Rhubarb Sauce Meringue Pie

Tis the season for rhubarb! My husband noticed a recipe for Rhubarb Meringue Pie in a newspaper recently and suggested I try it. I was a little taken aback - I mean, I LOVE Lemon Meringue Pie, but I didn't know how I'd like Rhubarb Meringue. I didn't have the actual paper so I did a quick internet search and found several recipes. I followed the one at Cooks.com for their Rhubarb Sauce Meringue Pie.

My only critique with the recipe is that the cornstarch should have been combined with a little water and mixed into the rhubarb rather than adding it in, dry, with the sugar. I took out a couple clumps of cornstarch before pouring the final filling into the pie shell. The rest of the recipe was great. It says to bake until it is a "delicate brown". It certainly looked delicate coming out of the oven! It was a truly beautiful pie. If you like Lemon Meringue Pie and have some rhubarb, I would insist you try this pie! I used frozen rhubarb and was delighted with the results. The whole family was asking for seconds. It was delicious. I loved how the tang of the rhubarb was nicely offset by the meringue - excellent combination.

There are egg yolks in the filling, which explains why the filling is more orange than you would expect from red rhubarb. I enjoyed this pie a lot more than my previous rhubarb apple pie with molasses. I was really impressed at how nicely the filling held up with the cooled pie. I love my husband's good ideas!

Enjoy your rhubarb!

Happy Easter!

Hello there,

 Happy Easter to you and yours. I'm serving up a simple baked cheesecake with peaches on top for our Easter dessert. I made the "Happy Easter" piping from Royal icing and let it dry and placed it on the cooled cake. My children created these Ukranian Easter Eggs (Pysanky) yesterday.
Enjoy the holiday!

Happy Easter, Love Helen

Ham and Cheddar Quiche

I'm still using up Easter ham, so I made the quiche recipe from Better Homes and Gardens new Cook Book Version 14 on page 238. I added 1/4 cup of diced green pepper to the recipe and it turned out really nice.

 I made the crust last night after making pizza. Even after eating ham for a whole week, there is still some left! I'm running out of ideas. I've already made it into pizza twice, now quiche. I had a grilled ham and gouda sandwich for lunch on Friday and ham and cheese a few more times.

It sure was a yummy treat for breakfast this morning. I don't like eggs by themselves, but with the addition of a pie crust and ham, cheese, onions and peppers to give it texture I thought it was great!

Sweet Potato Pie

Here's a first for me: Sweet Potato Pie! (With Streusel topping)

I had some left-over sweet potatoes from Easter dinner and thought about this. I had heard of sweet potato pie, but never tried it. I had a recipe for it in the Better Homes and Gardens 14th Edition page 441. My sweet potatoes were sweetened before they were served on Sunday, so I used a little less sugar than the recipe called for and it was still plenty sweet. It turned into a lovely pie, much like a pumpkin pie, only sweeter and less eggy tasting. I would have liked it with nuts throughout it, but I liked it anyway.

The recipe also says it can be made without the streusal and add whipped cream instead. If you'd like the recipe, leave a comment and I will add it!
Enjoy!

Happy Easter Cookies!

Today was a major baking day here. I made Easter cookies with the children, and two kinds of squares and pizza. I'll highlight the cookies today and save the rest for the next blog entries. I made the "Cookie Monster's Cookies" again and we shaped them like eggs, bunnies, chicks and butterflies. I did up a batch of royal icing and split it into three colors - pink, yellow and blue.

While I let the children decorate most of the chicks, I decorated the eggs. It was wonderful to have three different colors, in three separate bags, all with the same tip. Made for a pleasure to work them. I was going to make them all the same but just started changing each one after 3 the same. It was fun. Along the way, I had to ice the chicks for the children to decorate. They were dunking them in sprinkles. They had fun too. I'm keeping those in our special family can that we can eat right away! Here are how my eggs turned out.

 Here's how the other cookies turned out. Not quite like the Easter Bunny does it, but not bad!

