Fresh Peach Pie

About a year ago I posted this on my family blog. It's such a great recipe, though, I decided to re-post it here! I'm craving peach pie right now . . . YUM!

Hello, and welcome to the sweetest cooking show of them all:

Cooking With Katelee!

Today, the talented and beautiful Katelee is going to demonstrate how to make a delicious and gorgeous fresh peach pie that will WOW your guests on any occasion!

Start with a simple recipe for a pie crust. Katelee has used her always perfect pie crust recipe, and has just pulled her dough out of the fridge.

See how she rolls the dough out so nicely, using lots of flour?

Then transfer the roll dough into a pie dish. Spread it out evenly and cut off the excess. Katelee has even made a beautiful design on the edges.

Now, take 8-10 ripe peaches, cut into nice slices. (Katelee had her crew peel her peaches, too, by submersing the peaches in boiling water for 1 minute and then immediately transferring them to a bowl of ice water. The skins peel right off!) Lie the peaches neatly forming the bottom layer of the pie.

Mix the pie filling: 1/3 c. flour, 1 c. sugar, 1/4 c. butter (softened), and Katelee always recommends a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Mix until it resembles the consistency of crumbs.

Sprinkle half the butter mixture on top of the peaches. Add more peaches until the pie is heaping full. Sprinkle the remaining butter mixture on the very top.

Now, roll out the remaining pie crust dough to form the lattice top of the pie. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into strips, as evenly and straightly as possible. :)

Using the strips, lay them in a nice criss-cross pattern on top of the pie. Oh, isn't this looking beautiful?

If you have any extra pie crust dough, don't let it go to waste! Find your favorite cookie cutter, and cut out as many shapes as you can. Katelee particularly loves hearts.

Carefully place the extra decorations in the perfect spots on your pie.

Show off to your family how absolutely gorgeous your pie is looking at this point!

Cover the edges of your pie with tin foil so they won't burn and set your pie on a baking sheet in case it spills over a bit. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, turn the oven off but allow the pie to cool and set up in the warm oven for an hour or two or until ready to serve.

GORGEOUS!

And gooey, sweet, warm, and sooooo delicious.

Thank you, Katelee for showing us how to make such a lovely peach pie!

Until next time . . . happy baking!

Bottling Peaches

I spent my afternoon yesterday bottling peaches. I LOVE bottling fruit. It gives me such a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. Every year I have to look up the times and amounts again, so this year I thought I would post step-by-step directions on here. Maybe this will help someone else who wants to can their own fruit, but if not at least I'll know where to find all the info easily next year. :)

Also, for those of you trying to eat on a budget, if your family likes to eat canned fruit, this is a MUCH cheaper way of providing that for them.

Supplies Needed:

• fruit (peaches)
• sugar
• water bath canning pot
• clean mason jars and rings
• new lids for the jars
• wide mouthed funnel (optional but nice!)
• pots, bowls, ice, and other kitchen tools such as measuring cups, ladle, washcloths, etc.

1. Fill the water bath canning pot about 2/3 full with water and start heating to a boil.

2. Put the new jar lids in another small pot with water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Leave this pot gently simmering throughout the process, making sure the water doesn't get too low.

3. Fill a clean sink with HOT water and put your clean jars into the water to soak. (Your glass jars need to be hot when you put them into the boiling water bath or they will break. You may have refill this with hot water occasionally throughout the process as the water cools.)

4. Take a third large pot of water and start heating to a boil. (This is to blanch the peaches in.)

5. In a fourth pot, begin making your syrup.

RECIPES FOR SYRUP:

I grew up on my mom's medium/heavy syrup recipe, which I must say is delicious! She uses 7 cups of sugar to 5 cups of water. Since I've been canning my own peaches, however, I've been using a light syrup to help reduce the amount of sugar I give my family. I do a ratio of 1 cup of sugar to 2 cups of water. I still think this is plenty sweet, and we like it this way. However, if you are used to a heavier or sweeter syrup, you may prefer my mom's ratio. Stir the sugar and water together, heating over medium heat, until it begins to simmer and the sugar is completely dissolved. Then turn the heat down to low and stir occasionally until you need the syrup.

