all buttoned up.

In the End, There was Only One Kind of Cookie

The week leading up to the 25th went a little Crazy Town up in here. Saturday, the 24th, had me standing in the kitchen slowly turning circles wondering what exactly I could cull from the list. This December has not exactly found me smug, but it had found me happily laid back and mostly un-rushed. I had thought ahead! The baking for neighbors and friends was finished! The gifts had been done and wrapped for days! I was nearly annoying myself.

Pride goeth before the fall, friends.

So, on the 24th, while slowly turning circles and alternately wanting to cry and to laugh, I realized that in my planning I had left all the merry making and family cookie baking to the days we had just lost. I pulled out the only recipe that I felt like making and tried to channel some cheer. The recipe was for Peppernuts, which in my family are little crunchy bits: mildly spicy and tasting a bit like orange. I realize there are 100 different variations on these (some are an entirely different cookie all together) and the recipes vary even in my own family. So, for the record, this is my mom and my great grandma's recipe, but not my grandma's. This recipe involves Roger's Golden Syrup and lots of orange rind. We are a picky people.

Pickier still, are my VERY OWN CHILDREN who claim to not even like peppernuts (lest you think this was some kind of love gift for them). I made them anyway and I prepped for lunch the next day. The cookies for Santa were cancelled and there were no cinnamon rolls to wake up to. Last minute handmade gifts had long been abandoned and the stockings were a bit narrow. Still, we opened gifts, we laughed with friends, we marveled (and continue to) at our good fortune, and I ate more than my share of those damn cookies. They were good (and they still are, as most of them are now in the freezer).

Now it's New Year's Eve and I'm just catching up. And I still feel a little behind. But I didn't want this last day of the year to pass without letting you all know how grateful I am that I can come here, check in, write some stuff down, and be the recipient of a whole lot of good love and good humour. This space, with it's never changing header and occasional silliness, has been the source of so many good things and so many good people in my life.

Thank you, thank you. Happy New Year.

Breton Apple Pie

Our internet connection has been missing for the last couple of weeks. Then all of a sudden-- tah dah! It's here. They are redoing the house two doors down, so maybe that has something to do with it (incidentally: anyone want to be our neighbors? It's going to be a good lookin' house. Helpful neighborly traits include being okay with waking up to the sound of small people screaming "CROW" and chasing birds down your street on the way to the bus).

I turned 34 and Sam turned 7 during my absence. What does a 7 year-old get?

• a short stack of thrifted Dennis the Menace comics
• the second book in the Amulet series
• a chess set and this book to go with it
• new hoodie
• a stack of blank comic books and a speech bubble template

He also gets a Breton Apple Pie.

My friend Beth has a couple of Nick Malgieri's books and swears by his recipes for crusts and sweet things. His most recent book had a recipe for a Breton Apple Pie along with a picture of a beautifully turned out cake on a plate. The picture sold me, even though mine looks very little like his. He uses a 10" cake pan (I don't have one) which means you are able to slide the cake out and serve it on a plate (he freezes them baked, too). The recipe is online and I've made it three times, modifying it a stitch the second time, and making it dairy free for the third. I will say, using butter rather than a substitute makes a difference-- a good difference.

This is a dead easy recipe with the "cake" part being somewhere between a cookie and a pastry and altogether delicious. I used a large pie plate for this one, but used my large cast iron for the two prior.

Breton Apple Pie
(Modified from the September 17th, 2008 issue of the Washington Post. Originally appearing in Nick Malgieri's Modern Baker)

For the filling

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (I use earth balance when I'm going dairy-free)
• 2 1/2 pounds sweet apples, peeled cored and sliced into 6-8 slices
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 apple sauce (or up the sugar and leave out the sauce)
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the dough

• 8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the cake pan
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 large egg yolks, plus an egg wash of 1 large egg beaten with a pinch of salt
• 2 3/4 cups flour (spoon flour into a dry-measure cup and level off)

For the filling: Melt the butter over medium heat in a large pan. Add the apples and sprinkle them with the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon. Cook, covered, for about 10 minutes, checking them and stirring occasionally, until they are swimming in liquid. Uncover and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.  Remove from the heat and let cool while you make the dough.

