Happy belated Pi day! Whole grain shoofly pie

I'm always surprised at how many people have never had shoofly pie.  Some people haven't even heard of it.  Which is too bad because the confection of my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors is delicious.  In taste and texture, it's almost more of a coffee cake than a pie.  It's not overly sweet, and it's a great treat to have with tea in the middle of the day, and for that reason I decided to make it (very slightly) healthier by incorporating whole grain flours. 

Yep, that's the middle digits of pi on my pie plate.

First, a quick description of how it's made for uninitiated.  You start with a traditional pie crust (unbaked).  Next, you pour in a molasses-egg yolk-baking soda-hot water mixture.  And last, you pour a good amount of spiced crumb topping that is a little like a streusel topping but with a greater flour:butter ratio.  The crumbs sink into the molasses mixture, and as it bakes, it develops a gradient from nearly 100% molasses-y custard on to bottom to nearly 100% dry sugary crumbs on top.  This picture, taken a few days after baking, kind of shows the gradient, but it was hard to capture.

My recipe originated in one of my Mom's old cookbooks called the Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook.  I transcribed the recipe into my little recipe book years ago.  The few changes I've made: spelt flour instead of white flour,  the fillings are multiplied by 1.5 because my pi plate is pretty deep, and I use butter instead of shortening in the crumbs.  I was also pretty generous in rounding up the spices cause I like spices a lot.  The crust I used was not from the original recipe, but one I made and froze at Thanksgiving from Cook's Illustrated - side note: I actually froze this pie crust cause I wasn't convinced it was going to be any good!  It was too wet!  But it was wet because the crew at America's Test Kitchen used vodka instead of some of the water, which doesn't develop the gluten like water does, but makes the dough easier to work with.  I just couldn't believe it when the dough was so tacky, but it's an amazing innovation.  Last note, there are plenty of recipes out there for whole grain pie crusts, I'm sure they would work great in this application.  Onto my version of shoofly pie...

Ingredients
1 unbaked pie crust

2 egg yolks
0.75 c. molasses
10 fluid ozs. boiling water
1.5 t. baking soda

1.5 c. spelt flour
0.75 t. cinnamon
0.25 t. freshly grated nutmeg
0.25 t. ground ginger
0.25 t. ground cloves
0.75 c. brown sugar
3 T. butter, cold, cut into 0.25 inch chunks   

3.  Preheat oven to 400.  Roll out pie shell, form in pi(e) plate, and refrigerate until it's ready to fill.
1.  Beat egg yolks, then blend in the molasses.
4.  Dissolve baking soda in boiling water.  Slowly, while whisking, incorporate the water-soda into the egg-molasses mixture.  Set aside.
1.  Combine the remaining dry ingredients, including brown sugar.
5.  Add butter and work into crumbs with your fingers.  Crumbs will be very dry.
9.  Pour liquid into pie shell and top with crumbs.
2.  Bake at 400 for 10 min.
6.  Reduce to 325 and bake for another 35-40 min.

Anyone catch the secret code in the recipe?  Happy π day!

Rosewater walnut shortbread

I haven't been very experimental with dinner lately.  Mostly just cooking from my repertoire and sticking with easy quick stuff as I've been really busy.  And I was out of town all last week for a conference in what might be the Mecca of food towns: Portland, Oregon.  Drool... I ate some really great meals there.

But I was craving something sweet and buttery today, so I made some shortbread.  Shortbread is one of favorite kinds of cookies.  It's so simple and good.  I used the basic recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook and will probably tweak it a few more times before submitting it to a cookie contest on Michael Ruhlman's blog.  So if you see me in the next few weeks, you can expect some shortbread.  And if you have any suggestions, let me know!  The changes are that I put in some flavors that are relatively new to me - the main one being some rosewater that I picked up at Savory Spice Shop... I think it goes great with the simple, buttery sweetness.  I also made a halfhearted attempt to incorporate some whole grain and will likely play around with this a little more.  Also thinking that chilling, rolling, and using cookie cutters will improve appearance, and that pine nuts might be better than walnuts.

