Happy Thanksgiving Eve all.
I hope things are going well for your in your kitchens and you have only suffered minor burns (if any) and that your baking/sauteeing/roasting is going smoothly.
Here in the Pacific NorthWet, the fiance and I are preparing for our usual double Thanksgiving - dinner at his Grandmother's house with his entire mother's side of the family- and supper at my parents house with my immediate family that's within reasonable driving distance. Sadly, all of my siblings are out of the state or out of country this year for Thanksgiving - as they have been for the last few years which is what happens when you are the older sibling I guess.
This year, unlike years past, I have been home long enough before Turkey day to secure the rights to a dish at each family feast. For my fiance's family I was selected to prepare the stuffing and my family asked that I prepare some sort of dessert.
Well, I am one for tradition and like most families, mine is particular about which stuffing we make. So like any good daughter, I called my mother and asked her recipe. She emailed it to me and included the footnote: this was your grandmother J's recipe. When my mother finds a recipe that works, she sticks to it and only varies it when she knows the variation will work.
I don't know about you all, but I prefer my stuffing warm and fresh. Not reheated and day old. So I've prepped all the ingredients - the two loaves of torn french style bread (laid out to get stale), the celery, the onion and the drumsticks. Tomorrow, like many of you readers, I will get up early and assemble the ingredients into a roasting pan and home the timing works out for when dinner at my family-in-laws is ready. Unfortunately for all you readers, you won't be around to enjoy my grandmother's stuffing and unlike most other things on here, I am not sharing this recipe. Family tradition stays in my family.
For my parent's house, we are traditional except for some years when we elect not to have the usual apple or pumpkin pie. My fiance is not a pie fan either. This is year is nothing different. I put out feelers to see what my parents wanted, their current houseguest/family friend, and what my fiance might want after carb-agendon occurs. The three options: caramel apple pie, vanilla bean baked custard, or baked double apple pie. All three recipes are courtesy of Cooking Light and the latter two are slow cooker recipes. (If you didn't catch it earlier, doing a double thanksgiving means timing things carefully and I hoped to make sure dessert was 1) cooked thoroughly and 2)still fresh, hence the slow cooker options) My parents and their house guest said that they would want the custard but pie would also work.
We are a family who has learned to prefer over the years to have things in single serving sizes. Which is why I ended up doing both the custard and the pie. But wait, pie is really hard to serve individually without making a giant pie and having left overs. (I'm not saying I don't like left overs. I am a big fan because it means I have lunch the next day prepared already) Yes, I still managed to make pie and used the majority of the Cooking Light recipe referenced above. I just modified it to work for my muffin tins. :)
Rather than make my own crust, I do believe in saving myself some time and bought a Pillsbury Pie Crust package this year. Like most of you would, I rolled it out flat. I just used a glass to cut smaller circles that would fit in my muffin tins. From there, I filled them with the apple pie filling mix, baked in oven but shaved off some of the cooking time. Instead of the first time being 35 minutes, I turned that down to 22 minutes (give or take); the second round I cooked them for 8 minutes. From there, I followed the recipe and let things cool on a wire cooking wrack.
*By making the mini-pies, I ended up with a great deal more apples than pie crust. I did not want to make yet another trip to the store, so I asked my future mother-in-law (who lives nearby) if she had an extra pie crust. She said she did not have one but suggested making apple crisp. Love it when she suggests thing like that. So while the pies cool, I am making an apple crisp in the oven. Same temperature, about 25 minutes of baking time and I added some granola to the topping. *
The recipe for vanilla bean baked custard was rather simple as long as I wasn't doing five other things at once. This is a recipe meant to practice your timing skills my friends. It is also designed to test your Janga or Tetris skills because you have to actually have the right sized crock pot, ramekins, canning jar bands and not knock things over as you place the ramekins in the crock pot. Luckily, my mother loaned me her crock pot and my grocery store carries a wide variety of ramekins and I found the right ones.
If you have made your way over to the Cooking Light website, you'll note that this only makes enough custard for four people. You will also note my game reference above. Combine this with the number of people at my parent's house and you might note a dilemma: there will be five people there.
So like any typical American, I had to make a second trip to the grocery store to make a second batch of custard. At least this way, my fiance and I will get a chance to try the dish before we serve it to others since there will be three extra dishes.
Currently everything is cooling and waiting to have a taste test. When the fiance wakes up from his nap, perhaps we will sit down and try out the mini-pies and custards. I will let you know how it goes.
Happy Thanksgiving readers.
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