Recently in Recipes Category

This is a recipe I learned when my boyfriend and I started dating - oh, about 12 years ago. He swore it was his favorite apple pie ever, and it sounded interesting, so I decided to try it. It was the brown paper bag thing that intrigued me:

Brown Bag Apple Pie

Prerequisite: A brown paper grocery bag. No, I'm not kidding.

Preheat oven to 400F.
While defrosting a premade frozen pie crust:

Filling Ingredients:
5c apples - I usually use Granny Smith
1/2c sugar
2T flour
your favorite apple pie seasoning to taste (I have an all-purpose apple pie spice that has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice)

Mix sugar, flour, and spice in small bowl and set aside.
Peel, core, and slice apples - I have one of those peeler/corer/slicer thingies that literally makes it a snap to do all this. I used to hate peeling apples.
In a large bowl, combine the apples and sugar/flour/spice until apples are well coated.
Now, here's a matter of preference - some people just like dumping the apples into the pie shell, but I found that doing it that way sometimes makes the pie sag after baking. So I pick apples a couple at a time, and lay them in the pie crust so as to make the best use of the space. Yea, I'm a little OCD sometimes! Ha!

When all the apples are placed in the pie shell, top with the crumbs:

Crumbs:
1/2c sugar
1/2c flour
1/4c butter, at room temperature.

Mix the flour and sugar, then blend with the butter to make coarse crumbs. Spoon over the pie.

Now here's the interesting part.

Lay the bag, open end towards your pie, on a large, rigid cookie sheet. Carefully put the pie in the bag - it helps if it's oriented a little towards the back of the bag, but right in the middle side-to-side. Fold over the top of the bag a little bit and staple to close - I usually staple both ends and once in the middle.

Place on the bottom oven rack and bake at 400F for 1 hour.
Note: MAKE SURE the bag is not touching the heating element or sides of your oven. I cannot stress this enough. I have been neglectful in the past and had a corner of the bag just grazing the top heating element. It almost started a fire. That's why I use the bottommost rack in the oven (even remove the top rack). That way there's enough clearance around the bag. So I repeat, check to make sure the bag is not touching the sides or heating element in your oven.

The bag itself will be safe in the oven (as long as you've made sure it's not touching anything). You will smell singed paper. It usually goes away after a half hour. If you open the oven door to check on it, you may also see smoke/steam. It's nothing to worry about - it's the moisture baking out of the paper bag.

After an hour, carefully remove the cookie sheet/bag from the oven. Let it sit a couple minutes to cool, then rip the bag open to remove the pie. Some filling juice may have boiled over the crust edges making it sticky on the bottom of the pie pan, so it may be useful to get someone to help you - one person holding the bag and one person picking up the pie. Put your pie on a wire rack to cool.

The pie is good warm or cold, so in a couple of hours, sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I haven't had much time in the last month to write anything with all the shopping, baking, cleaning, and wrapping I've been doing. I just finished making my last batch of "cookies" - something my mom used to make when I was little... they're not really cookies, though. My mom calls them "No-Bake Chocolate Drops". I call them "Chocolate Heroin" - they're terribly addicting. I thought I'd share the recipe:

No Bake Chocolate Drops (a.k.a., "Chocolate Heroin")

In a very large saucepan, combine:
4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
Bring to a boil, and boil for one minute.

Stir into the above:
6 cups quick-cook oatmeal
1 cup peanut butter
2 tsp. vanilla

The mixutre will be a little bit crumbly, but drop by teaspoonfulls onto waxed-paper lined cookie sheets and refrigerate until set.

Easy, huh? The hard part for me is the sugar headache I get from eating them.

I'm presently storing them in the refrigerator because my house is quite warm right now. I really don't want them oozing all over the place.

Happy Holidays to all!!!

I made Easter dinner for the family this year. There were 10 of us, and even though I was going completely insane getting everything cleaned, cooked, and baked, it turned out pretty good. We had some good sweet ham, chicken, broccoli, candied carrots, corn, garlic potatoes, and homemade bread. And the ham gravy. Don't get me started on gravy. The only time my true Pennsylvania Dutch nature surfaces is when there's gravy on the table. I could have a dinner of gravy and bread and be completely satisfied.

I was contemplating what to make for dessert - my mom was bringing pistachio pudding, but of course we need more than one dessert! (I was forgetting about the 10 pounds of Easter candy my mom was also bringing over).

So I made a Butter Pound Cake - always a favorite - with some strawberries and syrup for topping. That satisfied Dave, who -gasp!- does not like chocolate, but I was feeling the need to satisfy the die hard chocoholics in the family. So I searched allrecipes.com and came up with Hershey's 'Perfectly Chocolate' Chocolate Cake.

Oh. My. God.

Sugar Shock is too mild a term. My teeth hurt from eating this cake. But it was quite good, so I thought I'd share the recipe. Again, it's not my own recipe, I found it online, and it probably even originates with Hershey's, I'm not sure. But here goes:

Cake Batter
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Chocolate Icing
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions
Heat oven to 350F. Grease and flour three 8-inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water - the batter will be thin. Pour batter into pans.
Bake 30 - 35 minutes or until a cake pick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, and remove from pans onto wire racks. Cool completely.

To make icing, melt the butter and stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to a good spreading consistency. Add additional milk, if necessary (I added at least 1/4 cup additional milk to make it nice and creamy). Stir in vanilla.

Assemble each layer with icing in between each - trim down the sides of the cake if any layer turns out larger than the other. Then frost the assembled cake.

Warning: be careful when removing cooled layers from the wire racks - mine tended to stick a bit. If I would have been less careful, the layers could have broken into many pieces.

This cake was thoroughly delicious, and I think I have eradicated the need to have any kind of sugar or chocolate product for the next month, at least.