Hey guys!
I missed this. Furey & the Feast is back, kinda, albeit with technical difficulties and all kinds of editorial dysfunction. (Where did the time go?) The redesign still in the works, but hey, we’ll go ahead as planned. An FAQ will be posted later this week explaining some of the editorial changes. In the meantime, if you think it looks exactly the same in here as it did before, well, you’re right. But we’re working through the chaos backstage, and it’ll happen, I promise!

So without further ado, here’s this week’s recipe. The following is from my Food 101 column in The Orange County Register: a sweet take on the classic grilled cheese sandwich. For best results, serve it with ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce — or all of the above — and a tall glass of Champagne.

GRILLED CHEESE GOES SWEET

Do you remember the first time you tasted a grilled cheese sandwich? I do – and it wasn’t pretty. My childhood experience consisted of two cellophane-wrapped slices of that ubiquitous neon cheese, sandwiched between white bread, all of which was promptly nuked in the microwave for a handful of seconds until the cheese had melted. What resulted wasn’t quite a “grilled cheese” as it was a soggy, gooey mass, bordered by a rigid crust that only a superhero could munch through.

It had my mouth watering every single time.

Of course, back then, I was easier to please. Anything made with processed cheese was welcome to my hungry belly. But when I eventually tasted a real grilled cheese, there was no turning back to this microwaved monstrosity. That crisp, buttery bread; the way the warm, creamy cheddar sticks to the roof of your mouth when you take your first bite. In those lunchtime or dinner moments, there are few things in the world that are simpler and more satisfying than a classic grilled cheese sandwich. Unless, of course, you have one for dessert.

This dessert grilled cheese still has all of the typical grilled cheese components, though in different forms: Angel food cake stands in for regular bread, brie takes the place of American cheddar cheese, and balsamic strawberries are added to sweeten the sandwich up even more. If you’re not making angel food cake from scratch, you can buy it pre-made from your local supermarket. Some markets will carry “angel food bars” which are essentially loaves, and these are easier to slice into uniform pieces than the characteristic ringed cakes. Angel food cake also grills beautifully, and because of its small crumb, yields an even golden-brown crust. Flexing your creative muscles can be very, very delicious.

For this recipe, you’ll need is a nonstick frying pan, a non-metal spatula and a pastry brush, the latter to use with the melted butter. If you don’t have a pastry brush, you can always blot the butter onto the cake with a paper towel. Just be gentle, and make sure you cover the slice’s entire surface.

STRAWBERRY GRILLED CHEESE
Yield: 4 servings

• 1 pint strawberries
  2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
  1 teaspoon sugar
  12 to 16 ounces brie cheese
  8 slices angel food cake, about 1/2-inch thick
  1/3 cup melted butter
  Optional garnish: Powdered sugar, whipped cream

Procedure:
1. Rinse strawberries and pat dry, then slice in the halves or quarters, depending on size of strawberries. Place in a medium bowl with balsamic vinegar and sugar. Mix to coat, and set aside for 30 minutes, stirring once to redistribute syrup.
2. Slice rind off of brie. (This is a little tricky, given the brie can be gooey and hard to work with. Make sure the brie is chilled rather than room temperature, as will help a bit.) Once rind is removed, slice brie into 1/2-inch thick chunks.
3. Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Brush butter on one side of angel food cake slice, and position it butter-side down on a cutting board or other work surface. Arrange chunks of brie and a few balsamic strawberries on slice, then top with another slice of angel food cake, brushing the top with melted butter.
4. Grill sandwich in pan for about 3 to 4 minutes. Flip sandwich over, and use spatula to press down, to flatten slightly, so all ingredients meld together. Grill for an additional 3 to 4 minutes, or until slice is uniformly golden brown.
5. To serve: Cut each sandwich into two triangles, and serve warm with remaining balsamic strawberries. Garnish with powdered sugar and/or whipped cream, if desired.

As a kid, I’d spent some serious time in the cupboards spooning heaps of brown sugar into my eager mouth. I preferred brown over white, mainly because I believed its flavors were more interesting (and because I believed I got more of a sugar high).

