Berry Vanilla Custard Pie

On Saturday my housemate and I watched Waitress starring Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion. This movie is great. Heartwarming, and sweet. Plus its got Nathan Fillion, and pies. Lots and lots of pies. So after some active convincing, my housemate and I got to work on our first ever pie entirely from scratch!


Ingredients:
Crust
Adapted from SimplyRecipes.com

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon sugar
3 to 4 Tbsp ice water

Filling

2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon for the berries
1/8 tsp salt
3 teaspoons of vanilla
1 1/3 cups milk
About 2 cups of frozen berries, (or 1/2 cup mashed) (I used strawberries and blackberries)

Preheat the oven to 400˚.

First combine flour, salt, and sugar in your food processor and pulse to mix.

Add the butter,

and pulse 6 to 8 times, until mixture resembles coarse meal, with pea size pieces of butter. The colder your butter, the better. You might even want to put it in the freezer for a half hour after you cut it into cubes to make sure it is extra cold.

Add ice water 1 Tbsp at a time, pulsing until mixture just begins to clump together. If you pinch some of the crumbly dough and it holds together, it's ready. If the dough doesn't hold together, add a little more water and pulse again. Note that too much water will make the crust tough. Remove dough from machine and place in a mound on a clean surface.

Work the dough just enough to form a disk, do not over-knead. You should be able to see little bits of butter in the dough. These small chunks of butter are what will allow the resulting crust to be flaky. Sprinkle a little flour around the disk. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour, and up to 2 days.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

First heat up the milk and sugar in a saucepan until little bubbles form around the edges of the pan (called scalding). Be careful though! It could boil over in a split second!

While the milk is heating up, beat your eggs.

Also while the milk is heating up, you can mash your berries. I got these beautiful organic strawberries and blackberries from the farm at UCSC (where I just got hired!) and froze them the day I got them, waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them!

There. Beautiful.

Don't forget to add the extra tablespoon of sugar here when mashing your berries!

Now here is the tricky part (and what my housemate was most scared of). Once the milk has scalded, slowly pour it into the beaten eggs while whisking vigorously. If you aren’t careful, the beaten eggs can turn into scrambled eggs from the heat of the milk. If you let the milk run down the side of the bowl as you pour it into the eggs, it gives it just enough time to cool to increase your chances of a scramble free custard.

Whisk until it is lighter in color. Then add the vanilla.

Once your crust has chilled, remove it from the refrigerator. Let sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes in order to soften just enough to make rolling out a bit easier. 

Roll out with whatever you have on hand on a lightly floured surface. (In the 3 years I’ve lived away from home, I have never had a rolling pin. I always use my handy dandy glassware and it works just fine!)

Do the best to get it into a 12-inch circle. You can eyeball it.

Carefully lift up the dough and lay it over your pan. Press the dough into the pan being careful not to tear the dough. (If you do, it's ok, you can smush it back together.

If you want your dough to be nice and flaky, brush an egg white onto the crust (this prevents the custard from sinking in)

Slowly pour the custard mixture into the prepared pie pan. Scoop the mashed berries into the pan. Use the tip of a knife to swirl and mix the berries into the custard. Don’t worry about a pretty design, the berries float to the top when the custard forms.

Bake for 30 minutes until crust is golden brown and a knife comes out with only the berries on it, and no custard.

And enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles

 

So whenever I get the urge to bake, but I don't feel like going out and buying things, I usually make these cookies. I usually have all the ingredients! And for the holidays I always buy Pumpkin Pie Spice but I never end up using it all! So instead of putting cinnamon in my snickerdoodles, I use Pumpkin Pie Spice! It makes the house smell like Thanksgiving and it makes for delicious cookies!

Adapted from Kelsey's Apple a Day
 

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour 
2 tsp. baking powder 
1/2 tsp. coarse salt 
1 cup unsalted butter, softened 
1 1/2 cup sugar (plus extra to roll the cookies in)
2 large eggs 
3 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (plus extra to roll the cookies in)

A splash of milk
First, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

Mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. 

Most snickerdoodles are just sugar cookies with cinnamon sugar on top. In my mind, why not incorporate the cinnamon (or in our case pumpkin pie spice) into the mix!
 

Next, put butter and sugar in a bowl and mix on medium speed with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, about three minutes. 

Add the eggs,

and mix until it is a beautiful canary yellow.

Reduce speed to low and slowly add the dry ingredients.

At this point, if the mixture seems too thick, you can add the splash of milk. It makes for softer cookies. 
 

In a small bowl, stir together about a third of a cup of sugar and two tablespoons of Pumpkin Pie Spice.

Shape dough into balls (you should have about 20). Roll in pumpkin pie spice/sugar and flatten. Place on cookie sheet.

Bake cookies until edges are golden, about 12 minutes. 

Let cool and enjoy!

 

Homemade Herb Bread

Homemade bread is amazing. Without a doubt. And yesterday they had fresh herbs at the farmers market at the base of campus (right next to my office!) I grabbed basil, thyme, rosemary, and sage and I knew that I wanted to bake it into some delicious bread!


To make herb bread, just take your favorite bread recipe and add your choice of herbs! This bread recipe is the one I used to make when I was a kid. I used to watch the show Zoom and they made this bread on the show and I was hooked for weeks! I was so amazed when I was still able to find it online!

Adapted from PBS Kids:

Ingredients:

1 cup white (or wheat) flour (and a little extra for kneading)
2 cups bread flour
1 cup hot water
1 package active dry yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
A splash of milk
1 gallon size resealable plastic baggie

Note: These measurements are for one loaf of bread. For the tutorial below, I doubled my recipe because I was making two types of Herb Bread.

To make Herb Bread, we are just going to add the types of seasoning we want to our bread. I made Rosemary/Thyme bread and Basil/Garlic bread but honestly you could add anything really. Even rasins and cinnamon if you want a sweeter bread, or even honey and oats for a honey oat bread!

Here are my measurements (you can just eyeball it really)

For the Rosemary/Thyme bread:

3 sprigs of rosemary leaves, loosely chopped
2 sprigs of thyme leaves

For the Basil/Garlic Bread
1/2 cup chopped basil
1 clove (2 teaspoons) of minced garlic

First, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Then mix 1 cup of bread flour, the packet of yeast, sugar and hot water in the sealable plastic bag.

Now get ready for the fun part. Let most of the air out of the bag, close it, and smoosh (yes, smoosh) the bag with your fingers to mix the ingredients.

My housemate Osang is a fantastic smoosher!

Then let the bag rest and watch the magic happen.

After about 10 minutes, the mixture will start to bubble and the bag will expand.

Meanwhile in a separate bowl, add the milk, the other cup of bread flour, salt, oil, and your herbs.

And mix together.

Add this mixture to your bag.

Get ready for Round 2 of Smooshing!

Open the bag and add the 1 cup of white (or wheat) flour. Reseal the bag and enjoy your last round of smooshing. Smoosh it until smooth, about one to two minutes. Then, take the dough out of the bag and knead it for another minute on a floured surface.

If your dough does not seem to be coming together while kneeding it, slowly add flour to all sides of the dough until it looks like this and it no longer sticks to your hands:

Put the finished dough into a greased loaf pan (or on a cookie sheet) and cover it loosely with plastic wrap.

Let it rise for about 30 minutes.

Then bake for 35-40 minutes.

Slice it and serve with butter, cheese, or olive oil & balsamic vinegar!

Bon Appetite and Happy Bread Making!