Pie: A Tart o' Apple

Sometimes we really crave li’l apple desserts. Foolproof recipes reproduce one of the luscious pies, create an edible tart, and all provide joy. No uneaten leftovers exist – we demolish complete pies. A delicious venture; I ensure enjoyment. The miniature palatable pie created below, I – maybe possibly we – celebrate amazing math constants with. Bake, taste, celebrate Pi Day…

Pie: A Tart o' Apple (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

3 baking apples, peeled and cubed or sliced

1 pie pastry (unbaked)

4 T brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

5 t flour

9 t butter (melted)

Make your pie pastry if needed. I made my own pie pastry because I wasn’t sure how the pre-made pastry would work out. If you don’t know how to make pie pastry, buy premade and reduce the problem to one already solved.

Roll out the pie pastry and cut out large congruent circles. Smush these large circles along the inside of well greased muffin cups. Be sure the diameter of the pastry cutouts is larger than the diameter of the muffin cups! (A bit more than radius plus height, if you feel like measuring.) Sprinkle flour in the pastry lined cups.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the cinnamon and brown sugar. Add this to the cubed apples, which should be in a separate mixing bowl, and stir together very well. Mix in the melted butter. 

Scoop the sugar coated apples into the pie pastry lined muffin cups. You can try to be fancy and add criss-cross pie pastry lines to the top. That would give a greater crust to apple ratio, so only do that if you really enjoy pie crust. Your set of tarts can be either open or closed.

Bake at 360 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool for 15 or so minutes, remove the tarts from the muffin cups, and eat. No forks required, just hands.

Enjoy!

Happy Pi Day!

Note: In the title & introduction, punctuation doesn’t count and dashes are used in place of zero. I only made it through 65 digits.

Cream of Potato-Celery Soup

I didn't expect this soup to turn out to be so wonderful. My low expectations were partly due to how non-perfect the tomato soup turned out and partly due to the fact that I only recently discovered how awesome potato soup is. If these recipes continue to make delcious foods, I am going to be making everything from scratch instead of buying premade foods.

This soup is not for people who don't like celery (or are allergic to it!). The celery definitely provides a distinct flavor. I'm not sure how much the chicken bouillon alters the flavor, so if you are a vegetarian you can possibly just leave it out. Or, if you don't want to use the bouillon cube for other reasons, you can substitute one of the two cups of water with chicken broth.

Two medium sized potatoes were enough to get the two cups of cubed potato pieces. The celery leaves can be found on the inside of a bundle of celery stalks or on top if they aren't removed before the store obtains them. I really don't know if those add flavor, so you can possibly leave them out and add a bit more celery if you are silly and buy precut celery.

Cream of Potato-Celery Soup (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 C peeled, raw, cubed potatoes
1 C thinly sliced celery
2 T chopped celery leaves
2 T minced onion
2 C water
1/2 t salt
1 C scalded milk
1 T margarine/butter
2 T flour
1/4 C cold milk
1 chicken bouillon cube
salt and pepper to taste

Chop up the potatoes, slice the celery, chop the leaves, and mince the onion. Throw all of this into a nice sized pot with the water and salt.

Bring the contents of the pot to a boil. Place a cover on the pot, reduce the heat, and simmer for 25ish minutes.

After this pot contents boil for the 25ish minutes, start to scald the milk. While the milk was scalding, I smashed a lot of the potatoes against the inside of the pot with a wooden spoon. I didn't want the soup to be very chunky! You can do this or not. You are the one who will be eating it.

Pour the scalded milk into the pot with the potatoes. Add the butter or margine as well. Mix this all up.

Meanwhile, add the flour to the cold milk. Stir well. If the flour leaves some lumps in the milk, you may end up with mini dumpling type things in your soup. Pour this thickened milk into the pot of potato soup. Stir in well and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. This will thicken the soup. Add the salt, pepper, and bouillon cube at this point.

Serve the soup while hot. Eat with a spoon. Or drink with a thick straw. I guess you can also pour some into a mug and just drink it that way. I won't restrict your soup eating options.

I made a double batch of this soup. Two days later, it heats up and is still very yummy.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Muffins

Muffins are delicious and easy to make. I think I've mentioned that a time or two. They may be evil in the mini form, but they seem to be happy and content in the blueberry form.

