Blueberry Goodness

Thanks to my awesome brother-in-law, I have some pretty sweet pictures to post and a fun title. :) This is the perfect dessert if you want good old fashioned pie for a crowd. And homemade ice cream goes splendidly with it....what doesn't go splendidly with ice cream?....Don't answer that

Blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, salt.....

Mixed by the lovely Sister :)

I had to remind Matt to take pictures of the baking since that's what this blog is about. He got distracted by his beautiful wife and his fancy new camera.

Say CHEESE...er...pie!

Ahhhh, the most important ingredient of any recipe.

????Chicken????....Like I said, Matt kept getting distracted....

Making the crust. The recipe for this crust is essentially the same as the apple pie crust only it makes more so it can fit in a jelly roll pan.

Again, food processors are awesome.

And yes I am still in my pajamas. And no my clothes don't match each other or the apron. Do I care?

The lovely Ashley assisting by getting the pastry board for me to roll the dough out on.

A cool shot that I just wanted to post cause it's cool.

Poppy and Ruth Anne came to see how the pie was coming. :)

Doing a few dishes and...smiling??

Yes that is a tape measure..also courtesy of matt's.

Don't mess with me.

The dough was not cooperating....

But I showed it who was boss and managed to get it in the pan without tearing it. WOOT!

Add the blueberries...

Rolling out the top dough....

Pinching the dough. A certain photographer was fascinated by this part and I had to weed through like 20 pics of me just pinching the dough.

Poking the dough.

Brushing the crust with whipping cream.

I sprinkled it with sugar and threw it in the oven :)

And this beautiful thing came out of the oven. Then we cut it up, and put homemade ice cream on top, and then savored every single wonderful bite. Sigh.

Happy Eating,
JRae

Love Thy Neighbor....with Apple Pie

I love loving people with food! So for this recipe we decided to invite our next door neighbors over to help us eat our apple pie. And, of course, we had to have ice cream and coffee with it too. :)

Mom gets the credit for all these really cool pictures :)

Apples...

Peeled, sliced, and sugared and spiced by the lovely Rita :)

Time for the crust, made by yours truly.

 The key (or one of them) to a good crust is keeping everything cold. We even refrigerated the flour.

 Food processors are grand inventions....

 Adding the ice water to my crust and reading and re-reading the directions to make sure I don't mess up..

Cute little ball of dough...

Me, flattening the dough into discs to refrigerate.

Messy Jessie...

Rollin, rollin, rollin...

It is perfect! If I do say so myself....

I love the chunks of butter on top! It's the inner Paula Deen coming out.

 Top crust! Brushed with an egg wash and sprinkled with sugar. Oy.

 At this point my house smelled fabulous!

 Me and my two best friends.

 My other best friend, Ice Cream...

Mad waitressing skills..

The pie was fabulous! The coffee grand! The ice cream heavenly! And the company enjoyable! :)

Happy Eating,
JRae and Rita

Here's the pie crust (Pate Brisee) recipe for you brave souls who wish to try making your own:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup ice water, plus more if needed


In the bowl of a food processor, combine flour and salt; pulse to combine. Add the butter, and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some larger pieces remaining, about 10 seconds. (To mix by hand, combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, then cut in butter with a pastry blender.)
With the machine running, add the ice water through the feed tube in a slow, steady stream, just until the dough holds together without being wet or sticky. Do not process more than 30 seconds. Test by squeezing a small amount of the dough together; if it is still too crumbly, add a bit more water, 1 Tablespoon at a time.
Turn out the dough onto a clean work surface. Divide in half, and place each half on a piece of plastic wrap. Shape into flattened disks. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least an hour or overnight. The dough can be frozen up to 1 month; thaw overnight in the refrigerator before using.

Strawberry Shortcake in Seagrove by the Seashore.

The first recipe of the blog is Martha Stewart's Baking Powder Biscuits, the Strawberry Shortcake  variation. :) Mom and I whipped it up while we were on vacation in Florida. I learned two very important lessons while making this recipe. Lesson #1- Never bake a new recipe in a strange kitchen, Lesson #2- Never make biscuits without a pastry blender....drink blenders were made for frozen concoctions...not cutting butter into flour and Lesson #3- when making biscuits you need a biscuit cutter. End of story,. Nothing else works. Well it works but it takes ages and ages to use a sharp knife to cut a million circles and Martha says it's important to use a sharp biscuit cutter so you can't just use an inverted juice glass, but I also can't cut perfect circles *huge breath*.....just buy a biscuit cutter, trust me.

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So here's me with my ingredients and my trusty cookbook...I'm thinking about naming it....

This is mom..... :) I should point out that I put off my little baking excursion till after dinner. And the afore mentioned biscuit cutting was taking longer than expected and we were all kinda tired from a hard day of sun bathing Mom was kinda tired and ready for dessert to be done so she could go to bed.

Aaaaand this is why you always bake in your own kitchen.....whipping cream with an egg beater is not exactly...um....efficient. :P

Before

After.....

And the Other After :)

Bon Appetit! The recipe is easy to find online and it's soooooooo yummy! The biscuit was the perfect sweetness, So ladies and gents, here's the first of many Stupid Good posts :)

Happy Eating,
JRae