Good-Bye Lemon Meringue Pie

Last Christmas, you may recall that we had some friends over for a big Christmas dinner. I think it was the night before the dinner that I broke the news that we were moving to my friend, S. He and his family were one of the families that came over for dinner. I thought that telling him before the dinner would make things smoother, given that it seemed like too big of news for it to casually be mentioned over dinner. Also S is a total drama queen. I called him up and told him on the phone, to which he responded, "this isn't the type of news you tell before Christmas - this is Boxing Day news!" Whoops. While at our house for dinner, he said that we would be forgiven for leaving so long as I promised him a lemon meringue pie before we left. Deal.

The only problem is that while we are such close friends, we really don't meet up too often. We live far away. They have a little girl and an older son, and I have K and T. S is in a band and that takes up many of his weekend nights. The list goes on, I'm sure. Luckily, my good friend, B, suggested that the old crew get together for a good-bye party and everyone graciously came to ours for it - thanks, guys!! With T, being out at night is a bit of a struggle. It was so nice to be able to just put him to bed when he started to lose it. It was also nice to have everyone over so we could work our way through our alcohol. Since everyone was coming over, S included, I decided it would be the perfect time to make the pie. I was all excited about it and was hoping he would be so stoked and pleased that I had remembered our deal. He arrived and I told him I made the pie and he had absolutely no recollection of the pie promise. Thanks, S!! That being said, who cares?! Lemon meringue is one of my favorites as well, so it was perfect.

It's such a simple pie, so it was pretty perfect for the occasion - I am at the point where things just need to get done. I started with my standard 3-2-1 pie crust. Mix 210g of flour, a bit of salt and a bit of sugar in a bowl. Chop up 140g of butter and mix it in with yoru fingers until it is all crumbly. Mix in water, roughly 70g, but do it slowly - I never end up needing all 70g. Then form a ball, flatten it a tad, wrap it and refrigerate it for a bit. Roll it out, pop it in a pie pan, and poke with a fork. Then bake it for about 10 minutes at 450F.

With the leftovers, I do what my mom always used to do. Roll them into a square, dot it with butter, sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar, roll it up, cut into little spirals. Then I bake them with the crust. They end up like delicious little cinnamon sugar cookies.

While the crust is cooling, get to work on the meringue and lemon filling. Before you start anything, get all of the ingredients ready, you have to move fast for this one. For the meringue beat 3 egg whiles, 1/2t vanilla, and 1/4t cream of tartar until frothy. Gradually add 6T of sugar and beat until hard peaks form. Set it aside and quickly get the lemon filling made.

Mix 1 1/2c sugar, 3T cornstarch, 3T flour and a dash of salt in a saucepan. Gradually add 1 1/2c hot water while stirring constantly over high heat until it boils. Reduce the heat and cook for 2 more minutes, stirring the whole time. Remove it from the heat.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat 3 egg yolks. Stir a tiny bit of the above mixutre into the yolks to temper them, then add them to the saucepan. Bring it to a boil again and cook for 2 more minutes, stirring constantly. Take it off the heat, add 2T of butter and 1/2t of grated lemon rind. Slowly add in 1/3c of lemon juice. Mix it up really well.

Pour it into the pasty shell. Then cover it with the meringue. If it took too long to make the filling, the meringue may have separated. This isn't ideal, but just try to beat the meringue back into shape. Finally, put it in the oven and bake for 12 minutes at 350F. Let the pie cool before cutting or else you will have a soupy mess on your hands.

I'm not sure why I didn't take more photos of the finished pie. In fact, I am pretty sure that I did, but I can't seem to find them on my phone. Perhaps I used Y's phone and forgot? Regardless, rest assured that this is both a beautiful and delicious pie. Most certainly one of my favs.

Cheesecake with Fruits (Again)

Over the weekend, we had a house full of guests. Y invited some of his work friends and their families over for lunch and to just hang out. We ended up with 17 people! There was no way I was going to make lunch for 17 (we ordered pizza instead), but I figured I could certainly handle a side dish (roasted root vegetables) and dessert. I asked Y what he wanted for dessert and he decided on cheesecake. With that many people, however, I figured I would need two cheesecakes. I made one regular and one chocolate, which I'll post about on Friday, probably.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you will know that I have made plenty of cheesecakes, each of them only slightly different. I have done a cheesecake with fruit topping at least two other times. The only real different is in how I do the fruits on top. I always use the same recipe. It is followed for the most part. The only differences are: the crust, I just smash up cookies and press them into the bottom of the tin, the topping, I don't make a sauce, and I halve the recipe instead of doing the full one.

 

Once the batter was all ready, I made the water bath, as instructed. I think I have mentioned this before, but I'll say it again. I really do recommend the water bath. It is kind of a pain and takes longer to bake, but (!) the top always ends up so beautiful.

