We totally did it – we had a pie party. Lots of you came, and brought pie, or bubbles, or both. Between the people and the pie and the whipped cream and the sunshine and the bubbly drinks (prosecco, pink moscato, sangria and mint lemonade) it was a pretty fantastic afternoon.
This was the scene at on Saturday at 1:59. I had goosebumps. I tried to photograph them, but it didn’t work. We cleaned up, but didn’t manage to get the walls did, as I keep forgetting to pick up this magic eraser everyone keeps telling me is such a good idea. I’m not convinced it will be less work than painting at this point. But who cares? Everyone’s coming for pie! When the kitchen’s full, no one notices the fingerprints on the walls.
I made a couple pies: a rhubarb-raspberry galette that used up the last of my (still spindly) rhubarb, and a sauteed apple galette on white cheddar crust with a hazelnut crumble topping. (It sounds all fancy when you put it that way, doesn’t it? – really I just added some grated aged white cheddar to the pastry, a handful of hazelnuts to the crumble and didn’t bother with a pie plate.)
And then people started to arrive with pie. Is there a better sight than friends arriving at your door with pies wrapped in tea towels? (And with bubbly bottles of prosecco?) Lauren came! And brought her friends! Astrid had only eaten three types of pie in her life – we fed her three lifetimes worth’ of pie to catch her up.
I heartily endorse a pie potluck as a great kind of a get-together – pie just makes people happy. And it’s the sort of dish you tend to make when you have a group of people to feed. Some people get nervous at the prospect of a potluck. But it’s so risky! You don’t know what you’ll get! That’s part of the fun – that element of surprise. Earlier this week a few people tried to warn me – you’ll get a dozen apple pies! But really – a) who cares? and b) doubtful – the diversity of the dishes that show up at a potluck always amazes me. Especially at harvest time, when there’s so much produce to choose from. Also? If ten people made ten apple pies, they’d all be different.
There was bumbleberry pie, and Saskatoon pie. (One came from Fifendekel in Edmonton, another from Pearson’s Berry Farm.) Jenna brought pecan pie – which was pie perfection, and turned out to be her very first pie made from scratch. Everyone agreed she nailed it. (I’m on her to post that recipe!) There was a stunning peach pie with a lattice crust that disappeared in record time, and chocolate chip cookie dough pie – cookie dough baked right in the crust! Andy brought a ginger pear galette with Greek yogurt for spooning on top. (She also happened to be a calligrapher, and sat down to make signs for each pie as it arrived.)
Aga brought tequila lime pie and two boys for W to play Star Wars with.
Carol brought pink drinks – Foxy Ladies – with Evans cherries from her own back yard. (She said, after a few plates of pie, “I think I’ve pied and gone to heaven.”)
Catharine brought gorgeous peach-plum galettes, sprinkled with sugar she said she rubbed with fresh mint. Hello. I almost snuck off with one of them for some alone time.
And Avery brought pie fries! Sticks of cinnamon-sugared baked pastry that you serve with sweet dip – she brought dulce de leche and strawberry cream. Of course because her pastry was fantastic they were a bit fragile – but a delicious hit! I guess with pie fries the goal is tough pastry?
Darrel and Corrine brought a graham cracker crusted no-bake cheesecake pie, topped with sliced peaches, blueberries and wee strawberries from their back yard. And Lauren‘s pie? A stunner, just like her – blueberry-blackberry-peach, and gluten-free, of course. Her crust was made with almond, sweet rice and millet flours and was incredibly tender and delicious. I may just start making her pastry from now on. She wrote a great pie post, by the way, that sums up the essence of pie and its influence on people.
I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m crazy for inviting people I’ve never met over to my house. Life is too short not to, I think. Anyone who is willing to bake a pie to bring to a potluck with a bunch of people they’ve never met is probably someone I’d like to hang out with. It’s so much easier to be talked out of doing something because there might be a risk involved (do axe murderers even like pie?) than to just go ahead and do it – most often the potential for greatness far outweighs any potential (imagined or not) negatives. And pie takes care of the rest.
Sautéed Apple Galette on White Cheddar Crust
Crust:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1/4 cup shortening, chilled and cut into pieces
1/2-1 cup grated old white cheddar
2-4 Tbsp. ice-cold water
Filling:
1/4 cup butter
3 lb tart apples (such as Granny Smith) cut into 3/4″ pieces (don’t bother peeling them)
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
Crumble:
1/2 cup all-purpose or whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces
1/4 cup flaked hazelnuts
Make the pastry: in a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, stir together the flour, sugar and salt. Add the butter, shortening and cheese and use a fork, pastry blender, wire whisk or the “pulse” motion of the food processor to blend the mixture until it resembles coarse meal, with lumps of fat no bigger than a pea.
