Day 74 - Brown Sugar Drops

          I decided something extremely important today.  And yes, it has to do with baking.  I absolutely CANNOT, MUST NOT do any of my baking for this blog while the Red Sox are in the middle of a baseball game, especially when they are playing the Yankees.  And especially when David Ortiz comes up to bat with Kevin Youkilis on third base.  I was in the middle of measuring the flour, baking soda and salt into the sifter, and usually I'll put like half the flour in and then the other dry ingredients followed by more flour so that everything is sifted in together nicely.  Yeah.  I was measuring, the tv was on, and I knew Big Papi was up to bat.  I measured the flour, half or all I wasn't sure, and had done the salt and baking soda, then heard the hit and the crowd erupted.  Of course, I'm going to drop everything and run to the tv!  I know, I can hear you saying, "the team has only one win since the beginning of the season and 7 losses, so it's too early in the season to be so wrapped up in one game".  Oh, but this is the Red Sox, playing against their arch rival, the Yankees.  These are games we die hard Red Sox fans DO NOT MISS.  I also didn't add the milk or the maple syrup before putting in the dry ingredients.  So,we can either chalk this up to my preoccupation with the baseball game or that I was having consecutive senior moments even though I'll deny I'm anywhere close to being a senior.  It was the game.  "That's my story and I'm stickin' to it." 

  Brown Sugar Drop Cookies came out of my New Doubleday Cookbook, p. 830-831; authors, Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna; publisher, Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.; ISBN 0-385-19577-X.

   Brown Sugar Drops  - 6 dozen

     3½ cups sifted flour (Ha, I forgot to do that, too - sift it before measuring. Yikes.)
     1 teaspoon baking soda
     1 teaspoon salt
     1 cup butter or margarine or ½ cup each vegetable shortening or butter, softened to room temperature
     2 cups firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
     2 eggs
     ½ cup sour milk or buttermilk ( I used sour milk: 1½ teaspoons added to ½ cup milk and rest for 10 minutes.)
     2 teaspoons maple flavoring (optional) (I used 2 teaspoons of maple syrup)

     Preheat oven to 400ºF.
     Sift flour with soda and salt and set aside.  With a rotary beater or electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, and eggs until well blended. 

Mix in sour milk and maple flavoring.  Slowly mix in dry ingredients. 

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls 2" apart on greased baking sheets.

Bake 8-10 minutes until nearly firm (cookie should barely retain fingerprint when lightly touched).  Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

      My son absolutely loved these.  I rate everything that I bake on a scale of 1-4 with 4 being the best and this crazy kid thought they should be given 4 rolling pins.  I'm sorry, I have to disagree.  I really thought the kid was off his rocker.  I don't think they had any taste.  It was after I had added the milk after adding the dry ingredients that I thought for sure I had used an extra cup of flour.  The batter just looked.  Too.  Sticky.  It was like spackle and took me a while to clean it off my spoons it was so thick.  Yeah, I really think I added that additional cup.  See, just like drinking and driving, baking and Red Sox don't mix.  Someone could get hurt or at least ill from something made when the chef isn't paying attention.  They kind of tasted like cardboard.  I have to give them a 1 rolling pin.  I'm interested in making a second batch to see what the difference would be, possibly tomorrow.  Not sure though, I already have something very important to bake and I have GREAT EXPECTATIONS for it, so I'll NEED to PAY ATTENTION!!
     Happy baking!

Day 60 - Beautifully Complicated Butterscotch Brownies

         I was on Facebook yesterday and one of my friends from high school posted this: 

Ah, life. Beautifully complicated. Embrace it. Whatever the complications may be. Wherever they may find you.

Rich was always a great friend and I had quite a few classes with him throughout those "formative years", and he was on the school's baseball team with my husband.  He was quiet and unassuming, staying true to his character and I know he has remained this way.  I admire him for that.  He has become a great man and undoubtedly his working at World Neighbors is a testament of that character.  He was also wise beyond his years which is another reason I love this "Rich Original".  Sometimes we become so involved in the problems or challenges that we are facing that we have a tendency to not step back and see that even though it may be difficult, life is still beautiful and we do need to embrace it.  Our individual struggles are beautiful.  Be in the moment.  Do not wish it away.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Nietzsche

I can attest to the fact that the hardships I have endured throughout my years have definitely made me a stronger person.  Life truly is "beautifully complicated".  Thank you, Rich!
    
