So the rest of the flour there was left had been sitting in my kitchen for months now, until last week my husband went to the store and bought 3 dozen eggs. Yes, this is what happens when you send a guy to the store and write “eggs” on the shopping list – you get 3 dozen of them. Too bad it doesn’t work like that when I write “ice cream” or “chocolate”.

Anyway, in order to use up those eggs I remembered about the coconut flour which always requires a lot of eggs.

I found a perfect recipe to try. Gluten free cream cheese coffee cake. 

I did made a few changes. I didn’t have pecans or maple syrup. And I used greek yogurt in place of the regular one (I think that what they meant in the original recipe). 

I think I found my new favorite cake and I do not feel guilty feeding it to the kids, also. 

INGREDIENTS:

Filling:

• 4 ounces queso fresco whole milk cheese ( I used it not because I wanted but because I didn’t have enough cream cheese)
• 4 ounces cream cheese (room temperature) – 8 oz (or more) if you don’t use queso fresco! 
• 4 TBSP raw honey (more if needed)
• 1 egg
• 2 TBSP dutch cocoa 

Cake:

• 6 eggs
  
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/2 cup greek yogurt
• 1/4 cup raw honey
  
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon coconut flour, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 1/4 cup mix dried cranberries and raisins
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon 
  

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease one 8-inch round cake pan.

2. Beat together all ingredients for cream cheese filling. Set aside.

3. Combine the first five ingredients for cake then add the dry ingredients through the salt. Mix well.

4. Pour cake batter into pan and drop cranberries and raisins on top of the batter.

6. Top with cream cheese filling and use a knife or tooth pick to swirl it around.

7. Bake for 25 minutes and let cool before slicing.

After one bite hubby described it: “well, it tastes different“, and he didn’t eat any more. The thing is that if we all ate by his taste buds we would be eating cheeseburgers, BBQ pulled chicken, chilli and apple pie for 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

That meant that the whole cake is for me and the kids only, and I shouldn’t be so happy about it, as my pants are getting surprisingly smaller on me lately.  

Have a great weekend my friends.

With two small children and a puppy, after a day of cooking, the last thing I want to hear from my husband is his lack of approval of the food that’s on the table.

Lately, I cook ONLY dishes I have asked my husband about and got his 100% approval, or when I know that if he won’t eat it I WILL FOR SURE.

It was a little  bit different in this case. He had read the recipe and said his verse: “YEAH, we could try it”, but I knew that no matter what I WANT TO TRY THIS CAKE. I knew that if he doesn’t like it I probably will.

I wasn’t wrong. He ate one piece and said: “Hm… it is different”. After a few days he asked for a piece of this cake but it was too late. I ate it all with a small help from my daughter.

It is not a brownie, that’s for sure. It is more like a lava cake.

Cream cheese swirl:

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup milk chocolate (semi-sweet or milk chocolate chocolate chips are fine, too)

For the chocolate cake:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Directions:
In a bowl, beat cream cheese, egg, 1/4 cup sugar and salt together until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips.

In a separate bowl combine flour, soda, salt,  1 cup sugar and cocoa powder. Beat in water, oil, vinegar and vanilla until just blended.

For easy removal, line slow cooker with aluminum foil and pour chocolate mixture into foil liner. Place tablespoonfuls of cream cheese mixture on the chocolate mixture and with a knife, gently swirl mixtures together to create a marbled design.

Set cooker on high heat and cook for about 2.5 hours.

————-

To prevent the water from the lid of slow cooker to drip onto the cake, before you cover  it with a lid put a towel over the slow cooker and than put the lid on top of the towel.

Print the recipe:

This cake came out very moist.

It has the right balance between sweetness and bitterness. I loved it.

Will be making it again.

I look through all kinds of recipes for the dough and finally decided to go with one that calls for rye flour. Lately I experiment more with all kinds of different flours, for example today I baked delicious, perfect for sandwiches, wheat germ semolina bread. Wonderful crust with a soft and fluffy inside. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it 🙂

As for the gelatte: from this dough recipe I made two middle size galette. One sweet and one savory.

