Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘tutorial’

Homemade Cherry Pie and a Lattice Crust Tutorial

Posted in Dessert, Fruit, Pies/Tarts, Seasonal, Tutorial/How-To, tagged , , , on June 26, 2012 | 19 Comments »

When I was growing up, there was a store my family frequented that had an amazing bakery section. They baked everything fresh on premises, and it was all super delicious. My parents still shop there often, and they never leave the store without a loaf or two of their amazing homemade bread, or maybe a couple of bagels. There’s one treat we often used to buy from this bakery that stood out in my mind above all else.

Their cherry pie never looked very elegant. It was wrapped in saran wrap that often stuck to the top a bit, and the “lattice” crust was made from a cutter, not an actual lattice. But nobody could care about that, because it was just so delicious. We didn’t get this pie often, and in fact, it’s been years since I had it. But the amazing buttery crust filled with sweet yet tart and always juicy cherries stands out in my mind.

When I last had this pie, I doubt if I would have believed you had you told me that I’d soon be making my own cherry pie. Remember that I only made my first ever pie crust within the last year that I have been blogging. Plus, cherry pie filling is something that comes from a can, not that gets made. Right?

As you can imagine, my feelings towards making cherry pie have shifted since then. I’ve made numerous pies since that first one, but I finally decided to make a cherry pie. Naturally, with plans to make my own pie crust, lattice and all, I couldn’t open a can to fill it with. Besides, cherries are in season now, and absolutely delicious. I can’t believe I considered that in the past!

If you’re hesitant, let me tell you a few secrets. Firstly, making cherry pie filling is as simple as boiling a few ingredients in a pot. Promise. Secondly, making a lattice top for your pie is a lot easier than you think. And because I am awesome, I made you a little illustration. Excuse the pictures. I took them on my iPhone in the terrible lights of my kitchen. Scroll down past the ingredients for the directions.

Homemade Cherry Pie:

Ingredients:

For Crust:

2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup vegetable shortening (crisco), ice cold

4-7 Tablespoons ice water

For pie filling:

Adapted from My Baking Addiction

4 cups pitted cherries

2 Tablespoons water

2 Tablespoons Kirsch (cherry brandy- if you don’t have, use water)

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup corn starch

Optional topping:

1 egg, beaten

sugar, for sprinkling

Instructions:

For pie crust: (Note: these are basic directions. For more detailed information, see my tutorial here.)

In the bowl of a food processor, mix together the flour, sugar and salt.

Cut the shortening into cubes and add to the food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the mixture resembles coarse (and uneven) crumbs. Do not over-mix.

Add the ice water, starting with 4 tablespoons and adding additional tablespoons as needed. Pulse until mixture just comes together. Do not add too much water!

Remove the dough from the food processor and roll it into a ball. Flatten into a disk and place in a plastic bag in the fridge to chill.

For pie filling: Combine all ingredients in a small pot. Bring to a boil and lower flame. Stir frequently for about ten minutes until the mixture appears jelly-like. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

To assemble pie: On a lightly floured surface, roll out the chilled pie dough to fit into a 9 inch pie dish. press it into the dish and trim the edges.

Place the filling inside the pie. Set aside.

Prepare the lattice top: (see diagram above for pictures to correspond with the numbers.) Roll out the remaining pie dough into a rectangle large enough to fit over the pie.

(1) Cut the dough into even strips.

(2) Place 5 strips of dough evenly across the top of the pie.

(3) Lift every other strip of dough a little more than halfway, and gently fold it back across itself.

(4) Place another strip of dough going the opposite directions, just at the edge of where the dough strips are folded. Unfold the strips and lay them flat. Half of the strips should be over the opposite strip, and half should be under.

(5) Repeat the previous step, this time alternating the strips that you fold, so that those that didn’t get folded before are folded this time.

(6) Repeat the steps until you have five woven strips in each direction. Trip the edges.

To bake the pie: Preheat the oven to 375.