As I got older, I slowly lost the taste for cloyingly sweet things like Big Stick popsicles, Gushers fruit snacks and Pixy Stix. The desire to fit all 6 feet of strawberry Bubble Tape in my mouth at once also went with it. But brown sugar? Not a chance. To this day, I’ll still sneak a little bit here and there.

These cookies are a throwback to my childhood, echoing of honey, molasses and caramel, containing much more dark brown sugar than I could ever eat in a single day with my spoon. I like to make these huge, so when you pair one with a tall glass of milk, you might actually be left with more cookie than milk.

BROWN SUGAR COOKIES 
Yield: 18 massive cookies 

•  3/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Move oven racks to upper and middle third of your oven, and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two cookie sheets or jelly roll pans with parchment paper. Cream butter and both sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer (or with a hand mixer). Add egg, vegetable oil an vanilla, and mix until incorporated.
2. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt, and mix to combine. Add flour mixture to mixing bowl and mix until all ingredients just come together (dough will be a bit wet and crumbly).
3. Portion dough into 18 balls (we’re talking a little bigger than a golf ball) and place on cookie sheets about 2 1/2 inches to 3 inches apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes for chewy cookies, and 16 to 18 minutes for crunchy. (The chewy cookies will be pale in color with crisp edges, while the crunchy ones will be a little more uniformly golden.) Remove from oven, cool in pan for 5 minutes before placing on rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container.

Ed note: Big changes are coming to F&F in the very near future! Please bear with me and these shorter posts, as a lot of my time is focusing on the new stuff. I hope you’ll like what we’ll eventually have in store!

Puff pastry has to be one of the seven wonders of the culinary world. For me at least, it’s right up there with caramelizing sugar and emulsions. I know how it works, I understand the science, but doggonit if it doesn’t make my head shake when I watch the magic happen.

In a nutshell, puff pastry is made by folding the buttery dough over and over and over onto itself so when its baked, it expands like a blowfish on steroids. Traditionally, it was time-consuming to make, but now we have all these shortcuts and even frozen versions, which I hate to admit, I LOVE to use.  When unexpected company drops by to say hello, one can take a thawed sheet of puff pastry, shove in some chocolate chips, cover with coconut flakes and bake it all in the oven for quick sweet appetizer or mini dessert.

These little puffs start out looking like ravioli, but they rise (and rise) to yield little flaky cubes with melty chocolate centers. By all means, experiment – I imagine adding a little strawberry jam or orange marmalade to the mix wouldn’t hurt. Using your own puff pastry instead of buying it frozen would up the awesomness of the dish, but there’s nothing wrong with the pre-made frozen kind, especially if you’re pressed for time.

CHOCOLATE PUFF PASTRY BITES
Yield: 18 pieces

• 1 sheet puff pastry dough, thawed
• 1/2 cup bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
• Garnish: Powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut puff pastry sheet into thirds, then cut each sheet into 6 rectangles.
2. Make a small pile of chocolate chips on one side of a puff pastry rectangle. Fold other side over chocolate chips and seal by pressing fork tines onto the edges. It should look like a little piece of ravioli. Place on a nonstick cookie sheet, or a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Repeat with remaining ingredients.
3. Brush the tops of the puffs with melted butter, and press a bit of flaked coconut onto each square.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until coconut is browned and puff pastry squares are a pale golden color. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes. Sift a little powdered sugar over the top before serving. Serve warm at High Tea, or any other time during the day, with a hot cup of black tea or a tall glass of cold milk.

A few years back, The Orange County Register had one of the most horrendous advertising bloopers I’ve seen to date. There was this campaign called “Take Back the Morning,” which in itself was genius because it encouraged people to carve out some quiet morning time to read the newspaper. I can get behind that.

But then the message was paired with a whole broadsheet page dedicated to the words “GO AWAY” printed larger than any headline that’s ever run in the paper’s recent history. The idea was that a newspaper reader would be sitting in a chair with an open paper shielding him/her from view, with the back of the newspaper facing the rest of the world and telling it to “GO AWAY.” But instead of the morning distractions going away, I heard of a few cases where offended subscribers did instead. 

