Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble. Or, why it's ok to sometimes use a boxed cake mix.

I have a confession. Sometimes I buy a box of cake mix. There. I said it. And I'm not sorry... Ok. I'm a little sorry.

Usually I don't see the point of pre-packaged cake mix because a cake is essentially flour, sugar and eggs and it's more trouble to go buy a box of cake mix than to just throw something together with whatever I happen to have on hand in my kitchen. But sometimes... sometimes I buy a box of cake mix.

And then it sits on my shelf. And it sits there. And I use up all the flour and sugar and eggs making cakes from scratch. And the box of cake mix sits there. And then I start to feel guilty, because inside that cake mix is a delicious dessert just waiting for me to add eggs, oil, and water. And frosting. And I'm standing in its way with my fancy flour and sugar and eggs.

And when that happens, when I become racked with guilt over the poor sad box of cake mix in my pantry, I buy rhubarb.

And I make a rhubarb crumble.

I learned the wonders of the rhubarb crumble when I was about 9 or 10 and a friend of my family, Aunt Shelley, came to visit. During the course of her visit she discovered that we had rhubarb growing in our back yard and made the most delicious summer treat ever. Aunt Shelley was a culinary genius.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was so easy that I, a mere child, could make it! And I've been making it ever since. I wanted to give Aunt Shelley full credit for inventing this simple yet delicious recipe, but my mom informs me that if came from... sigh... the side of a cake box.

Side of said cake box sent to me by my mom. But, as you can see, still modified by Aunt Shelley, culinary genius.

I still think Aunt Shelley is a culinary genius.

So here's the recipe for strawberry-rhubarb crumble, with a few minor changes. I also made it in jars, because, you know I love that. But you can make it in a 9X13 pan if you are a 9X13 kind of person.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Ingredients: 

4 c cut rhubarb
2-ish cups cut strawberries
1 c sugar
3 oz package strawberry jello
1 c water
1 package white (or yellow) cake mix
1 stick of melted butter

You won't believe this. Just layer them. That's right. Nothing fancy.

Start with the rhubarb and strawberries.

Pile on the sugar. Top with the jello.

Pour the water on top. Sprinkle with the cake mix.

Douse with the butter.

No really. That's it. No mixing. No fancy kitchen equipment. Just throw it all in there.

Then bake at 350 for 45 minutes if you're using a 9X13 pan or 35 minutes if you're using half pint jars like I did. You want it to be golden brown and delicious looking.

See? Delicious.

Thalia learns to cook: Omelet!

Thalia learns to cook posts are recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

Here are the steps I used to take when preparing an omelet. See if you can spot the errors!

Step 1) Decide to make an omelet.

Step 2) Turn on the heat to full blast because things need to be hot!

Step 3) Find a pan, put it on the heat.

Step 4) Put in some olive oil.

Step 5) Realize that the pan is heating up way to fast and quickly crack some eggs into a too small cereal bowl and try to mix them as fast as you can with a fork because you don’t own a whisk. Try not to get too much extra egg on the countertop.

Step 6) Add some milk to the eggs and pour into the pan without fully mixing it in.

Step 7) Take out your veggies (onion, mushroom, broccoli that’s half bad because you bought broccoli without thinking about what you were going to do with it).

Step 8) Cut veggies quickly because you realize that the eggs are starting to burn. Use a plate to cut veggies because you don’t want to wash a cutting board and your plates are 15 year old hand me downs.

Step 9) Dump veggies into pan and realize you have no idea how to flip an omelet.

Step 10) Take spatula and attempt to flip omelet. Fail miserably, and decide you would be ok with scrambled eggs instead.

Step 11) Mix up eggs and veggies into a sort of scramble.

Step 12) Dump whole pan, burned eggs and all, back onto plate where you cut veggies.

Step 13) Eat eggs and mostly raw veggies with a side of bitter disappointment.

NOW!

Here are the current steps I take to make an omelet. See if you can spot the differences!