For the dough: Set an oven rack on the lowest level of the oven; preheat to 350 degrees. Use a little butter to grease a 10-inch round cake pan. The original recipe calls for you to "cut a round of parchment or wax paper to fit in the bottom, then butter the paper. Have ready two 10-inch cardboard rounds or tart bottoms". Since I use pie plates, I skip this step entirely.

Combine the butter, sugar and vanilla extract in the bowl of a mixer. Beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating until smooth after each addition.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a large rubber spatula to incorporate the flour.

Place half of the dough in the bottom of the prepared pan. Use your fingertips to press the dough evenly over the bottom of the pan and about 1 inch up the sides. Sometimes I wait for the filling to cool, but it doesn't appear to make a difference. Spread the filling over the dough.

This bit would be lovely if I could do it right. But I haven't been able to quite manage it: Flour the remaining dough lightly on both sides and press it into a 10-inch disk (use a cardboard or tart pan bottom as a guide). Run a long-bladed knife or spatula under the dough to keep it from sticking. Invert the dough onto a separate floured cardboard and slide it onto the filling. I just end up plopping it on top and patching the holes.

Brush the top of the pie with the egg wash. Use the tines of a fork to trace a lattice pattern on the top. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until the dough is nicely colored and baked through. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes, then invert, un mold and turn right side up again (it's good to use one of the cardboard disks or tart bottom for this). Let cool completely.

****

It keeps well-- at least until the next day. During apple time I'm going to make a few and keep them handy in the freezer. 7 year-old Sam decided to skip the cake as he had already had "too much junk" during the day. Whatever, Kiddo. You ate your weight in carrots yesterday, so I think you'll be all right.

An Irregular Trapezoid Update: 2nd Season

I am elbow deep in brine and peaches and what-have-you as we dig in deep to the end of August.  You can smell our house coming down the block and if you don't like the smell of vinegar, I suggest you take a different route.  J at Putting By has been a great encourager to me this summer-- I put in my first order for lots and lots of tomatoes and am borrowing a pressure cooker to can up dried beans.  Of course, this has precipitated the question of storage so I've been trolling around trying to find a big cabinet with doors for the basement.

Our little trapezoid has done really well, despite a cooler than average summer.  Sam eats the lemon cukes like apples and the tomatoes are full of green fruit.  I've stopped watering the latter and trimmed back a lot of the new growth, in hopes that they will actually set and ripen. I'm waiting for the zucchini to finish up (or for us to get tired of it) so that I can try and eek out a third season of fall greens.  If not, I'll call it even and plant carrots and garlic and whatever for overwintering and hope for the best.

In a shocking turn of events, I made Ina's zucchini pancakes and all the boys happily ate them-- not once, but twice.  We have been also eating grunts, slumps and the occasional kuchen (out of the Rustic Fruits and the Grand Central books respectively), because you have to reward yourself a little for using up all that zucchini.

(p.s. the beginnings of the box, the updated greens, and when we ripped out the peas. )

A Baking Book That Might Drive Up Your Popularity

  

 

I made Karen DeMasco's Butterscotch Cream Pie for Thanksgiving (recipe here).  I made my own cookies for the crust, bought vanilla beans, candied pecans for the top.  I made the pudding and stuck my head inside the pot to lick the remnants out. I grew slightly resentful of the pie and how long it was taking.  I accidentally over whipped the cream for the top, prompting Paul to say that it didn't matter how it looked as long as it tasted good.  Uh, no.  A pie like this has to look as good as it tastes.  I took it to dinner. 

Let me tell you-- it was so good that our friend announced that she didn't actually care how long it took because it was worth every little bite and frankly, she would not feel bad if she asked me to make another one. And it was better than it looked, so I was wrong.

So we tracked down the book: The Craft Of Baking: Cakes, Cookies and Other Sweets for Inventing Your Own

It's beautiful and well written and very instructional, which I love.  She talks techniques and isn't that so important when you're trying something new?  Just like sewing.  DeMasco provides frameworks to improvise, talks about baking in soup cans, and goes into candy making which is both terrifying and exhilarating.  Jellies!

 

These are black raspberry flavoured, and they are delicious.  I have a horrible track record with candy and these came out first go.  The recipe calls for 1tsp of Vitamin C powder (a large bottle was 8 dollars-- not cheap, but hey!  Vitamins! I got Country Life Brand from New Seasons) and Pomona's Pectin/powdered pectin.  I think you could also skip the C powder.  The rest of the ingredients you probably have, especially if you have frozen fruit in the freezer.  