Drizzle the minimum amount of water over the mixture and stir until the dough comes together, adding a little more a bit at a time if you need it. Gather the dough into a ball, flatten it into a disc, wrap it in plastic and chill for at least half an hour. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out into a 14-inch circle (don’t worry about it being perfect); drape over the rolling pin and transfer to a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet. Put the fridge while you make the filling.
Meanwhile in a large, heavy skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat. When the foaming subsides, add the apples and cook until they start releasing their juices. Sprinkle the sugar and salt overtop. Cook for about 10 more minutes, stirring often, until the moisture evaporates and the syrup thickens, and the apples start to turn golden. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl to cool.
To make the crumble topping, blend all the ingredients in a bowl or food processor until well combined and crumbly. Preheat the oven to 375F.
Pile the cooled apples onto the pastry, mounding it the middle and spreading it out to within 2 inches of the edge. Fold the pastry over, letting it fold where it wants to. If you like, brush the folded-over part with a little milk or beaten egg and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Scatter the crumble mixture over top.
Bake for 45 minutes, or until bubbly and golden. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before sliding carefully onto a cutting board to serve. Serves 8-10.
September 11 2011 | dessert | 42 Comments »
How’s this for a fancy way to serve your fruit?? The watermelon was an after school project that is now destined to be tomorrow’s grade 1 snack. Think the class will be surprised when W shows up with a basketload of watermelon, carved into a Fabergé egg?
Perhaps because we were going to see OVO tonight we had eggs on the brain. But the boys wanted to carve a watermelon (remember the T-rex? and the shark?) and when my mom popped by for dinner, she started drawing whimsical designs on the outside of the watermelon with a washable marker, and then we all sat working at it with small paring knives, as if it were a communal pumpkin or a puzzle.
The cool thing about carving a watermelon like this is that you can add any design you want – swirls and stripes and checkerboards and diamonds – and some can go through to the white part of the rind, other parts can go right through to the pink. No watermelon is wasted, and it looks far fancier – dressed up, even – for a party. I’m thinking when Easter comes around again a watermelon will make a pretty cool giant Easter egg.
Dinner last night was smoked ribs from Jojo’s BBQ – her truck has been broken down and is now getting an extreme makeover, including a new smoker, so she’s been out of the food truck loop half the summer. The half during which Calgarians have been losing their minds over meals on wheels. And so this week she tweeted out that she’d be making home deliveries each dinnertime. (This week only! Although I’m hoping she’ll change her mind.) She brought ribs, and BEANS, and pink pickled onions, and barbecue sauce.
I wanted to make another batch of this Honey Sage Cornbread, but we were out of cornmeal.
Other people who live around us got some barbecue too, and we all saddled up to the table with about a half dozen salads and hummus and my sister’s leftover lasagna from across the street. (A. brought potato salad, made with potatoes dug up from her own back yard. The ones the voles left for her, anyway. Dolled up with fresh mint and olives and topped with crunchy fried yellow lentils. Super yum.)
September 07 2011 | snacks | 24 Comments »
When I placed one of these babies down in front of W, he declared in his best British accent: “bloody hell! That pancake is amazing!” (One of the most entertaining Harry Potter influences is imitations of Ron Weasley, saying “bloody hell” – or more, “bwoody ‘ell“, as if it were the most natural commentary a six year old could give.)
The Club Club girls had their community cookbook launch this weekend. When I went over to photograph them Lisa told me about her contribution to the book – banana and bacon pancakes she had had in Chicago (or New York? somewhere cool and food-centric) that blew her away and inspired her to make them once she got back home. Of course when it came to write the recipe down, it was a bit tricky, as it tends to be when you regularly wing it.
“You just make pancakes, really,” she told me, “and put bacon and bananas in them.”
And so I did. I stirred crumbled bacon and chopped bananas into a batter that already had a pureed banana in it (one that had blackened in the freezer, making it extra juicy and mashable). Bonus: you then get to cook the pancakes themselves in the bacon drippings, if you’re so inclined.
And then just now, when I flipped through the book to Lisa’s recipe did I realize she caramelizes the bananas and serves them OVER the bacon pancakes! Hello! That changes the game entirely! Will make them next Sunday and report back.
But these are pretty awesome. Even 13 year old Em, who like totally hates bananas, devoured hers.
And guess what! I have a copy of their book, warm from the presses, to give away!
Banana & Bacon Pancakes
6 slices bacon, chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour (or use half whole wheat, half all-purpose)
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 large egg
2 Tbsp. melted butter or oil
1 very ripe banana, mashed
1 ripe banana, chopped
In a heavy skillet, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until crisp; drain off almost all the drippings (keep them in a small dish) and set aside.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, egg and oil. Add it to the dry ingredients along with the overripe mashed banana; stir just until combined. Stir in the cooked bacon and chopped banana.