Step 1) Decide to make an omelet.

Step 2) Get out all of your ingredients: Eggs, milk, butter, onion, mushroom and broccoli that you bought specifically to make the omelet, because broccoli is delicious and good for you. Cheese is also a possibility here.

Step 3) Using a cutting board and sharp knife, chop up the vegetables into small piles. You need less than you think you do, but if you have extras, you can always store for tomorrow.

Step 4) Crack eggs into mixing bowl, add milk and whisk together with awesome whisk.

Step 5) Put pan on burner. Turn heat to medium low. Medium low is your friend.

Step 6) Add butter to the pan, as it melts, put in the vegetables.

Step 7) As the veggies cook, stir carefully with a spoon or spatula.

Step 8) Once the veggies are pretty close to cooked, pour in eggs.

Step 9) Wait until eggs are almost set. Slide spatula under one side of the eggs.

Step 10) Take a deep breath, and flip! The more of the spatula you can get under the eggs, the better off you will be.

Step 11) Sprinkle cheese in the middle if that’s your style.

Step 12) Fold omelet in half, slide onto fresh clean plate.

Step 13) Enjoy your veggie and cheese omelet with a side of awesome.

"Healthy" Petit Fours

I’m sure this will not come as a surprise to anyone, but I love butter, and cream, and chocolate, and sugar, and just about anything that you can think of that’s not healthy. Love it. I’ve never understood the appeal of low fat or fat free things… it seems like a waste of perfectly good food. I even take issue with vegetables. They’re all well and good when they’re a vehicle for something better (say, blue cheese in a salad), but they should not be encouraged.
But today… today is not about me… today it’s father’s day! And my mom’s birthday! Happy father’s day, Dad! Happy birthday, Mom! Here is a picture of their dogs:

My parent's dogs

Apparently I don’t have any pictures of my parents**. I do have many of their dogs though. I also don’t think that will surprise anyone.

What do you get your parents when they have everything? This is a problem I struggle with every Christmas, birthday, father’s day, mother’s day, and flag day. This time I decided to go back on the age-old advice that, when in doubt, parents will value presents you make more than anything you buy. I didn’t think they would want a macaroni necklace, or a finger painting, so I decided I would work to my strengths and send desserts!

But gifting desserts to my parents comes with certain challenges. Namely, they live 786 miles away, and my dad is on a diet that is almost, but not entirely, something approximately vegan. I needed a shippable, vegan, ultra-low fat delicious dessert. And preferably a pretty shippable, vegan, ultra-low fat delicious dessert.

In other words, I needed the impossible. Every dessert I could think of that was shippable was not up to my dad’s healthy food standards, and every dessert that I could think of that was healthy enough for my dad was not shippable.

And then I remembered petit fours (also known as pedophiles to handful of weird Ohioans… you know who you are!). Petit fours, little cakes wrapped in fondant, met all my requirements—because the cakes are wrapped in fondant they retain their moisture well, so they wouldn’t dry up while traveling 786 miles. Also, fondant is made of marshmallows, sugar, and water (all on the dad approved food list), and a fairly respectable cake can be made with some minor alterations to meet my dad’s healthy requirements. And even better, you can decorate the petit fours to look like tiny little presents. Tiny little presents of cake. Perfect.

Petit Fours!

SO, here you go! The solution to my parental-gift woes!

**This just in from my brother-in-law! A picture of my parents! Together! In the same picture! Eating the petit fours that shipped quite well!

“Healthy" Chocolate Cake Petit-Fours

Ingredients: 

Chocolate Cake:

• 3 c flour
• 2 c sugar 
• 6 T unsweetened cocoa powder 
• 2 t baking soda 
• 2 t baking powder 
• 2/3 c vegetable oil 
• 2 c water 
• 2 T distilled white vinegar 
• 2 t vanilla extract 

Fondant

• 1 lb small marshmallows
• 2 lbs powdered sugar
• 4 T water 
• Crisco (just to keep the fondant from sticking to your hands, don’t panic, dad!) 
• Corn syrup (for decorating) 
• Food coloring 

The first thing you need to do is bake the cake. This cake, unlike yellow cake (bah!!) is very easy to make. Just combine the dry ingredients all together, combine the wet ingredients all together, then combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Super easy.

