Pumpkin pie

So I finally went around and made my first pumpkin pie. I've only had pumpkin pie once in my life so I was unsure how this would turn out, and what a normal pumpkin pie should look like when it's done and so on. I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the results. It's been a long time since I really enjoyed one of my own pies this much.

Pie crust:
3 dl flour
200 gram butter
3-4 tbsp water

Mix flour and butter.
Add water until good consistency.
Wrap and store in fridge until it's time to roll.

Pumpkin filling:
750 gram pumpkin
1/2 dl brown sugar
1/2 dl sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs
3 dl half & half

Dig out the seeds and everything unwanted from the pumpkin, cut off the skin. Chop the meat into chunks. Try to make sure that you have about 750 gram of pumpkin chunks. Put the pumpkin in a pot and boil for about 20 minutes. Drain the water and puré the pumpkin meat.

Mix pumpkin puré, brown sugar, sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg in a bowl.
Whisk together eggs and half&half then add it to the pumpkin mixture.

Line a pie dish that is about 20 cm in diameter with pie dough, not too thick. Pour in the pumpkin pie filling.
Bake for 15 minutes at 250 C then another 40-45 minutes on 200 C.

If your pie, like mine, gets too much color towards the end - cover it with tinfoil but make sure that the tinfol does not touch the top of the pie or it might stick to it. I solved this by putting a rack in the oven and placing the tinfoil on that.

Day of the Mudcakes!

Today is the day of the mudcakes, kladdkakans dag.

I didn't know this until after I made this cake but now that I do I just have to share it with you.
When I was testin out another type of cake in the kitchen I had some pie crust dough left over and I felt the need to get creative so I pulled out my little portion sized creme brulé cups and went for it.

Pie crust:
1 dl flour
70 gram butter
1 tbsp water

Mix flour and butter.
Add water until you have a good consitency.
Wrap and store in the fridge.

Mud cake filling:
1 dl sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
50 gram butter
1/2 dl flour
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa
pinch of salt

50 gram chopped dark chocolate

Whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar until white and fluffy.
Add flour, cocoa and salt and mix until combined. Add the butter.

Chop the chocolate into fairly large chunks and set aside.

Take your pie dough and line four small portion sized, oven safe cups. You will probably have some dough left over.
Divide the chocolate batter between the four cups and sprinkle the chocolate chunks on top.

Bake at 175 C for about 15 minutes. Let cool, preferably over night, before serving.

Competition and my go-to recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie

So, I logged in at bloglovin.com - that is where I keep all my favorite blogs nowadays. They're so many now that I can't possibly keep track of them all on my own. Anyway, through bloglovin I found out that Smulan over at Smulans Bakblogg is holding a competition and the prize is three(3) Flame Boy Burners. The question she asks us is "What would you want to make if you owned a burner?".




Easy! The first thing that popped into my head was Lemon Meringue Pie.
If you remember; I have made lemon meringue pie several times and my favorite meringue to top the pie with is the meringue of all meringues(in my opinion at least): Italian meringue!

Here's the catch tho. Italian meringue is gorgeous. The texture is amazing and I would eat the whole batch of it straight out of my mixing bowl if I could. But when you bake it in an oven, which you do to make the surface crisp and slightly brown, it changes. Don't get me wrong, it's still very good but that wow-factor fades slightly after cooking the meringue in an oven.

My belief is that if I was to brown the meringue with a burner instead of using the oven, not only would it get a crispier surface, but it would also leave the center of the meringue at its original, super yummy state.

Smulan also requests the recipe for whatever it is that I would like to make and if I win I would have to bake and show the results of it. =) Gladly!

Here is my current go-to recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie.

Pie Crust:
260 grams of flour
0.5 tablespoon salt
110 grams of butter
a few tablespoons of water
(and an optional pinch or two of sugar)
---
Mix or whip all ingredients but the water on low until it has formed a slightly lumpy mess.
Add tablespoons of water, one at a time until you have a good and not too crumbly dough. I think I usually use 3 tablespoons of water.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and store in the fridge for about an hour.

Place the dough between two baking sheets and roll it out fairly thin. Then place it in a pie dish(23 cm) and fit it. Cut off any excess dough.
Fill the crust with some dry peas and pre-bake at 175C for 10 min plus an extra 10 without the peas.
Remove from the oven and let it cool.