Brush beaten egg over the top of the pie, then sprinkle sugar over it.

Bake the pie for 35 minutes, until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Did you enter my cookbook giveawayyet? If not, hurry and do so, time is running out! Thanks all for stopping by! I hope you enjoy this pie, and found the pictures helpful! -Miriam

Read Full Post »

Engagement Cookies {How-To}

Posted in Cookies, Dessert, Party, Tutorial/How-To, tagged , , , , , , on May 16, 2012 | 15 Comments »

Thank you to all the awesome people who have commented, emailed, tweeted and otherwise complimented me on the treats I made for my sister’s engagement party. I put so many countless hours of work, about 20 pounds of flour, bags and bags of sugar of all varieties, and finally pulled it all off. I just showed you folks the various goodies I made for the party, but I saved the best for the last. The center of the middle table had these:

From a glance, they might simply look like wooden branches in really cool vases. But look close and you can see there are delicious little flowers sprouting from the branches.

You know how they saw money doesn’t grow on trees? Well here’s something super important to remember: sadly, neither do cookies. I would totally plant a forest of cookie trees if that were a possibility. Because cookie producing trees don’t exist, I am going to show you how to make these cookies yourself. They’re really pretty, and totally perfect for an engagement, wedding shower, or even a wedding.

Let’s start, shall we?

First, you are going to need a recipe of your favorite decorator’s sugar cookies. Here’s Mine. You’ll be needing a batch of royal icing too, which is on that link.

Here’s what else you will need:

  • Two different colors of food coloring (that look nice together)
  • Heart shaped cookie cutter (your choice of sizes, I used a fairly small one)
  • A drinking straw
  • 3 piping bags
  • 2 couplers
  • Wilton #2 tip
  • Wilton #1 tip
  • plastic squeeze bottle
  • ribbon
Here’s what you’ll need to do. First, roll out the dough and cut out lots of little hearts. Next, take the straw and poke a little hole in the corner of each heart.
Important: you will want to alternate between punching the hole on the right and left side of the hearts, so that all of the hearts of one color will be on the right, and all of the other color heart will have holes on the left.
Bake the cookies (with the little holes removed) according to the directions of the recipe and let them cool completely.
Read the direction on my clown cookie pop post on how to outline and flood the cookies, because I won’t be elaborating here.
Divide the icing into 3 parts: two large bowls and one small one. Color one of the large bowls a nice girly color, and the other a nice boyish color. Or chose the bride’s and the groom’s favorite color. Or yours. You do want to make sure the colors look nice together.
Outline the cookie like so: (make sure to pipe around the hole too!) Use a #2 tip for this.

Next, flood the cookie: (Here’s where you’ll use the handy-dandy squeeze bottle.)

Now do that a ton of times:

And then, when you feel like you are up to your ears in royal icing, make a whole ton more:

Or, you could be a little less insane than I was and do fewer than 120 cookies. Just a suggestion.

Let the cookies harden completely. I waited overnight. You should to, or you might risk the colors flooding like they did on my clown cookie pops.

Use the reserved white icing (or you can use the other color for this) to pipe the initials of the happy couple- one per color. If your cookie is small (like mine) use a #1 tip for this. If it’s big, you can go for a #2. Or try both and see which you like better.

Don’t make my mistake. After piping S onto 60 pink cookies, I moved over to the green side of the table and began to pipe…more S’s! I was about five in when I realized my mistake, and luckily they were all still wet enough to wipe off and re-pipe an E. All’s well that ends in cookies, right?

When you are done, if you aren’t totally sick of piping yet, or it’s only 2 am and you don’t have to be up for work until 6:30 am the next day, or you have more icing and don’t want it to go to waste, or all of the above, you can pipe an outline of white or the other color around the heart. Or you can pipe dots. Or some of each. Go crazy. Have fun.

Once the icing has completely hardened, tie one of each color together with a ribbon and tie a nice little bow.

