Gratitude Monday - Apple Pie Order Edition

I'd been thinking of apple pie. This led me to the logical consequence: I baked one.
I am grateful for a number of things involved in this including Robin Hood Gluten Free Flour. It makes the best pie crust ever.
I am grateful my husband brought home some apples, and I am grateful I know how to bake pie.
We still have some cake around so the pie will go in the freezer for a few days. That's fine because just having it around and available will do for now.
In a few days the pie will be all the better.
Here is said pie:

Gratitude Monday--Many Things Edition

I am grateful for many things: big, little, middling, immeasurable.
Late last week the weather forced the cancellation of a planned camping trip with friends. It was disappointing, but we've had so much rain that our basement flooding. Even though it stopped raining Friday the ground was saturated, the water table rose, and water percolated up into the basement.
Being home gave my husband the time and opportunity to vacuuming the water every few hours.
For that I am grateful.

We spent Saturday trying out a new bakery in a nearby town and then on to a restaurant in a different town. Both were good and I am grateful for the chance.

I'd bought a sirloin tip roast to do over the campfire. Instead I got to roast it yesterday. We'll have several meals from it and that's really good. It'll mean less to think about while I process the abundance of vegetables we have received from my husband's family. I am grateful for the bounty and the time.

I'd been craving apple pie and my husband brought home apples from the trees in his orchard at his mother's place. I decided to try the new formula Robin Hood gf flour, but added a few things of my own including a tablespoon of psyllium fibre. It was a good call and it made a fine pie crust. In fact, it is the best pie crust I have ever made. I am grateful for all of it.

Gratitude Monday - Baking Weather

The weather turned the other day. It has grown cold and grey. By yesterday snow was falling from leaden skies and the outside air was humid and biting.
It was refreshing to be outside though only for a few minutes. I had most of a cup of coffee outdoors on Sunday and found it bracing.
"Now this," I said aloud to the Universe, "is what I call a great day. Thanks."
This weather is for hunkering down, for preparing for the cold and dark ahead, but more than anything else, it is for baking.

I am grateful for the change in weather as it makes me introspective and willing to do the household chores. Perhaps willing is a strong word, but certainly readier to do them than on a hot, languid day.
I'm also grateful for the wide variety of cookbooks I own. They fascinate me, whether they are several decades old, or ethnic, or specializing in something, they are a wonderful window on cultures. In my world the best way to study a culture is to eat.
I dug out The Ultimate Hot and Spicy Cookbook (Acropolis Books) and sniffed around. There, on p. 241, was this:

It's Peach Kuchen. Not hot in the spicy sense as it uses only cinnamon, and neither did I eat it hot in the temperature sense. It was easy to make and even kind of fun as I like to work with my hands and this involved topping the cake with sliced peaches. It smelled wonderful and looked like a right-side up upside down cake.

We had some more apples to use up. I had the time and inclination so I did this:

I used too much cayenne for my tastes in the last apple pie so I tried this one with black pepper. It's resting comfortably in the freezer right now so the results of the experiment are still pending.

I'm grateful for knowing how to bake, for having the time and the weather to bake, and for being adventurous enough to try new things, and new twists on old favourites.

And I'm grateful that I get to eat the results.

Yippee-Ki-Cayenne

I often use cayenne pepper in baking and never thought much about it other than to acknowledge it was, well, unusual.
But the other day Clare2e at the wonderful Women of Mystery blog made mention at the end of her post about accidentally using red pepper instead of nutmeg in an apple pie.

I’ve done that on purpose. I made one on the weekend that barely lasted two meals.

Hot pepper is great in hot chocolate. This was how the native South Americans before took it before the Europeans came along and added sugar. For the record, I use sugar too.

Knowing the traditional use and having eaten mole sauce, which contains chocolate, I decided to play a bit with it.
It’s lovely in brownies. The heat smoothes the chocolate and give a wee bit of an after bite. It’s very pleasant especially on a cold Canadian winter day.

It’s also absolutely stellar in gingerbread. I went to make some gingerbread last winter and didn’t have quite enough dried ginger. Rather than going out and getting some I paced a moment, drummed my fingers on the table and Ha! The obvious solution was revealed.

Ginger is hot. So’s the pepper. The trick is to get the mix right so the heat augments, not overpowers, the ginger.
I added about a one-quarter teaspoon to the mix. It worked fine and made it seem like I’d used especially strong ginger, nothing else.
I was so tickled with what I’d done it’s part of the recipe now. I’ve used up to a half-teaspoon of cayenne, but I increased the ginger to a teaspoon. If you like spicy, this is adequate. I love the hot/sweet combination and always have. We’ve got an old family recipe for mustard that uses sugar and turmeric that’ll clear your sinuses.

I find reasons to put it in other baking as it occurs to me. I’ve even thrown it in an ordinary loaf of bread.

Last winter I was taking cayenne capsules and discovered the cayenne warded off hot flashes. Sadly, my body adapted and that’s not working for me anymore.

But it still tastes good and with the autumn here and baking season upon us I’ll be finding even more uses for cayenne. Meanwhile, I may need to bake another nice, hot, apple pie.