Apple Hand Pies

 Whenever I have pastry made for baking I always have this urge to make little hand pies with it but I never follow through thinking it's going to be way to much work fiddling around with them. Not long ago though when I was grocery shopping I found this cute little mold for making apple shaped hand pies that would be just perfect for using with the apples we had left from picking and I knew my daughter would love it to :)

 With our chilled pastry and floured rolling pins in hand we started rolling and placing our dough in the press.

 Why do these little things always look like they are going to make the job so simple but it's never quite so?! The instructions said to use the outside of the press like a cookie cutter to get apple shaped pastry pieces that you then laid inside with the filling and  pressed together to make your hand pie. 

Of course this totally didn't work when the pastry started to slide into the indentations on the inside of the press while needing the strength of He-Man to make the crimped edges show up. All this was definitely giving me flashbacks to a pierogi maker I tried using years ago that squeezed all of the filling into a doughy balloon that got stuck in the crack of the press making an awful mess *grin*.

Needless to say we tossed those instructions in the trash can! LOL.

In the end we just cut our pastry into rectangular shapes and layered them in the press with our sliced apple filling sandwiched in between and it worked out so much better :) L rolled and filled while I pressed them as hard as I could until we ran out of pastry.

 

Oh my goodness were they delicious!!! We sprinkled a bit of cinnamon sugar on top before baking them and when they came out of the oven and cooled enough so that we could hold them they were nice and firm and the perfect treat for a chilly fall afternoon.... not sure how soon I'm going to attempt making them again though *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina

Catching Leprechauns

The children and I set out to catch a Leprechaun today with it being St. Patrick's day and all *grin*. And what better way to catch a tricky little leprechaun than to bake a rainbow colored cake and make him think that there was a pot of gold to be had!

I had ran across the fun idea for this cake over at Not Martha and we set to work making a batch of homemade regular yellow cake batter using this recipe as our backbone, modifying it with less sugar and using yogurt whey for the milk, and then splitting it up into seven different bowls so that we could add all the colors of the rainbow.

Just under an hour later our rainbow cake was out of the oven and cooling on the window sill so that it would be ready in time for dessert after dinner :)

No sooner had I put our cake on the table, set the trap with a mountain of gold coins and erected our 'come and get the gold' signage for our leprechaun, we had one climbing the ladder to steal our pot of gold!

But we were much to crafty for him! He fell straight into our trap...

and we got both the gold and the cake *grin*.

Hope you had a fun St. Patrick's Day to!

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Oh the joy that filled our house this morning as sleepy children raced to the front door to see what Saint Nicholas had left in their shoes!

Waiting for each of them was a little burlap sack and a brown paper bundle tied with string.

There was a special Christmas book enclosed for each of them and all sorts of nuts and oranges to eat along with a delicious chocolate St. Nicholas for later :)

We made Nicholas shaped cookies using this speculaas recipe which is so yummy with its ground almonds in the dough and lots of spice and the children had fun decorating him with raisins, chocolate chips and sunflower seeds :)

One of the things that we really wanted to do was pack a little tin full and surprise someone with it in secret but since our closest neighbor is my mother we thought it would be fun to see if we could get away with dropping it off at her door and not getting caught!

So with the cookie tin in hand all three of the children raced up to her house as fast as they could and then snuck as quietly as they could to the door, banged on it hard and then ran for their lives LOL.

A few minutes later the phone rang of course asking if it had been us and we denied it *grin*. She had no idea where they had come from so it was a very successful ding dong ditch LOL.

Did you celebrate Saint Nicholas' Day? I would love to pop over and see what you did to make it special :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies

We are spending a lot of our days embracing the beauty of fall around here lately as we watch the leaves on the trees transition to their vibrant autumn colors and we happily jump on their crunchy counterparts that litter the lanes :) The children keep bringing in handfuls of stray leaves to that they just couldn't resist because they were 'to pretty' and I keep picking up crumbled bits off of the tile floor beneath our nature table as they fall apart from all of the handling *grin*.

So when I saw a photo of some great fall leaf cookies on the Country Living website I just had to bake some with the kids. The only problem was there was no recipe so I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough that I use all the time and thought I'd share it with you to. It makes a nice sized batch of dough for tons of fun :)

4 eggs
2 cup sugar
2 cup unsalted butter

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add one egg at a time and beat really well until the butter mixture is super light and fluffy.

