More Food???

Yup, you got it. Here's some stuff I've baked recently...

sundried tomato & rosemary rolls

the sponge

incorporating the good stuff

the dough

est voila

these were absolutely delicious and i made them thinking that they'd be great for thanksgiving. it turned out they were, and all i could imagine while munching them was how delish they'd be with turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce. unfortunately, i forgot to bring the recipe to my mom's house with me for the holiday, and so instead i made...

sweet potato rolls


i also made a really yummy
apple blueberry pie

i also made a cherry torte, and i used the cherry juice as the base for a blueberry sauce, to be poured over the apples in the pie. i cooked down a package of blueberries into the juice, strained it, put it back on the heat, added some spices, a little corn starch, and was good to go.

straining the cooked blueberries to make the sauce

yum yum, the sauce

a bad picture of the inside

nom nom nom

Apple Crumb...

I don't know what you'd call this. It's based on a recipe I have for a dessert called 'cherry crumb torte', but I dont think this is really a torte. Anyways, the cherry one is one of my favorite desserts to make - unbelievably easy and looks gorgeous everytime. I had a bag of some getting-old apples and some big hunkin fresh guys from the farmers market the other day all ready to be used for a pie. When I was cooking the apples though I decided it'd be delicious to try the crumb idea with apples instead of cherries. I was right - it was!

I forgot to put an egg in the crumb mix, but I think it worked out perfectly. I was really worried when I realized I had done that cause I thought it was going to fall, but it didn't! It's a little doughy in the center layer but otherwise it's delicious - the apples are AMAZING in texture and taste and the top and bottom crust are crisp and sweet. I shaved some manchego on top but could have done much much more.

Apple Pie

So, I've got pie fever. Ever since I made the pie for our 4th party, all I can think about is making more pies. I haven't had a chance to do so until today, and so that's what I did today! I decided it'd be fun to do a step by step post about it:

Started off with apples (fuji and pink lady, my two favorites) as well as the nectarines, frozen mango and strawberries for the reduction.

I peeled and sliced 6 of the apples and put them in a large sauce pan


i then added cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, vanilla and honey to the apples,
and started to cook them over med-low heat


this time i ended up making my own crust because i forgot to buy some
i made it with butter, flour, salt and water, and it may suck, but this is it



next i popped the three nectarines into some boiling water to loosen the skins


then under cold water to peel


then chopped up the nectarines



and put them in a pot with the frozen strawberries and mangoes
(which had been defrosting)

i added a little vanilla to the fruit and covered the pot,
letting it cook down and eventually simmer



because i was having a hard time getting all the fruit mashed,
i poured it through a strainer and finished the sauce that way


meanwhile, the apples have been cooking on low heat


and i've rolled out the top crust and cut it into strips



then i filled the pie with the apples and some of the sauce


and then i covered it with the strips


and then painted some sauce on top and sprinkled a bit of cinnamon


baked it too high at 425 for 20 min, then 325 for 20ish
et, voila



Next up, banana bread!

July 4th

Oh hey, long time, no post. Woops.

So, this past weekend was July 4th and we had a full house all weekend. We threw a party saturday night and had a big cookout to kick it off - tons of cheddarwurst, hot dogs (turkey and beef!), and homemade burgers (mmm, brian's idea to toss in some chopped olives was BRILLIANT), as well as homemade pasta, tuna pasta, and potato egg salads! But the best part of the feast was this beauty.


Sadly, no sexy pictures as we were all much too ravenous for me to even think of getting my camera - but luckily my palm was near by and so that's just what we've got. It was an apple nectarine pie, and it was my first pie ever (at least to my recollection). I cheated and bought the crusts because the reason I never make pie is that dough and I don't get along well, but everything else was made by me and melanie. We peeled and cut up 10 apples and 5 or so nectarines. Put the apples on the stove with some soy butter, lots of cinammon, maybe two tbsps of brown sugar, a tsp or so of vanilla and a pinch of nutmeg and clove. As they cooked I threw the peeled (pop them in a pot of boiling water for 50sec and and run them under cold water, skin comes right off!) necatrines in a small pot with a little brown sugar, vanilla, nutmeg and clove and covered them, letting them cook down to a sauce. Once the apples were cooked just right, we threw the apples into the pie crust (piled nice and high) and then poured the nectarine sauce all over the top. I cut up the second crust into strips and covered the pie. Baked it at 400 for 15 or so minutes, then down to 350 for 25+. The pie cooked but wasn't browning right, so anna had the brilliant idea to broil it for a few minutes. And that was perfect! It came out golden brown and shiny - although looking back I wish I had painted some sauce on top of the pie for a really beautiful finish.

After stuffing our faces and drinking a thousand beers we all went up to the roof (safe, yes!) and watched the Boston fireworks, which were awesome.



The rest of the weekend was fantastic - mel and den took me to my first red sox game (first baseball game ever!) and we had a BLAST. Sunday night old friends of mine in a trillion gallons of gas came in for a visit on their way to Maine and we had a really wonderful time catching up and just being with each other.

Okay, so there's update #1 after laziness hiatus. Watch out, #2 is coming momentarily!