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!

taste the book, 6/30

now that the book is pretty much finished, i have turned my attention to other things like my garden and making bread. however, i still have my job at the cafe to contend with and this is the perfect opportunity to put the recipes i worked on for the last 6 months on display. with that in mind, i invite you to taste the book. as long as i am capable (read that as not so busy with the volume at the cafe), i will feature a dessert from the book as a special and post about it here. first up is the lemon ice box pie, a sweet and creamy pie perfect for a hot summer day (as long as you eat it quickly!)

freshly zested lemons

lemons, juiced by hand the old fashioned way (can you cay carpal tunnel?)

egg yolks, a bunch when you make as many pies as i did

if double yolks are a good luck charm, then i am drowning in them. this last month or so, we have gotten large quantities and i have cracked as many as 12 in a day.

sorry, didn't take photos of the next step-it was kinda boring-zzzz

mix the juice, zest and eggs into sweetened condensed milk and pour it into a cookie crumb crust. most of the time, these just go straight into the fridge to "cook" and set but the s.c.m. has been rather thin lately so i opted for a quick trip in the oven, about 7 minutes, to help them set.

let the pie chill, top it with whipped cream and white chocolate shavings. to make nice shavings, hold your knife perpendicular to the surface of the chocolate-one hand on the handle and the other on the tip of the blade and while applying light pressure, drag the knife towards you to make shavings.

oh so rich and creamy, lemon ice box pie in a gingerbread biscotti crumb crust-come on in and taste the book, i dare you!