Have a blessed Holy Thursday and I'll show you some more yummies tomorrow!

Glazed Raisin Bread p. 434

OOops, I forgot to glaze the "Glazed Raisin Bread". I suppose it is not too late. We only ate half the loaf straight out of the oven!

It was so deliciously good! The raisins were soft and plump, the loaf was full of raisins and the crust was crispy and sweet. I wanted to eat more and more and more! I guess butter and eggs will do that to you! I guess I didn't press out the bubbles after the first rise quite enough, since there is a big hole through the top of the loaf. I think if I had glazed it too, I likely would not have gotten any for myself! Definately a make-again!

Crepes

Ever since my children were big enough to drag a chair over to "help" in the kitchen, I have been making crepes for breakfast. There was a time when I made them on request. Then they started requesting them every day! So, for about the last 4 years I have made crepes every Tuesday and Friday morning. Surprisingly, they haven't gotten tired of them! Thank God, since they are such a snap to whip together. I combine flour and milk with egg and a little sugar and a sprinkle of salt. I add more flour or milk to get the right consistency. I might describe the right consistency as that of a slightly beaten egg, perhaps a little thicker, but not as thick as liquid honey.

Preheat a non-stick or cast iron fry pan to medium-hot (I start at 6 1/2 on my induction burners that go from 1 to 10, and reduce to 6 after first crepe). Pour a soup ladle full of batter into the hot 10" pan and tilt the pan around to let the batter reach the sides of the pan. Cook until the top no longer looks wet. Flip.

The crepe will be a nice tan color. When the bottom is flecked with light brown, it's ready! Remove to a plate. Spread with desired filling and roll up. The sooner you eat these, the better they are! The edges get crispy and harder to roll as they cool.

In our house, I have one order for "just butter", one order of "butter and jam", and four orders of "peanut butter and jam" but my husband also adds chocolate chips to his!

I have, over the years, also tried these perfectly delicious fillings:

banana and nuttella (with whipped cream if you like it)

banana and peanut butter

simply a piece of cheese, melted on the hot crepe

yogurt and berries

maple syrup - works better over two crepes, eaten like pancakes

banana and yogurt

Crepe recipe

Makes enough for one person (about 2 crepes)

1 egg

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp sugar

1 sprinkle salt

Just multiply as needed. I find that 5 eggs works for my family - 9 crepes.

My sister came up with this recipe when I was in high school. She may have used a recipe book, but I am not sure. No matter, it makes great crepes! So, now you can rise and bake some of your own!

Hearty White Bread p. 64

My bread stash was dangerously low today, so I looked up a new recipe. Came up with all the ingredients for this Hearty White Bread. It contains eggs, wheat germ, dry milk powder and potato flakes. (I only had potato flour but figured I'd try that). I've never thought about what potato flakes might be so if you know, you can let me know!

In any event, I mixed up a double batch of this recipe since "one large or two small loaves" would only get me to Wednesday and I'm a busy woman this week! Fast Forward past the usual problem of too much flour and not enough wet ingredients and the rest of the instructions were a breeze. Unbaked, this loaf felt as soft as those wondrous rolls I keep talking about. (Must be the potato). In the end, I kneaded in 5 3/4 cups of flour instead of the "approximately 7 cups" the recipe called for!  I raised the bread in the pans, covered with a greased sack paper. I must have pulled the middle one off too quickly, because that loaf sank a bit. You be the judge:

The other two turned out nicely, but streaky. I think it was the buttered covers. No matter, they still look pretty.

So I cut up the ugly one and took a bite. The crumbs are noticeably coarser than my usual bread. The inside has a nice yellow color from the eggs. The wheat germ was what had me saying, "hmmm... what's that flavor? I don't really like it." So, I slapped on some peanut butter and kept on munching anyway! Nobody else even tried any since everyone was not interested in bread after having today's muffins: blueberry bran muffins . I should have known better!

Now, I am off to make more decorations for that cake I froze two days ago.