    
      I found these brownies in my Fannie Farmer Cookbook, Thirteenth Edition, p. 629; author, Marion Cunningham; publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Random House; ISBN 0-394-56788-9.
     Ok, I have to be honest, the making of these Butterscotch Brownies was anything but complicated.  I just called them that because the words went so well with Rich's post.  They really couldn't have been easier.  And the really fun part was that I was able to use my mother's nut chopper.  I loved that thing when I was little.  It was always so much fun to put the peanuts or walnuts in at the top, turn the handle and watch those teeth grind them into little bits.  Brought back some more memories.

     Butterscotch Brownies

     ½ cup melted butter
     2 cups dark-brown sugar
     2 eggs
     ½ teaspoon salt
     1½ cups flour
     2 teaspoons baking powder
     1 teaspoon vanilla
     1 cup chopped nuts

     Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
     Butter a 9 X 13-inch cake pan.  Mix all the ingredients together, combining them well.

 Spread in the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until dry on top and almost firm to the touch. 

Let cool for 10-15 minutes, then cut into small squares.

     My son and husband loved them.  I thought they were good, too.  I'm going to give them 3 rolling pins even though there was disagreement over whether they should be awarded 3 or 3½.  My rating system is based on a scale of 1-4 with 4 being the best.  These will make a great treat to take to a friend's when you need to bring a dessert and don't have much time.  Just be conscious of those people with peanut allergies!
     Happy baking!  Remember, life is beautifully complicated.

Day 45 - Apple Oatmeal Bars

     I laughed a lot today.  Life is good.  I have all three of my children at home for a week.  I can't possibly imagine what it will be like when it is just me and my hubby in the home alone (oh, and the dog, and my sous chef cat).  I will definitely miss all of it, even the arguments.  They are growing up so quickly.
     Today it's Apple-Oatmeal the New Doubleday Cookbook, p. 852; authors, Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna; publisher, Doubleday, a division of Random House; ISBN, 0-385-19577-X.

     Apple Oatmeal Bars

     1 cup sifted flour
     ½ teaspoon salt
     ½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
     1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
     1 cup uncooked quick-cooking oatmeal

     Filling
     2½ cups finely chopped or thinly sliced, peeled apples
     ¼ cup sugar
     ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

     Preheat oven to 400ºF.
     Sift flour with salt and add brown sugar. 

Using a pastry blender, cut in 1/3 cup butter until the size of small peas; mix in oatmeal.  Pack half the mixture into a well greased 9" x 9" x 2" pan; top with apples and sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg. 

Dot with remaining butter and cover with remaining oatmeal mixture, pressing down lightly.  Bake 45-50 minutes until tan on top.  Cool upright in pan on a wire rack and cut into bars.

 

     The rating system on a scale of 1-4 with 4 being the best is what I use for my recipes.  The family has discussed and decided these were worth a 2.  The bars were just kind of ok.  Unfortunately, there was no wow factor.

     Happy baking!

Day 44 - Frgookie

     Wow, two nights in one week that I can't finish the blog before midnight.  I just quickly posted what I had in order to have it dated correctly, hitting the publish button at 11:59 (WHEW!) and kept working on it.
     Frgookie.  Yes, I spelled it right, but it really isn't even a word.  My husband made it up thinking it was something we had actually eaten.  See, we've been to a few restaurants that sell a chocolate cookie served in a cast iron skillet.  One place had a special name for it that I can't remember and my husband, a few months later said, "let's go to the place that has the Frgookie". So it's stuck.  This cookie concoction is to die for!  It is not quite fully baked and it's served with vanilla ice cream.  Every time it comes to our table, the scene is reminiscent of a pride of ravenous lionesses attacking their prey.  It isn't pretty.  If you don't have a spoon ready and you're not digging into it the moment it hits the table you are going to be out of luck.  Come to think of it, I don't think the members of this family are more passionate about anything else.  Well, except for the Red Sox, and I guess the Patriots are close behind.  And the exact same thing happened tonight when I put it on the table.  I told my husband that he'd better get into the kitchen or he wasn't going to have a chance of getting any.  Unbelievable.  It's like these kids haven't been fed in days, especially that teenage boy.
     We love chocolate chip cookies and the only recipe I ever and will ever use is the one on the back of that red and yellow Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels bag.  It's the best and I've never had any problems.  The past few times when I've made the Frgookie I've used the refrigerated Toll House cookie dough, place 3/4 of the dough in the skillet and then flatten it out to the edges of the pan.  But this time, I made our own dough.  We loved this dessert so much that I went and bought a small cast iron skillet and haven't used it for anything else but this one thing.

