Chill and Thrill Pie Crust

Warm temperatures are normally welcome, but not when it affects your pie crust. Chill your ingredients and equipment so you can experience the thrill of making a successful pie crust! You can become a pie crust master. 

Yield

•  four 8" one crust pies or two 8" double crust pies
•  two 9" one crust pies or one 9" double crust pie

A batch of chill and thrill pie crust can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week before using. The raw crust will appear darker, but it bakes up to a beautiful golden brown like the pie in the above picture.

Ingredients

• 4 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 3/4 cups cold shortening  Tip: Storing shortening in the refrigerator keeps it fresh AND it is always cold for making pie crusts. 
• 1 cold egg, well beaten
• 1 tsp. vinegar, white or cider 
• 1/2 cup ice cold water

Directions

• Sift flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder into a quart and a half bowl. If my kitchen is hot, I will place the bowl of dry ingredients in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to chill before continuing with the following step. 
• Quickly, mix in cold shortening using two cold knives, a pastry cutter, or with your hand. I prefer to mix mine with my hand. I use my fingertips.
• Add beaten egg, vinegar, and ice cold water.
• Mix well by hand with a sturdy spoon.
• Keep the pie crust tightly covered and chilled until you are ready to use it. 
• Roll the crust out on a lightly floured surface and place it into your pie pan.

I fold the crust in half , place the fold line in the middle of the pie plate, unfold the crust, and let the crust settle into place. 

• Trim the crust about 1/4 to 1/2 inch past the edge of the pie plate. The crust will shrink about 1/4 inch as it bakes. 
• Follow the baking directions for your pie recipe. 

You may need to cover the crust edge of the baking pie to keep it from over browning. 

Making a Pie Shield from Aluminum Foil

• Start with a square of aluminum foil that is about a half inch larger than your pie plate.
• Fold the square of foil in half and trim as shown above. 
• Center the pie shield over your pie. 
• Gently tuck the edges under the rim of the pie plate. 
• Take care to not get the shield too tight. You just want to prevent over browning, by keeping the crust edge lightly covered.

I always put a pie shield on my pies. I remove the pie shield for the last 15 to 20 minutes.
It is much easier to put a pie shield on a cool pie and remove it carefully from the hot pie. 

Happy Thanksgiving and Safe Travels

Hoping you have safe travels during the 2014 Thanksgiving holiday and receive many blessings. The holiday season has begun!
Bill and Sallee Bonham

Pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. Gobble, gobble!

Coconut Cream Tropical Fruit Salad

My oldest daughter arrived for Thanksgiving dinner carrying a shopping bag. Her contribution to dinner was a four ingredient, fruit salad that was ready to eat in fifteen minutes. I love the ease and speed of this recipe!

Coconut Cream Tropical Fruit Salad can be served as a side dish, or as a light dessert.

Yield: about 1 quart, or 4 cups

Ingredients

• 2-15 oz. cans of tropical fruit salad packed in fruit juice
• 1-3.4 oz. package coconut cream instant pudding
• milk
• 1 - 1 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows I like to use a cup and a half.
• Optional - 1/2 cup of chopped pecans

Directions

• Drain juice from tropical fruit salad into a two cup liquid measuring cup.
• Add enough milk to the fruit juice to make 1 1/2 cups of liquid.
• In a one quart serving bowl, combine fruit juice mixture with the package of pudding.
• Whisk for two minutes.
• Stir in the miniature marshmallows and the drained, tropical fruit salad. 
• Chill until ready to serve.

Variations

Try different combinations of fruit and pudding flavors.

1. Vanilla pudding , canned fruit cocktail in juice
2. Lemon pudding, pineapple chunks in juice, small can of mandarin oranges in juice
3. Add 1 large banana, sliced to any of the fruit and pudding combinations.

Spiced Pumpkin Butterscotch Mini Trifle

Just in time for Thanksgiving, spiced pumpkin butterscotch filling layered between the halves of a spice cupcake. Then, they are topped with whipped topping and cupcake crumbles. What's not to love?

