Pie Eyed

I’m envious of people who have hard skills that they can offer to others.   Whether it’s to make money, to barter or just to be nice, they have a skill that others need and they can take it anywhere.

I have benefited immensely from people like that over the years.  Cousin Abby does hair (and saves me a fortune); Uncle John waterproofs basements, pours concrete and muds flawless drywall (and saves me a fortune); Father-in-Law Frank can paint a room with his eyes closed (and saves me time and a fortune); our good friend Matt is an electrician (and we owe him our first born grandchild for the time he has put into the houses we have owned); and Brother-in-law Aaron is a mechanic (and saves me a fortune and my sanity).  How we got so lucky to have so many people in our lives who selflessly offer up their time and talent is beyond me.

I’m frequently left wondering what my husband and I can give in return.  We just don’t have obvious hard skills that are in high demand.  My husband is a middle school math teacher and I work in fundraising, and before that was a sex educator (yep).  So between the two of us, we can teach your kid math, the birds and the bees and raise you money.  I need my hair cut every 6 weeks, but how often does one need to give their kid “the talk?”  My skills just don’t come in handy that often.  As my hair keeps growing, our rooms need repainting and our house keeps falling apart, I continue to carry a certain degree of guilt for not having an equally sought-after skill to offer in return.

My point was driven home a year or so ago when our Leadership Team at my former job took a strengths assessment.  We were doing some group therapy and read Strength Based Leadership by Tom Rath.  As part of the experience, we took a survey to identify our primary strength.  As we went around the table, my coworkers took turns discussing their strengths such as Strategic, Analytical, Developer, and Activator.  Strong words that had obvious associations with hard skills that you need in the workplace.  Then it was my turn to announce my primary strength…Woo.  Woo?  What the heck did that mean?  Exactly what you might think.  I can charm people, bring people in and develop interest and excitement.  While that’s a lovely quality, it’s not a hard transferable skill!  How many business professionals are out there touting their above average Woo skills?  They’re not.  They are DEVELOPING STRATEGIC plans, ANALYZING revenue cycles, ACTIVATING projects and seeing results.  Not batting their eyes and being charming. I envision myself on a street corner with a sandwich board waving people in to get their taxes done.  Now that takes a certain degree of woo factor.

My little foray into pie-making has started to help me fill this void in my life.  All of a sudden, people are asking me to make them pie and I am gladly offering my services.  I’ve been waiting so long to be able to do something for my friends and family.  Finally, I can help with something that not many other people have the time, interest or energy to do.  Pie!  Look, I can still give a mean birth control presentation, but until anyone needs that, I’ll be in the kitchen.

Dorie Greenspan’s Devil’s Food White Out Cake

This is my all time favorite celebration cake.  The taste, texture and presentation all seem just a little more special than your average cake.  I hesitate to put Dorie Greenspan’s recipes on my blog because I really think you need to own her book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.  But this cake is so good, I had to share it.  We went to our neighbor’s house last weekend for a dinner party and I was asked to bring a cake.  And not just a cake – the host’s birthday cake.  No pressure there.  I knew hands down that it had to be this one.  The chocolate cake is moist and decadent.  In between the dark cushions of cake is a fluffy marshmallow frosting that is the perfect balance of mild sweetness to compliment the chocolate.  And the grand finale is the crumbled cake that you adhere to the outside making it oh so impossible to turn down a piece.  Put this on your list of must make cakes this summer!

Ingredients

Cake:

1 1/3 all purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (use the good stuff!)

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 sticks (10 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temp.

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled (good stuff!)

1/2 cup buttermilk or whole milk, room temperature

1/2 cup boiling water

4 ounces semi-sweet or milk chocolate, chopped (or 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips – I like these)

Marshmallow Frosting:

1/2 cup egg whites (about 4 large eggs)

1 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 cup water

1 Tablespoon vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease two 8 x 2 inch round cake pans.

IMPORTANT:  If you ever bake a cake again, please cut out two circles of parchment paper and place on the bottom of each.  Grease the pan, lay down the parchment circle and grease the top.  This will prevent your cake from sticking to the pan and will make the removal virtually flawless.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, powder and salt.  I love using the hand-held sifter that I bought at the grocery store.  You just dump everything in, turn the handle and it all gets sifted together.

