The most amazing apple pie EVER

Well, I’ve mostly been busy being pregnant, but I had a new comment on this blog, which made me think, “Hmm, haven’t posted there in a while.” And how could I deprive the world of more info about the greatest apple pie known to man?!

Bobby is a HUGE fan of homemade apple pie, and I think I’d probably told him a while back that I would try to learn how to make one. So when I came across this recipe from The Noshery, I e-mailed it to him as a bit of a teaser. That was, I think, on a Tuesday, and he asked me for the REST of the week when I was going to make it. I finally set about it on Saturday morning (this was several weeks ago now), and it’s a good thing I had plenty of free time that day. The recipe took a bit longer than what I thought, mostly because I had to peel and core five pounds of apples manually, plus I didn’t plan ahead well for chilling the dough and letting the caramel and apples sit.

This recipe was a tad on the expensive side just because of the sheer amount of ingredients, plus having to buy five pounds of apples (I couldn’t find a five-pound bag anywhere and ended up buying two three-pound bags) and star anise extract. I was lucky to find golden delicious apples on sale at Publix, and I think they were perfect for the recipe … a good mix of sweet and tart.

I absolutely loved the cheddar in the dough. I’m a big fan of apples with cheese anyway, and I can’t even imagine this pie with another dough. The only part of the pie that really gave me any trouble was the caramel sauce because I let it burn a little, and it ended up extremely gooey and difficult to stir in with the apples. The taste was still fine, though, and I think I probably ended up with a less caramel-y pie, which was fine with us. I’d almost recommend going easy on the caramel sauce because the results were so good.

Even though the pie was time consuming, the end result was totally worth it. It was amazing. I’m not exaggerating. I know I made it myself, but this really may have been the best apple pie I’ve ever eaten. Bobby said it was his new favorite. The one thing I wasn’t crazy about was that it was extremely runny while it was still warm (so I basically made a giant mess trying to cut it), but even so, it was ridiculously good warm with vanilla ice cream.

So if you’ve got the time to put into it — and especially if you love apple pie like we do — definitely give this recipe a shot!

Quickie recipe: Chocolate chip cookies

I needed a quick treat to whip up last night for my hubby and our friend Stu while they were installing our new security door, so chocolate chip cookies were the obvious choice. I usually just go with whatever recipe is on the bag, but this modification of a recipe from Smitten Kitchen may be my new standby:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) salted butter, softened
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1 bag mini semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped (optional — I made mine last night without these, but I definitely think they would be a good addition!)

Preheat the oven to 300.

Beat the sugars and butter together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla and baking soda. Once this is smooth, stir in the flour, then the chocolate chips.

Place rounded tablespoonfuls of dough about 2″ apart on an ungreased cookie sheet (this is debatable, because I just happen to have the most awesome cookie sheet ever — stuff very rarely sticks to it).

Bake for 18 minutes or until bottoms start to brown. (I was a little surprised that these took this long in my gas oven, but they really took 18 minutes and were perfect. So be patient!)

We ate these cookies straight out of the oven with milk, and they were delicious!

Recipe: Roasted vegetable minestrone

Earlier this week I was looking for something quick and easy but also healthy for dinner, so I decided to try Pioneer Woman’s roasted vegetable minestrone. I’d say it definitely fit the bill for all three of these, given that the only thing that really took much time was cutting up all the veggies. Most of the rest was cook time.

I like this soup a lot for the fact that it has some of my favorite vegetables in it: carrots, yellow squash, zucchini and mushrooms. And I’m always a sucker for anything with pasta in it.

A few things I ended up not loving about the recipe:

• I should have roasted the squash, zucchini and carrots longer, or possibly put them in two separate pans. I piled them all on one large cooking sheet, and they never really darkened much. They were cooked, but I don’t think I got the full flavor effect.
• Seasoning the soup was a little difficult for me because many of the recipes directions are “season to taste.” As someone who wasn’t familiar at all with what flavor the turmeric would add, I was really hesitant with it (as well as the salt and pepper just because it was such a HUGE pot of soup), so I think the end result may have been a little flatter than what I was expecting.

A few suggestions if you are going to make this:

• The recipe says it makes eight servings, but I think it’s more like 12. Seriously, we had so much soup leftover. We stuck some in the freezer and gave some away.
• I added a minute or two to all of the five minute cook times to let the water come back to a boil. It seemed to work out well that way.
• I might actually add a second can of tomatoes next time I make this.
• Make sure to give the pot a really good stir before you serve this because the pasta and kidney beans tend to settle to the bottom. We ended up with a ton of pasta near the end.

This was definitely a great cold-weather recipe, and I’ll be making it again soon with a few small modifications!

Recipe review: Pioneer Woman’s meat loaf

OK, to be fair I didn’t make this recipe. Bobby did, but I was busy making our sides (PW’s perfect au gratin potatoes and some buttery garlic green beans with onion). And be forewarned, this is another post without pic. I’ve really got to remember to take pictures of stuff!

