Pie Baking Day

Thanks for all of the lovely comments about the wreath I did for the Family Trees exhibit at the Concord Museum.  I will post the details about creating the fish and the moon face in the Silhouette Studio software in a few days.  Today is food preparation day for Thanksgiving for many of us and I'll be making pies for our extended family get together on Thursday afternoon.

The traditional apple pie that I make is time consuming but easy to make.  It is also vegan since we use oil for the crust.  I posted step by step photos and the recipe earlier this year.  You can see them HERE.

The Swedish Apple Pie is much faster to make and everyone loves it.  You can find the recipe in THIS POST.

I know that everyone is busy with last minute details for Thanksgiving plans (and maybe scoping out the Black Friday deals) so that's all for today.  Safe travels if you will be on the road this weekend - please be careful!  We'll have one of our sons home this weekend and I might even get an early (for me) start on some Christmas decorating.

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Gingersnap Time

Gingersnaps are one of our family favorites.  I always think about gingersnaps in October because my mother used to make them for the trick-or-treaters at Halloween. 

I drove as far as New Jersey today and did a special project with my sister (it has to stay a secret for a little while).  On Wednesday I'll get to Pennsylvania to spend a couple of days with Dad.

If you'd like to try our family recipe and read more about the gingersnaps, please click HERE to go to the post I wrote about these cookies last October.

Are you ready for Halloween?  Do you dress up to meet the trick-or-treaters?  I usually just pop on a tall pointy witch hat to answer the door.  I bought the candy yesterday and I will put up a few decorations when I get home again.

 

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  For the rest of the month, everyone who leaves a comment on my blog will have a chance to win this Sizzix "Scrap Pink" set.  You can see more photos and details at THIS POST.  For more chances, you can leave a comment everyday for the rest of the month - but just one comment per day please.
 

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Brownies "from scratch"

This recipe was one of my Mom's "go to" desserts - particularly for unexpected guests.  It is about as quick and easy as using a mix but much tastier!  As I made the brownies, I did another series of photos for the (someday to be completed) family cookbook.  If you are having a picnic or cookout for the holiday weekend I think these would be a hit.

Here are the steps - first preheat your oven to 350 degrees...

Take two sticks of butter or margarine (1 cup) and four squares of unsweetened chocolate (4 one ounce squares) and put them in a pan large enough to mix the entire recipe.

Melt the butter and chocolate over medium to low heat.

The butter will melt first and then the chocolate.  Stir the mixture until it is completely melted then turn off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes.

Crack four (yes 4!) eggs into a dish and add two (2) teaspoons of vanilla.

Beat together the eggs and vanilla in the bowl.

While the chocolate and butter are cooling, prepare a 9 x 13 inch baking pan by spraying it with vegetable oil and coating the pan with cocoa (if you use cocoa instead of flour there won't be any white edges on the finished brownies).

After the melted butter and chocolate mixture has cooled, stir in the eggs and vanilla.

Stir to blend the eggs in completely.  Be sure to let the chocolate and butter cool down so you won't "cook" the eggs when you add them.

Next add two (2) cups of sugar, one (1) cup of flour and two (2) teaspoons of baking powder to the chocolate mixture.  (You can sift these together first but I get a little lazy and just throw them in the pan and blend).

Stir to blend all of the ingredients.

When the mixture is well blended, it will pull away from the pan a bit.  Use a spatula to make sure all of the dry ingredients have been mixed in.  You can add chopped nuts (1 to 2 cups) at this point if you like nuts in the brownies.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  It will be thick so you should use the spatula to spread it evenly in the pan.

Take the pan and tap it a few times on the counter top before putting it in the oven - this makes sure that the batter is level.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes in the preheated oven.  The edges will look dry and pull away from the edge of the pan slightly.  Check the center in a few spots with a toothpick.  If it comes out clean, they are finished. 

Let the pan cool and then cut the brownies into squares (it looks like I could have used my Dad's cutting grid to make these a little more even!).

Serve alone or with ice cream and chocolate sauce (totally decadent!).

These are moist and chewy brownies.  For slightly more cake-like brownies you can substitute three (3) tablespoons of cocoa and one teaspoon of butter  for the unsweetened chocolate squares (just melt all of the butter, add the eggs and vanilla and then stir in the cocoa along with the other dry ingredients)

Enjoy the chocolately goodness!

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Gingersnaps

A couple of days ago I showed you the card I was sending to my Dad with some Halloween treats.  He has the package now, so I can show you what was inside...

Gingersnaps!

These gingersnaps are one of our family favorites.  My mother used to say that if she had a nickel for every gingersnap she had rolled she'd be a wealthy woman!  Some of my early memories of helping in the kitchen involve rolling the balls of gingersnap dough in sugar before they were baked.

