Home Sweet Home...and Pie

Home sweet home. I finally picked a day to drive to Minnesota that was not smack dab in the middle of a snowstorm. The past few years for Christmas and Thanksgiving, whenever i decide to make the drive, old man winter decides to throw a ridiculous snowstorm at me. I am not sure what he has against me going home, but I showed him this year. Though, it was intensely sunny and when I opened up my sunglasses case, one of the screws was missing, so I spent the entire 7 hour drive squinting into the setting sun....I can't win.

It is wonderful to be home, I am sitting in my pj's, dad cooked me truffled eggs for breakfast, we are bracing for the storm of the century, and the smells of thanksgiving dinner are beginning to waft through the house. Onions caramelizing, sage frying, homemade turkey broth bubbling, it all has me salivating for tomorrow's feast. It is just a lovely way to start the day.

Are you ready for thanksgiving? Is all your shopping done, and food prepped? The nice thing about coming home is that all I have to do is drink wine and chop/stir/plate where needed. I already had my effort-heavy thanksgiving meal last weekend, so this time around I just get to kick back and enjoy it. I was in charge of dessert last weekend, and, though most of us were too full by the time we got there, it was a tasty ending to a fun and friend-filled day.

I made this pumpkin pie from the Thanksgiving Bon Apetit Magazine, substituting my very favorite pate brisee crust. It is a beautiful twist on the plain whipped-cream topped pumpkin pie we are used to seeing around this time of year. Toasted nuts with crystallized ginger creates a pretty border and adds that crunchy extra-something to the creamy pie and buttery crust.

Pumpkin Pie with Glaze Ginger-Nut Topping
adapted from Bon Apetit Magazine

1/2 batch pate brisee (or pie crust of your choice), rolled out to 1/4 inch thick disc and chilled

Topping:

1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons pepitas
2 tablespoons brown sugar
large pinch of salt
2 tablespoons minced crystallized ginger

Filling:

1 - 15 ounce can pure pumpkin puree
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs + 1 large egg yolk
1 1/4 cups heavy cream

Transfer crust to a 9-inch pie pan, pressing the dough into the corners. Cut off excess dough, and crimp edges with thumbs. Freeze for 1 hour before baking.

In a large non-stick skillet, heat the butter over medium high heat. Add almonds, pecans, and pepitas and saute until nuts begin to brown slightly, just about 2 minutes. Sprinkle brown sugar and salt over and stir and cook another 2 minutes, until sugar has melted and nuts have been coated. remove from heat and stir in ginger. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, with rack in center position. Line the pie crust with tin foil, and fill with pie weights, rice, or dried beans. Bake crust for 25 minutes, remove weights and tin foil, and bake for another 8 minutes. Remove crust from oven, but leave the oven on.

While the crust is blind baking, in a large bowl combine the pumpkin, both sugars, molasses, flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt. Whisk together until combined. Add the eggs, yolk, and cream. Whisk until smooth.

Pour filling into warm crust and bake for 20 minutes. remove pie from oven, and wrap strips of foil gently around the exposed crust to prevent it from becoming too dark and/or burning. Return to oven and bake for another 40-55 minutes, depending on how deep your pie pan is. Mine is very deep so it took close to 55 minutes for middle to set. It may still jiggle a bit in the center, but if you touch the center with your finger, and it is tacky, but not liquid-y, the pie should be good to go.

Transfer to pie rack and sprinkle the nut topping around the perimeter of the filling, leaving a circle in the center exposed.

Heather's Squishy Buns

As I add more and more recipes to this blog, you will soon figure out that I am not a huge sweets person. I live for appetizers and savor the main course, but you will almost never find me first in line at the dessert table. For breakfast, you can feed me eggs and bacon until I pop, but I can usually pass on the doughnuts and danishes. Its not that I hate sweets, I usually just prefer more savory treats in my tummy.

This is not to say I cannot appreciate a great pecan roll once in a while, and boy, these are GREAT pecan rolls. They are actually Ina Garten's Easy Sticky Buns, and my good friend Heather made them last weekend at the cabin. I was of course there with my pastry brush and melted butter, providing moral support and and extra hand. She needed that hand, not because she needed help in the kitchen or help with the recipe, but because we were at a cabin and she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, assembling pecan rolls at 8:30 in the morning.

Frozen puff pastry makes these rolls an absolute breeze (even on the floor). Unroll the pastry, sprinkle on some goodies, roll it up, cut it up, put into muffin tins, and presto, you have pecan rolls. Heather's turned out a little tall for the muffin tin we had, so like any great chef, she improvised and made them fit. They were promptly renamed 'Heather's Squishy Buns', and that is what they shall be called henceforth.

'Heather's Squishy Buns'

Adapted from Ina Garten's Easy Sticky Buns

My notes in green

1 package frozen Puff Pastry (17.3 ounces, 2 sheets - defrosted)

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature) - if you forget like we did, just set them on top of a warm stove for a few minutes, or put them in the pockets of your apron as you prep the rest of the items

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup pecans - chopped or whole, your call

2 tablespoons unsalted butter (melted and cooled)

2/3 cup light brown sugar

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Here she calls for raisins...but Heather made the executive decision to omit, I backed this decision. If you want, add 1 cup of raisins.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place a 12-cup (or two 6-cup) muffin tins onto a parchment paper-lined sheet pan. There is a good chance that they will boil over, so this step saves some cleanup time.

Combine the 1 1/2 sticks of butter and the 1/3 cup of brown sugar together in a bowl. - Ina calls for doing this in a stand mixture, but there really is no need. As long as your butter is soft, a fork and a bowl is all you need to mash these two ingredients up together. Just ask Heather.

Place 1 tablespoon of this mixture into each of the muffin cups, and then evenly distribute the pecans among the 12 cups, on top of the butter and sugar mixture.

Lightly flour a wooden surface - or glass, or plastic, or 30 year old linoleum counter tops, whatever you have available to you - and unroll the puff pastry dough. Brush each pastry with melted butter, leaving a one inch border on all sides. Sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup brown sugar, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon - and raisins if you are so inclined...we were not.

Starting at one end, roll up pastry snugly, jelly roll style, and place seam side down.

Cut each roll into 6 even pieces and place one piece into each muffin cup, spiral side up.

This is where things got a little squishy. They were sticking up quite high so we did what any hungry, slightly hungover, unsure cook would do. We squished them down until they looked about even and stuck them in the oven.

30 minutes later, take them out, let them sit for just a few minutes, then turn them over onto a plate and let the gooey, sticky, goodness runeth over.