The idea was quickly whisked away and replaced by better and more successful ads. The “Take Back the Morning” message faded with it, but it shouldn’t have — I really think the advertisers had something there. Why don’t we take back our mornings from the rituals of rushing to work on time? Waking up a tad earlier on weekdays wouldn’t hurt, I think, especially if you filled your newfound time with some baking. Because then, not only would you be taking back your morning, but you’d also have something to take to work with you to remind you of the time you stole from the snooze button.

For night owls or newbies to this “Take Back the Morning” baking business, mini muffins are right up your alley. You only need to wake up about 25 minutes earlier than you usually do, which shouldn’t be too painful. (As a fellow non-morning person, I can attest to this.) 

You can mix the batter and pop the pan in the oven, letting the muffins bake while you brew coffee or take a quick shower (or read a newspaper!). Standard mini muffin pans also make the batter-measuring process easier: All you need is a rounded measuring tablespoon to scoop up the batter and portion it into the muffin cups. Adding chocolate and toffee chips only sweeten the deal, and if you really need a pick-me-up, dot the tops with crystallized ginger before baking for extra zing. 

BANANA TOFFEE-CHIP MINI MUFFINS 

Yield: 20 mini muffins

• 4 ounces flour
• 2 ounces golden brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 medium ripe banana, mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup toffee chips
• Optional: Crystallized ginger for topping

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a mini-muffin pan with paper liners, or use a nonstick mini-muffin pan.
2. Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a small bowl. In a larger bowl, add melted butter, milk, egg and mashed banana, and mix thoroughly.
3. Dump the dry ingredients into the bowl of wet ingredients, and whisk with a fork until just combined. Add in chocolate and toffee chips.
4. Using a tablespoon measuring spoon, portion out 1 tablespoon of muffin batter into each muffin cup. Top batter with chopped crystallized ginger, if desired.
5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean. Enjoy your morning.

There once was a Le Creuset pot,
Whose insides were blackened a lot,
When a cook disregarded
To stir constantly when prompted –
Please learn from her: stir more often than not!

You and I both know that candymaking requires way more attention than say, a casserole or whatever you cook in that Set-it-and-Forget-it Ronco thing you got for Christmas. I don’t have to tell you that. But I do have to tell me that.

It’s what I like to call Recipe Performance Fatigue. After making a recipe a dozen times, you start to get a little lazy with it. Ingredients are skipped, corners are cut. The beauty of cooking is that most of the time, your dish will still be fabulous despite the RPF tendencies you gravitated toward while making it. But candymaking doesn’t have room for all that corner-cutting. This is especially true when you’re making caramels and are dealing with sugar that boils and bubbles like the contents of an active Hawaiian volcano.

RPF is how I skipped the part about “stirring constantly,” ultimately leading to the stubborn black circle of carbon lining the bottom of my beloved enameled pot.

But I will say that the Le Creuset pot’s demise wasn’t in vain. For one, I’ve been scrubbing and soaking it for a couple of weeks and it seems to be slowly helping in lifting out the blackened mess. And to my surprise, the batch of caramels set up beautifully, glistening and cracking in all the right places when you cut them. And they were lacking any foul taste that would hint at my kitchen debacle. It was a Christmas miracle, so much so that I had to sprinkle them with fleur de sel — delicate flakes and tiny cubes that would come as close to snow as Southern California would allow. RPF, eat your heart out! Now, back to scrubbing my pot.

(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

For this recipe, you will need a candy thermometer or a digital thermometer that can read higher than 250 degrees. If you don’t have a Le Creuset pot, any heavy-bottomed pot will do. Just be sure to stir constantly so you don’t have to write cheesy limericks about your candymaking exploits (refer to top of post). The following recipe yields a chocolate caramel with a soft, buttery chew. The recipe that inspired it is from Epicurious, which yields a harder caramel with a heartier chew.