We have made this recipe countless times and have worked out ways to be super efficient in rolling and baking.  The dough should be mixed and then chilled for a few hours or even overnight before rolling the balls for the cookies.  It helps to have at least two people when you are ready to bake the cookies - one to roll the balls of dough and the other to roll them in the sugar and place them on the trays.

An important extra step in the baking is to hit the trays on the oven door when you are switching the position of the trays halfway through the baking time (top to bottom and front to back).  This helps to create the cracks in the cookies.  The degree of cracking seems to depend on other factors as well - humidity, length of chilling time and the choice of margarine, butter or other shortening for the dough.

 

This particular batch did not get very dramatic cracks.  They always taste delicious - no matter what they look like!

With Halloween just a few days away I think it is interesting to see how trick-or-treating has changed.  Today you have to be very careful about what you hand out and so many of the trick-or-treaters seem to have allergies or restrictions on what they can eat - parental approval is definitely required.  My mother used to give out these homemade gingersnaps in little bags.  Parents would tell their kids not to eat any candy until they came home so it could be checked.  Several neighbors confessed to Mom that they used to "confiscate" the cookies to have them for their own special treat! 

I have been working on making up family recipe cards - I started this project several years ago and from time to time I get organized enough to do another recipe.  I still have many to do.  I do the recipe cards digitally and eventually I might put them together into a family cookbook.

I started with this idea of making up cards with photos of the result of the recipe when I first began using the Creative Memories StoryBook program.  The program has gone through several versions and the 4.0 upgrade was recently released.  The latest version offers a free 30 day trial that can be downloaded from my CM personal website HERE.

I have done several versions of the recipe cards.  The 8 x 8 page above was done for a recipe swap a few years ago.  If you look carefully you can see that the "photo corners" are actually little clusters of cookies.  I used the StoryBook software to create digital cookie embellishments.   I designed the frame using Cricut Design Studio in one of the earlier versions and used the Cricut markers to outline the frame.  The design was inspired by some of the serving plates that my mother had - clear glass with round beaded edges called candlewick glass.

I think you can read the recipe from the photos if you'd like to give it a try (just click on the image to make it larger).  This recipe makes a double batch.  It is pointless to make a single batch - if you are going to go to the work of rolling and baking you might as well get seven to eight dozen cookies!

Thanks to all of you who made suggestions about my troublesome card in yesterday's post.  I had considered embossing the background - it actually is a textured shimmer cardstock and looks better in real life than it appears in the photos.  My cold seems to have turned into a sinus infection and I was feeling rather "uncrafty" and grouchy - thanks for being patient with me!  I will give it a second look and may do a "new and improved" version.

Do you have some traditional family recipes?  How do you keep the cooking traditions going and pass them along to the younger generations?  Have you ever made a recipe scrapbook?

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Swedish Apple Pie

The days are pretty busy around here right now.  I've been sorting out things that were relocated for the house repairs and renovation and trying to pull my craft room back to some semblance of order.  I've also been designing up a storm - on projects that I won't be able to show you right away - I think you will like them!

I had a lot of requests for apple recipes after my post yesterday.  There is nothing like a crisp apple to eat fresh but they also are wonderful baked in pies with lots of cinnamon.  This recipe is a favorite because it can be made pretty quickly (there is no crust) and it always is delicious.  You can use any type of apples - you might want to adjust the recipe for the sweetness to suit the variety you choose.

Robert's Swedish Apple Pie

5 medium apples, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, mixed together
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 egg
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Butter or spray pie pan (8 or 9 inch) and fill 2/3 full with apple slices.
Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar mixture on top of the apples.
Melt butter, add sugar and egg and mix well.
Add flour and nuts, pour over apples.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes (until apples are cooked and pie is golden brown)

These tangles of ribbon are for a project that I'll post as soon as it is finished.  The ribbons were used on the drinking "glasses" at our nephew's wedding celebration.

Using wide Mason jars as drinking glasses is a family "tradition" for my husband and his relatives.  I don't know who started this, but it is a practical use for the empty jars between canning seasons.  The ribbons helped to make the tables more colorful and festive.

 I added this photo just to show the difference between taking a photo with flash (first photo) and then with only natural light.  As a general rule, I like to omit the flash but sometimes you really need it to get a clear and colorful image.

I thought I had a photo of the pie (I am sure that I do!) but it was too late to search for the photo and also too late to make another pie for a photo session!  I'll add the photo to this post when I run across it.

It's Columbus Day weekend already, where is the time going this year?  I hope  you have a safe and happy weekend - we are staying home after all of our recent travels, we just want to stay put for a while.

