The Turkey Day Comfort Zone . . . Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving, aside from being a hopefully-heart-warming family holiday, as well as a dietary cautionary tale, is also a fairly rigorous exercise in domestic decision making, wouldn't you agree? So much to contemplate in preparing for the whole shebang. Almost invariably, it requires a bushy flock of post-it notes sticking out of cookbooks, at least three trips to the market in close succession due to overlooked ingredients, and one protracted search for that huge roasting pan that you know you saw on a shelf in the basement last Easter. Well, anyway, you think you saw it down there. 

Despite the little stresses, we have enduring affection for this holiday all the same. It annually reminds us of how lucky we are, how gratitude uplifts us, and of how much we value everyone we love. It also reminds us of how much satisfaction and joy we get out of baking!

This year, as far as baking went, I opted for tradition. That decision allowed me to linger, one might say, in the wide and expansive Turkey Day comfort zone. Yesterday I bustled around in the kitchen for hours. The end result was a full-flavored pumpkin pie made with heavy cream and enhanced with a tiny bit of dark rum in the filling; a replay of the best apple-cranberry pie recipe I've ever used (and which can be found in loving detail in my blog, right here); and, three-dozen buttery dinner rolls, formed in three 9" cake pans--the kind of rolls that snuggle more closely together as they rise.

Though I don't have a new recipe to share with you today, I just wanted to tell you that I'm so grateful for the friends and acquaintances I've made through my interest in baking--both online and in person. I sincerely hope you have a festive and blessed Thanksgiving!

:)  Warmly,
Jane

Autumn Apple Pie with Warm Cinnamon Sauce

I love everything about apple season. Apples are so perfect, so classic. And they never fail to remind me of childhood. I was born and raised in Michigan and, to me, fresh apples just seem like the distilled essence of a Michigan autumn--evocative in the nicest way.

In fact, if I were taking a word-association test and had to respond to the word "fruit," I'm quite sure I'd  blurt out "apple!" without missing a beat. They have such perennial appeal, and they're naturally portable. It's as if each one comes in its own protective little suitcase, making it travel-friendly. It wants to go where you go.

While not a single leaf in these parts has yet turned golden nor burnished red, and neighborhood school-kids have barely had time to crack open their textbooks or sharpen new pencils, I needed to make an apple pie. Not a grand model of complexity, mind you. Just a great hearty pie, served along with a warm, gently spicy, cinnamon sauce. What could be better than that?

About this recipe . . .

This isn't a complicated pie to put together, and it doesn't require a lot of time--both are factors in its favor. The crust, in my experience, is just about foolproof and, as it bakes, turns the loveliest color. The filling is neither time consuming nor does it require any exotic ingredients.

A wedge of this pie is completely satisfying on its own--no question about it. But drape it with a spoonful of the buttery cinnamon sauce and it takes on an added dimension that sets it apart. Really, really good pie!



I borrowed from a couple sources in making this pie. The crust recipe is from Apple Pie Perfect, by Ken Haedrich, and the filling recipe was inspired by one in Carole Walter's book Great Pies & Tarts. I could spend hours (and come to think of it I guess I have!) immersed in Walter's many cookbooks. They're amazing.

The sauce was just something I experimented with after looking at the directions for basic sweet sauces in a number of places; it's elementary and is one of those things, kind of like ganache, that hardly seems to require a formal recipe.

Autumn Apple Pie with Warm Cinnamon Sauce

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Ingredients for the crust:
3 cups All-Purpose flour (I used unbleached)
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
3/4 tsp. salt (I used kosher)
3/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1/4 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into chunks
1/2 cup very cold water

To make the crust:
In the large bowl of a food processor, place the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse several times to mix. Take off the lid and toss in the butter chunks. Pulse again, about 6 times, to cut the butter in. Again remove the lid and, using a fork, fluff up the mixture, scraping down to the bottom of the bowl. Toss in the shortening cubes and pulse about 6 times, then take off the lid, scrape the bottom, and fluff again with a fork.

Drizzle only about half of the cold water in and pulse 6 times. Fluff the dough again with a fork, then sprinkle in the remainder of the water. Pulse a few more times, until the dough begins to clump together. Dump it out into a clean mixing bowl.

Test the texture of the dough by squeezing a bit of it in your hand. If it's too dry and won't hold together, sprinkle in a tiny bit more water, one teaspoon at a time, working it in gently with your fingers. When the dough holds together, divide it into two pieces, one slightly larger than the other, shape each into a ball, and flatten the balls into disks about 1" thick. Wrap the disks in plastic wrap and chill them in the fridge for about an hour or so. While the dough is chilling, make the apple filling.