This recipe comes straight from one of the recipe books I have, unlike the previous muffin recipes which I pieced together from the internet. The main part of this muffin is delicious and moist and the blueberries go with it very well. I have used a few a muffin recipes where the batter is awful and the fruit can't even save it. Since this recipe is very simple and results in edible food, I will make them in the future.

Since few people here seem to like blueberry muffins, I cut the recipe in half which made 9 muffins. The muffins are amazing and I'm glad I decided to make them today! They are so good that my nephew tried to eat my hand to get more. There aren't many muffins left and I just made them a few hours ago.

Blueberry Muffins (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 C flour
1 C sugar
4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 C vegetable oil
1 C milk
1 t vanilla
2 C frozen (thawed) or fresh blueberries

Place the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir them up a bit.

Add the wet ingredients and mix until combined. The batter will be lumpy, so don't over mix.

Fold in the blueberries until they seem distributed rather well. Shouldn't take much effort.

Spoon into greased muffin pans or liners. Fill them 2/3 full. Sprinkle the tops with cinnamon sugar if you want.

Bake at 400 for 18 - 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

It was a drizzly day, so I wanted to make something easy. I also wanted something with chocolate chips. I've never made chocolate chip cookie bars before, so the conditions were perfect to give it a try. They turned out great. It's a lot easier to make one gigantic cookie and then cut it into pieces than to make individual drop cookies!

This is a pretty standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. Nothing new or surprising. The recipe is also scaled to fit rather well into a 13x9 inch pan. If you want cookies without much hassle, make these.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/3 C brown sugar
1/2 C butter (softened)
1 t vanilla
1 egg
1/2 t baking soda
1 1/4 C flour
1/2 t salt (only if butter is unsalted)
1/2 C nuts (optional!)
6 oz chocolate chips

Put the butter and sugars in a bowl. Mix at a medium speed until well combined (a minute or so). My butter was still a bit firm, so I cut it into slices.

Add the vanilla and the egg. Mix well.

Now mix in the baking soda and flour until combined. (Also the salt if needed.)

Stir in the best part (the chocolate chips!). Also the nuts if you really want to.

Press the cookie dough into a greased and floured 13x9 inch pan.

Bake at 375 for 12 to 15 minutes. The cookie will be lightly browned when done.

Cool and then cut. I cut them while they were still a bit warm to make the cutting easier. Enjoy!

Clear Tomato Soup

I'm going to start expanding my recipe range to include non-desserts and non-baked goods. Most of these types of recipes in the old cookbooks seem complex and not tasty. Fortunately for me, this clear tomato soup was easy to make and tasted pretty good. However, it was not clear. I'm guessing the title is to distinguish it from creamy tomato soup.

There are some homemade style tomato soups that are good, and then there are the homemade tomato soups that taste like pasta sauce. If I wanted to consume straight pasta sauce, I'd just open a jar and start drinking. This tomato soup is nothing like pasta sauce: it is a bit sweet and the clove is a bit strong. I'm going to play with the recipe in the future. I'll start by decreasing the amount of clove added and the amount of sugar added.

Clear Tomato Soup (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1 1/2 quarts fresh tomatoes (2.5lbs)
1 small bay leaf
1/4 C chopped onion
4 cloves (1 t ground clove)
1 T butter
1 T flour
1 t sugar
1 t salt
Pepper to taste

Cut up the tomatoes and place them in a pot. Add the bay leaf, onion, and cloves.

Boil this together for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Some people may complain about the smell of clove during the boiling process. Just ignore them, the clove smells good.

Press the soupy tomato mixture through a sieve into another pot or bowl.

Discard the skins and onion that don't go through the tiny holes. I ran the tomatoes through the sieve twice to make sure all the seeds were removed.

Rinse out the original pot you were using. Melt the butter in this pot over low heat. Stir in the sugar and flour. It will make a thick paste. Slowly add approximately 1/4 C of the strained (sieved?) tomato and stir until smooth. Heat this for a few minutes.

Slowly stir in the remaining tomato liquid. Constantly stir for 5 minutes over low heat.

Pour some into a bowl and enjoy! This soup would go great with french bread if you have any handy.