AND they are portable! 

Mini trifles can be prepared the day before your party. However, when using plastic party tumblers, the dessert can be prepared ahead of time and frozen. Thaw in the refrigerator. 

Yield 15 - 9 oz. mini trifles

You will need 15-9 oz. party tumblers. I bought two - ten packs at the local dollar store for $2. 
Ingredients
1 - 16.5 oz. extra moist spice cake mix
Pan coat spray
1 - 15 oz. can of pumpkin
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. ginger
¼ tsp. allspice
3 cups cold milk
4 – 3.4 oz. packages instant butter scotch pudding mix
About 16 ounces of whipped topping I used Cool Whip.

Instructions
• Follow package directions on the spice cake mix to make batter for cupcakes.
• Spray cups of cupcake pans with pan coat spray.
• Fill each cup of the cup cake pan about half full.
• While the cupcakes are baking, pour 3 cups of cold milk into a large bowl.
• Pour the four packages of pudding mix into the milk and blend until smooth.
• Add the pumpkin and spices to the pudding and blend until smooth.
• Cover and place in refrigerator.
• Remove cupcakes from the pan and cool on a cooling tray until they no longer warm

• Set out fifteen party tumblers
• Cut fifteen cupcakes in half and place the bottom of each cupcake cut side up in the tumblers.

• Put a rounded tablespoon of pumpkin mixture in each tumbler and level.
• Repeat another layer with cupcake top and pudding mixture.
• If you have any pumpkin mixture left, divide it between the tumblers.
• Fill each tumbler with whipped topping. 
• Crumble one cupcake into crumbs. I only used the center of the cupcake, not the outside edges.
• Sprinkle crumbs onto top of whipped topping
• Decorate with candy corn or other decoration of your choice.
• Cover and refrigerate the mini trifles for at least two hours before serving.
• You will have eight cupcakes left over. I place the left over cupcakes into a quart freezer bag and freeze them for my lunch.

SalleeShares- Holiday Baking Championship Week 2

#BakingChampionship

On the second week of Christmas my true love sent to me, seven bakers baking...lol.  I am gaining the Christmas spirit through my television viewing of Holiday Baking Championship! 

Week Two's Theme: Classic Holiday Flavors
Fall flavors and spices such as cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, pumpkin, caramel, chocolate, nuts, and apples remind me of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve.

Heat One: Eggnog Swirl Dessert

The seven bakers were excited to hear Bobby Deen say they would be baking with eggnog and would have sixty minutes before the heat was over. However, most of the contestants were not thrilled that the eggnog had to be in a swirl dessert.

The Bakers' Dessert Choices

• Pastry Chef Bill Liscomb chose to make Baked Eggnog French Toast and serve it with swirled eggnog and maple syrup. Personally, I didn't think this qualified as an eggnog swirl dessert, but was a breakfast pastry or breakfast choice
• Naylet Larochelle, the home baker who won the Week One main heat, chose to prepare Swirled Pumpkin Tart with Eggnog Whipped Cream. Yum!
• Caterer David Bondarchuck decided upon Eggnog and Spiced Cake Swirl Cupcakes. 
• Family Baker Dante Morasco's dessert of choice was Chocolate Espresso Obsession Eggnog Cheesecake. Seriously, I didn't understand the obsession part of the title. Is an obsession a new type of pastry? Am I that far off the web here in Mid-Missouri?
• Master Baker Punky Egan's choice was a streusel topped, Eggnog Pumpkin Swirl Muffin with Pumpkin Butter.
• Pastry Chef Terra Nelson immediately went with a brownie that featured a sweet potato puree and graham cracker crumb base. The top layer was reduced eggnog stabilized with white chocolate and, a Louisville, Kentucky staple, bourbon whiskey. 
• Professional Baker Erin Campbell's choice was Sweet Potato Cheese Cake with Gingersnap Crust and Eggnog Anglaise.  

