Blueberry Pie

Soooo now that it's time for pumpkin and pecan pie, I finally get around to showing you the blueberry pie I made this summer.

Truth be told, I wasn't so sure about showing you these pics.  After a few months working for a food magazine your own pictures look more like humble pie.  But I might as well finish off the last 3 or 4 posts I started so many months ago, such as this hand-picked blueberry pie.  You don't mind, right?

After picking buckets of blueberries, I knew a blueberry pie was in the works.  Both the blueberries and recipe come from Michigan.  While sitting around the table with our friend Gerry I copied down her recipe for blueberry pie.  Her secret, believe it or not, is a bit of cinnamon. You can't actually taste the cinnamon, but it definitely makes the berry flavor pop.

You should probably be making pumpkin pie right now (how about pumpkin with a gingerbread crust?).  But, if for some crazy reason, you're not into pumpkin pie and you have frozen blueberries leftover from the summer then go ahead and try this pie now.

Since we had so many pounds of berries I also whipped up a blueberry crisp based on this recipe.  The crumb topping has graham cracker crumbs and almonds in addition to your traditional oats.  I imagine it would work quite well on apple crisp too.

Better than fresh pie or a bubbling berry crisp are the friends who shared the recipes and  devoured forkfuls as we sat around the table.  No matter what season, holiday, or type of pie I am grateful for the gift of true friends.

Gerry's Blueberry Pie

recipe from a dear friend, Gerry Embrey

Ingredients:

1 pie pastry for a 9-inch double-crust pie (use your favorite recipe)

4-5 cups fresh blueberries 

3/4 -1 cup sugar

3 Tbsp all-purpose flour

dash salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Instructions:

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll out pastry for bottom crust and ease into a 9-inch glass pie plate.  

* In a large bowl combine blueberries, sugar, flour, salt and cinnamon. Toss until berries are evenly coated; pour mixture into crust.  

* Roll out top crust and place over berries; seal and flute edges. Cut slits (or shapes) in the center to allow steam to escape. Place pie plate on a baking sheet and bake 50-60 minutes or until crust is golden and fruit in center is bubbling. Let cool completely before serving.  

Food for Thought: "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." -Eleanor Roosevelt 

Flashback Friday: Good Jumbo Raisin Cookies

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

These cookies more than make up for that disappointing Mock Angel Food cake I told you about last Friday.  I expected a rather plain and boring old-lady cookie full of nuts and raisins, but boy was I wrong.  Each lovely bite was soft and just a hint chewy, but not cakey.  You know, like all the goodness of a fresh, warm cookie....only they stayed that way even when they weren't straight out of the oven.  And believe me when I say I taste tested them at multiple stages; as dough, straight from the pan, cooled 5 min, cooled 10 min, 30 min later, 2 hours later, breakfast the next morning, within 20 seconds of walking in the door after work, and, well, you get the idea.  Not even possible to just eat one.

Flashback Friday: Mrs. Alton's Brown Sugar Cookies

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

Going through my great-grandma's recipe notebook is going to be a little more time consuming than I first anticipated.  I decided to start off with a recipe she'd copied down twice- Mrs. Alton's Brown Sugar Cookies.  I haven't figured out who Mrs. Alton is yet, but my great-grandma must have liked her cookie recipe.  Though it appears in two separate places, neither recipe gives instructions or lists a measurement for flour. Great-grandma either knew it by heart, or couldn't quite figure out Mrs. Alton's secret.

I can only guess at what Mrs. Alton or my great-grandma might have done. What I wouldn't give to have just a picture or description of the original cookie! Was it a drop cookie or a cut-out cookie?  Do I add enough flour to make a spoonable dough or a rollable dough? (at least in these pfeffernusse cookies she noted to add enough flour to roll the dough like a rope).  There are more possibilities than I have time to test, so I'll just tell you about the assumptions I made.

Flashback Friday: Grandma's Molasses Cookies

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

Yesterday marked my grandma's 80th birthday.  We are celebrating this weekend with dinner out at her favorite restaurant followed by an open house at her assisted living complex.  My mom and I baked up 3 of her favorite types of cookies for the party.  For the sugar cookies I went with our traditional family favorite.  Her next request was a plain oatmeal cookie, no raisins.  (I kind of spilled some chocolate chips in a few batches though.)  In search of a tried and true oatmeal base I tested out 4 different recipes.  I haven't decided yet if I'll hash out the results here or just give you the winner.  Today we'll just munch on molasses cookies.

Many grandmas bake cookie for their grandchildren.  Since I love to bake so much it was often I who baked the cookies for my grandma.  Her third birthday cookie is the molasses cookie recipe she always asked me to bring her.  She would send me home with a jar of molasses from her basement shelves and I would return with a plate of cookies.