The lemon filling:
8 egg yolks
2 cans(about 800g) condensed milk
The zest and juice from 8 lemons
---
In a glass bowl add the yolks, condensed milk, lemon juice and lemon zest.
Mix very carefully until it's all well blended. I like to think of it as if I'm folding flavouring into a meringue batter. Don't overmix it or the chemical reaction will be broken and the mixture wont thicken as it should.
Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake at 150C for 20-30 minutes.
It's ready when it's soft in the middle but doesn't wobble when you move it.

The Italian meringue:
6 egg whites
330 grams of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract/essence
water
---
Pour the sugar into a small saucepan and add just enough water to cover the sugar.
Bring to a boil on medium heat.
Put the egg whites in your mixing bowl(I REALLY suggest a stand mixer for this) and whisk until it's slightly foamy - not thick like a meringue just until it begins to foam. Turn off the machine and leave it until the syrup is ready.
Let the syrup continue to boil until it passes the soft ball stage. When this happens, turn your mixer back on and set it to medium speed.
Slowly stream the syrup into your egg whites.
When all the syrup is in the egg whites, switch the mixer to high and let it work for about 10-15 minutes.
Swtich to medium and mix for a minute or so until the meringue has reduced a little in fluffiness.

Now you can spoon the meringue over your pie and put it back in the oven at 150C for about 20 minutes or until the meringue has gotten a nice color(this is where I would use the burner instead!).

Oh, and the pie is best served after it's completely cooled so either prepare it in the morning or the evening before and don't forget to make sure that the meringue completely seals the pie. There should be no gaps between the meringue and the pie dish or the meringue will shrink.

If you are worried about raw egg whites, don't! The awesome thing with Italian meringue is that as you are adding the syrup the egg whites are cooked by the heat of the syrup. That's why I think the burner would be great because the maringue doesn't need to be actually cooked in the oven. It's basically sent in there just to get some color and surface.

Apple Pie

A few years ago I didn't even like apple pie. In fact, I hated it. It was something about cooked apples that just I just didn't get along with. To make thing even strangers I also loved apples. I could easily down five apples a day and they would always be Granny Smith apples. Those were the only ones I really liked. Still to this day I pretty much only eat Granny Smith apples.

Anyway, yesterday I wanted to bake so I flipped through my The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook book and as I flipped past the apple pie recipe I remembered that Somebody in my environment loves apple pie. So I would have someone to feed it to! And sure enough, most of it is gone already, although personally I would have liked some sweetness added to the pie crust. The recipe for the pie crust that the book uses only calls for flour, salt, butter and some water. This kind of crust I would normally use for savoury pies. Everybody else seemed to like it tho so maybe it's just that I have a monstrous sweet tooth?



Now, this part isn't in the book or in the picture but from the sugary cinnamon water that was left over from boiling the apples I decided that rather than to waste all that nummy flavor I would make a apple cinnamon syrup. After I removed the apples from the pot I continued to boil the water mixture until it started to thicken. By then the butter started to seep out which I then removed as much as possible of. This syrup/sauce is really good if server hot with the cooled off apple pie. I would almost say it's better than the pie itself!

Frozen Candy Cane Pie

Here's a pie that I made a while back. The recipe has been all over the Swedish food blogs and it seems like it always turns out as wonderful, whoever makes it. It's basically a chocolate pie crust with a mixture of marshmallow fluff, whipped cream and crushed candy canes. Smooth, sweet and cool. The chocolate sauce was really good aswell. I will definitely make this again. It's only flaw is that it is so easy to eat.

Here's the gorgeous thing:

A birthday party

A birhday party is the perect opportunity to play around in the kitchen. For this party I made 2 types of cookies - sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies aswell as a lemon meringue pie.

The sugar cookies that I made were from The Hummingbird's cook book and I decorated them using an icing recipe from the same book. I think I prefer this icing recipe over my other ones. It's quite firm and doesn't get all over the place - perfect for piping and doesn't get too wet even with liquid food coloring.

As for the chocolate chip cookies; I'm trying to find a recipe that gives cookies close to Subway's cookies. These ended up looking alot like them but they were crunchy, not soft and chewy like the Subway cookie. I think that maybe if I let them bake for a shorter time in the oven they may have come out less crunchy. Next time I'll try that.

The lemon meringue pie was sort of a disappointment. The first time I made it, I messed up with the filling so that it didn't set but the italian meringue came out perfect. This time however, the filling was beautiful but the syrup for the italian meringue kept crystalizing so I ended up with a regular meringue instead. That works too but it's not quite as good nor especially impressive.