Concentrate, Woman, CONCENTRATE!

Why oh why am I always juggling a dozen things AND trying to cook at the same time?! It happens again and again!! Gah!!

I’m trying to pull out the ingredients for the Bavarian-Filled Eclairs while talking on the phone, starting a load of laundry, and assisting my son with his English homework.

WHY did I do that?

As I’m cooking the mix in the first step (butter and flour, trying to get the dough to firm up), it’s not working. It looks like Cream of Wheat when it should be looking like beautiful bread dough. I went over and over and OVER the ingredients list, and had my daughter go over it, too. It looked correct. After 45 minutes of non-stop stirring, hoping it would thicken, my blistered hand could take no more. I added more flour to the pot, and the mix started to change into something that looked more accurate.

I doubled the amount of butter needed. I measured 1 stick of butter to be 1/4 cup when it is 1/2 cup.

I tried baking a few anyway, just to see if they would turn out. My vote would be, uh, NO.

GRRRRRROOOOOAAANNNN!! This recipe was for my church group, too, which was meeting tonight! :’(

Well, I added more flour, what I could, and a lot of eggs. This is what they are. Not exactly the glorious products from Amish fireplaces… but over all, not too shabby.

They look OK. A little too brown for me, but still nice. They have a cake-ish consistency, not like the puff-pastry texture it is supposed to have. I will fill it with the most luscious Bavarian Cream filling and see how they turn out. I think they will be OK, just… different.

Well, lesson learned. NEVER multi-task when preparing an important recipe! NEVER!!!

Cranberry Apple Crisp

Mmm I love crisps, especially crisps with cranberries in them. A dollop of vanilla ice cream on top of warm crisp is SO luscious!! It’s a terrific comfort food, especially after a long, cold winter’s day at the office, or for the weary housewife who has been haggling over term life insurance comparisons all day. And crisps are easy and cheap! Here’s my absolutel favorite crisp, just in time for autumn’s apple and cranberry season!

Cranberry Apple Crisp
serve 6

2 cups fresh cranberries
4 cups apples, peeled and diced
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 packed cup Homemade brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup quick-cook oats
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons wheat germ or ground flax seed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 Tablespoons butter or margarine (but butter is better), at room temperature

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2-quart baking dish. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the cranberries, apples, granulated white sugar, and salt. Dump into your baking dish.

In the bowl that you just emptied, combine the brown sugar, oats, flour, wheat germ or flax seed, and cinnamon, and mix well. Cut in the butter until it looks like gravel. Dump this on top of your cranberries/apples mix in the dish.

Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until the fruit is tender and the kids start salivating heavily. Serve while warm, with fresh cream, or ice cream. OH MY WORD, this is SO GOOD!!! It’s great after a turkey dinner.

Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs

I make these Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs every year about this time of year, and they are so easy it’s mind-boggling. I take them to meetings, and they are gobbled up very quickly. The only thing to know is that they do not keep well– serve them within a few hours of making them, or they will get soggy. They are absolutely scrumptious– I guarantee you will have no leftovers! Not exactly nutritious, not exactly suitable for colon cleansing or other delightful medical benefits…. but you will have gained some adoring fans along with your weight!

I recommend that you read these instructions completely in their entirety before undertaking the recipe. OK, here goes:

Bavarian Cream-Filled Eclairs
makes 12 eclairs or so

For the Eclairs:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup boiling water
1 cup white flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs

For the Bavarian Cream filling:
2 packages instant vanilla pudding
2 1/4 cups very cold milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Note: Do not make the pudding mix until ALL your eclairs are baked!
Note: Depending on how well you stuff your eclairs with Bavarian Cream, you may have some left over. I find it very yummy to eat from a spoon.

Optionals for the eclair topping:
Ready-made frosting
Sprinkles

Important tools you will need:
Wooden spoon
Two metal spoons
An empty condiment container or other kind of squeezing container with a long nose
A funnel

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Grease a karge cookie sheet and set it aside.

In a saucepan that has your boiling water, melt the butter into it. Add the flour and salt all at once, and stir vigorously. Cook and keep stirring until the dough forms a ball that does not separate. Remove from the heat and cool for a minute. Now add your eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously until the dough is smooth. The eggs are slippery and this requires some oomph– but be sure to stir well.

Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto your greased cookie sheet, about 3-4 inches apart (the dough will expand). Bake in your hot oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 325 degrees and bake for 25 more minutes. When the time is up, turn off the stove and open the door for a minute or two. Leave the cookie sheet in there. Close the over door and allow your eclairs to sit in the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes. This sounds odd, but the remaining heat in the oven will help to dry out your eclairs, so the dough will not be spongy.

When the eclairs are sufficiently dried and cooled, you can turn your attention to the Bavarian Cream: Pour your milk into a large bowl, and add the instant pudding and nutmeg. Quickly whisk the ingredients until the pudding powder is dissolved. Work quickly, as you don’t want the pudding to gel too quickly– you need the pudding to be somewhat watery so you can get it into the condiment container to squeeze it into the eclairs. I use a funnel and spoon the cream into the container. This task is a little messy, so be sure to wear an apron!