Now display them at the party and pretend to be all humble about it while everyone gushes over your work.

Enjoy! I hope you like these. And I hope you come back soon, because I have some really delicious recipes to share with you guys. -Miriam

By the way, did you know that I am on Twitter? And on Facebook? And on Pinterest? And on Google+? Are you there too? Let’s connect!

Read Full Post »

Clown Cookie Pops with a Royal Icing How-To

Posted in Cookies, Dessert, tagged , , , , on March 1, 2012 | 9 Comments »

Remember my Clown Cake Pops? Well if you thought those were cute, I’ve got a real treat for you.

Meet Simcha, my favorite clown cookie:

(Simcha is Hebrew for Happiness, something which there’s a lot of on Purim. Name yours as you see fit.)

I’ve been considering doing a royal icing/sugar cookie post for a while, and finally, today I am going to take you behind the scenes to discover how to make your own little clown friend.

First, let’s start with the dough. I use the King Arthur Flour decorating cookie recipe, and people really like it. If you have one you like, go for it.

Scroll past the recipe for decorating how-to.

Sugar Cookies for Decorating:

From King Arthur Flour Cookie COmpanion

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 Tablespoons light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, lightly beaten with

2 Tablespoons water

3 1/2 cups flour

Instructions:

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter/margarine, sugar and corn syrup until light and fluffy.

Add the vanilla extract, salt and egg/water combination. Beat until combined. Add flour and stir until flour is incorporated and a smooth dough is formed.

Place dough in fridge to cool for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350. Cut parchment paper to fit your cookie sheets.

Spread a bit of flour on the cut parchment paper and roll out the cookies. For ordinary cookies, roll them about 1/8 of an inch or thinner. For cookie pops, they need to be a little thinner (in order to hold the sticks- see below.) Rolling the dough directly on the parchment will ensure that the cookie shapes don’t get damaged when being moved from the rolling surface to the baking tray.

Cut the cookies out with your cookie cutter. Remove the extra dough and put back in the fridge to re-roll at the end. If desired, place a lollipop stick in the center of the bottom side of the cookie.

Bake the cookies at 350 for 8-12 minutes, until edges are just turning golden brown. (Length of time depends on the thickness of the cookie. Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack before decorating.

Royal Icing For Decorating Cookies: 

From Brown Eyed Baker’s Tutorial on Cookie Decorating

Ingredients:

4 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 Tablespoons meringue powder

6 Tablespoons water

Instructions:

Combine confectioner’s sugar and meringue powder together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the water, (starting with  Tablespoons and add additional tablespoon if needed.) and beat thoroughly. Mix for about 8-10 minutes, until icing no longer looks shiny.

How To Make Clown Cookie Pops

Once you have your rolled, shaped, baked and cooled cookies, it’s time to decorate.

There are many comprehensive tutorials on decorating cookies on this wondrous world wide web. This isn’t one of them. I am going to show you the basics, but if you’ve never done it before, I urge you to check out some of the experts, such as Bake at 350 and Sweetopia. And of course,check out my incredibly talented friend Paula, AKA Vanilla Bean Baker, who just happens to be one of my favorite blog readers/blogging pals, in addition to being an extraordinary cookie decorator.

In the directions below, I am going to give you some basic guidelines, and also show you how to make some friends for Simcha the clown.

First, my amazing brainstorm: if you can’t find a clown shaped cookie cutter, fear not. I used a…get this – ice cream cone shaped cookie cutter! Yep, I turned it upside down, and made the cone into a hat for my little clown friend. The scoop becomes the head, and the little bits on the side are perfect for his hair. If you want to make a cookie pop instead of an ordinary cookie, roll them a bit thicker, then stick the lollipop stick into the middle of the bottom of the cookie. It’s not as confusing as I just made that sound. I promise.

Before you start, let’s discuss tools. You will need:

5 piping bags (disposable will make your life a lot easier.)

