People want homemade dessert late at night too

My friend Katie and I were having a great night drinking wine and watching Julie and Julia (if you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure this movie is about me). Earlier in the evening I thought I'd make us a pie, but I got lazy. As the night went on, I really wanted pie, but I didn't want to wait a long time for it to cook or to chill the dough or all that rigamarole that comes with pie making. What's a girl to do? Make tiny pies of course.

Katie and I peeled and diced an apple and divided it into two small ovenproof dishes. We squeezed some lemon juice on the apple pieces and sprinkled some cinnamon on top. Then I melted a few tablespoons of butter in the microwave and mixed in a few tablespoons of flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Then I glopped the flour/butter/sugar/salt mixture over the apples.


It's not pretty but it's gonna taste good. I turned the oven on and it would only go to 550 degrees (that happens sometimes. Gah). We threw the tiny pies in the oven and baked them for about ten minutes.


Anytime you can make a homemade dessert that you can eat warm right out of the oven is a good time. These were super quick easy and went surprisingly well with the cheap dessert wine we were drinking. Impromptu baking is the best.

Alli makes a pie

Alli sent me this picture from her travels this summer:


And I said "I want one, please." So when she came to visit, she made me one. She's not big with the recipe following and she's not sitting here right now, but I'll do my best to remember all the steps.

First, blitz one bag of Newman's chocolate cookies in the food processor.


You could use Oreos, or chocolate wafers or whatever. I'm pretty sure Alli picked Newman's because she's so healthy. But they were good.

Melt about half a stick of butter, mix it with the crumbs and pat it into a pie pan.


Aren't Alli's nails cool? She's so funny. Anyways, bake the pie crust for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.

In my amazing stand mixer (you could just use a spoon - or a hand mixer), Alli mixed 1 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of sugar, one 8 oz package of cream cheese, half a stick of melted butter and 1 tsp of vanilla (I think).


She also whipped up a pint of cream.


Then she folded it into the peanut butter mixture.


She's a happy kid.


Then she poured the peanut butter mixture into the pie crust and we chilled it for a while.


Now it's pie!!!!!!


Doesn't it look good? All creamy and amazing and not too sweet - but you could amp up the sugar if you wanted. Chocolate and Peanut Butter = everybody wins.

Good lord, this is ridiculous

It happens against my best intentions. I want to blog, but I work 37 hours a week at school and then I agreed to house manage a show (part time), downtown, really far away from school (travel time is a bitch) and then rehearsals (in Brooklyn! Oy vey) started for the play that I'm performing in and soon, there's nothing left but an empty shell of Lena skin (sorry for the gross imagery - I'm so tired).

But I start getting these emails/facebook posts saying "why don't you blog? Haven't read anything in a while..." in which case I feel a) guilty and b) excited that people actually read my blog and care if I don't update it. So here we go.

Sometimes on my days off, I sleep for 13 hours and then cook all day. One of things I decided to cook all day was pie. I had one and a half containers of blueberries (Zack ate some. Curses) and a container of gooseberries which I had little idea what to do with, except make a pie.


I decided to try a new pie crust recipe from the Pioneer Woman. It called for Crisco and I had just realized how much of that I had in my pantry.


I also decided to use my pastry cutter instead of my food processor (or my fingers). It was use all the random things in my kitchen day.


That was back when I had a manicure. Good times. This pie crust recipe made three discs like this.


I used two and put one back in the freezer. I rolled out one for the pie pan and set the second one aside.


Then I combined my berries, some sugar (enough to coat the berries - gooseberries are sour), a dash of nutmeg, a few Tablespoons of flour (to make the insides of the pie thicker), put them in the pie crust and laid some pats of butter on top.


I covered it with my second pie crust. It broke, but I just smushed it back together and cut a few slits on top so that it didn't explode in the oven.


35ish minutes at 400 degrees later and bam! I had pie.


The crust was amazing - flaky like nobody's business (although I kind of missed the butter taste). The filling was sweet and just a little bit tart. It was juicy and went perfectly with the crust. Look at those pretty berries!


I wish I could say I brought this somewhere to share, but really, Zack and I ate the whole thing (mostly Zack). If you come over for dinner, maybe I'll make it again.

I don't have time to bake (or sleep)

I quite literally had one day off in the entire month of June...and it's already past. So I have no time to cook (or clean or watch tv) or most importantly, to blog. All my time is spent teaching, stage managing and riding the subway between 112th street and Union Square. So I don't really have anything to show on my blog. Plus, I can't even plug my show anymore because there is no point - we've sold out the entire run.

Luckily, I have friends who bake and send me pictures! See this nice pie that my friend Ellen baked?


She has a nicer pie plate than I do - I've got to work on that. She made my Strawberry Rhubarb pie recipe! I feel special. It looks really delicious.


I wish I had time to make more pie! Thanks, Ellen for giving me something to blog about. Hope the pie was good.