1 tsp. baking powder
5 cups all purpose flour

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. Once you've got it all combined divide your dough into four chunks. Don't worry about being completely accurate, just eyeball it up.

Now color each of your dough balls a different fall color :) I really like to use Wilton Gel colors. They create gorgeous vibrant colors and they are cleaner to work with than the old drip style liquid food coloring. You can find them at most grocery stores and walmart.

After you have finished adding your food coloring, wrap each piece in a bit of saran wrap and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that dough firms up and makes it easy for rolling later :) Roll out your dough on a floured counter top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 - 12 minutes or until just starting to brown and firm up around the edges and the centers are slightly puffed up.

I set the kitchen up with three work stations so that each of the children had their own rolling pin, cookie cutters and assortment of colors and they had fun ripping off chunks of color and creating their own fall color palette :)

It actually turned into a color blending lesson on top of the baking fun as we watched the colors meld together creating new tones of oranges and greens and the surprise arrival of brown each time we balled up our dough scraps and rolled them out again. Things got quite psychedelic LOL.

So much yummy fall fun. I can see we're going to have a lot of tea parties in the coming days *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Celebrating Michaelmas

On thursday we celebrated our very first Michaelmas :)
I had found a great pattern and had been secretly cutting and stitching together a little wool dragon each night after the kids were in bed that would be perfect for our little playmobil Sir George to battle. I finished it up just in time and set it up on our nature table for them to find in the morning when they awoke.

Of course they beat me out of bed and I could hear them gathering excitedly around the Michaelmas scene when they got up and then the quiet that followed as they discovered the little coloring pages of a knight fighting a dragon that I had left on their tables for them to color. It was perfect. I had a few minutes to catch up on what I had to do to get the day started and they had fun picking their favorite colors for their dragons :)

After lunch we took some time to read a little story about Sir George and the Dragon. There seem to be a lot of different versions of Michaelmas stories from St. Michael hurling the dragon (lucifer) from heaven to Sir George slaying the dragon and our gentler version that I decided to go with of a dragon that had the hiccups and the gnomes that called on Sir George to help them solve their problem of a pesky fire breathing dragon. You can find a few different versions here:

The Most Beautiful Dragon
A Little Flower Garden's Michaelmas Festival
Our Little Nature Nests Michaelmas Story
In the end our dragon became the bread maker and I thought it was a perfect fit for my 5 year old :) It came from a copy of Before the Journey that I purchased last year.

With our story fresh in our minds and the anticipation of a fire breathing bread maker we went into the kitchen to make some green bread dough together to shape our dragon out of :)

They added gnarly toenails with pumpkin seeds...

poked in spines made of almonds and we cut in scales with a knife that puffed up and gave him a great lumpy body. Oh boy did he taste good with dinner, although there is something very odd about eating green bread. It just feels weird *grin*.

I can't wait until next year so that we can do it again and maybe add in some more fun ideas that I've seen around the web. One great post with lots of links is over at Rockin' Granola but if you google Michaelmas you will find tons of inspiration!

In case you would like to try my bread recipe I thought I would share it with you. It makes awesome soft white buns if you want a non green or dragonish version for another day LOL.

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 egg
a dribble of maple syrup
2 1/2 tsp. yeast
3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
green food coloring optional

Heat your milk and water until it is nice and warm, pour it into your mixing bowl along with your maple syrup, sprinkle your yeast over the water/milk and allow it to proof for about 10 minutes until nice and bubbly. Add your melted butter, egg, and 1 cup of flour and mix. I like to do this to break up my egg nicely before adding the rest of the flour. Now add in your remaining 2 1/2 cups of flour and mix until it forms a ball that you can turn out onto your counter to knead. Knead for about 5-8 minutes until nice and soft and smooth. Cover and allow it to rest until doubled in size. Punch down your dough after it rises and you can now shape it into your dragon, rolls or whatever you would like to use it for :)
Bake at 425 Fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes or until nice and golden and sounds hollow when you tap on it.

