this one's just for me

if you've been reading this blog for a while, you have heard me mention my flood damaged home. we were finally able to secure the financing to make the needed repairs and have begun to do just that. today, i had the pleasure of spending my day off at home while a crew worked on reinforcing the block walls of the basement. after turning my basement into a maze of plastic wrapped pathways, they began working. as i write this, i am still listening to a symphony of hammering, grinding and garbled spanish...

since i knew that the crew would be here all day, i did all of my laundry and chores yesterday so i could have some time to play in the kitchen today and play i did. this is not a recipe from the book but i did use one and rework it to come up with something new. who knows, maybe i will put it in the next book-stay tuned!

i love fresh apples; crunchy, sweet and juicy, i take one with me to the gym and munch on it as i drive home. every now and then, i like to make a cake with them. today, i grabbed two from the fridge, in front a golden delicious apple-green is the way i like them, and in the rear is a cripps pink or a pink lady-another great apple to snack on.

i decided to make an upside down cake with apples in the caramel and pumpkin puree in the cake:

butter, brown sugar, honey and cinnamon were boiled a bit

the caramel syrup was poured into the bottom of a tube pan

the pink lady was peeled and sliced and then carefully layered into the caramel, i ate the golden delicious-i couldn't help myself...

pumpkin puree, brown sugar, oil, vanilla and salt were whisked until smooth. some eggs were then whisked in too. the dry ingredients were sifted over the bowl.

man, i need a bigger work space. controlled chaos-i know where everything is...

all folded together with a little buttermilk and it is ready to go into the pan.

carefully pour it over the apples or they will move around and ruin the pattern.

baked and now it sits to let the caramel settle. then it is turned out.

pretty cake with caramel and apple slices over the top, mmmmmm......

shoo fly, don't bother me...

its that time of year again. the temperatures are beginning to drop and cane juice is being boiled down to make sorghum. that makes it time for shoo fly pie! yes, i know that it is a yankee thing-actually a pennsylvania dutch tradition, but it is a great way to showcase sorghum and it is on the menu today!

this is an interesting recipe. you whisk together sorghum and corn syrup with some spices, eggs and baking soda. it starts to get a little foamy and then you whisk in hot water and pour it into a partially baked pie shell. sprinkle struesal crumb topping over it and bake it. that is shoo fly pie-simple, easy, so tasty and sadly, not in the book...that means you need to stop by and get yourself a slice.

and they're off...taste the book with some steeplechase pie

every spring, the steeplechase is held in warner park. it is nashville's version of the kentucky derby but we like to think ours is more fun. since we risk a lawsuit by offering a true "derby" pie, i came up with our own signature pie-we call it steeplechase pie. its a pecan pie with chocolate chips and lots of whiskey. and it is on the menu this week.

chocolate chips and pecan pieces in the bottom of a partially baked pie shell.

whisk melted butter and sugar together. add the vanilla and the whiskey and mic the completely.

whisk in the eggs

add the corn syrup and whisk it again

pour it into the pie shell and into the oven it goes.

all done!

come on in and taste the book, we'll save you a slice

8/24 is national peach pie day!

ooooh it's a holiday, let's par-tay!!! we'll bake a pie together, it'll be such fun...

grated lemon zest, vanilla bean-scraped (save the pod for something else), cardamom and pumpkin pie spice...add some sugar and cornstarch and rub it all together.

add the peaches and toss them together

make thin strips of dough and lay 5 across the top, just like the photo...

5 more strips of dough, just like so...

into the oven she goes. golden brown and bubbly...who's got the ice cream?

for more information, read all about it in my latest article for the examiner.com

looky looky, the blog got props!

i know i said i was taking a break but...i do check in to see if anyone leaves a comment, see what kind of traffic there has been and when i noticed a huge jump in hits, i was curious. looking further i noticed that besides the usual traffic from love and olive oil (a nashville food blog that has a link to my page) and other assorted visitors, there were also many hits from blogs.com. it seems that they have chosen easier than pie as one of the top 10 food blogs in nashville. today, the blog also received a little love from nashville bites, a food blog from the nashville scene. so i ask all of you to join me in a little raucous happy dance while i hoot and holler!!! thanks to everyone who visits and helped make this happen! look for me to be back in action next week, hopefully. we will close on our sba disaster loan in a few days and soon hope to start the repairs so it could get a little crazy around the house but i will try my best to keep it all together. thanks again nashville!

ain't that just peachy? ttb 7/16

i have spent my week looking at a large basket of peaches and many little baskets of blueberries. the peaches are starting to ripen-perfectly. slightly firm but bite into one and the juices run. they are also full of flavor and hard to resist even if they are a bit on the fuzzy side. earlier in the week i made a peach brown betty with biscuits but today, i made one of my favorite recipes from the book, blueberry peach cornbread buckle. the cake goes together like so:

peeled and diced peaches

toss them with blueberries, lemon zest and sugar-let them macerate

mix up some cornbread, slightly sweet, and pour it into the pan

spread the macerated fruit and juices evenly over the top then sprinkle the crumb topping over the fruit. into the oven she goes

fully baked and out of the pan-waiting to be cut into squares

some of the fruit sinks, some stays at the top-it buckles, get it?

cake for breakfast-what more could you possibly need?

taste the book, 7/7

the dessert featured this week is butterscotch pudding. ever since i was little, i have had a thing for the hard yellow disk shaped candies-sweet and buttery and a little salty too. butter rum lifesavers were also a favorite of mine. so it shouldn't be a surprise that i would like butterscotch pudding unless you have tasted the stuff in the box-eww...same goes for the chips that are used to make cookies-they don't taste anything like butterscotch! many recipes that call themselves butterscotch just include brown sugar and butter-close, but...to really get the flavor of the hard candies, you need to combine 3 things: caramelized brown sugar, dark rum and kosher salt.

burning the sugar is tricky. take it too far and it will scorch the pot and you will have lovely black flakes in the pudding. (doesn't that sound like experience talking?) 265 degrees is as far as you want to go, so use a thermometer. (the hoods in the kitchen are loud-you may want to turn off the volume for this video)

dark rum-the darker the better and real unsalted butter help flavor the pudding. use the unsalted butter because it is a higher quality than salted and add kosher salt because it tastes better than iodized salt.

a lovely little dish of pudding

be sure to hide it from the wait staff...

come on in and taste the book!