Using a stand mixer (or hand held if you need to), beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy.  Add both sugars and beat for another 2-3 minutes.  Add eggs one at a time, beating until each one is fully incorporated.  Add vanilla.  Reduce the mixer to low and add in the melted chocolate.

Starting with the dry ingredients, add the flour mixture and then alternate with the buttermilk.  You want to begin and end with the dry ingredients.  Be sure to have a rubber spatula handy so you can continue to scrape the sides of the bowl.  Continuing on low speed, add the boiling water (I keep an electric kettle handy).  The batter will be pretty thin at this point.  Remove the bowl and using your rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate chips.  Divide the batter between the two pans and make on the center rack for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let cool in pans for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool right side up.

Look at that amazing parchment paper!

If the cakes have a bit of a rounded top, use a serrated bread knife to gently even them out.  Once cool, you will need to slice each layer in half horizontally.  You can do this with a knife, but I love to take a piece of string or dental floss and gently guide it through the cake and out the other side.  It makes for a clean, even cut every time!  Keep the best three layers for the cake, and crumble the fourth layer into a bowl.

While the cakes are cooling, you can make the frosting.  You will need a candy thermometer to pull this frosting off.  Don’t be scared – it’s worth learning the technique!

Put egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer.  In a small saucepan, put the sugar, cream of tartar and water and stir to combine.  Bring the mixture to a boil, cover the pan and boil for three minutes.  Uncover and boil until the mixture reaches 242 degrees on the candy thermometer.

This is the tricky part.  You want to try to time the egg whites with the temperature of the syrup.  So, when the syrup reaches 230 degrees (I found 230 to work the best for me), begin beating the egg whites to stiff, shiny peaks.  Once the syrup reaches 242, carefully pour the mixture into the egg whites while beating on medium speed.  Try your best not to let the syrup touch the sides or the whisk attachment.  Add the vanilla and continue to beat for about 5 minutes or until the frosting reaches room temperature.   This is a good time to prep your cake layers and get ready to assemble.

Now for the fun part – assembling your cake!  I love this cake because you do not have to be an expert cake decorator.  The cake crumbles make the least artistic bakers like myself look like they know what they are doing.

Put the bottom layer cut side up on a cake round or platter.  Cover it generously with frosting (you can probably be more generous than you think).  Top with the second layer cut side up and frost away.

Place the third layer cut side down and frost the entire cake.  This frosting is meant to be billowy and fluffy, so you do not need to fret about making it smooth and pretty (that’s my kind of cake!).  Once the cake is frosted, you’re ready to bring on the cake crumbles.  Using your hands, gently pat the cake crumbles into the sides and top of the cake.  You can go lighter on the top if you want more contrast.  This part is a little messy and you’ll probably need to clean up your counter or edges when you are done.  Once the cake is finished, place in the refrigerator for one hour, or you can even chill it loosely covered for 8 hours.

This cake was a hit at the neighbor’s dinner party.  I even had a chance to use my inappropriate birthday candles that have been waiting for an adult-only occaision.  Can you tell what they are?  Joints.  How funny is that?  With my limited exposure to the topic at hand, I still react like a child and think things like this are hysterical.  So when I saw these candles in a store a couple of years ago, I had to have them. Let’s just say that most everyone at the party caught on once they were “lit” and started to burn.

Joints or no joints, the cake didn’t stand a chance and was on its way to being eaten in no time.  I hope you can find a reason to make this soon!

You know your life has turned a corner when upon visiting a new city, you embark on a pie crawl and not a bar crawl like a more youthful and resilient version of yourself might have say, oh, 15 years ago.  My how time has changed me – those rounds of cherry bombs and appletinis have now turned into slices of cherry pies and apple pies.