I used a 9X13 pan and baked it at 350 for about half an hour (but the recipe I adapted this from said 20 minutes, so check frequently). I also used cake release on the pan so it would be easy to dump it out when it was finished baking. If you don’t have cake release, be sure to butter and flour the pan well.

Cool the cake for about 10 minutes, then dump it out. The best way to do this is to take a cooling rack and place it on top of the pan. Then flip the pan upside down and when the cake comes out remove the pan. Then use another cooling rack to flip the cake right-side up. Just place it on top of the cake, and while holding both cooling racks, flip over. Next time I make a cake I’ll be sure to document this process…

Cool the cake to room temperature (another tip – the cake isn’t cooled until the bottom of the cake is room temperature, not just the top!). Then wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer while you make the fondant.

Don’t be afraid of fondant. Fondant is your friend. And this fondant recipe is actually delicious! I promise! All you need to do is melt the marshmallows and 2 T water in a double boiler over simmering water. Stir it pretty consistently until the marshmallows are melted. Toss about ¾ of the powdered sugar on top of the melted marshmallows.

Now for the Crisco! Grease your hands and your counter top with it generously because otherwise you will have fondant-y fingers… and as delicious as that sounds, it becomes unmanageable very quickly!

Knead the fondant like you would knead dough, and once you’ve incorporated some of the sugar into the marshmallows, dump the mixture out onto the counter top. Start to incorporate the rest of the powdered sugar, and add water a little bit at a time if your fondant is dry and tears easily.

Divide the fondant into as many balls as you want colors. Then make a little divot in them and add the food coloring and begin working the food coloring in to the fondant, kneading and working the icing until it’s well incorporated.

Before

After

At this point, roll your fondant into a sphere and wrap in plastic wrap and set aside (you may need to refrigerate if you’re going to take a break). Now turn to your cake. Remove it from the freezer and cut into small bite-size-ish pieces. Put it back in the freezer while you’re preparing the next step with your fondant.
 
Spread out cornstarch (or I prefer powdered sugar) onto your work space and roll your fondant out until it’s fairly thin, but thick enough that you can work with it easily and not tear. For a much more expert account at fondant usage, see this blog post—it’s from someone who actually knows what she’s doing! 

Now, cut your fondant into squares and use these squares to “wrap” your cake pieces just like you would wrap a present. Instead of tape, however, use corn syrup! You can use your finger or a small pastry brush to glue your fondant together to make your presents.

Once you’ve wrapped all of your cake pieces, take the scraps of fondant and decorate the cakes. I like to make little polka dots because they’re adorable and easy (I just use the other side of a pastry tip), but you can do whatever you want! I also like to use nuts (almond slivers are pretty) or chocolate chips for decorations sometimes too. You are only limited by your imagination! J Happy fondant-ing!!

And happy birthday to my mom, and happy father’s day to my dad!

 

Pro tips that actually work: Smashing garlic

Protips that actually work are fancy things that you read about or see on TV shows that actually aren’t that hard to do. Or maybe are a bit hard to do, but totally worth it.

Where I learned it: A combination of watching Top Chef and reading about it in one of Mark Bittman’s cookbooks.

This one may not actually qualify as a “protip” since I think everyone who has ever cooked anything with garlic now does this. However, since I use garlic a lot (a lot) when I cook, this has been a real time saver, plus! bonus stress relief. And, as a total Harry Potter dork, this reminds me of a moment in Half Blood Prince (when Harry learns he can get more juice from the sopophorous bean via smashing rather than cutting. Hermione is understandably pissed as a result).