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About those cakes...

Several people asked for more details about the cakes I showed yesterday.  The vegan chocolate cake was made by my younger son and his girfriend.  They found the recipe on the allrecipes.com - here is a LINK to the page.

They made a double recipe in two round cake pans.  The recipe calls for 45 minutes of baking but their experience is that about 30 minutes is long enough.  You just need to check it with a toothpick to be sure it has fully baked.  They also added delicious chocolate chunks to the batter (you can see the bumps in the finished cake above).

Instead of frosting between the two layers, they did a filling of strawberry jam - with lots of strawberry chunks.  (The waxed paper is on the cake stand to protect it from frosting and jam).

The frosting was made with confectioner's sugar (about 4 3/4 cups), Earth Balance buttery spread (6 tablespoons), vanilla extract (1 1/2 teaspoons) and rice milk (about 1/4 cup).  They added fresh strawberries on top just before serving time.

The cake was delicious - and if you didn't know it, I don't think you would guess it was vegan.

Grandpa's cake was made by a local bakery.  It is a specialty cake called Gateau Concorde which is a chocolate mousse cake with a covering of chocolate meringues.  Eating this "cake" is like eating frosting with a crunchy topping - very rich and so delicious.  I don't have a recipe for this and it is probably a lot trickier to make.

The engagement cake was a sheet cake from Costco - you can't beat their tasty cakes at a great price.  I really liked the lattice and heart design and I am working on a paper version to use for cards. Once again - you can find inspiration for paper crafts from so many places.

We spent most of the day resting and clearing up from the party - a big gathering is so much fun but there is a lot of preparation and it can take a while to get things back to normal.

This evening, I was able to design the thank you cards for the happy couple to get started on their notes promptly.  They will be printed tomorrow and I'll share some details about them when I have the final version here to show you. We have some more wedding plans to work on, but I'll get back to posting some paper projects in another day or two.

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Digital Recipe Cards

I have been trying to take photos and make recipe cards for some of our favorite family recipes.  Each time we make something - out comes the camera!  I will use these for a recipe book to give each of our sons so they will be able to make some favorite foods.  I am doing these digitally so I can print as many as I want and they can be replaced if they get too messy from use.

I started with this photo of the shortcake as served.  The recipe is actually for the shortcake biscuits. I am sure that adding the strawberries and whipped cream won't be a challenge for our sons!

I used my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software to create the recipe card.  I wanted to use just the image of the dessert so I used the custom cropping tool in the cut and fill menu to cut around the shape.  For some shapes you can use the magic wand to do this quickly, however, in this case there was not enough contrast between the parts of the photo I wanted and the background I was trying to eliminate.

This is a slow process as you add dots to outline your image.  Fortunately, you can zoom in as much as 1600 percent so it is possible to get very fine detail in your cropping.

Once you have the item outlined, you can click "invert shaded area" and you will see the image that will remain after cropping.  Then you click "erase the shaded area" to drop out the background.  I usually go ahead and save this new image as content so I can easily use it in another project.

After the tedious work of cropping the image, you can have fun choosing the papers and designing the card.  I used patterned paper from the Primary Power Palette  - this is one of my favorites with lots of bright cheery designs.

For additional decoration, I added some layers and created a strawberry using one of the many shapes available in the program.

I created two strawberries and filled them with coordinating papers from the Primary Power Palette.  I made the green cap by cropping the strawberry shape so I could layer the top on the original strawberry shape.  I grouped the two layers, reduced the size, and copied and pasted it four times to add a little more interest at the bottom border.

Here is the current version of the card - I may tweak it a bit more.  One of my favorite things about doing digital projects is that you can try out many variations without wasting any paper!

The actual recipe is on the back of the card.  I will print both sides and then cut and adhere them together.  Sometimes I plan the cards so that they will be matted on cardstock cut in a standard recipe card size.

Several people have asked if I will do a live online class for the Creative Memories software.  There are many tutorials and videos already on the CM website but I would be happy to have a question and answer session to help people who have the software but haven't really figured out how to use it.  If you want to be included in the Q and A, please leave a comment on this post or email me at capadiadesigns@gmail.com with the best days and times for you.  Remember to tell me what time zone you are in so I can try to coordinate a good time for all of those interested in this session.  I am a Creative Memories consultant so if you are interested in buying this software (and do not have a local consultant that you work with) you can purchase through me by visiting my CM personal website - here is a LINK.

I have been doing a little more experimenting with the updated Design Studio program.  I did not have enough time to do a video today but should be able to make a quick exploration video tomorrow.  I have not found any more new features but I will keep searching through the program to see if there are more changes.

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