I haven’t gone anywhere interesting since I started this blog until recently when my husband and I went to Nashville, Tennessee.  The plane had barely dropped its landing gear and I was already formulating my plan of attack to find the best pie in Nashville.  And find Ben Folds.  But the pie would be easier.  By the time we went to bed that first night, I had mapped out the top three pie stops and was eager to experience all Nashville had to offer.

The Nashville Pie Crawl

Pie Place #1:  The Loveless Cafe

No lack of love here for this throwback motel turned cafe destination.  The Loveless Cafe lived up to all the hype – especially their secret recipe biscuits.  Before I get to the pie, let me just tell you that I had (vegetarian/vegan friends cover your eyes) the most amazing pulled pork omelet for breakfast.  Never in my life would I have put the two together, but man was it good.  I will say that my excitement for this meal was definitely influenced by the red gingham tablecloth, the server with a thick southern accent and the smoker wafting smells of slow cooked meat.  I was gettin’ all Sweet Home Alabama and eating any and all suggestions to feel authentically Southern.

With a belly full of barbequed pork and the clock just having reached 10am, there was no turning back.  Bring on the pie.  So we ordered up an apple pie and a peanut butter pie for the table.  I drilled our server on the quality of the pies.  Homemade crust?  Check.  Fresh filling NOT from a can?  Check.  Do you make the best pie in Nashville?  Check.  We’ll see about that.

The verdict:  Not a total letdown, but nothing to write home about.

To my surprise, the crust had body and a nice snap when you took a bite.  No soggy bottom which was a huge win.  The apples were crisp, but the spices and texture of the filling were a bit of a miss – kind of tasted like the refrigerator.  I think the Loveless cafe should stick to smokin’ their meat and baking their biscuits.  Look, you can’t be good at everything.

Pie place #2:  Puckett’s

They had me at the sign.  What’s not to love about an invitation for home cooked pies?  Puckett’s is a neighborhood favorite and I can see why.  With an eclectic atmosphere of mismatched tables and chairs, a grocery and a full scale restaurant, anyone can find a home at Puckett’s.  Word has it that you can run across a country music star if you’re there on the right day.  It’s a place where friends come to catch up and families come to dine.  And our morning breakfast was no exception.  The locals made the tourists feel right at home and the food was fresh and delicious.  Except the pie.  I was on a high – the experience had been so good until I decided to take them up on their invitation for home cooked pies.  But despite my better judgement, I went ahead and tried a piece of cherry pie even after I saw the individual pieces lined up, covered in saran wrap in the display cooler.

The verdict:  You should probably take pie off the menu.

Why do people claim to have great pie when it’s a mushy mess?  Have they never had a real, homemade pie that actually has a crisp crust and full-bodied filling?  How is that picture up there considered a pie?  I couldn’t even finish it.  The filling had to have come from a can and the crust was so soft, I could not distinguish it from the texture of the filling when I took a bite.  Puckett’s, I loved your food and would go back, but your pie sign is false advertising!

Pie stop #3:  Mayo’s Mahalia Jackson Fried Pies and Chicken

Who knew that a little yellow drive-through trailer on Jefferson Ave. would hold the biggest surprise of our whole trip – THE BEST PIE IN NASHVILLE!

We pulled in and it was love at first sight.  The smell of the smoker filled the car as we rolled our window down to order.  Mr. Dolla was already outside starting the day’s fried chicken and smoked pork.  Inside, they were making our peach and sweet potato fried pies to order.

A few minutes later, we were handed a brown paper bag, warm with fresh fried pies and we drove on our way.  If you like the pies at McDonalds, these will rock your world.  The fillings are made fresh, and each pie is made to order.  Both pies were good, but the sweet potato was by far my favorite.  The outside was crisp and golden and the filling boasted a perfectly balanced sweet potato flavor with a undercurrent of spice.  At only $.99 per pie, I could easily eat one every day if I lived there.

Verdict:  Mr. Dolla will make you holla for more pie.

This was it – the gem of Nashville.  Get yourself to Jefferson Avenue for some fried pie if you’re ever in the area.  And tell Mr. Dolla that I sent you!

Watch this short video about these iconic fried pies.