(*If you'd prefer to make the dough entirely by hand, use a pastry blender and a large mixing bowl to combine the ingredients, following the same general steps above in the same order. After you've cut in the butter, the dough should be in bits about the size of split peas. After you've cut in the shortening, the dough should be in smaller bits, perhaps the size of coarse cornmeal.)

Ingredients for the apple filling:

Approximately 7 to 9 large apples (I used some Granny Smiths, and a few nice Honey Crisps, but you should use any nice, firm, baking apples that you prefer. I've also had great luck in the past with really fresh Gala apples. I believe this is a good pie to experiment with, in this regard. I used probably 9 apples and my pie was piled high!)
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
3/4 light brown sugar (not firmly packed)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (or a little more if you adore the stuff! I adore it . . .)
1/8 tsp. ground, or a few scrapings of grated whole, nutmeg (I used grated; use with discretion--this stuff's powerful!)
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

To make the filling:
Peel apples and cut into 1/4 inch slices, dropping them into a large mixing bowl. Toss the pieces with the lemon juice. In a small bowl, combine the sugars, cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Don't add this to the fruit yet-- just set it aside.

* * * * 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, and place a rack in the lower third of the oven. Brush the inside of a 9" pie plate with a light coating of soft unsalted butter. Remove just the larger ball of dough from the fridge, unwrap it, and place it on a lightly flour-dusted work surface. Roll the dough into a 13" circle and place it carefully into the pie plate; try not to stretch it in the process. Trim the edge so you have an overhang of up to one inch.


Ingredients for egg wash (to brush on inside of pie shell and on top of top-crust before baking):
white only from one large egg
1 tsp. water

To make the egg wash:
Whisk the egg white and water together with a fork. Using a pastry brush, brush the bottom, sides, and edge of the raw pie shell lightly with the mixture.

* * * *



Now, pour the sugar mixture into the apples and stir to coat the pieces.

Shovel your apples into your pie shell, mounding them high in the center. Dot the fruit with bits of the 1 Tbsp. of butter.

* * * * 

Roll out the second disk of dough into a 13" circle and place it over the fruit. Trim the edge of the dough, and seal the edges together by crimping it closed with your fingers or with the tines of a fork, as you prefer. Cut a few small vents in the top crust to release steam. Gently brush the top crust with more of the egg wash, and then sprinkle the crust with a few pinches of plain granulated sugar or cinnamon sugar.

To keep the edges of the pie from burning in the oven, cover them with foil shaped to fit. (My trick is to take a square of foil about 13" x 13",  fold it into quarters into a smaller square, then I cut a large wedge shape out of the inner section. If done right, when I unfold it I end up with a nice round hole in  the middle of a  border of  foil that can be placed atop my crust and gently secured on the outer edges so it won't shift around. I find this is quicker and much less cumbersome than trying to shape random strips of foil around the edge of a pie.)

Place the pie in the oven. About 20 minutes into baking, place a baking sheet beneath; this will help prevent the bottom from burning. Check the pie again periodically; if the top crust appears to be browning quickly, lightly place a sheet of foil atop it and leave it there until the pie is done. Peek also at the edges of the pie to check if they're browning; if they're not, remove the foil border about ten minutes towards the end of the baking time.

Depending in part upon the type of apples you used, your pie may take 40 to 55 minutes. There should be bubbling evident through the vents, and the pie should be golden all over before you decide it's done. If you like softer fruit, plan to bake the pie on the longer side.

Let the pie cool on a rack for at least three hours before cutting.  Make the cinnamon sauce while you're waiting.

 
Ingredients for the cinnamon sauce:
1 and 1/2 cups water
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, light or dark
1 and 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 Tbsp. water


Dissolve the cornstarch with the 1 Tbsp. of water in a very small bowl. Stir until it's smooth.


In a small sauce pan, combine the 1 and 1/2 cups water, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Bring to a low boil, then turn the fire down and let it simmer for a few minutes, stirring frequently. Stir a couple spoonfuls of this hot mixture into the cornstarch mixture to temper it; then pour this back into the sauce pan and stir continually on low heat until the sauce thickens. Strain the sauce into a bowl to remove any lumps. Serve it warm, spooned over slices of the baked apple pie.

*If you like this recipe, but you want to guarantee that there's not a lot of juice in the baked pie, I recommend you check out this apple pie post I did last year. It's a more involved and time consuming process (you precook the fruit for a while, etc.) but it produces a truly exceptional pie.

(If you'd like to comment on this post, or to read any existing comments, please click on the purple COMMENTS below!)

Create the Universe . . . then Bake the Best Apple Pie You've Ever Imagined . . .

Carl Sagan, the late American astronomer, uttered my favorite pie quote of all time. He said, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." That's beautiful, isn't it? Now, I know that Carl wasn't really talking about our kind of pie so much as he was commenting on something esoteric and metaphysical and . . . well . . . cosmic. It seems to me, though, a perfectly fitting quotation with which to begin because a few days ago, somehow or other, I managed to bake the best apple pie that my own small universe has yet encountered. The first and only one I've ever concocted that I've been completely satisfied with, and not just satisfied, but astoundingly pleased.

