Dutch Apple Pie, I surrender to you.

So in this particular instance, I suppose last night my kitchen was my Mama’s kitchen. Or at least it smelled like it. One thing I’ve been basically terrified to try is the wonderful, spicy, crumbly sweet-ness that is Dutch Apple Pie. My mother makes a mean apple pie. Seriously, it’s amazing. For holiday’s she even makes one of my cousin’s a whole pie just for himself, because it’s all he’ll eat (frankly, I don’t blame him). So obviously although I’ve helped make this recipe 1500 times, it’s a bit daunting for me because I’m more then a little afraid I won’t measure up.

Then came the challenge. This last weekend, the Boy and I went to a friends for dinner, and since I had about 10 minutes notice, I just ran to the store and grabbed one of their bakery pies. They didn’t have a ton of choices, so I just grabbed a lemon meringue because it’s fairly generic so usually most every one likes it. Sad day for me,because in this case, that wasn’t so. Our host (or one of two I should say) not only doesn’t like meringue, also not a fan of citrus custard pies. In case you’re keeping track, that makes my store bought pie 0-2.

Now, I basically feel like an a-hole. I know that may not make sense, but I like to feed people. When people don’t eat, it upsets me. So I promised to make him a pie, any pie. Peach? Cherry? Apple? Bam, he wants apple. Alright, what about Dutch Apple? That’s his favorite! Sweet, good I know what to make! And I even have apples from the local orchard!

Tuesday I sat down to make the pie and the little voice in my head started to have a panic attack. I’ve never made a Dutch Apple by myself, let alone using only my memory to (try to) recreate my Mama’s specialty. I may or may not have stopped several times purely to spew a string of obscenities, gather myself back together and continue. Happily for me, Luck was with me and everything came out great. The dough was perfect, the apples were spiced just perfect and the crumble was sweet and buttery.

Update on Life

So I've been unexpectedly MIA this last week, and I apologize. The Boy was hospitalized (as Gracie said) but is feeling much better, at home, and doing well. The last day has been playing catch-up, and tonight and tomorrow I'm going to be out of town for a family event.

Hopefully I'm going to have a break on the 4th so that I can enjoy the holiday and celebrate our great country and all the men and women who have fought for it.

If I don't post by then, Happy Fourth of July!

PS> Here's a picture of an old-fashioned cherry pie I made last night!

Latenight Key Lime Pie

A friend and I had a movie marathon last night, and about 2130 I had a sudden craving for Key Lime Pie. Well, Brigid at Home on the Range posted a blog awhile back that had an old-fashioned Key Lime and the idea stuck in my head. Last night I saw the graham crackers in my cabinet, my mind clicked, and thus a Key Lime Pie was born.

I didn't actually have a glass pie pan, so I had to go to the store, and on a whim also grabbed a couple more cans of milk. (I also ended up being suckered into making apple fritters for an old friend sometime in the next week, but that's another story) My friend made the graham cracker crust, and I went to work on the filling. I followed the Nelly and Joe's recipe, because you don't go screwing around with a good thing.

I ended up having to double the filling. Not sure why, but I put the filling in the shell and went "That looks odd. And really, really.... low". Since I doubled it, I added a couple extra minutes to the cooking time, and it worked out beautifully. I had some heavy cream left over from the vanilla cupcakes, so I made my own shipped cream instead of using cool whip or doing a meringue (not to mention I forgot and dumped the egg whites down the drain).

Pie Crust!

So I was raised by a grandmother who did everything from scratch. To me store bought pie crust is sacrilege. I mean there is no way to buy a frozen crust and have it be all soft and flaky. I am also a fan of lattice topped pie. I love rolling and cutting and weaving the tops to make a wonderful lattice and then sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar. I found a wonderful pie crust recipie in my betty crocker cook book and I have never had a bad crust. Once we are settled I will make a pie to demonstrait the beauty that is from scratch.

Southern-Style Picnic ala Maggy Style

As I said before, Ryan the 3L came up for the weekend and brought along his lady friend. We had a little BBQ on Saturday night, and I decided to make potato salad. Now, one thing I'm horrible about when it comes to cooking/baking is time management. Seems like more often then not I'm nodding off on the couch at 1am waiting for my latest invention to set/bake/cool. I figured the potato salad would take about an hour. I was wrong, and once again I managed to finish it off at 1 am (which seems to be my magic hour). I had planned to send a large chunk of it home with them, but Sunday morning ended up being quite rushed and we all managed to forget.

So I now have a ginormous amount of potato salad in my fridge. I'm guessing about 5 pounds, which may not sound like much but the Boy doesn't seem interested, and I can't humanely eat that much without exploding. I wanted to make a good meal to compliment the potato salad to get rid of some of it without eating only potato salad. Nothing in my usual repertoire sounded very good, so I was struggling along through recipes when my mom called. I mentioned my dilemma and she said simply "Picnic Food". I was a tad confused and she said "What do you take on a picnic in the summer? Potato salad and chicken".

I started thinking and decided that sounded amazing. But I want to do one better and go back to my Louisiana days. Fried Chicken, potato salad and lemon meringue. The funniest part of this is, I've never fried chicken or made a meringue. Ever. I looked up a couple recipes online and found Paula Deen's Fried Chicken and one for a lemon meringue pie. Shockingly I had most the ingredients, I really just needed the chicken and some hot sauce.

I decided to make the meringue first, which was good since it takes hours to set. The filling itself was fairly simple, and I got the done with relative ease. Now comes the topping. Ironically the only time I remember seeing anyone attempt meringue was a good friend of mine's father. That good friend lives in Norway, and so that year was 2000 maybe 2001. In other word's I'm very much lacking in the examples department.

My egg whites just didn't want to puff up. In fact, I pretty much ended up declaring war. Happily, just when I was about to pitch the whole thing and curl up and cry in a corner, it started to peak. I gave it a couple more twirls, then called it good for a 1st attempt. I threw it in the oven, and when I pulled it out I was pleasantly surprised.


I put in the fridge to chill and went to work on my chicken. I had bought both wings and breasts, but since I couldn't con anyone to come over for dinner, I ended up just cutting down the breasts into strips. I figured they would make a good test run, and being white meat they'd cook up a bit faster and I'd have a lesser chance of burning them. I used grapeseed oil (which is pricey but soooo much better for you then other oils) and made sure I had it about 350 degrees. I doused the strips with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Dipped them into an egg and hot sauce mixture, then dredged them with flour, baking soda and a pinch of salt. I tossed them in the oil, and gave them 4-5 minutes a side. They turned out great and I was very proud of myself.

So there it is! Southern-Style picnic food ala Maggy.