CHOCOLATE CARAMELS WITH FLEUR DE SEL
Adapted from Epicurious
Yield: 60 to 80 caramels (depending on how you cut them)

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 10 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate or chocolate chips (up to 60 percent cacao)
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
• 2 to 3 tablespoons Fleur de Sel

1. Line a 9 x 11 (or smaller) rimmed baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Add cream to a small pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from burner and add chocolate. Wait about a minute, and then stir mixture until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth and creamy.
3. In a Le Creuset pot over high heat, add sugar, corn syrup, water and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring to make sure sugar is completely dissolved. Let pot boil for about 10 minutes, or until sugar is a deep amber color.
4. Slowly stir in chocolate mixture. At this stage, the pot will steam violently like you’ve made it angry or something. It’s cool, you’re doing it right.
5. Stir mixture constantly as you gauge the temperature of the pot’s contents. When it reads 243 degrees, remove the pot from heat and stir in the butter to finish.
6. Pour caramel into prepared pan (but don’t scrape the pan, it’s hot!). Let it sit for about 10 minutes, then sprinkle the Fleur de Sel over it. Cool completely.

To cut: Remove caramel slab to a cutting board and peel off paper. Cut slab into squares. If caramel is a little hard to work with, you can pop the slab into the freezer for a minute and it will be easier to cut. Wrap each caramel individually with wax paper squares. Caramels keep at room temperature in an airtight container for about 2 weeks.

For the most part, Keller takes a no-frills approach when naming his recipes. His brownie recipe from ad hoc at home is simply titled “brownies” — minus any capitalization and all the other things you can add to a title (i.e., “double chocolate brownies” or “best brownies in the whole freaking world”). Things many of us do to try and make our recipes stand out from the rest of the pack. He doesn’t need all that.

ad hoc at home, Keller’s latest installment, is by far my favorite.  It’s also the first Keller book that I’ve seriously cooked from, unless you count the time I made Bouchon’s onion soup. Though fantastic, it came at a steep price: Cooking the required 8 pounds of onions for 4 hours made my tiny apartment smell like I had a Funyun party the night before. With each passing day the intensity of the onion scent diminished, but the actual scent got worse. It went from smelling like sweet caramelized onions to the inside the mouth of a halitosis sufferer. But I’d spend another 4 hours of my life stirring a stock pot full of onions for that rich, buttery onion soup.

The wafting aroma of baking brownies is much easier to stomach than that of 8 pounds of slow-cooked onions. And in winter, a house smelling of chocolate and warmed by an oven is one of life’s pleasures. A simple pleasure, just like Keller’s brownies. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

This recipe makes 12 brownies. At first, a mere dozen may not seem like enough — but believe me, their richness is more than enough. The recipe can be doubled, however, and baked in a 9×13 pan. This makes the brownies a bit taller, so you can cut them into thinner rectangles. Use good chocolate whenever you can.

BROWNIES
Adapted from ad hoc at home by Thomas Keller
Yield: 12 brownies

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup unsweetened alkalized cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups 61-64 percent chocolate (I use chocolate chips for ease)
• Garnish: Powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9×9 pan. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder and salt.
3. In a small saucepan (or in the microwaveable glass bowl), melt half of the butter. Put the remaining butter into a medium bowl and pour the melted butter over the non-melted butter. Stir until remaining butter melts, and mixture is creamy with small bits of butter floating around.
4. In a stand mixer, mix together eggs and sugar for 3 minutes, or until pale yellow in color and thick. Add vanilla. With the mixer on lowest speed setting, alternate adding 1/3 of the sifted dry mixture and 1/3 of the butter until just combined. Add in chocolate chips.
5. Spread batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it. Completely cool brownies in pan before cutting. Dust with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

– Cynthia Furey

(Note: Giveaway rules appear right under the recipe.)

Friends, the gods are totally smiling upon me today, for today is a double holiday. Not only is it Thanksgiving, but it’s also (Drumroll! Fanfare!) Furey & the Feast’s first birthday. Which means there’s turkey, pie AND birthday cake. I might add that it’s not just any birthday cake, but it’s a chocolate cake.

A microwave chocolate cake. (Are those crickets I hear?)

Normally I’m not too keen on using the nukebox as a cooking method, but this is a special case.

I was 9 or 10 years old when I bought my first cookbook, which I ordered from the pages of that Scholastic book club newsletter you get every month when you’re in elementary school. “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts” had this beautiful chocolate cake on the cover, all done-up with chocolate curls and strawberry garnishes. What a cookbook was doing in an Scholastic newsletter I have no idea, but I remember thinking something along the lines of holy crap, I can make that?