And as if finding the best pie in Nashville wasn’t enough, we topped our trip off with some serious karaoke on Broadway.  I was not going to pass up a chance to do my best Shania Twain in the heart of Nashville.  Yee-Haw!

“Sometimes people are layered like that. There’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface….Like pie is.”  Joss Whedon

Pie continues to pop up in my life in unexpected ways.  This latest Pie It Forward was no exception – this was a total unplanned, surprise Pie It Forward.

For years, I have been interested in volunteering with a local organization that helps homeless families who are in emergency situations by placing them in temporary housing hosted by a network of local churches and synagogues.  Each time I read about it I plan to call and sign up to help.  But for years, I put off calling.  Because I forgot.  Because my own life distracted me.  Because my kid decided to stop sleeping and I was tired.  Because, to be honest, I was nervous.

Last month I decided enough was enough.  Poor me with my job, my house, my supportive husband and my kids who were fed and put to bed.  Time to drop my selfish excuses and help already.  The church we belong to was housing families and we signed up to be evening hosts.  Our job was to come after dinner and help by playing with the kids, assisting with homework, and really just offer support and compassion by talking and listening.

We walked into the church that first night and my heart was racing with anticipation and nervousness.  In the blink of an eye I had a baby in my arms and was chatting up a storm with M, one of the women.  She was young and had come with her husband and four children ranging from five to two months old (enter the baby I scooped up in a hot minute).  My mind was searching for things to talk about that wouldn’t highlight our obvious differences.  And out it came – “Do you like pie?”  We got to talking about sweet potato pie, holidays and memories of pie.  M had never made a pie of her own, so naturally I decided to organize a major pie making endeavor for our next scheduled night to host.

When the day came, I packed up my supplies and headed for the church to make cherry pie and sweet potato pie.  Three women staying at the church joined me along with another volunteer.

Together, we rolled dough, crimped edges and made our filling.  For two of the women, these were the first pies they had ever made.

When our pies were done, we sat around the table and shared the results of our hard work.  While plates, forks, and cans of whipped cream circled the table, we began to talk.  The divide between homeless and homeowner faded away as each bite of pie took us towards common ground.  We were mothers.  We were women.  We loved pie and we loved the pie we had just made together.  And in the comfort of our meal, stories began to emerge.  Stories of harrowing days spent in the foster care system, discontinued child support payments, murdered parents, absent fathers – lives tangled with so many forks in the road that it’s virtually impossible to trace your steps back to see where it all went wrong. And yet there was hope in a new beginning.  A chance to find permanent housing though the support of this program and reassurance in the compassion and understanding of new friends.

I left that night with two conversations looping through my head.  One track was of G, a 7th grade boy who assured me that his mom was working on getting a house east of Cleveland in our neighborhood and that he was sure he’d be joining our church soon.  The other track was of his mother, T, asking me to pray that her Cleveland housing program application would be accepted…or else they would have to start over and move to another shelter next week.

To the strong mothers and the innocently hopeful children, I wish I could give you more than just pie.

xoxo

The Pie Eyed Piper

If you live in Northeast Ohio, be sure to check out Family Promise.

*All photos were used with the permission of the families.

Let’s just cut to the chase here.  I made Irish soda bread and it was just as good (dare I say better?) than my Mother-in-Law’s.  There, I said it!  For years I have swooned over her Irish soda bread and resolved that I could never make anything to compare.  But this girl was destined for a win and the luck of the Irish was with me.

I took my own advice and read the recipe before removing even just one measuring cup from the drawer.  Boy do I love these bread recipes – four ingredients with optional raisins.  I was eager to conquer this challenge and take my soda bread to the family St. Patrick’s Day gathering.

The recipe in Baking With Julia is a traditional soda bread.  Nothing fancy, no eggs, no sifting – just flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk.  I blended the dry ingredients together with a fork as directed.  Then, reading carefully along, I added the buttermilk and stirred until the dough came together and then folded in a cup of raisins.  Easy enough.

Ok, so I might have added a dash of cinnamon. I'm Hungarian, not Irish so the authenticity was already out the door.