Look at how perfect it is - no cracks or bubbles.

Once it was cooled, I chopped up some strawberries into rounds and slightly layered them around the outside.

I alternated between strawberries and defrosted blueberries until the whole cake was covered.

For the glaze I put 1/4 cup of orange marmalade into a pan with a tablespoon of water.

I heated it up until it was nice and melted.

Then I strained out the orange peel, reserving the liquid in a small bowl.

I put the liquid back into the pan and heated it until it thickened a bit.

Finally I brushed it over the fruits and chilled it until it was ready to serve, which ended up being a few hours. As I mentioned above, we had 17 people in total - there were a total of 10 adults, one nine-year old, three three-year olds, two one-year olds and T. I cut this cheesecake into 12 pieces and it was gone in about 5 minutes. I got two of my most favorite compliments ever on it - one husband asked me to tell his wife the recipe and a different husband didn't believe that I made it, he thought it was store-bought. Another successful cheesecake in the books.

Merry Christmas

Santa came!!! On Christmas Eve, I asked K what he wanted to leave out for Santa and he said, "two Christmas cookies, a slice of apple pie, orange juice and milk. And carrots for the reindeer." To which I jokingly commented, "Wow! That's a lot of food for Santa - he's going to get fat at our house!!" K didn't want Santa getting too fat and having to stop at the doctor mid-present drop, so he edited the apple pie of out the spread. He also insisted that we label the carrots for each reindeer. Silly Dasher and Vixen only ate half of their carrots.

K woke up on Christmas morning to find this:

He was so pleased that he had, in fact, been a good boy and that Santa had come. Gah, I love that little guy.

While that was our actual Christmas Eve and morning, our Christmas celebration started on the 23rd when we had two families over. These two families are so wonderful and I 100% consider them our family here. (That's not to be rude at all to Y's family, it's just that we don't live anywhere near them either.) This post is going to be kind of a long one, but it will have lots of photos of delicious foods.

As you may recall, up until a week or so ago, we were all sick. This put my dinner prep way behind given that I first had to catch up on everything else that I didn't do while I was sick. Last Friday, we finally went to buy the turkey and other groceries, but by the time we got home, put everything away, ate dinner, and put the boys to sleep, I was too beat to actually start cooking. This means that all of the foods you are about to see were made between Saturday and Monday - mostly Saturday and Sunday, of course. Y is a complete saint. He cleaned the house and took care of the boys so that I could focus on food. It was a ridiculous amount of work to be doing while sleep deprived and with a lingering cold and a 4-month old, but sharing a delicious meal and a wonderful time with our family was well worth it.

Here's what I made: Before dinner, we started with K's favorite Christmas cookies, as well as mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies, candied pecans, and some savory snacks - cheeses, veggies, crackers, and chips.

The ginger Christmas cookies (K's favorites) were delicious as always. I love how all of the spices meld together making this the most Christmas-flavored cookie.

The mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies were a new recipe and they turned out really good. In K's letter to Santa, he asked what Santa would like to eat when he stops at our house. K recommended "mama's M&M cookies" because Santa "would certainly like them." How could I not make some M&M cookies after that raving review?! That being said, I just recently made some M&M cookies and wanted something a little different. Mint and chocolate are another of my favorite Christmas combos, so I went with it. For the most part, I followed the recipe aside from the refrigeration bit - I was in a bit of a rush, people!

Also I used peppermint essence instead of extract. I don't know what the difference is, to be honest, but it did not have the disastrous results that the recipe's baker had. These were quite nice.

The other change was that, of course, I had to add in some M&Ms. I went with half chocolate chips, half M&Ms. Also, when I said they were quite nice, I meant to say they were awesome and I ate my weight in them.

I rolled them into little balls and baked for 8 minutes. Delicious!

The other new recipe that I tried were candied pecans. Holy moly, these were amazing. Unfortunately we have eaten them all. Fortunately, we are headed to Y's parents' for New Years. I think I need to make another batch for the occasion.

These were so super simple. Mix sugar, cinnamon and salt in a big ziplock.

Whisk egg whites, water, and vanilla in a bowl.

Stir in some pecans.

Put the pecans in the bag and shake. Then spread them out on a baking sheet and bake. The recipe says to bake for an hour, but mine were still slight sticky at that point, so I put them back in for 20 minutes. They were phenomenal.

 

 Dinner consisted of: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole (from the can, not that homemade business I usually slave over, thanks to my little brother who FedEx-ed me the ingredients!!),

 

 

 roasted brussel sprouts, applesauce with dried cranberries, carrot ribbons with cashews, and stuffing.

 

 

This little princess of a girl kept saying "oishii!!" (delicious) as she ate her dinner. Gah! Be still my heart! What a cutie pie!!!

 

 

 I wasn't going to make a pecan pie, but one of the friends who came over halfway requested it, so I threw it into the mix as well. As far as pies go, it's a pretty simple one.