Finally, I think summer is on its way

Today is the first day of my CSA! That's Community Supported Agriculture for those of you who don't know. You can read about it here. Basically, I get a box full of farm fresh vegetables and fruit from a local farm every week for six months out of the year! It's awesome.

I just had to bake something right off. I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble. But that's not actually what I'm blogging about - I'm blogging about this pie that a made a few weeks ago (back when I didn't work 50 hours a week). But the crumble is very similar to this pie.

First of all, I had some pie dough lying around in the fridge. That's just the kind of girl I am. So that made this a lot easier. You could just buy pie dough if you wanted. Or you could make your own, like I did!


This is basically what I did. I chopped up some rhubarb -


- which is a vegetable, not a fruit. Did you know that? It's a very yummy vegetable. It goes well with pork too. But you probably don't want to put pork in your pie. So I mixed together some strawberries (all sliced and diced), one and a half Tbs flour, some lemon zest, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, 2 Tbs melted butter, some ground ginger (to taste) and 1/2 cup sugar along with the rhubarb.


Then I cut thin strips out of more pie dough and made a nice criss cross pattern. I had too much filling, so I made a few tiny pies too.


I baked it in my stupid broken oven at 300 degrees for about an hour (I really don't recommend this - stupid lousy oven) and then I got so annoyed that I put it in the broiler so that it would get brown on top.


It all turned out well though! I took it to a BBQ and everybody loved it. They all ignored the store bought pies that were there. Store bought pies cannot compete with my homemade goodness! I rule. And you can too! Make some pie. People like pie.

More pie!

My house is being overrun with sweet potatoes. I get them every week in my CSA and I never know what to do with them. Finally, after weeks of pile up, I had enough. We had company coming! I decided to make a pie.

I found a sweet potato pie recipe in an old recipe of Gourmet that looked easy enough. I made some adaptations due to food allergies of my guests and the constrictions of my refrigerator. I think it made it even better.

Sweet Potato Pie with a Gingersnap crust (click here for the original recipe)

Crust:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus additional for buttering pie plate
Flour for dusting
1 cup finely crushed gingersnap cookies (5 ounces; 20 2-inch cookies)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Filling:
2 lb sweet potatoes (I used 5)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup non fat milk
1 tablespoon whiskey (I used Maker's Mark)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour pie plate, so that nothing sticks later.

Toss together all crust ingredients in a bowl with a fork until crumbs are moistened, then press evenly over bottom and up side of pie plate. Bake crust 6 minutes, then cool on a rack.


Increase oven temperature to 400°F.

Prick each sweet potato once with a fork. Roast for one hour, or until tender. Halve potatoes lengthwise and cool. Don't they look pretty?


I could have just eaten them plain at this point. They were really good.

This next part is tricky, so I'm copying it straight from the magazine:
While potatoes cool, cook sugar in a dry 8-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, undisturbed, until it begins to melt. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally with a fork, until sugar melts into a deep golden caramel. Remove from heat. Carefully pour water down side of skillet (mixture will bubble and steam vigorously), then return to heat and simmer, stirring, until hardened caramel is completely dissolved. Remove from heat.

It sounds harder than it is. I'm usually freaked out by caramel making, but it was pretty easy.


Honestly, you could probably skip this step and just add some sugar to the filling mixture....

When potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel and add the flesh to the bowl of a food processor or a regular bowl and mash them with a potato masher/fork. Blend in the food processor until smooth (or just mash), then add eggs, cinnamon, and salt and mix until smooth. Add milk/cream, caramel, whiskey, and vanilla, and blend until combined well.

Pour filling into crust!


Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes and then cool on a rack for an hour. It will continue to set while it cools, so don't be too put off if the center is still jiggly (but it can't be soupy. That wouldn't work).

Serve warm.


It's good pie! Everyone liked it. Zack said he likes it more than pumpkin pie, which I thought it was nice. Cadence liked it too.


Cutest baby ever. Plus she likes my cooking (as do her parents).

Finally, time for some squash

I found my camera cord! Thank goodness. I tried cleaning the house and when that didn't work, I just randomly started poking around in the few boxes that I have yet to unpack and lo and behold, there it was.

The next few posts will be about the glory that is the butternut squash. I'm totally enamored of it lately. I keep getting them in my CSA each week, and the more of them I get, the more I love them. Here's my first venture into butternut squash land - in true Lena fashion - pie.

I got this recipe from The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World by Betsy Block. Zack made fun of me for reading a book about raising kids, but I prefer to think of it as a book about cooking healthy. There are recipes in it! And I'm trying to be healthy. Don't mock.

1 pie crust
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds)
1/2 cup cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice (a personal note - I just shook in a bunch of "pumpkin pie spice." I figured that was the same.
1/8 tsp salt
3 large eggs, room temperature

I had pie dough leftover from my apple tart from Rosh Hashanah (yeah, this was a while ago). I guess technically it was tart dough, but whatever. It's what I had. You can read about it here.