Basically, once you have separated a clove from the head of garlic, you don’t even have to peel it, just take a knife, turn it on its side, and push down on the garlic clove. The clove will smash, and the skin will separate. Woohoo! Then, you can take the skin and add it to your vegetable stock container (a pro-tip to come), and you can either mash up the garlic further, or cut it up, or just take the smashed clove and add it to your oil, etc right there.


No need for a garlic press (which is impossible to clean), much better than jarred garlic (which doesn’t have as much flavor), you rarely need nicely chopped garlic in a recipe (we’re not that fancy), and bonus stress relief of smashing the crap out of that garlic. And since garlic is usually one of the first things to get prepped in a meal, it’s a fun start to the cooking.

When life gives you yellow cake, scrap it in favor of pie!

For some reason I cannot bake a yellow cake. Chocolate cake? Yes. White cake? Yes. Red Velvet? Bring it on. But yellow? No. Every time I try to bake a yellow cake disaster strikes. When I was in college I made a yellow cake to take to some colleagues (in this case the colleagues were literally a bunch of chimps) and one thing led to another and the cake ended up upside down in my parents’ driveway. Yellow cake: 1. Ellen: 0.

Since then, things have not gotten any better. Just in the last few months I have ruined at least 3 (THREE) perfectly innocent yellow cakes. Just the other day I decided to try to make this beautiful lemon layer cake from cooks illustrated. So delicious. Yellow cake with lemon curd filling and a light fluffy frosting! Things were going to be great! And then it fell sideways. No amount of icing would save it. Yellow cake: 2. Ellen: 0.

So then, this weekend I decided I would defeat this cake. I would finally bake a yellow cake worth eating. I would bake it in jars. Jars provide so much structure that they don’t let cake fall sideways. Jars fix everything. I made the lemon curd. It was delicious. Things were off to a great start. I made the cakes in jars and… well… Yellow cake: 3. Ellen: 0.

I wasn’t going to allow the yellow cake to ruin the rest of my day. And I had a beautiful lemon curd that I had to do SOMETHING with. When life gives you failed cake, make pie! Pie never lets me down. Pie is always there for me. Pie is the best. So I made lemon meringue pie. In jars. I know, I’m obsessed with the jars. Take that yellow cake. Take THAT.

Lovely Lemon Curd!

I made two crusts using the butter crust recipe described in the derby pie in jars recipe and half pint jars (all my 4 oz jars were otherwise occupied… derby pies, crème brulee, pots de crème, oh my!). This made 15 crusts, but maybe could have made more if I smooshed them better. But I was having a rough day.

Lemon Meringue Pies in Jars!

I made these lovely lemon meringue pies, and they turned out fabulously! However, my lemon curd only lasted for 9 pies. I had 6 pies left. 6 empty pie shells waiting for something amazing to happen to them. Namely, chocolate pie. It became a 2 mixer day! I love 2 mixer days!

Two Mixers!

Then this happened.

Yes. That’s chocolate, all over me. All over me and my dorky math shirt (also a hole in my sock. Don’t tell my mother). I blame the yellow cake... that spiteful jerk. The chocolate pie did not turn out so deliciously (perhaps because almost all the chocolate ended up all over me), so I will just give you my improvised lemon meringue pie recipe. Best of luck. I hope you have better kitchen karma than I.

Improvised Lemon Meringue Pie (much of this comes from the Cooks Illustrated lemon cake recipe) 

Ingredients:

1 batch of the butter crust recipe (see the derby pie page) 

Lemon Curd:

• 1 c fresh lemon juice (6-ish lemons, depending on the size; plus 1 T for the meringue) 
• 1 t unflavored gelatin powder 
• 1 ½ c sugar 
• pinch of salt 
• 4 large eggs 
• 6 large egg yolks (hold onto 2 of the whites!) 
• 1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes and frozen (you can put it in the freezer before you start the rest of the recipe, it works just as well)

Meringue:

• 2 egg whites 
• 1 c sugar 
• ¼ c water
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 T corn syrup 

Start by making a dozen 4 oz jar pie crusts (or probably 1 regular size pie would work). Stick them in the fridge while you’re making the lemon curd. 