     Frgookie - makes 2
     2¼ cups all-purpose flour
     1 teaspoon baking soda
     1 teaspoon salt
     1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
     3/4 cup granulated sugar
     3/4 cup packed brown sugar
     1 teaspoon vanilla extract
     2 large eggs
     2 cups (12 oz. pkg.) Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
     1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

     Preheat oven to 375ºF.
     Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.  Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixing bowl until creamy. 

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in morsels and nuts.
     Spoon half of batter into an 8-inch cast iron skillet, pressing until dough has reached the edges of the pan.  Save remaining batter for tomorrow or make a second one to eat right away.
     Bake for 18-20 minutes.

                                     

     Be careful not to over bake because then the edges will be harder.  It's not that you can't eat them, it's just that they may be left in the pan.  The annihilators like things soft and gushy as you can see from the picture below.  I left it in just a few minutes too long tonight.

     Hmmm...how many does this feed, you ask?  I really cannot give you an honest answer because eating this is like a competition; who's got the fastest reflexes, the largest spoon and who just wants to inhale it instead of savoring the wonderful flavors.  Needless to say, every time we have this someone feels as if they didn't get their "fair share".  It can also become a little hostile when there isn't much left to be eaten, fighting for that last little bit.  Also, you want to make sure that no one is sick.  This not something to be eaten by those who are afraid of "double dippers" although you could ask for separate plates and divide it up.  The equal portion problem would be solved then, too.

     My rating system is on a scale of 1-4 with 4 being the best.  The Frgookie earns 4 rolling pins!  You are going to score BIG points with your loved ones when you make this and they'll be asking for it again and again and again.

     Happy baking!

Day 37 - Lace Cookies

     I've always wanted to make Lace cookies, but have been a little intimidated to.  They're just so delicate.  This recipe is from my cook book, Fannie Farmer Cookbook, Thirteenth Edition, p. 619; author, Marion Cunningham; publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., division of Random House; ISBN 0-394-56788-9.

     Lace Cookies
     1½ cups uncooked oatmeal
     1½ cups light brown sugar
     2 tablespoons flour
     ½ teaspoon salt
     2/3 cup melted butter
                                1 egg, lightly beaten
                                ½ teaspoon vanilla

     Preheat the oven to 350ºF.  Mix the oatmeal, brown sugar, flour and salt in a bowl.  Stir in the melted butter, then add the egg and vanilla and combine well.  Arrange the batter by half-teaspoonfuls, about 2 inches apart, on ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.  Cool slightly, removing cookies from the cookie sheet with a spatula as soon as they are firm.  If they become too hard, return to the oven for a few minutes to soften.

     Now I know why I was intimidated.  These suckers are not easy cookies to make.  They're quite tasty, but they have to be made "just so" or they're not going to come out right and you'll end up eating the 10 cookies that stick to the spatula (well, how else was I going to get them off?). 
     It says to leave the cookies in the oven for 5 minutes.  I did that with the first batch and when I went to remove them from the cookie sheet after allowing them to cool there for a minute or two, completely smushed (I love that word, but not when I'm making cookies) them together.  It wasn't pretty.  The second batch I knew I needed to leave in longer to harden, so I did that, and left them a little longer on the cookie sheet to cool, also.  I managed to extract a few off the cookie sheet without a major problem while some were still being smushed.  And then the last ones to be removed were stuck to the sheet like glue.  Once the cookies cooled completely on the sheet, they were not going to budge, and the couple I managed to scrape off had me thinking they might be good to use as spackle.  Making these brought me back to when I was first learning how to make crepes and the amount of time it took to learn the right temperature in the pan, the right consistency of the batter and knowing when the crepe was cooked sufficiently on one side so that it could be flipped.  These cookies took this baker some time to master in order to achieve a perfect finished product.  By the fifth and final batch, I had it down, but I don't think I'll be making these again.
     I really like how light and airy they are, but they are extremely sweet.  So sweet in fact that my kids don't want to eat anymore than the two that they had.  And there were enough of them for me to bring and share with my hairdresser and her salon (everyone there really liked them).  My rating scale is from 1 to 4 with 4 being the best.  So for these Lace Cookies, the rating is:  2½ rolling pins.
     Happy baking!