Anyway, PW posted this meat loaf recipe a few weeks ago, and I’d been wanting to try it. The various families in our home church group take turns cooking our meal, and it was our turn, so this seemed like a great opportunity to make the meat loaf. Unfortunately, because both the potatoes and the meat loaf needed to bake in the oven for more than an hour each at different temperatures, this meant we were pretty much in the kitchen all afternoon Sunday.

All I can say about the meat loaf-making process is that it looked interesting. I’m usually not the biggest fan of meat loaf, but this one had bacon on it, and PW says it’s her favorite, so I was betting it would be pretty good. There’s a lot of filler in it (bread, eggs, cheese, parsley, milk), so if you are a purist at all when it comes to meat loaf (i.e., want it to be super meaty), this may not be the best recipe for you. BUT it has bacon on top, and we all know that bacon makes anything better.

I was also a big fan of the sauce that goes with the loaf. Instead of plain ketchup, it was a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar, dry mustard and tobasco sauce, and it had a nice tang to it.

This was a really good recipe to make for a large group, especially since it made a lot for a reasonably low price. We ended up with enough meat loaf for 10 people with about 5-6 servings left over, and our total cost for the meat loaf was maybe $15, tops.

Recipe: Cheese straws

I’d promised to bring something “snacky” to the Alabama-Florida football party I was attending last night, and I wanted to do something different from my norm of either cookies or cupcakes, especially since I knew two other people were bringing sweets. I looked up appetizer recipes on Smitten Kitchen, and I’m a sucker for a good cheese-related recipe, so I decided to give these cheese straws a go.

The recipe itself was quite simple: Mix together some cheese, flour, salt and red pepper flakes, then add a little cream a

nd work into a dough. I had a little trouble due to our nearly burnt-out food processor (thanks to the last batch of baked potatoes I attempted tomake in it), so I ended up working the dough by hand, which was really not difficult. I made my cheese straws a little thicker and shorter than what’s show on SK, and the recipe made a total of about 28 2- to 3-inch cheese straws.

These turned out quite delicious, especially for something that was so quick and easy. The baking time itself was only about 13 minutes, and prep took maybe 15 minutes. The red pepper flakes give the cheese straws a nice, subtle kick of heat, and the texture was a good mix of crunchy and chewy.

I will definitely make these again, and I may just do these for some Christmas presents this year instead of cookies, which I’ve done the past two years.

Recipe: Apples and sweet potatoes

I wanted to cook something recently with sweet potatoes and apples, but it seemed that most of the recipes I could find were either for one or the other. And most of them were baked; if you’ve ever been pregnant, you know that when an urgent craving hits, you probably don’t want to make it wait that long!

I looked up a few recipes online and couldn’t find anything that was exactly what I wanted, so I decided to just make something up that sounded good. I’m sure it’s similar to other recipes that have been made before, and I was quite happy with how it turned out.

First I peeled four sweet potatoes, then I chopped them up into fairly small chunks. I chopped an apple (I had Braeburn on hand, but other types would be good in this, too) into similar-sized chunks and set it aside. Then I clarified some butter (about half a stick) in a saute pan on the stove top and added the sweet potato chunks on medium heat. I let these simmer until they were semi-soft, stirring occasionally.

Once the potatoes had softened somewhat, I added the chunks of apple, the sprinkled cinnamon and brown sugar over the top. I’m not really even sure how much I added, just enough so that there was a light dusting of cinnamon on all the ingredients and maybe 1/4 cup or so of brown sugar. I also added about 1/2 tsp of vanilla. Since sugar can tend to burn, I turned the eye to low heat, then covered the pan and let the ingredients continue to simmer until the butter was mostly soaked up or evaporated.

The end product was really quite good, and it was exactly what I wanted. These are great fall flavors!

Recipe review: Red Velvet Cupcakes

So I haven’t completely forsaken this blog and my love for cooking, but most of you who are my Facebook or Twitter friends probably realize that I found out a couple months ago that I’m pregnant! So now that the terrible nausea of the first trimester is past, I’m finally back to cooking and thought I’d share about another of my attempts at a Ming cupcake.

I was going to a football party for the Alabama vs. Duke game, so I wanted to try red velvet cupcakes (cupcake No. 4 on Ming Makes Cupcakes). I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I subbed olive oil for vegetable oil. In this instance, I think this was actually a mistake, because I could taste the oil in the finished product, and I think the cupcakes were a little on the dry side because of the substitution.

The cupcakes may have been a little too dry (everyone else said they were good, though), but the frosting was TO. DIE. FOR. Seriously, it was amazing. I don’t know that I would necessarily call this frosting a buttercream frosting because it was a lot sweeter and had a different texture from most buttercreams I’ve tasted. I sort of ramped up the almond extract (it calls for a splash, but I used several splashes), and it really made the frosting pop. So I would call what I made more of a butter-almond frosting. It was delicious on the cupcakes, but we also ate some of the leftover frosting on pretzels — uh, YUM.

