On Hiatus and Mini Doughnuts
Hi all! I know it’s been forever since I posted a recipe, life got busy, I had a birthday, and, I think I just needed a bit of a break before the craziness of the third annual Summer of Pie begins (in less than two weeks… eek and egads!). And here you thought I’d forgotten about you. Never!
Happy Belated Pi Day Pie
Here it is, late, but complete, my official original 2012 Pi Day Pie Recipe. It’s based on one of my absolute favorite desserts ever, the seven layer bar. You’re welcome.
In a bit of irony, although seven layer bars are one of the easiest desserts to make, rendered as pie it proved to be one of the hardest. Mostly because I tried time-saving by making the custard/cream base comprising most of the fillings in one go. And, well, it didn’t go. I should know better. My time-saving in the kitchen usually results in another trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients to replace the ones I just totally wasted trying to save time. But the second time was the charm and I did manage to keep the ingredient list as small as possible by keeping the custards as similar as I could. And you all got a kick butt St. Patty’s Day dessert, so win/win right?
Speaking of winning, make Seven Layer Bars with kids. It’s a great experience for all and no one has to really know anything about cooking as it’s mostly dumping a bunch of things in a pan and then putting it in the oven for a small period of time. The kids also get to smash stuff with a rolling-pin. Kids, and I cannot overstate this, LOVE smashing things. My nephew fervently idolizes the Hulk almost exclusively because of his unrivaled smashing abilities. And he’s tall. And green. All excellent things when you’re six. “Get the recipe”
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
It’s been hovering around 80° here in Wisconsin for almost a week now. EIGHTY DEGREES. In March. In Wisconsin. I’m going to blame that for the failed first attempt at my new pie this weekend. The weirdness of going out in short sleeves when I every native midwestern voice in my head screams at me to take my parka has temporarily fritzed out my kitchen skills.
Well, not completely. I made two batches of these boozy brownies for St. Patty’s Day — they were a huge hit with drinkers and teetotalers alike. And I’m sure the pie will work, as soon as I stop sweating. Crazy!
I’m a terrible pie blogger…
UPDATE: Get the Official Original 2012 Pi Day Pie recipe, Seven Layer Bar Pie!
Bad News: I don’t have a new recipe to post today :-( I know, even non-pie bloggers are blogging about pie today, and here I am with bupkis. I’m sorry. I have no excuse… well, I was sick, but, well…
GOOD NEWS: I’ve got an awesome brand spankin’ new pie recipe ready for testing and I’m making it tomorrow!! My usual thorough Google search has once again shown that, much like my Cinnamon Roll Pie, there’s nothing else like it (it’s also based on something not traditionally found in pie form). Woohoo! And I Pi Day promise to have the recipe up this weekend.
Until then please enjoy last year’s Pi Day entry which includes one of my most popular pies, Hot Dog Pie, while you listen to some Pi-inspired tunes. Have a great day everyone!
P.S. If you’re jonesing for some pi day pie, check around at your local eateries for deals today. I know here in Madison the local Whole Foods is offering whole pies for $3.14 and Hubbard Avenue Diner has a whole day of free pie and fun.
“Geltato. It’s Italian.” — my niece, explaining gelato
I love my ice cream maker. Technically, it’s a gelato maker. (What’s gelato?) The good news is that this recipe works in whatever kind of ice cream/frozen confection machine you own. Even the old hand-cranked numbers that my parents used to slave-labor me into churning for endless, soul-deadening stretches of time (about 30 minutes). These days the worst thing a kid is stuck doing is staring at it, which is a bit like watching paint dry, slightly faster, and more edibly.
But aside from serving to distract small children for upwards of 25 minutes at a time, I love my ice cream maker because it lets me make any flavor of ice cream I want. Like peanut butter with bacon chips (better than you’d think, but not as good as peanut butter with chocolate chips). Or a simple caramel without all the thick, syrupy ribbons or embedded caramel cups or waffle cone pieces or whatever else the local ice cream place deems necessary to mess up your nice caramel ice cream with in a misguided quest to make it “less boring.” As you can tell, for me ice cream is serious business. And I can tell you, this is a seriously good one.
All the taste that won’t go to your waist.
I love Tikka Masala. It’s Indian comfort food at it’s finest, but, let’s face it, like all great comfort food, it has 50 billion calories. I know, pretty hypocritical coming from the gal who brought you Capownie, but I gotta save my calories somewhere!
