Midnight Mocha Cookies

Here's Midnight Mocha "raw" food cookies from the great cookbook, "Practically Raw Desserts."

No, it's not pie, but it's still baking. (-;

Midnight Mocha Cookies, gluten-free, no added oil, grain-free.  I'm just showing the ingredients.  I know recipes aren't copyrighted, but I don't think it's fair to the author to print their hard-earned recipes...it's a great cookbook.  You should get it! (-:

Almond flour.

The coconut flour is on the left, almond flour on the right.  Just thought I'd show you the difference in color and texture.

 Doesn't the coconut palm sugar look like brown sugar?  It's finer and doesn't pack like the latter.

The coconut nectar looks like molasses, but is much light in taste.

I know this is almost a repeat photo, but I love that little drop falling down.

Coffee Extract.  I get both these extracts from Williams-Sonoma.  Oh, there was also brewed coffee in these, too.

 Pre-mixed.

Mixed.

Raw and perfectly delicious just like this.

Lining them up on a cookie sheet.

The finished product.

Blueberry Crumble Pie

Howdy!  It's been 12,000 years since I posted anything to Listen to Me Pie Lady!  I've been busy making art most of this year so my pie making has been waylaid.

Here's a pie I hadn't tried before from Epicurious, although I use my own pie crust recipe.  My neighbor Sue has a gallery in which I was the featured artist back in November (click here to see my artwork if you'd like (-;).  ANYWAY, here husband, John, helped me carry all my packed up crates and paintings out to his SUV and my car and drove them to my house.  I promised him a pie, he said blueberry thinking it was a little healthier than the bourbon pecan pie I had suggested, and I thought I'd do a little twistipoo to it with this crumble recipe.  It sure smelled good as I zipped to over to them. I just took it out of the oven and the cold air blew it's cinnamon and lemon scents back at me.  Here's a few pics of it going in and coming out.  Thanks again for the help, John!

Goin' in.

Comin' out.

I'll add some chocolate chip cookies I made earlier in the day, too:

Blueberry Throw-Together Pie for a Sunday Night

I intended to make something a bit unusual for my final pie for July, which I mentioned in my last post, is National Blueberry Month.  I was going for something from www.epicurious.com called a blueberry crumble pie, but the evening was getting later and I stared down at my hastily written recipe sheet in despair.  I had written the ingredients in a chaotic matter (just the way my mind works), but then I started coding the order with plain circles and filled in dots and thought, uh, yeah, there's no way.  I reverted back to a simple recipe from the Pioneer Woman's blog, but she used nutmeg and I used cinnamon.  I threw in dark brown sugar and baker's sugar plus a little vanilla salt.  And so it went...  And when I say "threw" I mean it.  I really didn't measure anything...just small handfuls of this and that (what I just described).  Cookies and cakes need to be exact in baking, but you can be a little more free with pies.

Anyway, you know why I call this "Blueberry Throw-Together Pie!"  I think it's a beauty!  (-;

Ugh--not enough time for this recipe!  I'll just throw it together!

I used 3 pints of blueberries.

Blueberries coated with baker's sugar, cinnamon, dark brown sugar, vanilla sea salt, thickener.

Heaped into the first crust.

 Going into the oven!  That lump left of center is some butter that's going to seep right down into those blueberries!

The requisite cinnamon pie crust rolls made with leftover pie dough.  My grandma's tradition!

Finished and lookin' might fine!  Look at that thickened, blueberry juice seepage!  Mmm.

Nutty Berry Crumble

Helllllooooooooooo--

I'm back to this sweet blog...My plans of baking a pie a week went by the wayside when I'm almost always the only one in the house eating the pie!  My husband is not a pie guy, so I had to take a break-i-poo.  I didn't mean that to be for months! ha!

Well, it's July now, which means it's National Blueberry month.  Here's a tasty recipe from Sweet Paul's cookbook called "Eat & Make."  Nutty Berry Crumble was finished off in 2 days.  I used Jacobsen Salt Company's vanilla bean salt which adds something special to any sweet recipe.  Since I discovered it at Williams-Sonoma, it's pretty much the only salt I use for desserts.

Anyway, the crumble was delicioso!  It contained blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries and the crumbled had walnuts, pecans, and almonds--quite the double trifecta! I also made a blueberry buckle coffee cake off some bag of gluten-free flour, but forgot to take a picture of it.  Oh yeah, so how do these recipes fit in with a pie blog?  Well, a crumble is close to a pie, I'm thinking, so that's the way I'm going to roll it.  Pun intended! (-;

Nutty Berry Crumble

Buttermilk Chess Pie

Here's the last wintery pie for the last day of winter, and oh, nelly, what a winter it was!  Again, from the cookbook "Four and Twenty Blackbirds," a tangy buttermilk pie.  I made the crust gluten-free with my favorite gluten-free flour from Williams-Sonoma--Thomas Keller's Cup 4 Cup, available here:  Williams-Sonoma Cup4Cup.  It's mimics regular all-purpose flour better than anything I've ever tried.

The makings of a good crust.  Gluten-free flour, lard, and as expensive a butter you can find. Mwah!

Parchment paper half-sheets from King Arthur Flour.  I love these to line cookie sheets and to roll out my dough.

If I have extra filling from custard-type pies, I pour the excess into these little ramekins and bake along with the pie.  A little warm custard nirvana minus any crust.

Tangy and yummy with buttermilk and a touch of vinegar for a little more twang. (-;

Grapefruit Pie for National Pi Day

Happy National Pi Day--here's a pie straddling winter and spring just for you...and me!

Grapefruit Pie from the cookbook "Four and 20 Blackbirds"

Eggs and sugar whirled together:

Butter Pie Crust--I went a little wild with the fork tines.  This pic was after it had been in the freezer to thoroughly chill.

 Beautiful red grapefruit.  I cup of freshly squeezed juice was needed.

A very expensive bottle of Campari.

 

 Isn't it pretty?  It looks like a liquid ruby jewel.

Couple of dashes of Angostura orange bitters next.

Sorry for the shadows--I couldn't get a good shot.  I just thought it looked pretty--grapefruit juice, Campari, eggs, egg yolks, and heavy whipping cream swirled together.  Looks like I'm able to marbleize some paper.

Whirled up again.

 

 

Pastry brush--I have the authentic wooden one as well--to brush onto partially, blind-baked pie crust.  It helps seal the crust from the liquid about to go in.

Ohhhh, the goodness. It was so delicious!  Let me tell you who else thought so...

 

I'm sitting in my art room at the computer and my husband comes in to tell me goodnight.  All of a sudden we hear slurping, and we both hold each other's gaze in a brief panic of knowing before seeing.  I had brought the pie into this room to cool on a pie rack set on a low bench.  Well, Kman had let Ebert in, and that beagle nose and tongue went straight to this pie.  BEFORE I had one bite. 

 

I cried out, "I just spent 3 hours on that pie!"  My husband says, "Well, just avoid the hole,"  But there wasn't just a little indentation.  Ebert's tongue had cut a swatch through the top of almost 1/2 of the pie.  What you see above is the ONLY piece I was able to selvage, confident that no dog germs had come near it.  Later, while I was still up at 1 a.m., Eberto wakes up and went straight to my room door.  He did the same thing the next morning.  I guess you could say, this was beagle certifiable as delicious.  The next time around, he is NOT getting one piece!