Warm the skillet up again. (The great thing about cooking the bacon first is that it sort of gets the skillet going, so that the pancakes cook perfectly from the very first go.) If you like, add a bit of canola oil and swirl it around the pan. Ladle in some batter and cook over medium-low heat until the edges look dry and bubbles begin to pop on the surface. Use a thin, flat spatula to flip the pancakes over and cook them for another minute, until they are golden on the other side.
Repeat with the remaining batter. If you need to keep the finished pancakes warm, keep them uncovered on a plate in a 200ºF oven. Makes about 8 pancakes.
September 05 2011 | breakfast | 18 Comments »
Let me just say off the bat that I’m fundamentally against red velvet cake. Yes, it’s because it’s just barely chocolate (a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder, typically, so as to not overwhelm the colour) and somewhere around a bottle’s worth of red food colouring. That’s what makes it red. Give me a big ol’ chocolate cake – taste over aesthetics – any day.
(By the way, I’ve tried it with beets – it does lend the palest of reddish hues, but once cooked the beets never have the same intensity of traditional red velvet cakes made with food colouring.)
But I appreciate that other people are enamoured with it, and that’s all that matters when you’re making a birthday cake for someone. And when a that someone tweets that he will be very disappointed if no one makes him a 15 tier red velvet cake (joking, yes), you make one, right? Right? Just for kicks?
I’ve always meant to make one of those cakes that look almost like a stack of crepes, with uber-thin layers – I think mostly I love the idea of the cake:frosting ratio. You don’t slice the cake layers crosswise in halves or thirds (too tricky and crumby); you spread small quantities of batter into baking pans and bake them for a short time, so you wind up with thin cake layers that are sturdier than you might think, almost like big cakey cookies. These didn’t crumble. I wouldn’t expect a mix to produce the same results.
So last night I got it in my head that it might be a good idea to attempt such a cake. If you are like me, you will attempt this in your stand mixer and make an enormous mess, simply due to the quantity of ingredients and their proximity to the rim of the bowl. If you’re like me you’ll give up at the end and stir by hand until everything looks like cake batter.
So we put on The Fantastic Mr Fox and then I made Mike pause it approximately every 12 minutes to rotate the thin cake layers in and out of the oven. I used three 9″ pans. It wasn’t a big deal, really-they cook quickly. Flip them out, wipe out the pan and spread in some more batter. Just make sure you have the counter space. I cooled them on racks and then kept them with a piece of parchment between each layer to frost the next day.
I used cream cheese frosting, but didn’t quite make enough – this is enough to spread a peanut butter thickness on each layer, but as you can see the sides are a little stripey – I didn’t anticipate the sides needing as much frosting as it did, on account of all the space between each layer. It sucked up a lot. Next time I’d make half again as much icing, or double it, even. Yes, that’s a lot of icing – but I think next time (next time??) I’d prefer the frosting a little thicker between layers. They stripey effect would be more dramatic when you cut into it. But I did kind of like the stripey effect on the outside, even though it was unintentional.
Happy birthday Dan!
Twelve Layer Red Velvet Cake
Cake:
1 1/2 cups butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups sugar
6 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cups milk
2 Tbsp red food colouring
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
Frosting:
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 8 oz (250 mL) pkg cream cheese, at room temperature
1 bag icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 Tbsp water
Preheat the oven to 350F. To make the cake, beat the butter and sugar in the bowl of a large bowl – if possible in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle blade – on high speed for about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla, scraping down the bowl as you need to.
In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the buttermilk, milk and red food colouring. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. On low speed, add the flour in 3 additions, alternating with the milk mixture in 2 additions, beginning and ending with the flour. You’ll have to scrape down the bowl a lot, and I covered the top of the mixer with a tea towel to prevent ingredient spray all over the kitchen walls.
Spray three 8″ or 9″ round cake pans with nonstick spray, and spread between 3/4 and 1 cup of batter evenly over the bottom of each. Bake for about 12 minutes, until springy to the touch and the sides are starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Let them cook for a minute or two before inverting the cakes out onto your hand and then onto a wire rack to cool. Wipe out the pans with paper towels, re-spray and repeat. I got 4 batches, for 12 layers.
To make the frosting, beat the butter and cream cheese until fluffy and smooth; add about a third of the icing sugar, the vanilla and a splash of the water and beat until smooth. On low speed, add another third of the icing sugar, and then the rest, adding more water as you need it to achieve a soft, spreadable frosting. (Ensure it’s not so soft as to squish out the sides of the layers, though.)
Once the cake layers are completely cooled, start stacking them, frosting in between. I used not quite as much frosting as I would between traditional cake layers – go for peanut butter thickness to the thickness of the cakes themselves. Once you stack them all, frost the outside of the cake. Voila!
Serves lots – people will take thin pieces because it’s so high.
September 04 2011 | cake | 20 Comments »