The rye flour gave it and amazing nutty flavor. The crust just melts in your mouth!

Recipe adapted from Linda from The Tart Tart:

Ingredients:

For crust:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, very cold, cut into small cubes
6 Tbsp. cup very cold water
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup rye flour
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

For filling:
3 big nectarines, pitted, cut in half, sliced 1/3 inch thick
1/2 to 3/4 cup fresh raspberries
4 Tbsp turbinado sugar (regular brown sugar will do)

– for this recipe I used only 2 Tbsp. of sugar and the fruits were definitely TOO TART FOR MY HUSBAND but pretty tasty for me.

Egg wash:
1 egg yolk
1 Tbsp heavy cream

Directions:

In a big bowl combine both flours and salt. Add cold butter cubes. Work it with your hand(s) until all the butter is combined and the dough resembles wet crumbs. Do not overdo it. Make a well in a center and pour 3 Tbsp of water. Knead it until the water is combine, make another well and add the remaining 3 Tbsp of water. Knead it again until the dough is smooth and easy to work with. The original recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water but after I added the first 6 Tbsp. is seemed to me that the additional 2 Tbsp. would have made the dough way too sticky and too wet.  

Divide the dough into 2 the same size balls. Wrap in plastic foil and chill for about 20 minutes in the freezer. After that take out one ball and on lightly floured surface, with a rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle about 9 inch in diameter. It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle.

You might want to do in in between two sheets of parchment paper. I tried it but the paper was sliding back and forth as I was trying to roll the dough. Finally I ended up rolling it on lightly floured counter top and gently removing it to the baking sheet lined with parchment paper after all. In a few places the dough cracked but I sealed it working the dough gently with my fingers.

Add fruits. Arrange them as you want. I put the raspberries in the middle but it caused that, while eating it, the first bite was really tart. Next time I would arrange it in between nectarines.

While arranging the filling leave out at least 1 inch edge (2 inches would be perfect).

At this point sprinkle the fruit with sugar.

Fold the edges over the fruit.

Make sure to seal all the holes and cracks in the dough where juices can leak out while baking.

Repeat with the second ball of dough OR keep it till next use.

To use the frozen dough the next day or a few days later, take it out from the freezer 30 minutes to an hour before rolling.

Transfer baking sheet to the freezer and chill it for 10 to 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

After the dough is chilled, remove it from freezer and brush the edges with egg yolk and whipped cream mixture.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the filling is bubbling. 

Wait a few minutes before slicing. Enjoy warm or cold. It is delicious either way!

Related articles

• Giving Galettes a Try (offthefrontporch.wordpress.com)
• Chocolate Pear Galette with Praline Crunch (peasepudding.wordpress.com)

It is 4th of July and we are not going anywhere to watch fireworks tonight. My husband is not very happy about that but with our two little munchkins and him still recovering from his surgery it is what it is and being honest with you, I am happy about that. Although he really tried to convinced me into going out but as stubborn as I am and as hurting as he is, I won. We are not going and I have more time to blog as it’s my second post today 🙂

To make the 4th of July a bit special, though (just for him), for the first time in my life I made a roll cake.

Since I discovered this recipe I had looked at it several times thinking that it actually does not look like a very hard work to make a roll cake, and the recipe for a sponge cake is incredibly easy and fast to fix. I’ve changed the recipe a little by whipping the egg whites separately, adding a beet juice as a natural food coloring to the filling and using blueberries as a garnish.

Ingredients for the cake:

5 egg whites

5 egg yolks,

5 Tbsp. powdered sugar

4 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp. corn starch

Ingredients for the filling:

(2 cups) half and half whipped cream

4 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup fresh strawberries, cut into pieces

1 Tbsp. fresh beet juice (for coloring)

Directions:

1. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks. Add sugar and egg yolks and whip for additional minute.