I really wish I had some pictures to share, because the cupcakes turned out being really cute. I bought some decorative gel to write the Crimson Tide “A” on the top of all of them. I’d say they ended up being pretty much perfect for the occasion!

Recipe review: Banana cupcakes with maple brown butter frosting

Oh. my. word.

I may be up all night from the sugar rush these cupcakes brought on.

I am continuing on my quest to make all the cupcakes on the Ming Makes Cupcakes site, so this time I attempted Cupcake 6, the banana cupcakes with maple brown butter frosting. I’m skipping 3 and 4 for the time being because of the Month Without Process (one calls for chocolate chips, the other food coloring, neither of which I currently have at the house), and I was mixing the batter for Cupcake 5 while these were baking. I’ll have a review of those soon!

The banana cupcakes were reasonably simple to make, especially with my handy stand mixer. The prep time wasn’t terribly long, but the baking time and the subsequent time-in-the-freezer for the cupcakes tacked on a cumulative hour and a half. These were unique in that once they were out of the oven they went immediately into the freezer. This actually gave the muffin tops a crunchy texture that was really nice, especially with the frosting.

The frosting was also really easy and was a pleasant combo of melted butter, confectioner’s sugar, milk and maple syrup. The smell was incredible, and the flavor delicious but very sweet. After the first few bites, it was almost a little too much, especially because I added some cinnamon to the cupcake I munched on.

One of the best things about the cupcakes was that they can stand alone, and they are quite similar to banana bread. Bobby ate one with the frosting, then ate one without, and actually liked them better without the frosting.

These were another winning cupcake from Ming Makes Cupcakes, and they were different from all the other ones I’ve made so far.

Month Without Process: Spicy Oriental Beef Salad

When I was planning our meals for this week, I needed something to make from ground beef, and I wanted to find something different from the norm — so no hamburgers or meat loaf, and we’re out of pasta, so no spaghetti, either. I’m pining to get the pasta attachment for my stand mixer, but since I don’t have it yet, I haven’t made any effort to make pasta during our Month Without Process.

I searched on epicurious, and this recipe for Spicy Oriental Beef Salad caught my eye. It sounded spicy and fairly simple to make, so I gave it a shot. I made an exception to our non-processed rule for this recipe and bought Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce (yeah, I know, you can hate me for it if you want). I accidentally added the scallions and mint into the dressing mixture rather than mixing them in at the end, so I may not have gotten the exact taste it was supposed to have.

This wasn’t really my favorite recipe of our Month Without Process, and fittingly, it was technically not a non-processed recipe because of the aforementioned ingredients. It was pretty good, and Bobby said he would definitely classify it as Asian-style (or Oriental, as the recipe title says). It had a nice kick to it, too. I think what may have made me not like it as much was that, well — I was out of limes after the Juicing-fest, so I subbed lemon juice. That made the meat taste pretty sour. I think the other thing I didn’t like about it was that it was just too much beef without a lot else. I served it over lettuce, but it wasn’t necessarily a salad, and we both had a 1/2 pound of beef on our plates. Needless to say, neither of us ate all of it.

I might try this again sometime, but if I do, I will be sure to have the lime juice the recipe calls for, and I will likely incorporate it with some other veggies. I think it could be pretty good with cabbage!

On the side, I threw together a pretty easy Asian-style veggie mix. It was onion, carrots, green bell pepper, yellow squash and cabbage cooked in a mixture of Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and sugar. I actually enjoyed the veggies more than the beef — they had a really nice flavor.

Plan to Eat

There’s a site out there that’s been around for just over a year called Plan to Eat. I read about it in Money Saving Mom’s flipflopping posts, in which she first disliked it, then said she liked it. It’s a meal-planning website and appears to have been started by a woman whose husband built a digital tool to help her grocery list-making easier.

The site offers a free 30-day trial, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it out. You can input your own recipes, use the site’s recipes or link to recipe sites. When you link, the software automatically fills in a list of items needed. You then add recipes to your calendar on the day you plan to cook them, and you can generate a grocery list for a certain time period, say, a week. Here’s what my calendar looked like for the first week:

I generally like the idea of the site, but it borders on the time-consuming side for me. It definitely helped me quickly compile a list of recipes and what I would need for those, but as far as I can tell, there’s no way to input what you already have on-hand. So I had to sift through a bunch of items to mark off things like flour, oil, salt, pepper, garlic, etc. There may be a way to circumvent this, but I couldn’t figure one out. Ultimately, I feel like the grocery list generator should be the best benefit of the site, but I could probably make my own list in less time.

The part I did like about the site was putting the recipes on the calendar. I added recipes with main ingredients I knew I had (kale and chard were two big ones this week) and was able to divvy them up to different days fairly easily. However, while the site made it easier to do this, this is still something I could do without too much trouble on my own.

Overall, the site is an interesting idea, but I probably will not pay to use it after my free trial is up. Even so, I encourage folks to check it out. You may like it better than I do, and the first 30 days are free with no payment information required.