Tuesday's Twist: Twisted Cinnamon Bread

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

Triple twist cinnamon rolls.  Okay, the triple aspect is debatable, but it started with a T.  This twisted ring is one of those concepts I've been wanting to try for a long time but didn't use a recipe for.  Step by step pictures would have been nice, but that sounded messy.  Basically you make cinnamon rolls, but slice the log in half lengthwise and then twist the two ropes together into a ring.  Say what?  Just check out these pictures over at Just Love Cookin for an idea of how to slice and twist your dough.

I didn't get the ends tucked in quite right, which means I had better try this again soon.  You know, to practice.  Practice makes perfect, but imperfect pieces call for slicing off a sample to hide the evidence.

I made an orange flavored dough then spread the inside with orange marmalade (remember these?) and sprinkled it with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger and probably a few other things I didn't keep track of.  Oh, I think I threw in some cardamom.  Sorry, sometimes you just have to freestyle it and see how it turns out.

Food for Thought: "A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life." -Jean Ingelow

Flashback Friday: Great-Aunt Eleanor's Sour Cream Raisin Pie

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

Old recipes rarely include detailed instructions for the modern day cook.  What was considered common sense in our great-grandmother's generation was passed on from mother to daughter by hands-on experience and not necessarily written down in recipe format.   Details, tips and tricks of the trade were learned at home, and written recipes were intended as guidelines or reminders, not do-it-yourself, fail-proof tutorials.

This sour cream raisin pie recipe from my great-aunt Eleanor is over 100 years old.  It left me guessing in a few places, causing me to look up some of the details I mentioned yesterday.  It would be interesting to go back and make this recipe with her.  I don't think my meringue turned out as intended, but I've no way of knowing what hers was like in the first place.

Flashback Friday: Great-Grandma's Chewy Ginger Cookies

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

I wasn't lying when I said there was an abundance of old molasses cookie recipes in the family.  This one comes from my great-grandma on my mom's side.  Around age 20 she came over from Norway and got her first job as a cook for a doctor's family.  The family lived in St. Paul but brought her with to cook when they stayed at their resort home in Maine.  She also accompanied them as first cook aboard ship on the Great Lakes.  The details have been lost to time, but I still have some of her recipes like these ginger cookies.

 I've made more than my fair share of molasses cookies, yet I've never seen one utilizing a crisscross fork pattern.  Flattening with a fork is usually reserved for peanut butter cookies, but I was pleasantly surprised by its use here.  Many molasses cookie recipes call for chilling the dough, but these cookies can be baked immediately.  I'm generally not a fan of cloves and was hesitant to add a whole teaspoon.  Once again I was pleasantly surprised and found the blend of spices to be just right.

Tuesday's Twist: Orange-Ginger Caramel Corn

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

I found a new way to predict winter storms and snow days.  When Melissa has the urge to make popcorn, a winter storm is coming.  Even though I'd just made these popcorn balls during last week's snow day, I had the urge to make caramel corn.  Not long afterword a winter storm blew in another snow day.  While it's not much in the way of a weather pattern it does warrant a winter storm warning: imminent danger if stranded inside with a bowl of this crunchy orange-ginger caramel corn with cranberries and peanuts.  Proceed at your own risk.

While my popcorn impulses don't necessarily indicate winter storms, they are often times a result of the ever churning storm in my brain.  This recipe randomly jumped out of my brain around Christmas, right after I made gingerbread popcorn.  It came without warning and with such intensity that before I knew it, there was a batch of popcorn at my finger tips.  A friend asked me where I got the idea, and I said  "umm...I don't know?...my head?"  In the aftermath of said storm I happened to scribble down the measurements I used.

Random Recipe Wednesday: Carrot Cake Breakfast Bites

Sometimes I get things a little backwards and eat cookie dough for breakfast.  This time I made what some would call breakfast cookies and ate them for supper, snacks and pretty much everything but breakfast.

I hesitate to even say breakfast cookie, because these really aren't cookies.  Let's call them breakfast bites.  Without any butter, oil or sugar you can not have a cookie.  What we do have is a hearty and satisfying breakfast/snack that leaves you feeling full, healthy and energized.  Dried fruit, nuts and oats are ground in the food processor then mixed with shredded carrot and apple and a mashed banana.  See, it's breakfasty but it's not a cookie.

Flashback Friday: Soft Molasses Cookies

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

I was hoping to find an old recipe starring peanut butter in honor of National Peanut Butter Day yesterday.  Alas, there seems to be an abundance of old family recipes for ginger and molasses cookies.  I guess peanut butter wasn't exactly a staple in the Scandinavian kitchen.  While I won't turn down a spice cookie, I generally prefer a cookie involving chocolate.  All that being said, I'll do my best to add a little more variety to this series in the coming weeks.

