Pecan Pie and Vanilla Ice-Cream

Happy Thanksgiving folks   I'm going to a potluck Thanksgiving dinner in Balally in Dublin tonight.  And I will be bringing some of these pecan pies (because I have a bottle of Karo) and some homemade ice-cream made with condensed milk (because traditional egg custard based ice-cream is rich with protein which will not be welcomed by the Move 4 Parkinsons choir that will be present).

This is Bakerella's recipe for Pecan Pie (Irish-ised).


Mama’s Pecan Pies
Makes 3 pies or about 33 mini pies

450g pecans
200g Butter
450g package light soft brown sugar
1 heaped tablespoon Self Raising Flour
16 oz. bottle light corn syrup (Karo)
1 tablespoon Vanilla Extract
6 eggs
3 regular size (not deep dish) pie crusts

Melt butter in the microwave for about 2 minutes or until melted and set aside.
Prepare your pecans. Remove any unwanted brown pieces from the pecan crevices and shake out pecan crumbs in a colander.
Place brown sugar in a large bowl. Work out any lumps with the back of a spoon. If the brown sugar is too hard, you can loosen it up in the microwave. Heat it for a few seconds and it will be fine.
Add a heaping serving tablespoon of self-raising flour and stir until the flour disappears into the brown sugar.
Add a bottle of light corn syrup. Then add 1 serving tablespoon of vanilla and stir until thoroughly combined.
Add melted margarine. Fold carefully into the mixture so it doesn’t splatter. Fold until the margarine is thoroughly worked in and disappears.
In a separate bowl, crack open six eggs. Remove the “roosters” and loosely beat the eggs with your spoon.
Fold the eggs into the pie mixture until they disappear.
Add pecans and stir until completely coated.
Remove three pie shells from the freezer at this point and check for cracks. If you do have a crack, thaw and knead the crack together and refreeze.
Pour the mixture evenly into the three shells. You’ll probably have a little bit leftover in the bowl. Tap tops with a spoon to check consistency and make sure there is the same amount in each pie. Redistribute pecans if necessary to make equal.
Bake for 45 minutes to an hour at 175. Cook pies until they swell and then fall. At that point they are done.
Remove and cool for about three hours. Store on the counter or in the refrigerator depending on how you like your pie.


Eggless Vanilla Ice-Cream
1 can of condensed Milk
1.2Ltr Double Cream (I know insane right)
2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1. In a stand whisk ingredients together until thick and quite stiff.
2. Pour into a freeze proof container and cover with cling film (this ice-cream does not need to be churned.

Footnote
I wound up being too late and now have much Ice-cream in the freezer and Pecan Pie in the fridge

Brownies - an Adendum

So a little experimentation (this time last week) following a bit of Pintrest browsing allowed me to put aside one of my snobbery's.  You see I abhor recipes that include the likes of

'add one pack of cake mix to...'

So here I am to admit I may have been just a little too hasty.  The two experiments that I tried were based on American confections (it coming up to thanksgiving and all).

The first was putting Reeses peanut butter cups in brownies and the result was pretty meh - nothing unpleasant but nothing special.

The second was the delightfully decadent Oreo stuffed brownie.  The Oreo remained soft due to the moisture in the brownie - amazing!

Try this with one of the Brownie Recipes below;

Katherine Hepburn Brownies

Brownies

DO THIS NOW your taste buds will thank you for it.

Katharine Hepburn's Brownies

I am open to be corrected on this but so the story goes that Katharine Hepburn was asked to submit a recipe for a charity thingy and she submitted a recipe for brownies.  It quickly became the 'go-to' recipe for brownies at the time.  But due to my brownie 'curse' I haven't ever been able to make them work.  Below is the original (I believe).

Maple Pecan Pie

• 1 prepared unbaked pastry shell, 9-inch
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups pecan pieces or halves

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350° and place rack at lowest position. In a large bowl, beat eggs. Add maple syrup, brown sugar, melted butter, and vanilla. Blend well and stir in pecans. Pour into prepared pie shell. Bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown and the filling is set.

Whiskey Fed Christmas Cake - The Preparation

And so I did start with the Christmas Cake

Add half a bottle of whiskey* to 450g of Dried Fruit** cover with cling film and pop it into the hot press for a day or so take it out and stir it every once in a while (twice a day) so that all of the fruit gets a chance to plump up and get a little drunk.  Think of it like a tea brack looking at you cross eyed!  By the time you get to mixing up this cake the whiskey will have combined with the sugars from the fruit to create an unctuous syrup.

*Jameson Whiskey

**This years dried fruit combination:
Dried Blueberries
Dried Cranberries
Flame Raisins
Currants
Golden Sultanas
Sultanas

Christmas Cake

BTW My Christmas cake is not close to being baked. I have bought an impressive array of dried fruits I just need to get my hands on a bottle of Jameson will post when I get cracking.

The kitchen in the new house.

So it would appear all my promises of Christmas baking have been lies till now.  I've just moved house and I've been working on getting that into order.  The old kitchen in the new house is significantly smaller than the kitchen in the house we were renting.  We have a room now ready to house a swanky new kitchen but cant afford to kit it out (because as it turns out there was nothing holding the slates (roof tiles), on being that the slats had dissolved!).  The old kitchen in the new house is a double galley kitchen and works really well if one person is cooking, everything is in easy reach.  Small kitchens can be a blessing in disguise.  In renting over the past 12 years we got really, really good at designing efficient kitchens.

1st Goal - Storage
Its really difficult to find stuff.  Most of it was packed away in chest of drawers (my clothes are from the laundry or a skip bag at the moment - ironing was never a high priority).  Two big billy bookcases took a large chunk of the storage needs from the garage and later down the line we can look at buying doors for them.

2nd Goal - Clear Counter Tops
We went to Ikea and got a bunch of rails and hooks to deal with my obscene need to have utensils (there are 20 filled hooks and we still need more).   We bought a magnetic strip for the knives and got rid of the knife block.  We discovered that the Goodalls spice/herb tins are magnetic so we will probably pick up some more magnetic strips.  I have other hook mounted spice jars that everything else can go in.  My weighing scales is wall mounted and I have one of those plastic bag storage thingys.  The hand blender went up on the wall too and we've run out of wall space.

Whats left to do in the old kitchen...

3rd Goal - Brighten the place up a bit
There are solid wood doors and crap cabinets.  Sugarsoap, Sand, Undercoat and Paint the Cabinets.  Get rid of the current light fitting (the roof is 6'6" and the other half is 6'5") and insert under cabinet lighting and lighting over the food prep/serving area.

4th Goal - Finishes
I will paint the center panel for some of the cabinets with blackboard paint for shopping lists and menus (I have a painfully bad memory).  Some of the tiles need re-sticking and I need to paint the little bits that need painting.  The final thing is that the cooker needs a splashback.  I like the stainless steel ones for practical reasons.