Measure 1 T lemon juice into a little cup, sprinkle gelatin over top and set aside. Heat the remaining lemon juice, sugar and salt in a pan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves and mixture is hot (but not boiling).

Whisk eggs and yolks in a bowl, and while whisking constantly, pour lemon-sugar syrup into the eggs and return to pan.

Cook over medium-low heat and stir constantly with a spatula or spoon (not a whisk, which is what I have a tendency to do) until the mixture has thickened and reaches 170 degrees (about 5 minutes).

Remove from heat and stir in gelatin/lemon juice mixture until it’s thoroughly dissolved. Then add in the frozen butter until it’s incorporated.

Pour through a strainer into a bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Bake your pie crusts at 350 until golden brown. I think it took about 10-15 minutes. Give or take.

Cool the crusts to room temperature, then fill about ½ to ¾ of the way with lemon curd mixture. Again, I like to use a cookie scoop for this to make things easier.

Then, make your meringue topping. Combine all meringue ingredients in a bowl of a mixer and place in a double boiler (or a pan with an inch of water in the bottom). Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 160 degrees (5 – 10 minutes). Remove from heat and beat on medium speed until soft peaks form (5-ish minutes) and then turn speed up to medium-high and beat until mixture has cooled and stiff peaks form (another 5 minutes).

Use your trusty ice cream scoop to scoop meringue on top of the pies, and torch with a kitchen torch!

Enjoy!  

Pre-Torched

Post-Torched

Thalia Learns to Cook: Pesto

Thalia learns to cook posts are recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

This is the true story of a meal turned around, and I think very emblematic of how I’m learning to cook. My husband and I joined a CSA for the Spring and Summer. For the uninitiated and those not living in hipster/ liberal enclaves, a CSA is “Community Sponsored Agriculture” or Farm Share. Basically, you pay a farm a set fee at the beginning of the season, they use that money to get through the season, and then each week they deliver (or you pick up- individual results may vary) a bag of food!

Because of all the rain and cool weather this spring in CT, our food bags have been filled with greens. Many many greens. Bok choy, dandelion greens, spinach, carrots with a foot of greens attached, boston and romaine and other mixed lettuce, mizuna, basil, cilantro, parsley. So yeah, a lot of greens. In addition to the food, we also get a weekly email with a list of the ingredients and a few recipes that attempt to use some of the more esoteric deliveries. For instance, what do you do with a huge bunch of carrots attached to a huge-r bunch of greens?

The answer? Pesto! Being an unabashed white pasta lover, pesto makes me happy. It’s one of those things where if I see it on a menu at a restaurant, I’m hard pressed to order anything else. (What do you mean pesto-sun dried tomato combinations went out of style in the late 90’s? They’re so delicious!) So, bunches of carrot greens in hand, I decided to try pesto for the first time.

Cilantro Pesto (recipe from the Gazy Farms CSA email)
**Note: This can also be used with carrot greens, as you can see from the photos in this post.

Ingredients:
1 bunch fresh cilantro
(or 1 bunch carrot greens: but you have to boil the greens for 1 minute and let them
drain for 5 minutes before you start chopping them up for the food processor).
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup walnuts or pine nuts (I used a mix. Pine nuts are mega expensive).
Salt to taste 1/2 cup olive oil (plus more as needed)

Method: In an electric food processor or blender, blend cilantro, garlic, vinegar, Parmesan cheese, cayenne pepper, nuts, and salt. Add 1/4 cup of the olive oil, and blend the pesto. Add more olive oil until the pesto reaches your desired consistency.

Pour pesto in a small saucepan and warm over low heat, stirring constantly, until pesto begins to simmer. Serve over cooked pasta, or as a delicious spread.

