix, eggs and peppermint extract. Add in crushed peppermint and stir. In a shallow dish, mix together the powdered sugar and cornstarch with a fork. Using a small cookie scoop, drop scooped dough into powdered sugar mix.  Coat with sugar, then roll into balls.  If you attempt to roll the dough into balls before covering them in sugar your hands will turn red from the dough.

Bake for 9 minutes. (They will look underdone.  This is what you want or your cookies will get rock hard.). Make sure not to overcrowd the cookies on the cookie sheet as these cookies will spread.  Take them out of the oven and cool for one minute. Then move onto a cooling rack/paper towels to cool. They will be chewy with little pieces of crunchy.Yield about 36 cookies

Thankful Thurs #52

source

1. A great visit at my mom's.

2. Making good time driving home.

3. Blockette didn't get carsick once.

4. The massive yuck winter storm passed us by.

5. My mom (re)teaching me how to crochet for the umpteenth time.

6. Blockette not complaining once in the grocery store.

source

7. Mrblocko didn't tease me too much when I cried during "Secret of the Wings."

8. Going a whole week before catching Mrblocko and Blockette's cold.

Raw Oatmeal Pumpkin Cookie Dough

Sick of pumpkin yet? 

Not me! 

 I'm still going strong, rockin my stylish orange glow.

That's why I made these no bake pumpkin oatmeal cookies from Chocolate Covered Katie.  Gotta maintain the Snookie-esque hue.  Plus, I wanted something sweet to eat!

Because now that Christmas is over, we can't possibly eat Christmas cookies!

Actually, I made these before Thanksgiving...I'm only about a month behind on my posting.  Better late than never eh?

I didn't have any quick cook oats and the time, so I used Old Fashioned, or Rolled oats instead.  I was also too lazy to whip out the food processor to make my own so I just used regular flour.  I think it turned out great.  If you use regular flour, you won't need as much liquid to make the dough come together.

These little cookie dough balls were great when I needed a snack or wanted something sweet.  Two little cookies were the perfect amount to satisfy my craving.


No Bake Pumpkin Cookie Dough Balls from Chocolate Covered Katie

• 3/4 cup quick oats (I used old fashioned)
• 1/2 cup oat flour (I was too lazy and used unbleached flour)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup xylitol or sugar (I used brown sugar)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon 
• optional: a pinch pumpkin pie spice (I used 1/4 t)
• optional: handful mini chocolate chips (I left this out)
• 1/3 cup canned pumpkin (or sweet potato puree)
• 1 tablespoon oil (I used veg oil, but they would set up better if you used coconut oil)
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons milk of choice, as needed (add this last if your dough isn't coming together.)

Combine all dry ingredients and stir very well. In a separate bowl, combine all liquid (including pumpkin). Then stir to combine, and form into balls or cookies. Or put in the fridge to firm up a little before forming cookies. (I used a small cookie scooper so the dough would be relatively uniform in size.  The dough is quite sticky, so I rolled them with wet hands.  I kept mine in the freezer.  They were just soft enough to bite into without breaking off a tooth or cracking your jaw.)

Happy Christmas Everyone!