Once your condiment container is filled, gently work the long nose into a crack or hole in the puffy eclair. Squeeze some cream in, as much as you think is suitable. I sometimes tap the eclair on the counter to force the cream further back into the eclair’s cavity. Do not overfill! Otherwise, when your guest bites down into the eclair, he/she will have a lapful of cream.

Repeat this procedure until all eclairs are filled: fill the condiment container with cream, insert condiment nose into eclair and fill with cream, tap eclair to move cream inside.
Once all the eclairs are filled, spread frosting onto the eclairs and sprinkle with decorations.

Serve eclairs at once, or if you must wait, store them in the refrigerator and serve within a few hours. The cream will set into pudding (which I like), but the eclairs will be slightly soggy. I’ve never received any complaints about it, though.

Photo courtesy of Joe Pastry, who also has some great photos on how to fill the eclairs.

Easy Giant Apple Pie

Cool weather is here, hurray! I rarely cook in the summer (except for grilling), but now that autumn is on the way, I am getting the “cooking bug” once again. And right now, apples are everywhere. The kids have been busy picking, peeling, and dicing apples for our freezer. All winter long, I have access to instant-cubed apples that I can easily thaw and throw into a pie or crisp or anything we fancy.

So today I made Easy Giant Apple Pie. If you have peeled and diced apples and ready-made packaged pie crusts, this recipe takes about 15 minutes to throw together– it’s SO easy! And I call it “Giant” because it is a huge pie, baked in a casserole dish. This is nice if you have a lot of kids to feed (like me) or a big crowd, if you love leftover pie, or if you’re skipping the appetite suppressant and just want to bake a big pie.

Technically, this kind of apple pie is called “French” apple pie, because it has no top crust. Rather, it has a crumbly streusel topping. It’s fabulous with coffee or ice cream.

Regarding the spices– add to your own liking. I rarely use measuring utensils (I’m a hands-on kind of cook) so the measurements here are approximate. Also, make sure your pie crusts are room temperature. This makes them more flexible without tearing– you are going to need to pull at the crusts a little to fit them into a rectangular 13×9 casserole dish.

Easy Giant Apple Pie

2 pie crusts
1 13×9 casserole dish

for the pie mix:
10 cups (or so) of pared and diced apples (thawed)
3/4 cup raisins (optional)
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup molasses (optional)
1/4 cup ground flax seed meal (optional)
2 Tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 cup flour

for the topping:
1 stick of butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Blend the topping ingredients and mash in the butter until the mix looks gravelly.

Mix up the apples and other ingredients for the pie filling.

Take your pie crusts. Make sure they are room temperature.

Gently unroll one of the crusts and place it into the casserole dish. You want to stretch it a little to make the crust fit up along the sides of the dish.

Unroll the second crust and overlap the first a little. Press the seam together where the two meet. Again, make sure your crust fits up along the inner sides of the dish.

Dump the pie filling in the dish. Sprinkle the topping evenly on top.

Bake in a hot oven at 400 degrees for an hour and twenty minutes. The pie should be bubbling. The baking pie makes the house smell INCREDIBLE.

Doesn’t it look scrumptious?? Yum!

Easy Apple Crisp

I just love autumn! It’s cooler, it’s crisper, the air smells glorious, and my apple tree has produced fruit! Yay!!! What a wonderful crop so far!

The boys volunteered to harvest the fruit, and then they volunteered to peel and dice the apples! This is because they knew what awaited them if they did: Apple Crisp. I serve it warm with ice cream, and it’s a favorite dessert. I make a TON of it at one time. The leftover serves well for breakfast the next day, or for a repeat dessert the next evening (all you have to do is sprinkle some extra oatmeal on the leftovers and bake again for 20 minutes).

Here’s my Easy Apple Crisp recipe. It’s my favorite dessert recipe because it so easy– I’d much rather do the quick-and-easy stuff so I can spend more time looking for nice women shoes or reading my books.

Easy Apple Crisp
serves 10

10 to 12 cups of apples, pared and diced
2 cups of brown sugar OR 1 3/4 cups of white sugar and 1/2 cup molasses
3 sticks butter (preferred) or margarine
1 cup flour
2 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger

You’ll need a very large casserole dish– I use my nice huge one. Grease it up generously with margarine or butter. Dump your diced apples into the dish and pat down.

Concerning the brown sugar– you can use straight brown sugar, or you can do what I did if you don’t have any or don’t feel like making any– and that is, coat your apples with 1/2 cup of molasses before adding anything else. This is what I did for this recipe.

In a large mixing bowl, mash your sticks of butter just a little, with a sturdy fork. Add the sugar to the butter and mash it some more. It does not need to be very well-mixed, just blended. (Remember this is “Easy” Apple Crisp!).

Add the flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, and mix it together. Dainty ladies use forks, but when I use them, I just make a mess all over the countertop. You can feel free to ditch the fork and mash the stuff with your hand.

When blended, dump the oatmeal/margarine/sugar mix on top of your apples in the dish. Spread it around with your hand– don’t pat it down because the apples will need room to “breathe” while they bake. I take my hands and poke holes into the apples, to allow the oats and butter to sink in.

Place in a pre-heated oven set at 350 degree, and bake for an hour. It will smell HEAVENLY while it bakes.

Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

This is a great quickie dessert for those autumn evenings. Enjoy!

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