So, yes, another dessert book which is not good news for me and my jeans.  BUT, it is unlike any baking/dessert book that I have and I've already put brioche and honeycomb brittle on my must try list.  Incidentally the other two big desserts I brought to dinner were a Raspberry and Pear Pandowdy from the Rustic Fruits book and Pumpkin bread from the Grand Central one.  We are three for three on the good books front.  They would make fantastic gifts, too, along with Molly's Book which has made the rounds through all my friends-- unless, of course, you want to be the person who always shows up with the fabulous desserts that nobody else has the recipes for.  In that case, keep these under your hat. 

BOOM!

I have been doing a very good job of this whole school starting, everybody up and washed and out the door thing.  We've been riding the bike (mostly) and I've been getting dinner ready and everybody fed by 5 (mostly).  This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous to most of you, because, duh, none of those things are very hard, but sometimes that kind of routine (or monotony) becomes the hardest thing to do-- let alone do it well.  I started volunteering a little bit in Sam's classroom and while I don't think I'm too much help most of the time, it has been a great reminder to cut the kid a lot of slack once we get home.  He holds it together so well in the face of so much distraction and um, strong personalities.  I'm *still* really proud of him. 

All this to say, that Hey October!  My love for you has not diminished, I've just been distracted!  Some of the best things happen in this month and for whatever reason, I always feel my year resetting at about this time.  Screw you, New Year's Day.  Anyway, the whole month (and this whole winter) was made 100 times better with a phone call from my friend Beth yesterday-- she called to tell me that all my baking dreams had come true.  Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson have just come out with their Grand Central Baking Book.  (How did I not know this was coming?  I'm talking to you certain in-the-know peeps of mine.)  Grand Central Bakery is among many great bakeries in town, but as far as I'm concerned they are hands down the best at certain things-- like Cinnamon Rolls.  They are the cinnamon rolls of my dreams (quite literally) and I've tried several times to recreate them at home and have been completely lost.  My friend dropped off her book for me to copy down the recipe (I have one waiting for me at Powell's but I couldn't freaking get down there today-- see above blah, blah about routine) and no wonder I couldn't figure it!  Molasses!  Currants!  8 grain cereal!  That sound you heard this afternoon?  That was my mind blowing. 

They take about a day and a half to make (I'm almost not joking) and I'm right in the middle of the process.  So you're going to be hearing about this again.  Besides, the rest of the book is beautiful and full of greatness-- really, I'm sort of terrified about what this is going to mean for my waistline.  I thought that Rustic Fruit book was going to do me in, but I had no idea.  There's a section in there called "Every Day Fruit Desserts", which I'm taking to mean that I should be making them EVERY DAY.  See you tomorrow.  

Molly's Life

I do not make a lot of room in my life for books.  Children's books-- yes, but other sorts, other than cook books or craft books or whatever-- no.  If I were to explain this to 9 or 14 or even 22 year-old me, I would expect that they would sit in shock for a moment while their eyes welled up with tears of disbelief and sadness. I have consoled myself over the last few years that there will be a time, very soon, when reading for joy will be just that, joyful, and not something to try and fit in when I've exhausted other options.  I have read some very good books this last year or two (and two really not good ones), but it's felt a bit like cheating on the rest of my life.  Sad, but true.

I've been thinking about this a good amount, and wondering what to do exactly, and then Molly's book showed up in the post this morning.  Molly-- now there's a girl worth cheating for.  So, while the babies were sleeping and Sam had his mouth full for a minute (he's at that crazy don't-stop-to-take-a-breath-I-have-so-much-to-say-out-loud stage), I put on the Frances tapes and said very quietly, "bud, I'd love it if we could just sit and be together quietly for a little while.  Is that all right?"  He said that it would be okay, maybe, if he could have more granola and milk and, uh, a small candy cane. 

I made it to page 55.

Then, while acting as passenger on our couch plane, and right before he pointed above my head to the blank wall and said, "Mrs., do you see that sign?  It says books are dangerous when you're flying, so put it away. Thank you", I got right up to Coconut Macaroons, recipes and all.