If you celebrated Michaelmas and shared photos or stories on your blog I would love to stop by and see how you made your day special :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Mouthwatering Rhubarb Pie ~ Recipe

Rhubarb season is in full swing and there is no shortage of it around here! We've been eating it in muffins, cakes and now pie :) The tartness of the rhubarb mixed with a good dose of sugar makes for a mouth watering combination. If you're not crazy about a sweet pie then a warm slice of rhubarb pie might change your mind. The tart bite of the rhubarb counteracts the sweet and melds together perfectly.

Pull out your food processor and start feeding in fresh stalks from your rhubarb plant. The amount of sliced rhubarb you need will depend on the size of your pie plate so pull out an empty pie plate and start filling it with your sliced rhubarb until you have a really heaping dish full. It will shrink as it cooks so more is better than not enough!

I have quite a deep pie plate so I used about 10 cups of sliced rhubarb while my mom can only squeeze about 8 cups into hers so using your pie plate will give you the perfect amount :)

Once you have all of your rhubarb sliced and measured out put it into a large bowl and add:

1 1/2 cups sugar
6 heaping Tbsp. minute tapioca
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 egg lightly beaten

and mix all of it thoroughly together. If you are worried that it's to much sugar, don't. You could cut it back a bit but I wouldn't take away to much. You need that sweet to keep you from puckering up to much when you take that first bite *grin*.

I know that lots of people use flour as a thickener in their pies to help all of those juices set but I really like to use tapioca because you don't have to worry about getting any lumps. It's just that easy!

Now that you have your rhubarb all mixed up, pour it into your pie plate that is lined with an unbaked pastry shell for the bottom of your pie.

Tuck a few dabs of unsalted butter on top of your rhubarb filling and cover with another sheet of your pastry. Pinch, roll, or tuck the ends of your pastry tightly together to help seal in all of that rhubarb goodness and to finish it off you can sprinkle a little bit of sugar over the top of your pastry. I also like to take a sharp knife and cut in a few slits across the center of my pastry to let steam escape as it cooks.

Place in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees fahrenheit for the first 15 minutes and then turn your oven down to 350 degrees fahrenheit after that and continue cooking for another hour.

Mmm, mmm!

You will know your pie is good and ready to come out of the oven when your pastry has browned up, you can hear it bubbling and some of the juices are starting to escape :)

It's always a good idea to put a sheet of foil or parchment paper underneath your pie as it cooks because more often than not there will be a little bit of delicious sweetness that escapes and drips out of your pie. This makes clean up a cinch!

If you can keep yourself from cutting into your rhubarb pie while it's hot it will set up beautifully and the pieces will come out nice and solid. Of course we couldn't help but dip into our pie while it was still hot so we made a bit of a mess of ours but it was so worth it *grin*.

Enjoy!
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop

Valentine Sugar Cookies

We're getting ready for Valentine's day and making special treats :)

We always make a heart shaped cookie for our party and this time we made sugar cookie sandwich hearts with a yummy jam center. So good! I only know this because there may have been a little bit of taste testing going on as they were being made *grin*.

L was all ready to get down to business and had her new little apron that she made tied on and her hands washed even before I could ask her to do anything :) She loves to crack the eggs for me and run her hands through the flour *grin*.

I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe but halved the batch this time so that we didn't end up with mountains of cookies. You will need:

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup unsalted butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking powder

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Cream the sugar and butter together and add in your eggs and vanilla beating until everything is light and fluffy looking.

Add your flour and baking powder and mix until just combined. Turn out your dough onto a sheet of waxed paper and top with another sheet of wax paper so that you can press down on your dough flattening it out towards the perimeters of your paper and then place it your fridge to chill so that when you pull it out again it will be nice and easy to roll and cut out your hearts on :) Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 8 - 10 minutes or until your cookies are just browning on the bottom edges.

We used two different sized heart cookie cutters to create the tops of the cookies and then we ran a line of icing around the edge of the bottom cookie to create an icing dam so that our plum jam wouldn't squeeze out when we sandwiched the two layers together :) I make my jam without pectin so they are always a little bit runny and the icing works perfectly to keep everything in it's place *grin*.

I had to hide them out in the garage tonight to keep the kids from asking for more and so that I wouldn't sneak into the kitchen and nibble on them for a midnight snack LOL. I have terribly weak will power!

Hugs,
Rosina