Yes, fellow bakers, you heard me right. After years of less than stellar results, I finally produced what I consider to be a truly fabulous apple pie. Not so-so, not okay, not pretty good. Incredibly good. And just in time for Turkey Day (how timely, how opportune!). It could hardly have occurred at a better moment.

My measuring-cup runneth over . . .

What, you may ask, brought on this little victory? Well, I feel it's largely attributable to cookbook author Nancy Baggett's recipe for deep dish apple pie, which appears in The All American Dessert Book, with particular credit given to her pastry crust. I'd been casually scouting around for a promising apple pie formula over the last few weeks, thinking maybe I'd make one around Thanksgiving. And though I'd never baked what I felt was a really excellent apple pie before, hope--however poignant and naive--does tend to spring eternal.

Of course, there's nothing at all unusual about 90 percent of the fruit pie recipes one runs across. They typically have more in common than not. But there were a couple of factors about Nancy's pie that struck me as uncustomary and intriguing. The crust, for example, calls for a little baking powder, a meaningful portion of cake flour, and--get this--she tells you to lightly grease your pie pan. I've never seen a fruit pie recipe that directs you to grease the pan, but it makes perfect sense doesn't it? Indeed it does.

The gal just likes to tinker . . .

Because I found her crust recipe so interesting, I followed it by the book with no tinkering (I swear, no tinkering at all . . . I'll testify to that in federal court if you want me to). The pie crust, once baked, was flaky, tender, and firm enough to hold up without crumbling to bits. It wasn't too dry, nor was it at all soggy. The taste was just right--very slightly salty with just the tiniest glimmer of sweetness. It was the crust a serious home-baker dreams about producing. In a nutshell, just yummy.

Regarding the apple filling, I did do some substantial tinkering there, but nothing I'd consider radical. What did I change? Well, instead of following her recommendation to use "at least three different kinds of apples," I used only Galas--very crisp and sweet. This was not so much by design as by necessity since I had only Galas on hand and wasn't in a position to run to the market. I figured I'd just take my chances and that turned out to a lucky choice.

Nancy, then, directs readers to slice the apples thinly. I haven't had happy moments with thinly sliced apples in past pies because, in my experience, they have a tendency to turn to unadulterated mush, and there's nothing I find at all appealing about apple filling that resembles apple sauce. So, I cut my apples into generous bite-sized chunks, figuring I wouldn't risk it.

I also knew at the outset of this particular pie venture that I was going to augment the filling with a few cranberries, either dried or fresh (of course, you can always omit these, but why would you want to go and do that? . . . after all, they're such a pretty color, and they're good for you, so just simmer down and surrender to the moment, okay?). I ended up using dried cranberries that I'd soaked in orange juice for about 20 minutes to brighten their flavor and soften them up; that turned out to be an inspired decision, I am convinced. I also upped the amount of cinnamon in the recipe a little bit, and doubled the amount of lemon juice. All in all, the flavor of the filling was fantastic--just perfect.

You never know until you taste it . . .

The pie baked well, and looked fine out of the oven, but I didn't have a clue as to its success-quotient until I actually tasted it. Doubtful of what my tastebuds were conveying, I tasted again . . . and then one more diminutive bite to seal the deal. By golly it was true. "Holy moly," I thought, "Finally. It's about time."

And so it was, just as now it's about time for me to give you the recipe . . .


Apple Pie with Dried Cranberries

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

To make the pastry dough (enough for one double-crust pie):

8 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/3" chunks
7 Tbsp. solid vegetable shortening, cut or spooned into 14 pieces
2 cups All-Purpose flour
2/3 cup cake flour
1 and 1/2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
6 to 9 Tbsp. ice water

Freeze the butter cubes and shortening pieces for 20 minutes.

To mix the dough by hand (which is what I did, with my faithful pastry blender):
In a large bowl, completely stir together the flours, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the fat until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with a few bits the size of small peas remaining. Scrape up the flour mixture on the bottom of the bowl.

In a small bowl, measure 6 Tbsp. of ice water. With a fork, lightly combine the water, bit by bit, with the flour mixture, tossing until the water is evenly incorporated and the dough begins to form clumps (Nancy notes "15 to 20 strokes" at this point; I wouldn't get too anal about this). Reach down to the bottom of the bowl to make sure all the flour is dampened. Pinch a small bit of dough between your fingers; it should hold together smoothly and be moist but not soggy.

If crumbly or dry, sprinkle over more of the ice water, a couple of teaspoons at a time, tossing with the fork. When the dough is moistened enough to hold together when pinched, gather it up, and press it firmly together with your fingers into a smooth mass.