Among the 140 recipes in this cookbook, there were only a handful of them that a child could make without parental know-how and knowledge. One of them was this cake. My mom had banned sweets from the house long ago, so this cake was, in my eyes, the greatest of mankind’s achievements. I could have cake every single weekday of  summer while my mom was at work, thanks to the ease of the microwave. She’d never know.

So in honor of these childhood and blog firsts, I wanted to “bake” this cake again. Back then, each forkful of cake laced with deviousness was especially delightful. Without that element, would it taste the same after all this time?

(Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe and giveaway)

It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve even looked at this recipe, with its outdated fonts and taboo methods. Do people really use margarine in buttercream frosting these days? And since when does baking a cake require that you line the pan with plastic wrap? I’m certain I wasn’t the only one baking from this cookbook in the late 1980s/early ’90s, so I’m glad to say that we’ve all come a loooong way since those days. As for its taste: well, it’s not quite as I remember it. It’s like the microwaveable brownie you get in those Tyson frozen meals. The cake may not be as sweet as the memory, but it’ll do in a pinch.

HERSHEY’S MICROWAVE CHOCOLATE CAKE
Adapted from “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts”
Yield: 8 servings

• 1/4 cup Hershey’s Cocoa
• 2/3 cup hot water, divided
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Line an 8-inch by 1 1/20-inch microwave-safe dish or bowl with plastic wrap.
2. In a small glass bowl, combine cocoa and 1/3 cup hot water. Microwave on high power for 40 to 50 seconds, or until mixture is slightly thickened.
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix in oil, remaining 1/3 cup water, egg and vanilla. Add in chocolate mixture and stir for 40 or 50 strokes, until batter is smooth and all ingredients are incorporated.
4. Pour batter into plastic wrap-lined bowl/pan. Nuke on high power for 5 to 6 minutes. Cake is done when it begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes to cool.
5. Invert cake onto serving plate and peel off plastic wrap. Cool cake completely before frosting (recipe follows).

EASY COCOA FROSTING
Adapted from “Hershey’s Fabulous Desserts”
Yield: 1 cup

• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine (please, oh please don’t use the latter), softened
• 1/4 cup Hershey’s cocoa
• 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
• 2 to 3 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Combine all ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Use paddle attachment to beat ingredients until frosting becomes spreadable. Spread over cake and garnish as desired.

After birthday cake, there’s usually presents. So in honor of F&F’s milestone, Artist Lisa Orgler of the Lunch Box Project and I are having ourselves a giveaway. Lisa creates these amazing whimsical paintings of food using playing cards as canvases – like this lovely one (at right) she painted of my Insalata Infilzata, which I bought, framed and hung in my dining room.

The grand prize winner of this contest receives one of Lisa’s paintings – your choice from her collection, or one from your own blog you would like her to paint. (Whether you win or not, you should also know that Lisa is having a buy one get one free special from Dec. 1-15. Go have a look!)

How to enter: In the comments section of this post, share your most flamboyant, embarrassing or epic kitchen disaster while cooking a holiday meal (mine involves twin flaming meatloafs, for example).

Fine print: The contest runs from today through Dec. 2. I’ll choose the top five best stories and pick a winner at random on Dec. 3. I’ll also pick three entries at random to each win an 8-ounce package of Cacao Rouge cocoa powder, made by Chuao Chocolatier, a Venezuelan chocolatier based out of my ‘hood of Southern California. (The only thing I ask in return is a promise never to use this awesome chocolate in a microwave chocolate cake!) One entry per person, please. Good luck, and I can’t wait to read your stories!

After cake and presents come the thank yous. Although these come last, they’re not at all of least importance. Super-enormous thank yous and virtual hugs go out to everyone who humors me in reading this blog. A writer is nothing without readers and I am truly, truly thankful for you. I hope you get something out of your time spent here. I hope you are entertained.

A special thank you also goes out to the writers behind The Chickenless Kitchen and Sweet Water – Lindsay and Jenn, respectively. The two lovely ladies awarded me with the Kreativ Blogger award (which is so awesome!!). Both are new bloggers, having started their blogs this year. Both are fantastic additions to the food blog world. Please visit them yourselves and welcome them to our community – I promise you won’t be disappointed.

A safe and happy Thanksgiving to all!

P.S.: FTC/BlogHer rules requires me to state where the giveaway goods come from. They are purchased by me.