Thin piping tips- Wilton #1 or #2 tips

Thicker piping tips – Wilton #3 or #4

Squeeze bottles for flooding icing (useful, but not necessary. I was too lazy to wash mine, so I didn’t use them.)

Toothpicks for spreading icing into tiny crevices

Next up, let’s talk dividing the icing. You need 5 colors:

Yellow, White, Red, Blue, Green

You will need the most of the yellow and white, as those are your background colors, some red, for the noses, and a bit each of blue and green for decorating.

Note: Be creative! My pictures are just a suggestion- but have fun decorating these! Make sure, however, to plan your icing accordingly.

Now let’a talk decorating. There are three main components to decorating cookies:

1) Outlining

2) Flooding

3) Decorating


First up: outlining-

In this step, you pipe a thin line of thicker icing around the edge of the area you will be decorating. When you flood the cookie (step 2), this line acts as a dam to hold the icing in place. It is probably considered “correct” to outline the entire cookies, wait till it dries, then flood it. I didn’t do it that way. 

Start by outlining the clown’s hat. I used yellow icing:

Next up- flooding:

In the flooding step, you add a bit of water to the icing, making it easier to fill in the outlined area. Add the water a few drops at a time to ensure you don’t make it too thin. If you have a squeeze bottle, use it to pour icing into the center, then spread with a toothpick.

For these cookies, we are going to repeat steps 1 and 2. First, outline the clown’s head:

Then fill it in:

Now let it dry. Completely. Don’t make my mistake. Mine weren’t dry enough, and the colors bled on many of my cookies. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “learn from other’s mistakes; you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Once your cookies are completely dry, it’s time to move on to step 3: decorating.

First, let’s give our little clown friends a big clown nose:

And some hair. At first I outlined and flooded this section, but then I discovered that it was too small an area, so I piped the thicker icing over the entire area.

Now you can decorate however you please! Give him a mouth, some eyes, don’t forget to decorate the hat!

Not to promote myself or anything, but I just made a Facebook Page for this blog, and if you make these cookies, or my cake pops, or really any of my recipes, I would love for you to upload pictures and share them with me!

Hope you found this helpful! And if you’re sick of purim treats and decorating how-to’s, fear not. I have some amazing real food recipes to share with you soon. -Miriam

Read Full Post »

Tiny Pecan Pies and a Pie Crust Tutorial

Posted in Dessert, Nuts, Pies/Tarts, Seasonal, Traditional, tagged , , on November 20, 2011 | 11 Comments »

Until a couple of months ago I was absolutely terrified of making my own pie crust. Any and all desserts that involved pie crust started with one out of the freezer aisle in the grocery store. Then one of my coworkers asked if he could order a pie as a treat for his family for Rosh Hashanah. My first instinct was to say no, after all, I had never made a pie crust, and didn’t want to try it for the first time on a customers. But as I have mentioned before, I never like to turn down a customer, so I did some research, and I said yes. I explained that it was going to be my first time making a homemade pie crust, and he agreed.

I spent a long time searching the internet for advice and information related to making homemade pie crusts, and came upon this phenomenal tutorial from Brown Eyed Baker (who happens to be one of my favorite baking bloggers, I trust her and her recipes completely. I took some step by step pictures and will try to make it as simple as she did, but really, if you want to learn about making homemade pie crust, I urge you to check out her post.

Two important things to be aware of before starting your dough:

1) The fat and water needs to be very cold to ensure flakiness and,

2) The less you work the dough, the more tender it will be.

Additionally, a little advance planning will help you tremendously in the process. When I know I am planning to make flaky dough, the first thing I do is cut my butter and/or shortening into small cubes and place them in the freezer.

Shortening doesn’t form the prettiest cubes, but don’t let that trouble you.

About an hour later, you are ready to begin. Combine your flour, salt and sugar in the food processor, pulsing a few times to combine. Toss in your frozen butter:

Pulse the flour and butter together using short on/off bursts, about ten times, until the mixture resembles coarse and uneven crumbs.