 

I also made my favorite, apple pie. Turns out I am one of the only ones who actually ate it. Pecan pie for the win! (Note: the below photo was taken about 10 minutes ago, I didn't eat that much pie!)

 

It was a pretty mental three days in the kitchen, but I haven't cooked since, as we have been living on leftovers. I guess maybe it was worth it?? Who are we kidding? It was totally worth it! I love this meal!!!

 

As a final little story of from the evening, my favorite line of the night comes from our friends' 9-year old son, while playing MarioKart against K. K is fiercely competitive and if he is losing or loses at something, he generally doesn't take it well. This is something we are working on, but it's not going so well; he just hates losing. Naturally, he was losing. In the middle of a race, K goes, "Z!! Slow down!! I want to win." Without missing a beat, he replies "No way. I'm not losing to a 3-year old." Man, I love kids!



Advent Calendar - Part 2

Last night, I got cracking on a few more ornaments - a snowflake, a candy cane and a snowman face - for the Advent calendar. Each ornament is only one main layer of felt, but I thought they would look more finished if I stitched all the way around each one. I like how they look, but I'm not going to lie, it is kind of a pain on the little edges or corners. The candy cane got particularly messy. Ah well. The beauty of this little calendar is that if I decide I don't like an ornament or two, I can just redo it after they are all done - or more likely on November 30th, 2014.

I am now up to eight ornaments, mind you, tomorrow morning is the 6th. I really have to keep moving on this. Anyway, here are close-ups of the other five ornaments. These were the first two that I made, little ornaments (ha! ornament-shaped ornaments).

The next three were a stocking, a pair of mittens, and a gingerbread man. K had no idea what a gingerbread man was. Maybe I should add them to our Christmas cookie list!

Advent Calendar - Part 1

I took a little bit of a break from the blog last week. With a baby who decided that 2-5AM were ideal playing hours, I was exhausted. Honestly, there were a few nights last week that I went to bed at 7, same time as the boys. Over the weekend, since Y was here to watch the boys in the morning while I caught up on some sleep, I got started on an Advent calendar for K (and for T, but not for a few years). I know I started a bit late - on Friday, November 29th!! - but I had a few other projects at the end of the month that I needed to get done before I started this, which I'll blog about later.

I'm not joking at all, when I tell you that K has been asking to put the Christmas tree up since last February. Sometime during the spring, I told him that we can't put up the Christmas tree until after Halloween. After his Halloween party, I had just gotten everything cleaned up and was making dinner when he came to the kitchen and said, "whelp, I guess it's time to get the Christmas tree out." He said it like it was some huge chore, and yet obviously he had been waiting for ages for that moment. Poor guy, but I explained a bit further - the tree isn't coming out until December. He took it well, but towards the end of last month, it was a constant barrage of, "What number day is it today? When will it be December?" I figured that if getting the tree out was to be this exciting, the actual day would be exciting as well and he needed a countdown of sorts. I looked online and found a few Advent calendars for inspiration, and also tried to recall the one from my childhood. Then I just went and did whatever I wanted anyway.

I started with the pockets. I decided that I would do only up until Christmas Eve. I imagine that Christmas morning K is going to have little interest in putting on that last decoration - seeing what Santa left him will be much more exciting. I made the pockets 6cm squares. So I cut out a big rectangle that measured 28cm (enough for the pocket plus 1 cm at the top of each row) by 36cm. Then I cut four pocket strips, each 6cm by 36cm.

Then I got to work on the numbers. I bought iron-on felt for this bit. I drew all of the numbers starting with all then ones, then the twos, threes, etc. I wanted them to be as uniform as possible, but knew that they were going to be far from perfect. I'm cool with that for this project.

I slowly filled up the squares with their numbers.

Once they were all on, I took the backing off and iron-ed away (note: this photo is pre-ironing).

Then I sewed a tiny white and green pom-pom trim to the large rectangle.

Eeeek! It's so cute!!

Finally I sewed on the pocket strips and got to work on the tree. The tree is about 36cm wide on the bottom layer and about 40cm tall.

Then I sewed all of the bits onto a huge piece of white felt.

For the tree, I sewed on each of the green layers separately. I don't know how that middle layer got so wonky without me noticing, but it will just have to do. Trees aren't perfect anyway and I figure with the ornaments on, you probably won't be able to notice.

I set it out so that on December 1st, when K woke up he could put the first ornament on. I was sleeping, but apparently K saw it, threw his arms in the air and yelled out, "CHRISTMAS TREEEEEE!!" I love that little guy.

So far, I have only made five ornaments. I figure as long as I make a few each night, I should be able to stay ahead of the game. I figured with the ornaments being so tiny (no more than a 6cm square), they would be quite quick to whip up. I was wrong. This is going to be a labor of love for sure. Wish me luck!!