Day 35 - Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

         My mother-in-law gave me this recipe because my kids absolutely love when she makes these cookies, and it's also on the back of the Craisins bag if you're ever needing it.

      Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies
     2/3 cup butter
     2/3 cup brown sugar
     2 eggs
     1½ cups oats
     1½ cups flour
     1 tsp. baking soda
     ½ tsp. salt
     6 oz. package Craisins (sweetened dried cranberries)
     2/3 cup white chocolate chips or chunks

     Beat butter and brown sugar until fluffy. 

Add eggs and oats. 

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  Add to butter mixture. 

Stir in cranberries and chocolate chips.  Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet.

  Bake at 375ºF for 10-12 minutes.  Makes 4 dozen.

     I'm mixing the brown sugar and the butter together, then take out the salt and baking soda and realize I have less than ¼ cup of flour left.  How can this happen?  I'm doing an experiment/project/challenge that will last me a whole year on baking and I have less than ¼ cup of flour in the house?!  Not well prepared, so had to run mid-recipe out to the store.  I bought the 10 pound bag, so that should last me through the middle of next week...I hope.
     My kids love these cookies!  I don't know if I made them as well as Grammy did; things always taste better when there are some warm fuzzy memories associated with them.  But they were excited to come home from school to find them on the counter.  My husband gave them the thumbs up, too.  I preferred the plain ol' Craisins mixed with white chocolate chips personally.  Alright, so I had a little snack while I was mixing things together - just making sure they were safe to eat and weren't going to make anyone sick.  On a scale of 1-4 rolling pins with 4 being the best, these cookies deserve a 3½!
     Happy baking!

Day 23 - Peanut Butter Cookies

     I realized something today.  The past few days I have been glued to the internet perusing different food blogs and it is amazing the amount of time I can spend looking at one site which takes me to another site and leads me to another, and so on.  I'm sure you have all at one point experienced this.  It's like when I first started Facebook; looking at her friends led me to her friends, oh there's someone I know, and then there are her friends.  Hours and hours of internet time.  What I realized a few minutes ago, as I was looking at this one beautiful blog, was that...I am a victim of blog envy.  Oh my gosh, the pictures, the writing, the recipes. (sigh)  Now I want to stay glued to my computer 24/7, but the all-important baking won't be done and certainly my house would never be clean and we all know how much of a struggle that's been.  I know, it's only been three weeks, but I want to shoot for the moon, take this nationally, internationally even!   I know, it already is national and international because it's on the web and all this from a family shared computer and my husband's laptop.  I'm just letting you all know that I'm excited about where this is going and I have a good feeling, a really good feeling.  I'm blessed to have people actually reading this stuff.  AND to top it off, you are all telling me you're enjoying it!  For that I am extremely flattered and grateful.  So, for all of you who have joined us (me, myself and I) these past three weeks, I thank you and encourage you to stay along for the ride.  As I said, I am really excited about this and have been supported in many different ways.  Who knows what will happen next?
  
     Peanut Butter Cookies today, y'all.  It is from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook Thirteenth Edition, p. 617; author, Marion Cunningham; publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, division of Random House; ISBN 0-394-56788-9.
     Peanut butter cookies have always been a favorite in this house.  My husband will eat them like there's no tomorrow with a big glass of milk.  This recipe calls for shortening, but I have another recipe using butter which I like the taste of better.  These were still quite good though.





Peanut Butter Cookies
     Will make 50-60 cookies
     The ingredients:
     1 cup shortening
     1 teaspoon vanilla
     1 cup granulated sugar
     1 cup brown sugar
     2 eggs, beaten
     1 cup peanut butter
     3 cups flour
     1/8 teaspoon salt
     2 teaspoons baking soda

     Preheat oven to 350ºF and grease some cookie sheets.  In a mixing bowl, thoroughly cream the shortening, vanilla, and sugars.

Add the eggs and beat well.

Stir in the peanut butter.  At this point, the dog came into the kitchen from the dining room.  He can smell peanut butter from a mile away and probably thought I was making his dog treats again, poor dog!

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda, and add to the peanut butter mixture, combining thoroughly.

Form into tiny balls with the palm of your hands and place on the cookie sheets.  Press each cookie twice with the back of a fork to make a crisscross design.