2. Meantime sieve both flour and corn starch to a separate bowl.

3. With a hand whisk gently mix the flour with the egg and sugar mixture.

4. Heat the oven to 320 F. Line a 17×11 baking sheet (the deep kind) with parchment paper. 

5. Gently spread the batter over the baking sheet.

6. Bake for 25 to 3o minute.Do  not overbake as it will be crumbling and breaking as rolled into a log. It should be slightly brown and soft to the touch. Mine was done after 25 minutes.

It looks like the original recipe was made in smaller dish so it was thicker. I used 17 x 11 baking sheet and my cake was very thin and delicate but still easy to handle.

7. As soon as it’s baked move it from the baking sheet, keeping the parchment paper on the bottom.

8. Using new piece of parchment paper, very lightly greased, cover warm cake (the greased part touching the cake).

9. With the two layers of parchment paper and the cake in the middle roll the cake. The log should be rolled pretty tight and even.

10. Leave it for about 45 minutes to cool.

11. Meanwhile whip the half and half with powdered sugar adding only one tablespoon at a time and tasting it after each time. I used 4 Tbsp. of powdered sugar as in the original recipe and it came out too sweet as for my taste. Add vanilla extract and beet juice (you can use canned but I prefer using fresh). Beat until well incorporated. You can use more juice for deeper color but be careful not to add to much!

12. Unroll the cake, removing the top layer of the parchment paper. Spread the whipped cream and strawberries over the top. Leave some of the whipped cream for later. 

13. Roll the cake removing the bottom layer of the parchment paper as you roll.

14. Spread the remaining whipped cream over the top of the roll.

15. Garnish with fruits.

16. ENJOY:

My plan for this cake was a little bit different. I wanted to make it more “patriotic” by adding the beet juice to half of the batter and blueberry juice to the remaining batter. By doing so I would have blue and red roll with white filling. If I had done it, I think it would have looked pretty cool, but I remembered to do that when the cake was already in the oven. I totally, totally forgot about it even after my previous, 20 minutes fight with my blender to get the beet juice!!! ugh…

After that I’d decided to add the beet juice into the whipped cream and use the blueberries for a garnish. After all I think it came out great even without the colors I had planned.

The roll tasted great served immediately but chilling it in the fridge for a few hours made it WAY BETTER; moist and so soft. Next time though, I will use more strawberries. Biting into a piece of a strawberry gives it such a great kick of freshness! I really recommend this cake. Easy to make. Tastes great. Looks cool! and it has beets in it which you don’t taste at all!!!! you can go wrong with that 😉

Normally pasztet is meat based dish. In Poland it’s made from ground poultry, pork, ham (It actually could be made from any kind of meat). The meat is minced into a spreadable paste. It’s mixed with flour or bread crumbs, eggs, seasonings and baked in a loaf-like pan. It’s not the healthiest dish as it’s made mostly from the “strange” parts of the animal (like liver) and its fat.

There is many variations of this dish. Vegetarian variations as well. Mine is one of them. To like this dish you really must like carrots. It is essentially a carrot paste with whole sugar glazed carrots inside. I LOVE it. My husband DOES NOT.

Ingredients for glazed carrots:

4 carrots, lengthwise the size of a loaf pan*

2 Tbsp  butter, unsalted

1 Tbsp coconut sugar (brown sugar is fine, too)

orange juice from one orange, fresh squeezed

* You can cut those carrots in half but you don’t have to if you have a pan wide enough to cook them in.

First of all I need to mention that I’m in love in coconut sugar, lately (as well as coconut oil).
I discovered this sugar in our grocery store for about $5 per lb. It’s not the cheapest thing but I had to try it. Now I am hooked. I use it only in small amounts and in a few dishes so it lasts longer.

Place carrots in a sauce pan. Add coconut sugar, butter and fresh squeezed orange juice. Covered bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a medium low and cook for about 20 minutes or until almost all the liquid is gone. Stir it often.