Flashback Friday: Pfeffernusse

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

Though I never tasted my great-grandmother's pfeffernusse, I've heard about them from my dad and uncles.  I'll never know her exact recipe, but we have a tattered copy of the recipe she may have used.  Her name printed across the top is the only clue I have towards these small, hard cookies her grandsons so fondly remember.

Last September I told you about the aprons we found at my grandma's farm.  Just for fun I decided to make these cookies while wearing the blue flowered apron I like to think belonged to my great-grandma.  I couldn't resist stirring them up in the blue bowl she likely used.

And when I say stir, I do mean stir.  No electric mixers to cream the butter and sugar here, a bowl and wooden spoon will do the trick.  The recipe is a little vague in some areas, "Flour enough so you can roll the dough like a rope."  "Flour enough" ended up being just over 4 cups of flour, and that was for half a batch.  It would take a trusty wooden spoon to stir in 8 cups of flour without a mixer.

Weird Recipe Wednesday: Sweet Potato Polenta with Cinnamon and Smoked Paprika

Weird Recipe Wednesday: Because some recipes are so weird I just HAVE to try them.  My curiosity always gets the better of me.

I'll risk sounding like a broken record here and remind you how much I like to combine little bits and pieces of random recipes.  Stick with me though, you just might learn something in the process, like how my mind wanders from grits to potatoes to soup to cookies and back...with a sprinkle of cinnamon and smoked paprika.

I've eaten grits once, maybe twice, but we're not too familiar with them this far north.  After spotting Jenna's recipe for Sweet Potato Grits I figured it was time to give grits another whirl.  I didn't do my homework and used the cornmeal in the cupboard as opposed to grits.  Grits are made from hominy, which is corn soaked in lye.  If hominy isn't involved you just have cornmeal, which makes polenta.  Now I know for next time.

Festive Friday: Yulekaga - Our Christmas Morning Tradition

Festive Friday: You can always find room to squeeze in a few more treats around the holidays.

Christmas mornings in our family have always involved Yulekaga, a Scandinavian Christmas bread.  My mom remembers her mom making this bread on Christmas Eve and giving it as gifts to the neighbors.  The tradition has continued in that our Christmas mornings still involve this family bread.  I grew up calling it you-la-clog-la, which still gives my mom and I a good laugh.  I wish I had been old enough to make it with my grandma just once, but I never had the chance.  Fortunately my mom was able to watch my grandma one year and took notes.

My grandma never really followed a recipe and didn't necessarily do things the same each year.  Similarly, we tend to pull out the faded note card but seldom write down our exact adjustments.  I wasn't about to change that this year, but the recipe below is fairly close to our tradition.  I typed out the notes from the recipe card my mom used while watching my grandma and then reformatted it to a style closer to the recipes I usually post here.  As one of my friends says, this is a follow your heart kind of recipe.  I wasn't thinking of pictures on Christmas morning, but here are a few slices we had left the next day.

Yulekaga (Scandinavian Christmas Bread)
recipe from my Grandma as observed by my mom
makes 4 coffee cakes

Heat 2 cups milk to scalding, cool in bowl. Put 2 packages yeast in 1/2 cup lukewarm water (she puts 1 in water and 1 in milk). Add 1 cup sugar to milk. Melt butter to make 1/2 cup and add ~2-3 tsp ground cardamom. Add to milk. Add yeast mixture and 3 eggs. Add enough flour to make dough like most bread (approx 3 cups per 1 cup liquid.) Knead. Let rise. Roll in rectangle. Butter surface. Cover with brown sugar. Cover with fruit and raisins. Put on cookie sheet in crescent  shape. Make slits across top. Let rise. Bake 20-30 minutes at 350 or 375 if bread needs to rise. Frost when cool. .

modified version we used this year 
Ingredients:

Bread:
1 cup milk
2-1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1-2 tsp cardamom seeds, finely crushed
2 large eggs
1 tsp salt (this must have been forgotten on the handwritten copy. Salt is an essential ingredient in yeast breads.)
 4-5 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:
melted butter (about 2 Tbsp per loaf)
brown sugar
ground cinnamon
candied fruit
raisins

Frosting:
powdered sugar
butter, softened
milk or water
vanilla, optional


Instructions:
* Heat milk to scalding, let cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast in warm water, add milk and sugar. Stir in butter, cardamom, eggs and salt.  Add flour, 1 cup at a time, until dough is stiff enough to knead. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, adding flour as needed. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
* Cut dough in half and roll each half into a rectangle. Spread with melted butter. Cover with brown sugar and sprinkle with ground cinnamon. Top with candied fruit and raisins. Roll into a log, sealing edges well. Transfer log to a greased baking sheet and form into crescent shape. Cut slits across top, cover and let rise until almost doubled. Meanwhile, open Christmas presents. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Let cool. Stir together frosting ingredients until desired consistency is reached. Spread over bread.

Food for Thought: "Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it's difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family." -Mother Theresa