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Halve your squash and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. Line a baking pan with foil and put the squash in the pan, cut side up. Rub with oil and bake until it's soft, about an hour.


2. Prebake your pie crust - for about 5-8 minutes. You can do it while you bake your squash. I didn't weight mine down and it went all crazy. So, line your crust with foil and weight it down with dried beans or pie weights or something.

3. Turn your oven down to 375. Cool your squash a bit and scoop out the flesh into a food processor or blender or just a big bowl if you want. Add the cream (I accidentally added 3/4 of a cup instead of 1/2. It tasted good to me in the end, so yay!), sugar, spices and eggs. Pulse it in your food processor or just mash it a lot until it's all smooth.

4. Pour it into the pie shell (take out the foil/weights first) and bake until the filling is set, about 40-45 minutes. I made a few little squash custards too - I just poured some filling into little ramekins and baked them along side the pie.


Aren't they cute? Here's one up close.


The pie was good too. I served it with whipped cream and everybody liked it. It's kind of like pumpkin pie. Just tell people that it is if they don't like the sound of squash pie.

Sometimes you have to be selfish

Recipes are coming, my dear readers. Rosh Hashanah was a huge success. I've still recovering from the exhaustion of holidays plus rehearsals plus....I don't know, whatever else is going on.

Sometimes, you have to make things just for yourself. Little things that you can enjoy alone. The other day, while prepping my apple tart for Rosh Hashanah, I found myself with a scrap of extra dough and a bit of fruit leftover. Rather than let it go to waste, I threw the fruit in a little ramekin, mixed in a pinch of sugar, flour and a tiny bit of butter and threw the dough over the top. I sprinkled some sugar on it and put it in the oven for 40 minutes at 400 degrees.


Back to feeding the rest of you tomorrow, I promise.

Lazy lazy me

Sometimes, I don't feel like cooking. Right now, I'm too broke to go to a restaurant, so I do the next best thing (or sometimes, the flat out best thing) and go to a friend's house. Usually Meredith's. Here she is now.


On Saturday, she made this pie. She didn't have a finished picture of it.....but I do.


It was a bit gloopy but totally delicious. Stay tuned for more amazing food from more amazing people.

Pie Crusts, Part Three....at least

So, the day before I went off to CA, Zack finished whatever desserts we had in the house, which prompted him to moan and groan at my side while I was packing, "Pie! I want pie! Make me a pie!" I sighed. "I'll make you one when I get back, okay? I'll get some nice fruit in California and bring it home and make you a pie." He would stop momentarily and then go back to tugging at my sleeve and whining "Pie!" So I figured, I better deliver.

At the farmer's market in CA, my mom picked up three pints of strawberries and I thought, perfect, I'll take them home and make a pie. "What kind of pie are you going to make?" My mom asked. "I don't know.....strawberry pie." I shrugged. "That's not a thing," my mom frowned. "Strawberry rhubarb is a thing." Well, rhubarb isn't in season and if I want to make strawberry pie, gosh darn it, then I will.


Lena's Strawberry Pie - with the Breeden Family Pie Crust!

A quick word about the pie crust - when my friend Ellen saw the trouble I was having with pie crust, she promised to send me her family recipe. It had a mix of butter and shortening, which Meredith kept telling me is the best, so I gladly accepted Ellen's recipe. Here it is:

2 cups flour
1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbs ice water

Mix salt into flour.


Divide shortening and butter into small pieces...


... and cut into flour mixture using a pastry blade (I took my mom's pastry cutter from home. I freaking love it. It was even better than using my food processor - sacrilege, I know!)


Add ice water one tablespoon at a time, kneading until dough holds together (one extra tablespoon is sometimes necessary).



Look how nicely it came together! This is like real pie crust making, right here.

Divide into two parts, one larger part with approximately 2/3 of the dough and the other with the remaining 1/3. Wrap in wax paper and pound into disks.


Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes, or until chilled.

While this happened, I worked on the strawberries. I sliced them up and mixed them with about half a cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour, a little bit of lemon juice and a pinch of salt.


Then I took out my bigger chunk of pie dough and rolled it out.


Then I smushed it into a pie plate. I'm very technical and precise, as you can see.


Then I put the filling in it.


Woo! We're cooking now. I rolled out the smaller piece of dough and cut it into long strips and made a "lattice top" whatever that is. As far as I can tell, it's like making a big tic-tac-toe board on top of a pie. I'm sure there's a purpose to it. It makes me feel very All-American, even though my strips are a little wonky (another technical term).


Then I baked it at 450 degrees for 30 minutes and 350 degrees for another 30 minutes, or until the fruit bubbled and the crust looked kinda golden brown.


It was good. Hands down, the best pie crust I've made so far. Thanks, Ellen! Also, who says there's no such thing as strawberry pie? It was even better the next day after it had chilled once and really set the filling. It was like strawberry jam in a pie crust. Who doesn't like that? Zack loved it. The whole pie is gone already. That's the mark of good baking right there.