Ingredients for pâté: 

9 medium carrots, washed

2 Tbsp plain yogurt

2 eggs

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

zest from one lemon

2 Tbsp coconut oil

 1/4 big red (sweet) onion

1 stick celery

salt, pepper, sugar (to your taste)

feel free to use ginger and nutmeg as well

Directions:

wash the carrots, cut into small pieces and place into blender. add flour, eggs, yogurt and lemon zest. blend until smooth. add spices and blend again. set aside.

in a small pan heat the coconut oil, add onion and celery. cook until both are soft. add it to the carrot mixture and blend again until smooth.

Pour half of the mixture to a loaf pan. Place 2 glazed carrots side by side.

Pour the rest of the carrot mixture over it and place the remaining glazed carrots on top of it pressing them so they are slightly covered.

Cover with aluminum foil. Baked in 355 F for 1.5 hour in a water bath.

After that let it cool covered or serve warm immediately.

It could be served warm or cold.

As a main dish or a side dish.

As a paste on a sandwich or with crackers.

It looks great and taste delicious with fresh mint 🙂

Store it in a fridge for up to a week. It actually tastes better after a few days.

I want to share that recipe here on my blog, but every time I make it there is almost no time between when it’s made and when it’s in our bellies.

Last Saturday when it was raining and dark outside I finally decide to make Babka. Finally, because that cake was stuck in my head for a long time. “Babka” is Polish name for a sweet yeast cake but actually it can be made without the yeast and then it resembles pound cake. That’s how my mom and my sister used to make it – without the yeast. It’s not very babka-like but many people do that and call that cake babka and when they use the original recipe with yeast then they call it “yeast babka”.

My mom wasn’t a baker and she even didn’t tried to become one. Whenever she baked something (and it happened really rare), she would always make something VERY easy and fast to fix. Babka and a simple chocolate cake were our most often eaten desserts (and pudding or kisiel, of course). She almost never made a glaze. It was too much work with something that she actually didn’t enjoy – baking. Instead of glaze she would spread a homemade jam (raspberry or black currants) on top of each slice of those cakes and that was it. Just like you would do with open-faced sandwich. It actually was pretty delicious.

These days those simple dishes are my comfort food and whenever I feel under the weather I always come back to it.

Following my family steps I made my babka without the yeast. Although, I do want to try to make it the original way someday. But not when I am on bed rest 😉

This cake is really moist and not sweet at all, at least not too sweet like you would think after reading the recipe.

I do not have the right pan for baking babka but I used 9inch loaf pan and it worked great.

Ingredients for cake: 

1/2 cup white chocolate cut into really small pieces (or white chocolate baking chips),

5 1/2 Tbsp. butter, softened and cut into small pieces,

8 tsp. sugar,

1 tsp. baking powder,

1 tsp. baking soda, (if you don’t have it, don’t worry, this cake will be fine without it)

3 eggs, yolks separated from whites,

1/3 cup all-purpose flour,

1 cup ground almonds, blanched

2 tsp. orange zest,

Ingredients for glaze:

3/4 cup milk chocolate, cut into pieces (milk chocolate chips will do), or if you want to make white chocolate glaze use white chocolate (or chocolate chips),

1/3 cup whipped cream,

1 tsp. fresh squeezed orange juice (or orange liquor),

1 tsp. orange zest.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Into a glass bowl put chocolate and butter. Put that bowl over a pot with small amount of boiling water. Stirr until ingredients melt together. Now you can take it off the heat and add egg yolk, but still over the double bath. Add one yolk at a time stirring really fast. Add sugar and mix well.

Remove the bowl from the pot and add sieved flour with baking soda, baking powder and ground almonds. Stirr with a spoon.

Beat the egg whites until stiff and add to the almond-chocolate batter. Mix well with a spoon. Add orange zest.

Transfer the batter to a greased pan and bake for about 40-45 minutes. After about 40 minutes you can check with a toothpick if it’s done.

Cool on cooling wrack.

While the cake is baking prepare the glaze:

Again, over double bath melt together chocolate and whipped cream. At the end add orange juice and orange zest.