Bake about 8-10 minutes or until firm. (or bake and bake and bake until they are finally finished)

    
     They were tiny, pop-in-your-mouth size which was cool, but they took forever to bake on the larger cookie sheet.  I am not kidding, probably an extra 10 minutes making it a total bake time of 20 minutes if not longer.  I kept hitting the timer for another two minutes and was becoming extremely frustrated they were taking so long.  In the end it was all good though.  People liked them, but I prefer the buttery ones.
     The rating:  3 rolling pins!
     Happy baking! (still working on it)

Day 13 - Jam-Filled Sugar Cookies

     Memories of Grandma...   I was originally born in Rhode Island, but we lived in New York and Illinois while I was growing up.  My four grandparents have always been a huge part of my life.  Since I was the first grandchild on both sides until I was about 8 years old and, in addition to being an only child,  I guess you could say I was completely spoiled. When we lived in Illinois, I would fly back and spend every summer with my mother's parents so my mother could work and my father could go to school.  Looking back now, it was during these summers that my love for food flourished.

      My grandparents had wild blueberry bushes growing on the hill up behind their house and a big beautiful garden, so there was never a shortage of fresh vegetables.  My grandfather and I, aka, his "little cucumber" would go out to the garden each day when he returned home from work to pick things for dinner or to bring in the excess so that Grandma could do her canning.  I never ate so well as I did during those summers; griddlecakes, doughboys, lemon meringue pie, chicken cacciatore, three bean salad, Italian bread, spaghetti and meatballs, chocolate cream pie, cream cheese cookies, liver and onions (ok, THAT I never ate, but my grandfather loved it!), hot dogs and beans with brown bread (from a can!), and my absolute favorite, her jam-filled sugar cookies.
     There were so many wonderful things she made that I liked, but those cookies hold a very special place in my heart which is why I have never attempted to recreate them.  I knew it would be tough to make them like Grandma did.  And she knew they were my favorites.  She didn't bake them that often and come to think of it, I never did see her make them - they always seemed to magically appear.  She said they took her the longest time to make out of anything she did, but I never really understood why until today.  I didn't have the recipe she used, so I may have been missing a couple of steps and I am really hoping my aunt has it so that I can do this again.  Grandma also had this cookie cutter that she never used for anything else but those cookies.

When she died 21 years ago, we were cleaning out her house, and I found it tucked away in the drawer.  Through seven moves through three different states I have kept that cookie cutter, and have not wanted to part with it.  It represents a part of my childhood that I never want to let go of.  That piece of metal, which is probably over 50 years old, is so much more than the shape it makes in the dough; it is the hours she would spend knitting while watching "her" Red Sox and drinking a Narragansett Beer from a glass, the card games we'd play, the way she would scream and shake her arms in the air when I'd accidentally scare her, our story times, the warmth of her kitchen, and the unconditional love that she showered me with.  It is her.  And everything about her.
     While the cookies I made today were quite delicious, they weren't anything close to what I remembered.  I think she rolled her's thinner than the suggested ¼ inch thickness and definitely added less jam than the ¼ teaspoon I did.  The recipe here says to spread it around the cookie, but Grandma only had the grape jelly in the middle and would sprinkle the tops with a little sugar.  It also made only 16 cookies, so it you're wanting to make more, double the recipe.  I also baked them much longer than the 12 minutes at 325ºF, probably 12-15 minutes more because it took them a while to brown.

     This recipe comes from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook Thirteenth Edition, pg. 612; author, Marion Cunningham; publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, division of Random House, Inc.;  ISBN 0-394-56788-9.
     Sugar Cookies
     ¼ pound butter
     3/4 cup sugar
     1 egg
     ½ teaspoon vanilla
     1 tablespoon cream or milk
     1¼ cups flour
     1/8 teaspoon salt
     ¼ teaspoon baking powder

     Preheat the oven to 350ºF.  Cream the butter, then gradually add the sugar, beating until light.  Add the egg, vanilla and cream or milk (I used milk.), and beat thoroughly.

 Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder together, add to the first mixture, and blend well.  Arrange by teaspoonfuls on cookie sheets, 1 inch apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.
     Filled Sugar Cookies.  Add about ¼ cup flour to the dough, just enough so that it can be rolled out.  Roll ¼ inch thick and cut into 3-inch circles.

 Spread half the circles with jam, jelly, mincemeat or fruit and nut filling. 

                                      

 

Cover with the remaining circles and press the edges together with a fork.  Prick well.  Bake on buttered cookie sheets in a preheated 325ºF oven until lightly browned, about 12 minutes.