The next step was to knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for just about a minute.  The recipe says that the dough will be “soft and malleable…” but I did not expect a sticky, gooey mess.  I even looked malleable up in the dictionary and it means capable of being shaped or formed. Um, no.  It felt like I had enough dough between my fingers to make another soda bread!

That is NOT malleable

Attempting to tame the dough as best I could, I plopped it on the prepared baking sheet and tried to cut a crisscross as directed.   There was no making any kind of crisscross in this dough. It just popped right back into it’s sticky form.

I took the bread out of the oven about 6 minutes before it was set to be done.  It looked golden brown and I wanted to err on the side of caution.  What emerged was a beautiful round of Irish soda bread despite my sticky hands and failed crisscross.  It tasted great and had a perfectly balanced texture – not too soft and not too dense.  And best of all, it tasted just as good as my Irish Mother-in-Law’s.

Be sure to check out our hosts this week for the recipe at My Culinary Mission and Chocolate Moosey!

Before I go any further, let me just put this out into the world – I am totally sick from eating too much rugelach dough. Onward…

These rugelach prove that sometimes keeping a little mystery about oneself is a good thing.  Women hear it all the time; men like some mystery to their partner.  In fact, I just saw something like this on the internet.  It said Keep Some Mystery in Your Marriage!  Seriously?  The only mystery in my marriage is where the remainder of the Girl Scout Cookies went (I’ll never tell).

I’ve never been good at keeping mystery about me.  Picture that ticker bar that runs along the bottom of the CNN report with the news in real time.  Now picture that ticker bar running through your head and then right out of your mouth in a verbal play-by-play.  That’s me – what enters my head comes right out of my mouth.  Luckily, I do have a filter and I know what material is for the 6pm news vs. the 11pm news.

I just started a new job last month and I promised myself that I would hold back and let my coworkers get to know me little by little.  I promised that I would not bare my soul and overwhelm my new work family with all my quirks and random thoughts.  But oh no, it wasn’t even the third day and somehow I had managed to relay my love of karaoke, my pie obsession, my accidental pregnancy during my move to Oregon, my luke warm love of my dog and the fact that my husband just got a vasectomy…all to an audience of new coworkers who were willing to accept me anyways. And that’s the beauty of no mystery – you put yourself out there to a new world and in a matter of days it feels like home again.

But I digress, back to this Rugelach.  There are just some things in life that are better kept shrouded in mystery.  Like that fact that these sweet little pastries are made with THREE sticks of BUTTER and ONE and a HALF packages of CREAM CHEESE.  Holy cream products, Batman.  I liked my life better when I could pop one (or two) of these in my mouth without flashbacks of a pile of yellow and white sliding around in my electric mixer.

The dough itself is a cinch and incredibly basic.  I whipped up cream cheese, butter and salt, added some sugar and then slowly added flour until the dough came together.

I divided the dough into two pieces, shaped them into a rectangle and refrigerated for two hours.  My only problem was inadvertently eating the dough.  It’s like I have a tick.  I just can’t help but pluck a bite here and a bite there – even if I know darn well I’m just eating straight butter, cream cheese and flour.  Needless to say, after doing it twice, I was totally grossed out.  Someday I will learn to keep my dough eating habits at bay.

Once the dough was chilled, I rolled them into a 14 inch long rectangle, cut each in half and spread the four pieces with apricot or lekvar (prune) filling. Then each piece was coated with a sugar/nut/cinnamon mixture and sprinkled with dried fruit.

But once again, I was going too fast and took a minor misstep.  Between my trips back and forth to the kitchen and the toddler dance party in the living room, I misread the directions and rolled my rectangles into a 14 x 5* inch piece rather than 14 x 10.  That extra 5 inches would have come in handy when rolling these like a jelly roll.  I could only make about two turns – and I knew they were supposed to be coiled around more than just twice.  Size DOES matter.

Overstuffed and under-rolled...

I was already completing this challenge by the skin of my teeth.  Then I read further and realized that Julia wants the rolled dough to sit in the fridge for 4 hours.  Ugh!  Once again, I have relearned the lesson that you must read the entire recipe before you start.  And especially before Tuesday.  So I took a shortcut and only refrigerated them for an hour.

