A is for Apple Pie

We made an apple pie to finish up A week, using apples that we got at the orchard! We used the pie recipe in the back of the book How to make an Apple Pie and See the World. We didn't go to Sri Lanka or France or anything like in the book, though. ;) We used our favorite crust recipe to make the crust and not the one in the book... I say "our favorite" loosely, as Caroline dislikes pie crust (crazy kid! How can one not like eating butter and flour?).

Chris is the crust man lately... he does an awesome job getting the proportions just right and leaving the food processor on the right amount of time to make the crust ball up like it is supposed to do. I was feeling somewhat run down from my cold, so he helped out a lot this day so that we could make the pie, make pizza for dinner, vacuum... and I even got to take a nap! Thanks, Honey!

Cecilia and Caroline used the A cookie cutter to cut the shape into the top layer of the rolled-out crust dough. The idea here is to transfer them to the top of the pie, making layered letter A's all over the pie as the top crust.

Let's just say that this crust was not cooperative and perhaps a store-bought crust would be in order here in the future... we ended up actually making some A's by hand (Caroline rolled out "snakes" of dough and then shaped them into A's on the pie), as the cookie-cutter ones did not want to come up from the wax paper nicely and most of them tore up or looked pitifully not like the letter A. To get an idea of what the pie was really supposed to look like, click on some of these.

The girls had some fun rolling, shaping, and spatula-ing the scraps of crust dough.

Here's the finished pie... ha! Betcha can't make out many A's, huh? ;)

Cecilia gave it one fork up.

Making Pretzels (Successfully!)

We made whole wheat pretzels today, and we didn't catch the oven on fire - success! And a double success... both the girls loved the pretzels! Last year, neither of them really liked them much... too gummy for Cecilia, I think... but this time, they both ate a whole pretzel for an afternoon snack. Here's our recipe:

Whole Grain Pretzels

from the King Arthur Whole Grains cookbook

Dough

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup water, at room temp

1 T soft butter

1 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

1 tsp barley malt extract (syrup or dried) - I used molasses this time

Water bath

8 cups water (I used 10)

2 T baking soda

Glaze

1 egg beaten w/ 1 T water and a pinch of salt

Kosher salt and/or seeds for topping

Mix the whole wheat flour w/ the cup of water and let sit, covered, for 20 minutes. Stir in butter, bread flour, salt, yeast, and barley malt extract (I did this with the dough hook on my stand mixer). Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1.5 hrs.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Grease two baking sheets or line w/ parchment paper. Make the water bath by pouring the water in a wide pot and placing it over high heat to boil.

Divide the dough into eight equal pieces and roll into ropes about 1/2 inch thick (hard to get them this thin, in my experience). The cookbook suggests letting the ropes rest halfway through rolling, so maybe that would help... I didn't have time for that! Shape into pretzels.

When water is boiling, turn it down to a simmer and add the baking soda. Carefully drop the pretzels into the simmering water, cooking about three at a time. The pretzels will expand quickly and dramatically. let cook about a minute or two, then use a slotted spatula or spoon to transfer to the baking sheets.

Brush each pretzel with egg wash and sprinkle with salt and/or seeds. Bake about 12-15 minutes until well-browned. Best when served warm.

Caroline helped me roll and shape them while Cecilia was napping... and then both girls sprinkled on coarse salt after the pretzels took their "bath" in boiling water before going into the oven.

Caroline wanted some of them to be shaped like fish... so here's the attempt at that.

And here's the attempt at the traditional shape. How does one roll pretzel dough out thin and long enough so that it can be made into the pretzel shape without looking like these do? Anyone know? The dough is so elastic that it gets to a point when I cannot make the ropes any thinner.

Yummy!! We will be making these again during Lent for sure!

How to Make Elderberry Syrup

With cold and flu season here, I decided to make some elderberry syrup... much cheaper than buying the bottled stuff in the health food store! H/T to my friend Jessi for telling me how she made it.

First, you need dried elderberries and honey. That's it! Oh, and water, a pot, and a stove :)

Put 1/2 cup dried elderberries into a pot with two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer until reduced, about 20 minutes. I removed any stray stems from the berries before I put them in the pot. I got my elderberries online for $7.50 for a pound plus shipping... believe it or not, Whole Foods doesn't carry them!

Pour elderberries and liquid through a fine mesh strainer.

I found it helpful to use a wooden spoon to press as much liquid as possible out of the berries.

Discard dried berry skins (or... eat them? make them into something else?) and add one cup of honey to the elderberry liquid. Stir to combine.

Pour syrup into a clean jar. Keep in the refrigerator and take a teaspoon or so a day as a flu preventative.

A Tip from the Kitchen

This tip comes from my ingenious husband...

Anyone else use all natural peanut butter, the kind with only peants and maybe salt as the ingredients? If you do, you know that all the peanut oil settles at the top of the jar. Whoever is first to open a new jar must first stir it all up, a somewhat time-consuming and messy process. My husband was helping Caroline make her lunch, and he began using a spoon. Then he had the idea of taking the electric mixer and only attaching one beater to it. It fit down into the jar perfectly, and in just a minute he had perfectly uniformly-mixed peanut butter! No more bottom-of-the-jar dry, crusty peanut butter for us!

This is the same guy who, along with one of my brothers, used an electric drill on a pepper mill when my mother asked that they grind up a quarter cup of pepper. This works well, but I'd advise aganst doing it in front of the owner of the pepper mill!