     I'm going to keep trying, but some things are just not meant to be recreated.  I think this may be one of those things
     Happy baking!

    

Day 4 - Apple Cream Pie

     Funny, it's only day 4 and I'm feeling that I've been baking and blogging for months (haha)!  I realized this morning that I omitted a very important part of my post last night - taste.  How can a person be blogging about what they're cooking, baking, or even frying if they aren't going to add how it tastes?  The Pepperoni bread was good, but it wasn't one of those times that it was "to die for" because I have made those.  My son loved it, but I may have thought that because I wasn't feeling all that well yesterday and had very little appetite, too.  I was disappointed that the dough was so bread-like, especially towards one side of the loaf.  The Pepperoni and cheese wasn't evenly distributed.  It was certainly edible, but I am my own worst critic as I'm sure you'll discover.  I'm not going to pretend that I'm the world's greatest baker and I deserve to have my own show on the Food Network because I definitely am not, far from it.  I enjoy being in the kitchen and feeding my family and one of my goals for this is to improve my baking.

     An aside, my scale says I lost two pounds. I haven't exercised, but I'm thinking "thin", so maybe I'm wishing the weight away.  Ok, more honestly, it's probably that I've lost that wonderful monthly water retention.

     Ok, I typed the beginning of this blog this morning at 8:44 a.m., and it is now 11:06 p.m.  Life happened - breakfast had to be made, piles of laundry needed to be done, a daughter went back to college, groceries needed to be gotten, and a son requested assistance with homework and a science project which ended up regressing because of the parental input.  I'm aggravated.  There just wasn't enough time in the day today.  I know sometimes that happens and usually I can deal with it, but maybe it's because I now have superglue on 6 of my ten fingers, that I can't upload pictures to this particular computer because I can't figure out how, that it took me 4 hours to make a pie crust (really wasn't difficult I just had so many interruptions), or that the pie is in the oven and will be done at the stroke of midnight.  I didn't even make dinner!  It was a fend-for-yourself-eat-leftovers night.

     I made my first pie crust from scratch.  We'll see how it turns out.  As I said, it really wasn't difficult and if you are uninterrupted, should not take very long maybe an hour and a half including chill time.  I used the recipe from one of my Julia Child cookbooks thinking that her's would be one of the best.  My only concern, well, two actually was that I trimmed the edges right at the top of the pie plate and that I didn't roll it thin enough.  When I pre-baked it there was shrinkage and some of the crust is below the plate edge, and I just think the thing is too darn thick.  We'll see.

     This Apple Cream Pie recipe hails from my mother's sister, Jeanne.  She is a wonderful cook, too, just like her mother.  My mother, not so much.  She inherited the creative genes, not the culinary ones.  She wasn't bad, just...ok.  I've mostly made this pie for Thanksgiving, but it's been quite a few years.  It felt weird to not make it for a special occasion.  I'm glad I did though.  It smells delicious!

     Apple Cream Pie

     One Pie Crust (HAHA, I just noticed that I didn't read the directions and that the pie crust is supposed to be UNBAKED.  I'm thinking that it may be better that I did because it was especially thick.)

 

    

      5 or 6 Medium Apples (I used Macintosh, just because we prefer those.)

     1 tbsp. Lemon Juice
     1 cup firmly packed Brown Sugar
     1/4 cup Flour
     1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
     1/8 tsp. Salt
     1 cup Cream

     Pare and quarter apples.  Place in unbaked pie shell.  Sprinkle lemon juice over apples.  Combine dry ingredients.    Sprinkle 3/4 dry ingredients over apples.  Pour cream over apples.  Sprinkle with remaining dry ingredients (sugar mixture).

     Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then at 350 for 45-60 minutes until apples are tender.
     (Add 1/4 tsp. cinnamon when mixing pie dough) - which I neglected to do.  I've used pre-packaged pie crusts in the past and it tasted just fine without cinnamon in the crust.

     So, it's coming out of the oven in 1 minute!  I will take a picture which along with the other ones I've taken will be posted tomorrow.  I will taste it in the morning  - BREAKFAST with a nice cup of coffee, and let you know how the crust came out.  It is best served chilled anyway, not like a warm apple pie.  Time for bed.  I also need to discuss tomorrow my shopping trip and how I saved 48% at checkout!  I still need to get this glue off my fingers...

     You're probably already in bed, but Happy Baking!