-----

And here’s where the story goes terribly terribly wrong.

So, while I was pouring the olive oil into the blender, I thought to myself “wow, that’s awesome that the olive oil just cooks the garlic so you can eat the pesto raw.”

So, when I put the pesto into the pan to heat it up I did it minimally. As in, not long enough to cook the garlic to the point where it lost its raw garlic taste. Have you ever eaten raw garlic? Not pleasant. Worse, have you even been within breathing range of someone who just ate raw garlic? Even worse.

I then mix the not-at-all cooked pesto in with my delicious white spaghetti (no I will not apologize for not using wheat pasta. It’s not as good, so neener neener).

Then I taste it. Hmmmmmm… it tastes like raw garlic and not much else. None of the parmesean or cilantro or pine nut flavor comes through. It’s like chewing on raw garlic. Thinking that perhaps the olive oil just hasn’t had time to do its job, I serve it up on a plate and sit down to dinner.

Hmmmmm…. Says my patient husband…. It tastes like garlic and not much else. Did you cook it? He asks?
No! I try to explain, the olive oil cooks it! I don’t know why it didn’t work!

And this is when I get the look.

I’ve seen this look before. It starts out with a “wait what? This is a perfectly obvious error you are making, what kind of person make this error”… And then moves into a “oh yes, now I remember, you are still learning how to cook, so I should correct you, but gently” and then into “very gently” (because I might have burst into tears once or twice when first learning how to cook and making obvious mistakes in my early days.)

“You know Olive oil doesn’t cook garlic.”
“Huh?” I answer… “It’s like citrus! Or vinegar! It cooks….” oh wait.

Olive oil is the OPPOSITE of citrus or vinegar. Right. The opposite. It does not cook things. It just adds fat and richness. Right. OK. So, we put the whole thing, pesto and already fully cooked pasta together, back into the pan, and try to cook off some of the bite, while I attempt to figure out where this lack of knowledge seems to have slipped through. This is emblematic of my errors: I often don’t have the exact knowledge I need to make the dish work, so I either forge ahead and hope whatever I make up is correct (which works more now than it did at the beginning), or somehow I substitute knowledge from another source (citrus cooks ceviche) and put it out of context (oil cooks garlic?) to horrifying results.

But! A Happy Ending approaches:
A few weeks later, lesson learned, we received another recipe, this time for Spinach Basil Pesto:

Spinach Basil Pesto

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups baby spinach leaves
3/4 cup fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Method:
Blend the spinach, basil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, lemon zest, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a food processor until nearly smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula as necessary. Drizzle the remaining olive oil into the mixture while processing until smooth. (Notice how the recipes are pretty much identical?)

This time, I cooked the pesto fully in a pan before mixing it in to the pasta.

And this time, it was all I could do to not just eat the pesto with a spoon from the pan and finish and entire pound of pasta by myself. I held off, and it was amazing. See! Dreams do come true!

Baking in Tiny Jars: Derby Pie

I’m an animal enthusiast who comes from the horse capital of the world, whose great-uncle was a triple crown winning jockey, and whose cousin is currently mayor of Louisville--home to Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. By all rights I should be a horse enthusiast. But I have a confession… the only day I can get excited about horses is Kentucky derby day. And, while I’m confessing, it’s not the horses that make derby day magical for me. No, it’s the pie.

Kentucky derby pie (which I suppose I should call ‘horse race pie’ since we live in a world where the name ‘derby pie’ has been trademarked… just know that I’m rolling my eyes) is the best thing that ever happened. Ever. For you Yankees who don’t already know, derby pie is a chocolate pecan pie with a wee bit of bourbon. I could eat an entire pie. All by myself.

Because I often have this desire to eat a whole pie by myself, and because it’s adorable, I often make individual derby pies for my annual derby shin-dig (the party is all about the pie. And the hats).