When someone yells “FIRE!!” from your walk-in closet, one of two things can happen: You’ll either respond in ways that would make a ninja press his hands together and bow, or you’ll trip, faceplant, and yell back something totally unintelligible. How do I know?

So I’m in my kitchen measuring ingredients for a friend’s wedding cake (full rundown next week), elbows deep in cake flour and with a 38-pound tub of high-ratio shortening at my feet. I had hired Robert the Repairman to hook up the stackable gas washer/dryer I bought off of Craigslist (which by the way: not recommended.)

It was a totally uneventful evening until that frantic call-to-action of “FIRE!!” was put into place. I dropped my sifter and in an effort to bypass 38-pounds of fat, I tripped over my own toes and faceplanted slow-motion style into the speckled Berber carpet, rug-burning my lips in the process.

But I got up! I got up and as slowly as I seemed to fall, I yelled a stretched “WHAAAAT?” in the general direction of where smoke was now wafting from.

Robert the Repairman came running into the kitchen and together we filled glasses of tap water and ran back to the closet, where flames and ashes were shooting out of the dryer’s drum. And all the while I’m thinking, I’ve owned this home for a week and already it’s burning down?

Luckily, it only took a few minutes to put the fire out. Then we moved the behemoth appliance outta my house and waited for the Craiglist guy to pick it up. I got my money back (thank goodness), but I’m still working on my sanity.

So how do you go back to sifting flour after something like that? Well, you don’t.

Catastrophes give me the munchies, and all I wanted to do was eat away the buzz that was coming from my nerves. After that debacle, the question wasn’t “how long are my clothes going to smell like burning lint,” but rather “what am I going to stuff my wounded lips with?”

The answer was pie. Pie heals all wounds.

One of the first things I did on the day I moved into this place was make an apple pie for the sole purpose of watching it cool on my very first pie window. At various times of the week, I would be a geek and take it out of the fridge to place it on the pie window – just so I could see it there again. The whole pie was still sitting in the fridge, so I pulled it onto the counter and ravaged most of it like it was the last time I’d ever eat pie. Crisis-driven hunger solved. Lack of sanity, however, is another story. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

From experience, I can attest that this pie is good to make when life gets a little fiery. Brushing some of the cooked pie filling onto the crust will give you a bubbly, caramelized flavor – and a pretty sexy pie. The below recipe for butter pie crust was doubled and adapted from Gourmet magazine’s September 2009 issue. For the original recipe, click here.

Might I also say that it’s good to be back to a regular blogging schedule? I missed you guys.

CRISIS-AVERTED APPLE PIE
Yield: 1 9-inch pie (about 8 servings)

• For crust:
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 sticks (1 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup ice water, divided
• For filling:
• 10 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced (about 6 slices each apple)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. To make pie dough: In a food processor, blend flour, butter and salt until a coarse meal forms (when it looks like graham cracker crumbs). Add 1/4 cup of ice water and pulse. Add remaining 1/4 cup of ice water in tablespoons, and pulse between each tablespoon until dough forms. Be careful not to overwork dough, you want it just combined and holding together. (If dough is too wet, you can always add more flour.)
2. Remove dough from food processor and place on a lightly floured work surface. Divide dough in half and flatten both halves into 5-inch circles. Wrap in plastic and chill in refrigerator for at least one hour, or up to three days.
3. To make pie: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out one pie dough disk and place in 9-inch pie plate. Prick pie dough with fork.
4. Peel, core and slice apples, about six slices per apple. Place in a large bowl and toss with lemon juice. Set aside.
5. In a medium saucepan, add butter, flour, water, sugars, spices and salt. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Pour all but 1/4 cup of the mixture into apples and toss. Arrange apple mixture in prepared pie crust.
6. If making a regular pie, roll out second pie crust and place over apples, crimping edges with a fork. With a small knife, cut four slits into the center of the pie. If making lattice crust, roll out pie dough and cut into strips, arranging them into a pattern over pie. Crimp edges of pie.
7. Using pastry brush, brush remaining sugar mixture over top of pie crust until coated. Bake in oven for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and apples are softened. Remove from oven and cool on a rack before serving.

– Cynthia Furey