I sliced the rolls into 1 1/2 inch pieces as directed, tossed them in a nut/brown sugar/cinnamon mixture and baked them for 30 minutes on 375.

Let’s just say these could stand a re-do.  I put too much filling on the dough, so the slices were bursting with cinnamon and sugar.  I salvaged what I could and was pleased that they at least tasted good.

My takeaways?  Read the recipe.  Google an image to see what they’re supposed to look like.  Plan ahead.  Don’t bake between dinner and kid bedtime.  And keep a little mystery in your life.  You better believe that when I take the salvaged and moderately pretty ones to work tomorrow, I’ll be sure not to mention the minor kitchen disaster that they really were.    Be sure to visit our hosts at My Baking Heart for a picture of what they should really look like and the recipe!

Although I have spent the past year up to my ears in pie, I have not been inspired to make a tart.  Tarts just seem so high maintenance – so pristine with their tight little crumb and perfectly filled shells.  It’s like they are the fancy older sister of pie.  The one from the Upper East Side, with a big job and a crisp, pressed suit who comes home to see the crunchy little sister with the non-profit job who lives in t-shirts and jeans.  To me, that’s the difference between a tart and a pie.

My time to conquer the tart has come with the latest Tuesdays With Dorie challenge:  Chocolate Truffle Tartlets.  You can find the recipe at the site of one this week’s hosts:  Spike.does.stuff. You can also visit Tuesdays With Dorie to see how others fared.

I have to be honest – this challenge came very close to squashing my dreams of perfecting the art of French pastry.  I came out of the gate strong, making a chocolate dough for the tart shell.  Flour – check.  Really good cocoa – check.  Sugar – check.  5 Tablespoons of butter – FAIL.  It was supposed to be 8.

See, the recipe for the chocolate dough was on a different page than the tart recipe.  Midway through the dough, my page flipped back to the main tart recipe and I read 5T of butter from the chocolate filling recipe on accident.  I was totally oblivious to this, even as I dumped a dry pile of crumbs onto my work surface.  Honestly, did I really think this mess was going to form into dough?  Yes, I did.

I knew something wasn’t right when the recipe instructed me to do the French fraisage technique to bring the dough together.  Little by little, you take your crumbs and with the heel of your hand, smear it across the work surface to stretch the butter.  This is supposed to create a delicate, flaky dough.  But, when you have not used enough butter, this technique is nearly impossible.  Rather than create a delicate dough, you just make your hand sore and sprain your finger from all the poking and patting (seriously).

I was determined to not let this dough get the best of me.  I smooshed, I smeared, I was the definition of overworking the dough.  I was still clueless to the fact that I was missing 3 Tablespoons of butter.  I refrigerated the dough and returned to prepare the tart pans.  What I pulled out of the refrigerator was not dough – it was a hard, dry hunk of chocolate something.  I broke it into as equal pieces as possible, but I was certain that I was not doing Julia Child proud.

I was too far into this to turn back.  Using all of my strength, I tamped out circles with a rolling pin and lined the pans with dough.  By the end, I was feeling like there was hope left for these to be edible.

I baked the shells and turned my attention to the filling.  This recipe is not for the person who just kind of likes chocolate.  This is a prove your devotion to chocolate, beyond chocoholic recipe.  Not only is there a chocolate crust, but there are three types of chocolate – bittersweet, milk and white chocolate.  Not to mention 8 egg yolks.

Gooey mess of melted chocolate and butter

Perfect light yellow ribbon of whipped egg yolks

I combined the melted chocolate with the whipped egg yolks, chopped chocolate and chopped biscotti and spooned the mixture into the cooled tart shells.

After the tarts were baked and cooled, I removed them from their pans.  The result was better than I expected.  They stayed in tact and made for a very pretty presentation.  The taste?  Well, the crust was pretty good considering the butter issue.  But to be honest, these were way too chocolatey for me.  I liked the rich taste and the chunks of the biscotti, but two bites was more than enough.  I just know there’s a chocolate fanatic out there that would love these!