As written this makes about 12 cookies.  Which I could probably finish off in two days.

1/3 c. walnut pieces (or chopped walnut halves)
1 stick of butter, softened
1/4 c. sugar, ultrafine baker's sugar is best
1 t. rosewater
a scant 1/2 t. vanilla
a pinch of salt
1/2 c. white flour
1/4 c. semolina flour
1/4 c. whole wheat flour.

1.  Preheat oven to 350.  Put nuts on a baking sheet, and bake for 7-9 minutes, till very fragrant. 
2.  With a fork or wooden spoon combine the butter, sugar, rosewater, vanilla, and salt.  Mash till well combined.
3.  Sift in the flours.  Stir in till a loose dough forms.  It's okay if it's not one cohesive ball.
4.  Press into a rectangle on a baking sheet (make sure it's cool, if you re-use the one from toasting the walnuts) that is about 1/3 inch thick.
5.  Press the walnuts into the dough.
6.  Bake for 15 or more minutes, until the edges are starting to brown. 
7.  Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack, and let cool for 10 minutes.
8.  While still warm, use a sharp knife to cut into desired cookie shapes.  Long "fingers" are traditional.
9.  Try to prevent yourself from eating them while they're still warm.  Fail miserably.

Avocado ice cream (aka green dinner part 2) ... and discussion on avocado smoothies

This is more of a concept post than a recipe, since unfortunately, I lost my notes that had the measurements I used written out! Argh! I guess it's okay, cause the concept is great, but the recipe itself had room for improvement.

**** UPDATE - 4/20/10 - I have found my notes! Here's the actual quantities I used on this ice cream:
3 avocados
2/3 c. cream
1/3 plus 1/2 c. sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c. milk
juice of 1/2 lime
*** end of update

The concept is based on another dessert I was recently introduced to: the avocado smoothie. Lisa and Tin made some at their Tet celebration, and reminisced about having a lot of them while they were in Vietnam, where they're quite popular. They had a recipe from the internet that was something like this:

1 ripe avocado
1 cup ice
1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. sweetened condensed milk
directions: combine and blend. Serves 2.

At home, I've been making them and attempting to make them delicious but a bit less calorific... something more applicable to breakfast or snack time. So roughly, I've been making them like this:

1/2 an avocado
juice of 1/2 a lime
20 ozs of soy milk
2-4 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
handful ice
directions: combine and blend. Serves 2.

Something about the combo of sweetened condensed milk and avocado is just amazing. So I decided to try it as an ice cream. The goal was to make it even a little richer than the original smoothie since it's for dessert. I also had some leftover sweetened condensed milk from the smoothies, so even if I had the exact portions I used, they would be not very round numbers. In the end it was something like this:

3 avocados
1 and 1/3 cans sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/2 c. milk
juice of 1 lime

1. Blend until completely smooth in a blender or food processor.
2. Chill in refrigerator at least 3 hours or until the mixture is near your fridge temperature (~40 degrees)
3. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions.

The analysis - the ice cream was incredibly smooth, rich, and delicious, but could be improved upon in two ways. One, it was richer than necessary, so I would probably omit the cream next time and add a little more milk (again, I'm not sure the above ingredient list is exactly what I did). Second, while it was great right out of the ice cream maker, it froze as solid as a rock overnight. Homemade ice creams tend to do this more than store bought ones because they don't contain artificial stabilizers, but you can minimize rock-hard-ness by adding hygroscopic sugars. Hygroscopic substances attract water molecules, making the whole mixture more fluid. Corn syrup is actually a very hygroscopic form of sugar, so I think I would try adding just a small amount next time... I don't think it would make it too sweet. The alternative, which is perfectly acceptable in my book, is just to take the ice cream out 20 min. before you're ready to eat it. And lastly, while it looked very pretty with the slices of pineapple, I think it's actually best just on its own!