I love good stories and I love good food and Molly knows how to pull out both.  There is this deep, hilarious chasm between people who love to write and people who love to write and do it well--  A Homemade Life falls soundly into the latter category and it makes me yearn to put books and reading and taking great pleasure out of both, back into my life. 

Thank you, Molly.

(I'll be at Powell's tomorrow, but the whole list of signings and appearances are here.  Totally, totally jealous that I won't be hangin' in Oklahoma City with the Huffsters, so if you're there, give Hannah a little good game smack and tell her it's from me.). 

Feed Me.

 

(dinner from Stephanie)

Our lives have been made immeasurably easier by our friends bringing us food and company during these last few months.  Scratch that.  Make that this whole last year.  After Amy set us up with a meal list last time around I was certainly not expecting another go-round only a year later.  But a couple of PreK moms put together a website using this free calendar system and then badgered me for names.  I felt bad, but not bad enough to not ask my friends, yet again, to feed us. 

Who knew how long I would end up being in Florida (Paul got was well-fed in my absence) or that we would be housebound for two weeks with crazy weather?  There are few things better than a good meal to help people feel cared for-- especially if it's food that they like (and we loved all of it). 

The calendar worked great.  People could sign up at their leisure, make changes, or check for any updated information.  If you're looking to help friends in need, this is the way to go.  Another family from Sam's school is dealing with a long-term illness and every month a different batch of people sign up for meals using this system.  They even type in the sort of food they'll be bringing so that they're not doubling up too much.  That is love. So, in the spirit of such love:

Tips for Making Best Friends for Life

• I cannot tell you how great it is to recieve food in containers that can be recycled or kept.  Mason jars, tin pans, cardboard boxes lined in parchement paper... all these things make life so much easier during the aftermath.  
• Favourite take-out works quite nicely if you're not up for the cooking
• Bringing food that can be cooked and eaten or thrown in the freezer for the next day is a great idea.  Leftovers are a life-saver.  You may want to avoid bringing things that are already frozen.
• Don't automatically think lasagna/pasta if you're cooking for vegetarians (shut up, Hula.  We loved your lasagna.  I'm not talking to you).  Beans, soup, soba noodles, falafel, calzones, casseroles... you know the drill. 
• Throwing in a couple of pieces of fruit is a very good plan.
• Finally... The Grocery Delivery Option.  You can make pretty much anybodies day with grocery delivery.  It also makes a kickass shower gift.  Because getting to the grocery store can get tricky (see below).

Jammin' on the One.

Andrea brought us dinner last month as a part of Feed the Framily '08.  She brought us 23 Hoyt food because she has certain connections and she loves us (if Paul and I ever leave the house alone again, we are heading straight there for a fancy dinner).  She also brought Sam some bread and jam because she knows him well.

What Sam doesn't know is that I switched the jar she brought with some from my vastly inferior freezer stash.  You can't blame me because she brought strawberry Bonne Maman.  I ate it all by myself.

Apparently, I've been going on and on about the jam and my deep affection for jam of all kinds (except for marmalade, which I realize is very un-Commonwealth like behavior) and because she is a good friend and (probably) wanted to shut me up, Eggplant had a box of it delivered to my house.  A whole freaking box. 

When I was in college a friend of mine had asked if I wanted anything to eat from the corner store.  I requested some kind of fruit, and finding nothing good he brought me back a giant pickle from the jar next to the register.  How could I not be in love with him?

I feel like all of these stories are related. 

 

Clotheslined.

Doh!   I have a feverish baby.  It's sweet but totally pathetic-- not unlike other areas of my life.  It's beautiful outdoors this week and they are forecasting dry and nice until the beginning of next week. 

We're still planning a party for Saturday and I took Sam to the store to get his brother a gift.  We ended up with a bunch of Playmobil 1-2-3 (surprise surprise).  Okay-- I would like to make some spiced nuts for the party.  Suggestions?  I would also like to make some sort of apple cupcake.  Is there such a thing?  I just have so many dang apples.  

I took leave of my body for about an hour last night and drove to a box store plaza to buy Sam some sort of skeleton decoration for the front of the house.  Who am I??  I do not even like this holiday.  I ended up with a Martha Stewart Window Cling.  I wish they still had the Owl one.  I would feel slightly better knowing it was doing double duty on scaring away our predatory squirrel and crow population.