Presentation to the Judges

Pastry Chef Duff Goldman, Chef Nancy Fuller, and Pastry Chef Lorraine Pascale were less than thrilled with the taste and/or presentations by:

• Dante - Judge comments included, "Where's the holiday?" The piped chocolate "modern" Christmas tree design on the plate didn't work.
• Erin - A kind comment for a rough presentation, "Not a looker, but delicious." Erin struggled with having a raw cheesecake and decided to put scoops of the cheesecake into small ramekins to finish baking. 
• David - Unanimous agreement from the judges, "Frosting is waxy." "Pedestrian." Not what a professional baker wants to hear!
• Bill - His final presentation was beautiful BUT the eggnog wasn't the star. The judges agreed with my thought that French toast isn't a dessert and it wasn't swirled.

However, four bakers all found favor with the three judges.

• Terra - Served a shooter of Mamaw's Spiked Eggnog with her upscale brownie. "Fab plate of food!" and "Redemption tastes good." were two of the comments bestowed upon Terra's dessert. Terra barely stayed in the competition last week. Redemption is indeed sweet.
• Naylet - The trio of judges all agreed the eggnog flavor was spot on. Duff Goldman asked her if she would teach him to bake. Straight faced humor from the Charm City Cake owner. 
• Punky - A beautiful presentation and flavor. 

And the Winner of Heat One is: Terra Nelson

Terra's main heat advantage? The use of an electric spice grinder. The other six bakers had to use a mortar and pestle to grind spices with. Cutthroat Kitchen's Alton Brown must have had something to do with this advantage! 

The Main Heat Challenge

Each baker was challenged to make a dessert using three classic spices and two sugars in sixty minutes.

An electric spice grinder was a definite advantage because all of the classic spices were whole. Whole nutmeg, whole allspice berries, whole cloves, rolled cinnamon bark, and a variety of sugars were presented to the seven bakers at the beginning of the challenge. 

A Bad Baking Day on National TV

• We all have bad baking days. However, most of us do not have a bad baking day on national television. Last week, Terra Nelson found out what this feels like. 
• This week, it was Erin Campbell's turn to burn a batch of caramel three times AND had her beaten egg whites collapse into soup for her souffle. Her end product completely failed to impress the judges. What kept Erin in the competition? She took on an ambitious dessert and did not quit attempting to scale each barrier that could have prevented her from completing a dessert. 
• Naylet cut herself twice in the first few minutes while grating a roll of dried cinnamon bark on a hand-held grater. However, she also kept baking after the medic bandaged her injured digits.

Seven Bakers Baking

1. Cakelet with Peach Cranberry Compote  by Naylet
2. Spiced Bread Pudding Chocolate Souffle with Caramel Sauce by Erin
3. Apple Nut Cake with Cream Cheese Drizzle by Terra
4. Hamantaschen by Dante. A hamantaschen is a traditional Jewish cookie that is shaped like a triangular hat around a filling.  
5. Gingerbread Man Cookies by Punky
6. Five Spice Orange Holiday Loaf by David
7. Three Spice Creme Brulee by Bill

Outstanding Bakers

 Bill - Nancy and Lorraine love the Creme Brulee. Duff said," it's about the process." and he felt the custard was a tad over baked. 

Dante - Lorraine complemented Dante on his,"great pastry."

David - What a turn around from the first heat! David's bread was deemed,"Awesome!" by Duff Goldman. A lovely presentation with two wonderful sauces. 

Struggling Bakers

• Punky was the eliminated baker. Her soft,under spiced gingerbread men with whole spice decorations fell flat with the judges. All three judges expected more from a master baker and thought Punky played it too safe.
• Erin - Bad baking day, but she stayed in the competition.

Safe Bakers

Terra

Naylet

The Week Two Winner: Bill Liscombe and his Spiced Creme Brulee.