Divide it into two equal portions and shape each into a disk about 5" across. Wrap each disc in plastic and chill in the fridge for an hour. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to two days, or frozen for up to one month; thaw the dough in the fridge before using.)

To make the apple-cranberry filling:

10 and 1/2 cups peeled, cored apples cut into large bite-sized chunks (I used all Galas)
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
3 and 1/2 to 4 and 1/2 Tbsp. cornstarch (use the larger amount if your apples are really juicy; I used 4 Tbsp. in my pie)
3/4 tsp. cinnamon (I used Penzey's Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cassia--it's potent and extremely good)
1 pinch of salt
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into bits
1/2 cup dried cranberries that have been soaked in a orange juice for 20 minutes or so and then drained
1 Tbsp. half & half for brushing on top of pie dough
1 and 1/2 Tbsp. sanding sugar for sprinkling on top of pie (I prefer the larger sparkly crystals of sanding sugar, but regular granulated sugar will work fine too)

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.

In a very large, heavy, nonreactive saucepan (not a copper pan, basically), toss the apple chunks with the lemon juice. In a small bowl, stir together thoroughly the two sugars, the cinnamon, cornstarch, and salt. Add the sugar mixture and the butter bits to the apples; toss until well combined. Bring the whole mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat. Simmer, stirring and scraping the pan bottom, for about 3 minutes, or until the apples cook down slightly; do not let the apples burn.

Remove the pan from the burner.

Add in the cranberries and stir to evenly distribute them. Taste, and add a dab more lemon juice if you feel it's needed. Set aside.

To roll out the pastry dough:

Lightly grease a 9-1/2" deep dish pie plate (if you have a deep dish pie plate you might as well use that, but I just used a regular pie plate that was 9" in circumference and it turned out fine). If the 5" dough disc is cold and stiff, let it warm up until slightly pliable but still cool. Dust it generously with flour on both sides.

Between two sheets of parchment paper, roll out one dough portion into a circle that's about 13 and 1/2" round. Occasionally check the underside of the dough while rolling and smooth out any wrinkles.

If the dough becomes at all sticky or limp, place it on a cookie sheet in the freezer for about five minutes to firm up. When done rolling, gently peel off the top sheet of paper, then pat it lightly back into place. Flip over, and peel the bottom sheet off the dough. Center the round, dough side down, onto your pie plate. Gently peel off the remaining paper. Smooth the dough into place and patch any tears. Using scissors or a paring knife, trim the overhand to about 1/4". Prick the pastry all over with a fork (I didn't do this; your choice if you want to do it). Loosely cover the pastry and place it in the freezer while you roll out the top crust (I didn't do this either, but I was working pretty fast at this point; basically, just don't let the plated dough get warm at all). Roll out the second portion of dough the same way as you just did above. Transfer the round, with paper still attached on both sides, to a baking sheet and place it in the fridge.

To assemble the pie:
Pour the apple-cranberry mixture onto the bottom crust in your pie plate, mounding the fruit in the center.

Take your top crust dough, and remove one sheet of the paper. Flip that over and center the dough onto the mounded fruit. Peel off and discard the remaining paper. Trim the pie's top overhang to about 3/4". Fold the overhang under the bottom pastry edge to form an edge that rests on the lip of the plate. Press the top and bottom edges together firmly, crimping as you like (with your fingers, or with the tines of a fork, etc.) all the way around.

Cut slashes/vents in the top of the crust for steam to escape, using a small sharp knife (grease the knife if it's not super sharp; I cut five vents).

Using a soft pastry brush (I like to use a floppy silicone brush for this kind of thing), brush the half-and-half lightly on the top--not on the edges--of the pie, and sprinkle the top with the sanding (or granulated) sugar.

Put the pie on a baking sheet (I use an old, stained cookie sheet for juicy pies) to catch any drips. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until the crust is lightly browned. Make a large, loose, foil tent over the top of the entire pie. Continue baking for at least 30 minutes more, or until the top is nicely golden-brown and the filling is bubbly.

Let the pie cool on a wire rack for at least 1 and 1/2 hours, and a few hours longer if at all possible. The cooler the pie is, the neater the slices will be.

* * * * * * *
Wonderful on its own, but also delicious served with a little vanilla ice cream on the side. Hope yours turns out as well as mine did!


Recipe full disclosure! The recipes in this post come from The All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett (2005, Houghton Mifflin). The recipes I used appear on pages 18 - 21, for her "Favorite Deep Dish Apple Pie," and on pages 90 - 91, for "All-Purpose Pie Pastry Dough." As noted above, I adapted the filling recipe. Also, I reworded her instructions slightly, here and there. This is a very good book and I highly recommend it.

(If you'd like to comment on this post or to read any existing comments, just click on the purple COMMENTS below!)