Another Kitchen Day

When I woke up yesterday, I didn't expect to spend another day in the kitchen, but that's how it turned out. It's all good though...I tried a couple of things I've been itching to try. First of all, some one of you told me about this Cranberry and Apple Mustard...maybe as long ago as last year. I can't remember who it was, but if it was you, then thank you. Finally, I gave it a try yesterday. The recipe suggests canning it in half-pint jars. I think this will make a great little gift for neighbors and friends, and so I decided to use the little half-cup (quarter pint) jars. My yield was eight little jars.

Just before ladling it into jars, I tasted it while it was still warm. It tasted more like mustard than cranberry or apple. We had some with our turkey sandwiches last night though, after it had cooled. It tasted quite different cooled off. The cranberry and apple flavors were much more forward. It's very good. It's good as it is, but I think it would make a good sweet mustard too. I'd like to try it adding more honey to sweeten it up some. It was easy to make. From start to finish was less than an hour's time.

Then, I've absolutely been dying to try a new recipe for Peppermint Pie. There are lots of recipes online for peppermint pie. The one I've selected here had ingredients I could live with (meaning, things I didn't suspect would kill me). Let's just start with the candy. Candy wouldn't hurt us, would it? 

This pie is made with "soft" peppermint candy. It's the kind that has the texture of butter mints...not the hard kind...and not the soft taffy-like stuff. We looked all over the grocery store candy aisles (both regular and seasonal) for this. Finally, when we looked high over our heads, we found it. It came in a huge tub. Kind of a win-win, if you ask the sugar fiend in me.

I wanted to make mine a pie for two. So, I'll show you the pictures, then I'll give you my scaled down adaptation, and I'll tell you how I think it could be improved. Here's how it looks when it's all baked up and decorated. Looks pretty, tasty, huh?

It has a chocolate cookie crust, and it's so pretty when you cut into it.

And let me just tell you...this was absolutely to die for. It is delicious. It's very rich though, and this pie "for two" really should have been a pie "for four." We suffered through though. My piece was a little smaller than Mike's. He couldn't finish his before it icked him out...delicious though it was. 

So, here's how I think the recipe could be improved. I want to try this again, but put the cookie crust just in the bottom of four one-cup ramekins. (I'd skip the baking part here.) Then, I'll ladle the filling into the ramekins, give it two hours to set up, and then top it with the same whipped cream and crushed peppermint candies. I still have plenty of ingredients, and so I'll give us a couple of days to come down from our sugar high, and then try it again in the ramekin version. For the time being, here's the pie for two recipe I used:

Peppermint Pie for Two

Adapted from Saving Room for Dessert

Serves 2-4

Ingredients:

For the crust:

1/2 package (9-ounce) chocolate wafer cookies (about 25 cookies)

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

1/2 package (.25-ounce) plain gelatin (about 1 1/8 teaspoons)

2 tablespoons cold water

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

1 cup heavy whipping cream, divided

1/2 cup crushed soft peppermint candy (about 20 candies), plus extra for garnish

For the garnish:

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup plus 1-1/2 tablespoons sifted powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla or peppermint extract

Crushed peppermint candies

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Add the chocolate cookies and granulated sugar to a food processor and pulse until crushed to a fine crumb. Add the melted butter and pulse until mixed. Spray a 6-inch pie plate with nonstick spray. Gently press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate. Bake for 7-8 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool to room temperature.

In a small bowl sprinkle gelatin over the cold water and set aside to soften. Measure 1/4 cup whipping cream in a small saucepan. Add 1/2 cup of the crushed peppermint candy. Cook over low heat until all the candy is melted (about 5-10 minutes). Remove from the heat and add the softened gelatin and peppermint extract. Set aside to cool to room temperature. Don't allow the mixture to cool too long and become set.

Beat 3/4 cups of heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the peppermint mixture into the whipped cream until almost blended. Spread the filling into the pie crust and refrigerate until set - about 2 hours.

Garnish with additional sweetened whipped cream and crushed peppermints as desired. The extra crushed peppermint adds a good sweet crunch to this pie without making it overly sweet. Garnish away!

* * * * *

Just FYI, I tried crushing the peppermint candies with my food processor. It didn't work. The blade kept popping off the spindle, and so I crushed them by putting them in a zip-lock bag, and then whomping on them with the flat side of my meat mallet.

Over the past couple of days, I've been putting out my hand-made Christmas items. Everything is out now. I'm not sure if we'll put up a tree this year, beyond the ones that hang on the walls. Here's how it all looks:

This is my Christmas Star table topper. Those are some Jim Shore creations in the middle. The taller one is an angel holding a cat.

If I'm remembering right, this might have been the first quilt I quilted when I got my sit-down mid-arm machine. 

Here's another poinsettia table topper. This was a quilt-along with Lori Kennedy at the Inbox Jaunt. It was just for practice and learning, but I like how it turned out. I used a white metallic thread in the center and around the edges.

I used the white metallic in the bobbin too. Here's how it looks from the back.

There's my Santa's Village, made for a challenge (Any Holiday). The table topper there was made by my friend Marei.

This little Gingerbread Man was made for another Project Quilting challenge (A Well-Dressed Man).

This Christmas tree hangs in our family room downstairs. It's decorated with hot fix crystals, although they don't show up well in the photograph.

This is my Roly-Poly Santa. He came from a kit...kind of fun to make. It was my first try with gridded stabilizer. The kit for him is still available at Keepsake Quilting. There's a snowman and a scarecrow version as well.

You might recognize this one from last year. Those are the tiny trees I embroidered from Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread. Those were positively addicting. Once I started, I couldn't stop until they were all finished. And then I combined them with a little "Tiny Tree" sew-along from Temecula Quilt Company to make this little quilt. It's hanging in the dining room this year.

Downstairs next to the fireplace, the stockings were hung with care. The one on the right is Matthew's stocking. The two on the left are for the kitties.

These are my two little Santa figurines. I felted the one on the right when I took a class some years ago. The one on the left is a hand-carved Santa made by my friend Carol from high school. If you look carefully at that, you can see it's the same Christmas tree quilt shown above. The kitties below are Smitty on the left, and Gracie on the right.

It was late in the day after all that cooking and decorating. I didn't get as far with my top-stitching as I'd hoped. It's about half finished. I'm hoping to get it all done today, but there's still quite a bit to do to finish the block. Finishing it today might be overly optimistic.

And just so you know, we're all in our places this morning. Kitties love quilts.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. I have a couple of small housekeeping chores to accomplish, and then I'll get back to the top-stitching. I'm ready for a sewing day. How about you?