Wait until cake and the glaze are cool then spread the glaze over the cake.

Enjoy!

Related articles

• Chocolate Cinnamon Babka (biegizagraniczne.wordpress.com)
• GC Bread Challenge: Kranz Babka (gastrocasa.wordpress.com)
• Babka or Bust! (thesecretlifeofmrsbundt.wordpress.com)
• Who doesn’t love pudding? (foodandmoreinthatorder.wordpress.com)

He likes to snack in general. Watching movie – snacking. Bored – snacking. Working in front of the computer – snacking. So he always likes to have things to snack on. Chips, granola bars, pop-tarts, chocolate chips cookies, trail-mix. If for some reason we do not have any of those things he will go through our kitchen cabins every 10 minutes trying to find something. It looks like he has an amnesia and he doesn’t remember that 10 minutes ago he did the same and in those 10 minutes nothing has changed in our kitchen. No snack magically appeared.

One day we decided to try to make granola bars. It’s cheaper and much healthier. Granola bars I made are packed with calories but, at least, I know and can pronounce every single ingredient.

Ingredients for the granola bars:

• 1 cup oat flour (or 1 cup oats finely ground in blender or food processor)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup unpacked brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce (I used homemade)*
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups quick oats
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 chopped mixed nuts (of your choice)

for the glaze

4 oz milk chocolate bar

or

6 oz semisweet (or milk chocolate) chocolate chips

1 Tbsp milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°; line a 9 x 9 baking pan with a parchment paper, long enough to go up over the sides. Lightly spray with oil.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

3. In a large bowl, with a mixer cream together the butter and the sugar on medium speed.  

4. Add the egg followed by the honey, applesauce* and vanilla extract.

5. Working by hand, stir in the flour mixture and the oats until just combined and no streaks of flour remain; stir in raisins and nuts.

6. Spoon oats onto prepared baking dish, flattening to make even. Bake for about 23-25 minutes, or until light brown at the edges. They will seem soft and undercooked, but once they cool they will set completely.

7. While the granola cake is cooling melt over double bath and constantly stirring the chocolate bar or chocolate chips with 1 Tbsp milk.

8. When everything is evenly melted and there is no remaining pieces of chocolate pour the mixture over the top of the granola cake and spread it around with a knife.

9. Let it cool overnight or in the fridge for a few hours.

10. Cut into desire pieces.

The first time I made it I forgot to add the oats at the end and we ended up with mushy mixture with granola like taste that we had to eat with a spoon.

The second time I used regular oats instead of quick and for my taste it came out too dry.

Next time I’m going to try out this recipe: no-baked chewy granola bars. Will see which one are better 🙂

* to make an applesauce just enough for this recipe:

In a saucepan, combine peeled, cored and cut into small cubes 1 apple, 3 Tbsp water (I always use orange juice), 1/4 tsp cinnamon. Cover, and cook over medium low heat for 15 minutes, or until the apple is soft. While cooking check if more water (juice) is needed. If yes, add 1 Tbsp. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher.

Recipe adapted from Skinny taste.

Finally yesterday I got extremely bored and sick of being sick and doing nothing. I asked my husband if he would want to try this cranberry almond coffee cake and he said that he doesn’t like cakes with coffee. I said there is no coffee in it but his answer got me thinking, though. I looked at the recipe one more time just to be sure if it really doesn’t have any coffee. NOP.

So, Why is it called coffee cake then?!

Of course I googled it. The answer for obvious: “because it goes well with coffee”. I’m not kidding. Here it’s explained better: wiki.answers.

My husband was really satisfied with that answer. He said that sure, if there is no coffee and looking at those ingredients he may even like it. Woooo…. 😉

Coughing and trying not to loose my lungs I pulled myself together and fixed it really fast. I did not have almonds nor almond extract. Instead I used walnuts and vanilla extract. It turned out delicious!!! After it was done I’ve noticed my husband sneaking to the kitchen and snacking on it all the time.

