Tom's Visit and Cooking

We have had Tom, Fred's nephew, visiting this week. It has been quite fun spending time with him and getting to know him better. It's his first trip out by himself to visit. I have been making quite a few desserts for him. Tom picked an apple blueberry pie for dinner tonight at Patrick and Theresa's (there will be poker tonight as well! But most importantly, there will be amazing food cooked by Patrick. mmmmmm!). The pie recipe is from Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes. If you don't know anything about pies, then you have to get this book! Betty ran a pie shop outside of Duluth, MN and it is the very best pie in the whole world. My favorite is the five-layer chocolate pie (to die for!, honestly.) But Tom picked a fruit pie to try. Here are some photos of the pie before, during and after cooking.

Here is the pie filling with 4 cups of sliced apples, 2 cups of fresh blueberries and sugar, etc., before mixing.

This pie doesn't have a crust for the top, rather it is a crumble mixture of butter, nutmeg, brown sugar and flour that is sprinkled on top of the fruit and baked.

Here we see the baking pie.

Here is the finished pie. Looks delicious. I'll let you know tomorrow if it actually is! 8-)

I also made some cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies. I'm not sure if I spoke about our trip to Gualala, but it included a very fine bakery that had Chocolate Ginger cookies. I didn't have the recipe, but you'll notice that the cover cookie on the right is a chocolate ginger cookie and the cookies I made on the left are from the book. I think I need to make them large next time and wait until they are more cracked. The recipe says to remove them when they just start to crack, but then they don't get real cracked like the ones on the right. However, word of warning: these cookies are not an afternoon cookie. You have to chill the dough for two hours and then you have to roll them into balls and chill again and then roll them in granulated sugar. Quite a process. I think these are special occasion cookies. The thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies were made in a snap and Tom seemed to like them quite a bit.