This year, my life changed when I learned something amazing. I hope you’re sitting down for this because it may change your life too. Pies in jars. It’s the second best thing that ever happened. Why? Let me detail the ways:

Pies baked in tiny jars!

1. Jars have lids. I’ve probably sold you on pies in jars already with just lids! They’re stackable, they’re transportable, they’re amazing! 
2. You can freeze the pies in the jars. Make the pies as far ahead as you want! Pop on the lid, freeze them before you bake, and take the pies right from the freezer to the oven (removing the lid first!)! So easy! 
3. You can bake the pies in the jars. RIGHT IN THE JARS. And they’re a single serving, so you don’t have to worry about getting carried away with portion sizes… you can eat the whole pie and not go into a diabetic coma! 
4. You can serve the pies in the jars. No extra cleaning! No additional plates! 
5. You can get adorable canning labels for the lids. This is just an extra touch… but a particularly cute one. 
6. Later, when you have leftovers, you can keep them in the freezer and have one whenever you panic because there’s no dessert in the house. What? That doesn’t happen to you? 
7. You can ship them! Yes, I ship pies to the deserving. If you’re really nice to me, maybe pies will show up at your house one day. 

Well, now that I’ve convinced you of the wonders of derby pies in jars, let’s get to the good bit—how to make them! I learned about pies in jars from the Not Martha blog, so here are some of the tips she had, as well as the tips I learned through trial and error.

This recipe makes about a dozen pies in 4 oz jars. I use these from amazon, but you can sometimes find them at walmart, and apparently stop & shop as well!

For the pie crust you’ll need:

            1 ¼ c flour

            ½ t salt

            1 T sugar

            ½ c butter (chilled and cut into 1" cubes)

            ⅛ - ¼ c cold water

And for the filling you’ll need:

            1 stick melted butter

            1 c sugar

            1 c corn syrup

            4 eggs

            1 T bourbon

            ¾ c. chocolate chips (give or take)

            ¾ c pecans

Whipped cream, just for fun

First make the crust. I like to use a butter crust recipe because it’s delicious, and it holds up pretty well to the freezing process (people always say stuff like that in food blogs, thought I should throw something like that in, but honestly, I have no idea if it’s better or worse than other crusts, I just like butter). I also like to use a food processor to make my crust because I’m lazy, but you can also use a pastry cutter if you have the patience.

Put the flour, salt and sugar in the food processor and process until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal (about 15 seconds). Pour ⅛ c water through food tube, adding a little water at a time until the dough holds together.

Technically you should chill the dough for a bit before you move on to the next part, but who has time for that when there’s a question of pie? SO, go right to it, but if you’re a stickler for the rules chill the dough for about an hour.

When you’re ready to put together your pies, press pieces of pastry dough against the jars to make the crust. It’s not going to be elegant, but just smoosh it in there. You don’t want it to be very thick, so be careful to flatten it out, especially down around the bottom edge. Don’t let your dog steal your pie crusts. No matter how much she begs. 

Add your pecans and chocolate chips! Put about a tablespoon each in the bottom of the jars and then chill them while you make the filling.

The filling is really easy – just mix the remaining pie ingredients together (from the butter to the bourbon).

Once you’re done making the filling you can add it to your jars! I like to use a cookie scoop because it helps keep things tidy and prevents drips of pie filling from going all over the place. You don’t want to fill them too much, you want to leave enough room so when the filling rises a little bit while baking you can still put the lid on. Something like 4/5 of the way to the top is just about perfect. 

At this point you can do one of two things -- you can put the lids on the jars and put them in the freezer until you're ready to use them (at which point you can take them right from the freezer to a 350 degree oven and bake for 45 minutes to an hour), or you can bake them (at 350 for about half an hour or 45 minutes).

You want them to be browned on top and to look like this:

They’re best served either a little bit warm (not hot) or at room temperature and with a little bit of whipped cream. I can never wait that long though, and always burn myself. It’s worth it though… it’s worth it.