Apple Sweet Potato Pie

This is a creation that I would like to call my own (well, with a little help from my father). The idea for this pie came from a recipe card that my dad picked up at the grocery store. It was for an apple and sweet potato casserole. He gave me the recipe and suggested that I make it. From looking at the ingredients, I figured that it would make a good pie. Apple Pie is good and Sweet Potato Pie is good, so combined it should be good.

I cheated on the pie crust, using ready made; but the rest was all homemade. I'm not going to go into the whole recipe here, but if anyone is interested, drop me an email or a comment and I will give you all the details.

This pie was actually made in 2 steps because I wasn't fully happy with the result after the first baking. After the first bake, I had basically made the casserole on the recipe card, but in a pie crust. It tasted much more like a side dish than a dessert.

On the suggestion of my father (who got to taste the pie during the first step), I rebaked the pie with a cinnamon-sugar syrup. I boiled some sugar, water, cinnamon, and nutmeg until thickened and poured the syrup over the pie. I then baked the pie for another hour at 300 C so that they syrup could soak in and the sweet potato would get more tender. The result above was from after the second bake.

If you don't like sweet potatoes, you will probably not like this pie (even after the second bake). But if you like them, then this is the pie for you.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

The other day there was a box of old bread left in the break room at work. The note on the box said that the bread was free and could be used to make breadcrumbs or croutons. I had other plans.

Originally I had thought that I would make a french toast type of bread pudding but while I was at the grocery store I saw that pumpkin was on sale and I changed my mind. The process was really simple since I basically just followed the directions for pumpkin pie that is on the back of can of pumpkin. Instead of pouring the batter into pie crusts, it was poured over the bread.

Alright, lets get into this post. This is another step by step posting since people seemed to enjoy the last one.

As usual, I like to have all the ingredients out before I start. That way I know if I'm missing anything and can then make changes to the recipe beforehand. As you can see, there is a loaf of bread, some eggs, sugar, a can of pumpkin, 2 cans of evaporated milk, and some cinnamon and nutmeg (the nutmeg is whole, I grind it by hand because it tastes better that way).

As you can see, I have cut up the bread into about 1" size pieces and I combined the sugar and spices (well, I didn't stir them together before this picture was taken, but you get the idea). The next step is to add the eggs to the sugar mixture and stir well. Then you have to stir in the can of pumpkin and finally you stir in the two cans of evaporated milk.

Now that all the liquids are combined, you just need pour the wet mixture over the bread. Be sure to pour it evenly and not to put too much into the dish. The bread will soak up some of the batter, so just pour it slowly.

Now that everything is combined, you should let the dish sit for at least an hour in the refrigerator. This will allow the bread to soak up the pumpkin mixture. Once the mix has sat long enough, you can bake it. I baked the pudding at 325 C for approximately an hour. Just check it periodically to see if it is set in the middle.

And this is what you end up with. To serve, I just dished some of it into a bowl and added some whipped topping. It definitely tastes like pumpkin pie, but isn't as rich as the pie usually is. The bread makes it taste lighter than it really is. It was a good way to use up old bread and it tastes good.

Zucchini-Corn Bread

Its been while since I posted so I decided that I would go ahead and make a comment about what I came up with this weekend. I had some zucchini that was soon to be past its prime and I didn't feel like making traditional zucchini bread so I got a little creative and made zucchini corn bread. Its was basically just corn bread that had shredded zucchini added to the batter (with a little bit of nutmeg). I reduced the amount of milk that I would normally have in the corn bread since zucchini is somewhat moist.

I think that it took a little longer than normal to bake, but I can't be certain since I did it in the toaster oven instead of the full sized oven. Most baking usually takes longer in the toaster oven.

It came out looking just like corn bread but with some green specks throughout. Flavor-wise, it was tasted like a normal corn bread (I think the nutmeg and zucchini added a little flavor, but no over powering flavors); but, it was very very moist. It wasn't soggy or undercooked, just moist.
For the most part, it was just like regular corn bread. So, I guess in the end I made the corn bread a little healthier by adding another vegetable to the mix.

Oh, sorry, no picture on this one. It's not all that exciting to look at anyway (its just corn bread).

Bananas Foster Pancakes

This Saturday morning I was in the mood for pancakes. I also didn't want just plain syrup. I looked around the kitchen and spotted some bananas that were just ripe. Then the idea to make Bananas Foster Pancakes popped into my head.

I put one banana into the pancake batter and cooked up the pancakes like normal. While I was making the pancakes I melted some butter and brown sugar in a small sauce pan. I added a little water to make a good syrup consistency. I cut up a banana (on an angle because it looks better that way) and put the banana slices into the syrup. I let them cook until they got nice and tender (which only took a couple minutes).

I plated up the pancakes with the bananas and syrup on top and sprinkled everything with a little powdered sugar for decoration.

They were really good. I'm sure that I could make a much better sauce but I wanted to eat quickly and was only able to use what was available in the house. Had I had some cream I think I would have added that to the sugar/butter mix instead of water and made a sweet creamy sauce (like melted ice cream maybe).

Tropical Muffins

So what do you get when you have 4 very ripe bananas and a pineapple cake mix? Well, I don't know, but if you add in a can of mandarin oranges, you get Tropical Muffins!