It’s tart and sweet at the same time with a little bit of crunch that we got from those walnuts. It’s seems to be the perfect combo for a cake.

Today it’s almost gone. 

Even our daughter tried it with a little help of the dog which got so spoiled lately that she will take your food right out of your plate or hand if you don’t watch her. She wasn’t like that before. We still love her, though 😉 If you look closely you’ll see that our daughter doesn’t look very healthy as well. Red eyes, red chicks. Today she has 100.6 F temperature.

Poor Little Thing. Yesterday she was just laying on the sofa cuddling me or her teddy bear and watching Next Iron Chef… which sucked sooooo bad, btw. I mean the show was great but the end was terrible!!! Can’t believe Zakarian is the Next Iron Chef!!!

Even sick she still has her funny and playful attitude. She smiles a lot, laughs and makes funny faces when I point my camera at her. That’s my girl!

Actually, this cake didn’t take my sickness away but it improved my mood a lot… . Now not only I suffer a terrible cough but heartburn as well. It’s worth it, though.

If you’re interested in the recipe, go here.

Related articles

• Fresh Cranberry Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake (justpinchme.com)
• Spiral Coffee Cake with Nuts and Orange Marmalade (secretfoods.wordpress.com)
• Cranberry & Almond Upside Down Cakes (roostblog.com)
• Pumpkin Cranberry Bundt Cake (notecook.com)

How big was my surprise when he ate the piece I gave him, and said: I loved it! Seriously. I did!

This cake is VERY EASY and FAST to make. You need to know that as much as I like to bake or cook I don’t like stuff that’s expensive to make, it’s complicated to make, has too many ingredients, etc.

So, this is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup oil (olive oil)

2 small eggs

In a mixing bowl mix all those ingredients together

Use about 10 medium size plums.

Cut them into medium size pieces and cover the dough. Actually you can use more plums and cover it more than in the picture below. This cake is very good but when the dough rises it seems like those plums are lost, so the next time I make it I’ll use more plums.

For the topping I use:

1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter/margarine

Cut butter into flour and sugar for topping. Knead it untill smooth. Make a ball from the dough and put it to the freezer. Forget about it. That’s why I make the topping before I start doing anything else. The dough need about 30 minutes to harden. After everything is done, and the dough is hard enough you grate  it over the plums.

Bake in 340 F for about 50 minutes or until the topping is slightly brown. It really depends from your oven. Mine is terrible and every time I bake something I need to watch it very closely to not to burn it. In my oven 340 F means about 345 F or more.

Now I’m hungry!

Hugs from my corner !

Polish apple pie is a little different from the American. When I asked my husband if he wants apple pie, I had a Polish version in mind. He was very surprised that we have apple pie in Poland. Also, he though that Polish is the same as American… you know… “as American as Apple Pie”… he thought that apple pie is from America so Polish must look and taste the same. Oh… those Americans… they all think that almost everything was invented in US, or if it wasn’t it was improved by Americans… I’m just kidding, not. 😉

So… For the first time I made him an apple pie, the Polish style, and I ended up eating it myself.

From that day I’d been looking for a pie that we both would like. I’ve tried a few different recipes. Sometimes he liked it, and I didn’t, sometimes I liked it but he didn’t.

And finally one day! I did it! I found a pie that we both really liked! I can’t say it’s the American version, but it’s deliciously awesome and the best part of it is the crunchy toping.

I changed the original recipe a little, and today I call it THE PERFECT APPLE PIE.

Since then, every time I make it my husband says: “this pie is better than the last one.”

The first step is to make the topping:

TOPPING:
1/2 cup sugar (white, brown, or turbinado)
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter

Cut butter into flour and sugar for topping. Knead it untill smooth. Make a ball from the dough and put it into to the freezer.

Next step is to make the crust:

CRUST:

1 cup flour
1/3 cup UNSALTED butter
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. water

Cut butter into dry ingredients. Add water gradually until just moistened. Roll and place into a 9-inch pastry dish. I use my hands to do that. It’s quick and very easy.