Again, it is important not to overwork the dough, so only pulse this until it resembles the crumbs above, not more. Next, add your ice water. I put a couple of ice cubes in a bowl, then add water, and let it sit while I form the dough until this point, so the ice has had enough time to melt somewhat, and the water is very cold. Pulse the dough, again using short on/off bursts, until the dough just comes together. If it appears slightly crumbly, don’t worry- that’s how it should be! (Note, however, that a little more water is probably better than not enough, so err on the side of more. The trick is to use a bit of water at a time, so you don’t get a goo-ey watery mess.)

If you aren’t sure if the dough is good, try grabbing a bit in your hand. If it comes together nicely, it’s ready. If not, add a bit more water.

Once the dough comes together nicely, it is ready to chill. Form the dough into two discs, and wrap each in a plastic bag. Place in the freezer for about an hour.

These are the basic instructions for making pie crust. Beyond this point are the step-by-step instructions for making these gorgeous and absolutely adorable Itty-Bitty Pecan Pies.

The first thing you will need to do is find a circular cutting device that will cut the correct shape for the mini-muffin pans. The way I did this is I flattened out a paper liner for the mini muffin pan, and measured some things against the full circumference. This cup fit perfectly:

Once you have that all figured out, it’s time to make the filling. There are way too many pictures on this post already, so I will let you figure out what it looks like to whisk together the filling ingredients, toast the pecans, smash them into small pieces with a heavy wooden rolling pin, then add them to the filling. The final product should look something like this:

Once that’s done, you are ready to roll out your dough. Grease a mini muffin pan well with baking spray. Spread a bit of flour on a clean and dry surface. Use a heavy wooden rolling pin to roll the dough out as thin as possible. (Especially when the pie will be so small, you don’t want to have the dough too thick or it will take up half of the cup!)

Cut circles out of the dough using the circle cutter you measured earlier. Set aside the scraps to use for the garnish. Place the circles inside the mini muffin cups, forming a cup up the sides. Try to stretch the dough to come up exactly to the edge of the cup.

Fill all of the cups with the pecan filling. Make sure to use enough of the actual pecans, not just liquid, or the pie won’t hold up. (I had leftover liquid from the filling at the end, but no extra pecans.) Once the cups are all filled, it’s time to cut the dough for the garnish/topping. Here are the two types of topping you could make:

The full top with the flower cut-out seems nicer in theory, but I liked the way the three-flower look baked better, so I wound up using mostly that method. Here’s what you need to make either of these:

A 1-oz shot glass was the perfect size for the full-top. I used a mini cookie cutter for the flower. For the first method, I used a shot glass to cut a circle the size of the top of the pie. I then used a mini flower cookie cutter to cut the circle out of the top. Then, I placed the circle carefully over the pie, and pinched the edges together a bit.

For the second method, I simply cut three mini flowers out of the scraps and connected them on the top of the pie.

Once you top all of your pies, brush them with a bit of egg and sprinkle some sugar on them. Bake them for about 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Cool before removing from pan.

Itty Bitty Pecan Pies:
Filling recipe adapted from the Karo Syrup bottle.
Ingredients:

1/2 cup of butter or margarine, cut in small cubes

1/2 cup vegetable shortening (crisco), cut in small cubes

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 Tablespoons sugar

5-8 Tablespoons ice water

Filling:

1 Cup dark corn syrup (Karo Syrup)

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 Tablespoons melted butter or margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups toasted pecans, chopped

Instructions:

Follow instructions above to make pie crust and create mini pie cups.

Whisk together all of the ingredients for the filling except for the pecans until smooth. Add pecans and stir to combine. Fill cups and top as directed above.

Bake at 375 for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by, and please let me know what you think! Oh, and come back soon, I have some phenomenal recipes to share with you!

-Miriam

Read Full Post »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 4,582 other followers