I had 4 bananas that were very very ripe and it was at the point where I either make something with them or I toss them. Not one to waste, I thought about making some banana muffins. But also one to take a somewhat lazy approach, I went looking for cake mixes. Since I've been eating healthier lately, I haven't been buying any mixes so all that was left in the cabinet was a pineapple mix. At that point I thought that banana and pineapple would go well enough together, but that something it still needed something else. Upon opening another cabinet, I found a can of mandarin oranges. Then I thought some more about it and came the conclusion that if I didn't add any nuts to the muffins they would just be uniced cupcakes. Thankfully I keep a bag of walnuts in the freezer (they stay fresh longer that way).

Everything was now set. I prepared to make Pineapple-orange-banana walnut muffins. The cake mix called for 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of oil (I think), and a cup of water. Since the oranges were packed in about a cup of light syrup, I omitted the water. And I knew that bananas and such were great for keeping things moist, so I also omitted the oil. The batter came together like normal cake/muffin batter consistency.

To make getting the batter into the cups easier, I used an ice cream scoop. Its a great idea for anytime that you have to get a lot of equal sized portions out quick. The muffins only took 20 minutes to bake at 350 C. I probably could have left in the oven a little longer and gotten the tops more browned, but this way they were extra moist.

I brought them into work this morning (letting my fitness class get first dibs). There were about 30 muffins on the tray and between a few people at the gym and my coworkers in my building they were all gone in under an hour. I've gotten lots of compliments so far, so I guess they came out really well.

Annual Cookie Making Day

For the past few years my family and I have been getting together sometime before Christmas to spend part of a day making a bunch of cookies. This year there were actually two cookie days but I missed the first one since I was making periogis (which I really enjoyed); I was determined to be at the second party. As usual we had the party at my Aunt's house since she has a large kitchen with a double oven.

We typically have a few ideas of what will be made with each person bringing the ingredients they would need for what they would like to make. My brother had been on a big sugar cookie kick earlier this week and he brought some already chilled dough which was a major time saver. I had planned on making the carrot cake cookies again (but this time as a double batch with carrot cake and spice cake mixed together). My cousin and her fiance were to make the chocolate chip cookies and my mom had got together the ingredients for the baklava, molasses cookies, and the no-bakes.

We started around 11 and baked until about 3. Everything went smoothly with only a few cookies getting over-browned and some slightly mashed during the transfer from baking sheet to cooling rack.

What puzzled me the most is that there were 5 cookie sheets (if not more), and I basically only had one to work with. My brother and cousin took the other sheets for their cookies. So, as usual, I was stuck with one cookie sheet and my Silpat.

So the run down of what we made and quantities were about:
Sugar Cookies, 8 dozen
Chocolate Chip, 6 dozen
Molasses, 4 dozen
Carrot Cake, 4 dozen
No-Bake, 3 dozen
Baklava, 12 dozen pieces (between the 3 batches we made)

Everything came out really well and everyone got a lot to take back with them. I brought most of mine into work to share and everyone has been enjoying them. If you want to know the recipe for any of the above, send me an email or post a comment and I will get you the info.

Merry Christmas everyone!

And it became Fruitcake Biscotti...

The original plan was to make fruit cake cookies. I didn't have a recipe for fruit cake cookies and my plan was use a basic cookie base and add some fruit and nuts to it. The results are shown on the left side of the above image. Once the cookies were deemed a failure, I attempted to salvage the leftover dough and make biscotti. This almost worked, but then I overbaked the biscotti. The general comments from the people who have ate the biscotti say that the flavor is really good but they are way too dry.

I'm not too happy about how this turned out and I questioned if I should post it or not. In the end I think its important to admit your mistakes and learn from them. I'm not giving up the fruit cake cookie and will try again. Or maybe I will just try to perfect the fruit cake biscotti instead.

Red Velvet Bites

The week of sweet treats continues. Today's treat is what I am calling Red Velvet Bites. They are basically everything you love about a red velvet cake, in the form of a cookie. The recipe starts with a red velvet cake mix (its the theme I'm going with right now) that is made into a cookie batter with eggs, oil, and butter, and for an extra kick, I added some semi-sweet baking chocolate.

When I came up with the plan to make these cookies, I was going to roll the dough into balls and coat them with powdered sugar before baking (so that they would have a crackled top); but while making the dough I realized that I didn't have any gloves and I was not about to roll these by hand (my hands would have been stained for days). So instead I baked them as a drop cookie and coated them with powdered sugar afterwards.

They give a bit of a surprise on the first bite since most people do not expect a chocolate taste from a red and white cookie. They are unique and fun for the holiday.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Last night I decided that I should make some more cookies and I have been thinking about how I could another cake mix. I searched through my cupboards and found that I had a couple carrot cake mixes (along with a red velvet and a spice cake mix). The abundance of carrot cake mix persuaded me to make carrot cake cookies.

The recipe was very simple, 1 stick of butter (softened, really softened), 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts, and 1 carrot cake mix. I mixed them all together in the stand mixer (I would not try this by hand since the dough is pretty stiff). I spooned the dough onto the cookie sheet in about teaspoon sized globs and baked them for approximately 12 minutes at 350 degrees C. Once out of the oven I transferred them to a cooling rack. Once fully cooled I iced the cookies with cream cheese icing. And that was it.

They are interesting little cookies. Eating one is like having a couple bites of carrot cake. I don't know if I will be making these again (it depends on the feedback I get from my coworkers). However, I think I might try to make something with that Red Velvet cake. I'll be sure to post what I come up with.