I’m not a fan of arbitrarily making fattening dishes low fat or low calorie. Most of the time it’s all the fat and calories that make them really good in the first place. Plus I don’t like it when my chocolate cookies taste like applesauce. That said though, if I can find a way to lighten things up without losing the taste I’m all for it.
CAke + Pie + brOWNIE = :-)
All right, here it is, my baby, the product of my mad genius, my Frankenstein’s monster: The Capownie. I’m not sure what I can say about this that hasn’t already been said here or here, except that it tastes far better than something that ridiculously excessive has any right to taste. For those who aren’t fans of the whole reading thing, I’ve made this nice infographic of the Capownie ingestion sequence:
I should also add that this is, and may always be, a work in progress. While I think everything works pretty well here, deep down I’m convinced this thing only stays together by sheer force of crazed will. Please send me a pic if you try it! Goodnight and good luck.
Pleasecake Pie
Hi all! From deep in the bowels of Capownie headquarters I bring you this tasty standalone dessert. Ok, “bowels” probably isn’t the best metaphor to use in a food blog, but, well, the idea for this pie did originate as part of the inside of my dessert turducken (recipe hopefully coming as soon as I work out the kinks).
See, last year I made my first Capownie with very simple and maddeningly trying rules basically boiling down to it had to consist of three complete desserts (not fillings!) baked one into another. Like a regular, non-dessert, turducken. I accomplished this with my bottom layer: brownie baked into pecan pie baked into chocolate cake; but I couldn’t think of anything to put inside the top layer’s pie that would slice easily and not squish down onto the rest of the cake. Naturally, this failure haunted me.
Then, lightbulb! Genius struck in the form of grilled cheesecake sandwiches. Read more…
Easier Than Pie
I really shouldn’t be allowed to use or even be somewhat near to knives. In truth, I shouldn’t be allowed to wear nice clothes and try to eat dinner without first donning a full bodysuit-style plastic bib, I should be patently forbidden from using anything sharp for anything other than purely ornamental purposes. And even then I should maintain a safe viewing distance.
First off, I love the name Capownie. It’s like the sound Batman’s fist makes when it hits you. Capownie! Ehem, well, anyway… I know the blog’s not as lively in the winter — it is the Summer of Pie after all — so I’m hoping this news livens things up a bit. I’m making Capownie, AGAIN!
Faithful readers will remember that last year I fulfilled a lifelong dream of making a real dessert turducken. It took me five days after work and late into the night, and I swore I’d never do it again. Until last November. Apparently, time heals all wounds or maybe I’m just super crazy, but I had this lightbulb idea: Cheesecake! I will add cheesecake to the Capownie. It always bugged me that the bottom layer of Capownie had the proper turducken-style three layers of dessert, but the top only had two layers. This year that will be remedied!
Will it work? I have no idea, but you can find out with me as I try to blog daily about it while I make it. A few brave, insane souls have requested the recipe and I’m hoping to put up some good detail pics and videos of the process. Stay tuned the week of February 6 for the big Capownie baking event. It’ll be just like the Oscars, only with more butter and less celebrity schmoozing. Although, if you know some celebrities, feel free to send them my way (suggestions from friends have included: The Packers, Alan Rickman, and Jake Gyllenhaal — I’m sure they’re all foodies). Hey, Capownie’s pretty unique to the world and you can only score a slice here, I’d totally come if I were a celebrity.
While I prepare a detailed battle strategy for taking on this year’s Capownie challenge, here’s a quick, fun, very non-Capownie recipe I made with my six-year-old nephew this weekend — he loved being able to do it himself. It’s called Monkey Bread (no, I don’t know why) and the only things I changed were slicing the biscuit rounds into six, instead of four, pieces; upping the cinnamon to 2 rounded teaspoons; and coating the biscuit pieces in two batches, instead of cramming all of it in the bag at once. Enjoy!
I'm paid to design websites, but otherwise I bake, cook, draw, write, knit, run way too much, watch a great many bad movies, repair things, and reluctantly practice amateur psychotherapy and medicine. Jack of all trades, master of none? Most likely. But I tend to be overwhelmed with the options the world offers and people usually end up with cookies because of it, so no one seems to mind.
Summer of Pie 