I'M GOING TO NEW YORK ON MONDAY!
You may have remembered me mentioning this in previous posts, and now it's finally time!
To refresh your memory, here's the basic need-to-know's of the trip:
My school's Honors Chorus was asked to participate in composer Tim Janis's American Christmas Carol concert on December 2nd at Carnegie Hall in New York. It is a live concert composed by Tim Janis featuring many soloists and a 200 person student choir (that's where we fit in!) Since we learned about our trip back in March, we've had to memorize a ton of music. 10 pieces in all. All are Christmas inspired and I can honestly say I like them all.
Here we all are at PBS filming Tim Janis's Celebrate America in Pittsburgh, where we first got to meet him. (I'm on the right side, second row, second one in!)Some Highlights of the Trip:
-Ferry over to Liberty Island and Ellis Island
-See Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera
-Visit the Empire State Building
-Time Square, Macy's shop windows, and St. Patrick's Cathedral
-See West Side Story
-Guggenheim Museum and Planet Hollywood
-See Marry Poppins
- And... a SURPRISE??
We leave the 29th, and return the 4th. It's going to be amazing. The best part is I get to share it with some of my closest friends=) Oh, and I'll do my best to take some food pics. If the food is worthy enough!
Okay, now on to the recipe at hand. The Pioneer Woman and Joy the Baker. Two of the most amazing food bloggers out there? Quite possibly. And what happens when you team them together in a recipe? You, my friends, are about to find out.
As I thought of the desserts I would choose for Thanksgiving this year, my family gave me the general consensus that there MUST be pie. There ended up being 3, but we'll get there. First up, was an apple pie. I chose a "dreamy" version that I saw on the Pioneer Woman's blog. I liked how there was a bit more to the pie than just throwing you apples in. In this recipe, you also make a creamy filling to pour in as well. That intrigued me so I knew I definitely wanted to try this one out.
Where does Joy come in? Well... the Pioneer Woman's pie dough recipe involves crisco, which is a no-go for me. I have already tried Joy's pie crust recipe and I knew I loved it, so I went with it instead. It NEVER fails. I might be getting ahead of myself, but it is the flakiest butteriest pie crust ever. It's pretty fool proof as well. I do believe that for this being my second time around it was a bit easier to make as well, naturally. I love this pie crust recipe, and you should too.
Note: You will have to half her pie crust recipe since you only need 1 crust as there is a crumble topping.
This was not too hard to put together. I did it over three days just because I felt like it. I made the apple filling one day, the crust another, and then put it together on the third day.
NOTE: I made one boo-boo. For some reason I cooked my apples in the cinnamon sugar mixture beforehand on the stove. To remedy this, I reduced the cooking time a tad, but otherwise I don't think it affected the outcome.
Served up with some cinnamon ice cream or whipped cream, this was luscious. It had more to it than your average apple pie thanks to the creamy filling. Secret time: We ended up finishing this pie before it was even Thanksgiving Day. Whoops!
Dreamy Apple Pie
from The Pioneer Woman
Ingredients
1 whole Unbaked Pie Crust
Filling:
3 whole Large (4 Or 5 Small) Granny Smith Apples, Peeled, Cored, And Sliced Thin
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Sugar
1 Tablespoon All-purpose Flour
1 cup Heavy Cream
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1/8 teaspoons Cinnamon
Topping:
7 Tablespoons Butter
3/4 cups All-purpose Flour
1/2 cups Brown Sugar
1/4 cups Pecans (more To Taste)
Dash Of Salt
Preparation Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Roll out pie dough and place it in a pie pan. Decorate the edges as desired.
Add apple slices to a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together cream, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, vanilla, and cinnamon. Pour over apples. Pour apples into pie shell.
In the bowl of a food processor (or you can mix by hand) combine butter, flour, sugar, pecans (chop if you’re not using a food processor), and salt. Mix until everything comes together in clumps. Pour topping over apples.
Attach foil to the edges and lay a piece of flat foil loosely over the top of the pie. Place pie pan on top of a rimmed cookie sheet and bake for one hour. At the end, remove foil and allow to finish baking and browning. Can bake for up to 15 or 20 minutes more if necessary.
Remove from oven when pie is bubbly and golden brown. Serve warm with hard sauce, whipped cream, or ice cream.
Joy's Pie Crust
from Joy the Baker
makes a double crusted 9-inch pie crust
2 sticks (8 ounces) cold unsalted butter
2 1/2 (12 ounces) cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (5 to 6 ounces) buttermilk
1. Cut the butter into 1-inch pieces and place in the freezer to chill for 15 minutes. Measure out the buttermilk and store in the refrigerator to keep it cold (you could even put it in the freezer for a few minutes too).
2. Sift together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Take the cold butter from the freezer and toss it with the flour mixture.
3. Dump the cold butter cubes and flour mixture onto a large work area for rolling. With a rolling pin, roll the mixture, flattening the butter cubes with the flour into long, thin, floured butter sheets. Work quickly to ensure that the butter stays cold. Below is what the rolled butter and flour look like after I’ve gathered them together on the work surface a bit.
4. Place the flour and flattened butter back in the large bowl and chill for 10 minutes. When the butter is cold, remove the bowl from the refrigerator, make a small well in the center of the flour and butter mixture. Add the cold buttermilk to the bowl all at once. Begin to bring the dough together with one hand ( keep the other hand free to answer the phone). Moisten all of the flour with the milk, using your hand to break up large clumps of milk and flour. The dough will be rather shaggy, but you can add another tablespoon of buttermilk, if you see that all your flour isn’t moistened. Form the dough into two disks. The disks will be rough, and hard to shape together, but once they rest in the fridge for an hour, they’ll be easier to roll out.
5. Chill the dough for at least an hour in the refrigerator. At this point, the dough will keep in the fridge for up to three days, or in the freezer for up to three weeks. For freezing, roll the dough out into sheets and wrap them in plastic film.
6. Roll out the top crust large enough to cut a 12-inch circle.
Transfer the pie filling mixture to the pie shell. Moisten the border of the bottom crust by brushing it lightly with water and place the top crust over the filling. Trim the overhang of the top crust so that there is only 1/2-inch of overhand. Tuck the overhand under the bottom crust boarder and press down all around to seal it. Crimp the border using a fork or your fingers and make about 5 evenly spaced 2-inch slashes starting about 1 inch from the center of the pie and radiating toward the edge. Cover the pie loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 1 hour before baking. This will chill and relax the pastry, preventing shrinking.
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Looks wonderful!
~ingrid