I place the ball of dough in the middle of the dish and then just press it down and spread all over the dish until the bottom and the edges are covered.

FILLING:

1/2 cup sugar
5 whatever apples you like/have, or enough to fill crust (I like the granny apples the best).

fresh cherries (OPTIONAL)
Cinnamon to taste (about 1 TBSP)
1 tsp. corn starch

Normally I do not mix any fruits with apples but for the last few times I mixed in some cherries and that pie was really DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!

In a measuring cup mix sugar, cinnamon, corn starch.

Fill the pie with half of the cut into small pieces fruits, pour half of the sugar-cinnamon-corn starch mixture over the fruits. Add the remaining fruits and the rest of the sugar-cinnamon-corn starch mix. IT IS OK TO NOT TO USE ALL THAT DRY INGREDIENTS MIXTURE if you don’t want that pie to be very sweet. For example for this pie I used only 1/3 cup. I knew that the cherries will give it extra sweet kick…!

So, it looks like that:

and just like that bake it at 450°F for 15 minutes. Take it out. Wait for the oven to cool down – about 10 minutes. Preheat it again. This time to 350°F. In the meantime take the topping dough from the freezer and grate it over the fruits.

Bake at 350°F degrees for an additional 45 minutes, or until the pie filling is bubbly, and the topping is light golden brown.

ENJOY!!!

I need to add that this pie is crazy easy and fast to make. The topping is so crunchy and not too sweet as well as the filling.

It is the perfect pie!!

I baked a banana pudding pie, with home-made vanilla wafers.  For the first time.

Everytime a recipe calls for something from the box, like yellow cake mix, or brownie mix, or pudding mix, etc., I always ask myself (or rather omniscient google): can I do it from scratch? I hate buying those fake mixes. Just hate it! I HATE even more to eat them. Yuck!

First of all when I read the recipe for banana pudding pie I had no idea what vanilla wafers are… Now I know. Eureka!!!! Kruche Ciastka!!! So simple! 🙂

Even more simple to make:

This recipe makes about 65 cookies

• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour

1. In the bowl combine the butter, sugar and salt. Beat on medium speed until smooth. Add the egg yolks and vanilla, and beat on low speed until blended. Add the flour, and mix until incorporated and a smooth dough forms.

2. Divide the dough into 4 portions. Roll each portion into a log 6 inches long and about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours.

3. Position a rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper (aluminium foil will do)

4. Using a sharp knife, cut each unwrapped log crosswise into slices 1/4 inch thick. Place the cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets.

5. Bake the cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until the edges and bottoms are golden, 12-15 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.

TAD-AH!!!

Crushed wafers (about 45) mixed with 1/2 cup of melted butter = YUMMY pie crust!!!

Homemade pudding (not so yummy, so recipe is not necessary here). I’ve got to find different one.

Pudding on top of the crust and sliced bananas followed by new layer of crushed wafers and sliced bananas, and second layer of pudding.

Meringue on top

Looking Yummy!

And lets say: JUST looking yummy! What a bummer!

All that work, and the only thing I got from it is D.I.A.B.E.T.E.S!!! Seriously! The pie is awfully sweet. I ate a piece and I felt like I had a shot of the strongest coffee on earth. They saying that smoking one cigarette takes about 15 minutes off of person’s life. After a slice of my pie I felt like I’m about to die. I don’t know how much it took away from my life, but it was A LOT… . Never ever again. I want to live to my daughter 18th birthday at least.

btw, I didn’t cry this time, but at the same time I wasn’t laughing either… I ate my part in a stoic manner, but I didn’t ask my husband to do the same. I knew it’s a very hard piece to swallow… my pie… 😉 and I didn’t want to be THAT cruel to him! He didn’t deserve that…

The only thing I’ll keep is the wafers recipe.

So, I’m still on a mission to find the perfect banana pudding pie recipe with no artificially flavored mixes from the store in it. Wish my luck!