6. Prepare a large bowl (use the largest you have!) by putting in cold water and some ice.

7. Wash the peaches. Be sure the peaches are ripe and at their best. :)

8. Dip the peaches a few at a time into the boiling pot of water meant for blanching. Leave them in there for 1 minute. Fish them out and put them directly into the bowl of ice water. (I use a ladle for this.)

9. Peel the skins off the peaches. They should peel right off easily. If you are having trouble peeling the skins, try leaving them in the boiling water for a few more seconds. Remove the skins and pit (I put this waste into an empty bowl next to the ice water) and then slice the peaches to desired size. Leave the slices in the bottom of the ice water bowl for now. Repeat steps 8 & 9 until you have enough peaches prepared to fill a batch of jars.

10. Remove your jars from the hot water one at a time. Put the funnel in the top of a jar and load peach slices into the jar until pretty full. Then, ladle some of the prepared syrup over the peaches until there is only about 1/2 inch of space left at the top.

11. Carefully wipe down the top rim of the jar so that it is clean and the seal will work properly.

12. Fish one of the new lids out of the boiling pot of water (they are in the simmering water to help the rubber get ready to seal) and carefully place on the jar. Secure the lid with a ring.

13. Repeat steps 10 - 12 until you have 6 jars prepared. Place them carefully into the rack in the water bath canning pot of boiling water. Gently lower the rack and place the lid on. Check over the next few minutes to see when the water resumes it's full boil. Once it is boiling, begin the timer.

HOW LONG TO PROCESS

Process is the canning word for "boil in the canning pot."

The amount of time you leave your peaches in the canning pot depends on the type of food, size of your jar, and your elevation. Because I am at a high elevation, and because I was doing quart-sized jars this time, I let my peaches boil (process) for 35 minutes. Here is a link to the the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, where they have a chart to look up how long to process your food depending on all these factors.

14. Once the peaches have processed for long enough, remove the lid (CAREFULLY - there will be lots of hot steam!) and lift the rack up. (I like using 2 forks to lift the rack up.) Carefully remove the jars using canning tongs or an oven mitt. Place the jars on a clean, dry bath towel in a spot where they won't be moved or touched. Allow them to stay there undisturbed for about 24 hours. The lids should seal (you may hear them pop). Press on each lid after the next morning (I usually can't wait this long :) to be sure they all sealed tightly. Label them with the date and store away! If you had any seals not pop, eat them immediately or put in your fridge to eat soon.

15. Enjoy the fruits of your labors! You are amazing. :)

Chocolate Pound Cake

I wanted to make a birthday cake for my friend, and she so generously shared her favorite cake recipe with me to make for the occasion! This is DELICIOUS!!

Cake

• 1 package Devil's Food cake mix
• 1 package small (3.9 oz) chocolate pudding
  
• 4 eggs
• 1 c. sour cream
• 1/2 c. water
• 1/2 c. (one cube) butter, softened

Combine all ingredients and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Pour into greased bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. (I feel confident that you could make this in another cake pan, not just a bundt pan - but it looks so pretty as a bundt cake if you do have a bundt pan.)

Fudge Frosting

• 4 3/4 c. sifted powdered sugar
• 1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 1/2 c. boiling water
• 1 tsp. vanilla
  

Combine sugar and cocoa. Add butter, boiling water and vanilla. Beat on low speed until combined. Beat 1 minute on medium speed. Cool 20 minutes (approximately) until mixture reaches spreading consistency.

Moist Pumpkin Cake & Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

With fall in the air, this is a seriously amazing dessert to make for your autumn parties - personally one of my very favorite cakes and definitely one of my most requested flavors. These are also great as cupcakes!
Pumpkin Spice Cake

• 1 yellow cake mix
• 1/2 c. white sugar
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 (15 oz.) can of pumpkin puree
• 1/2 c. vegetable oil
• 1/2 c. applesauce
• 4 eggs
• 1 c. chopped pecans (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour a cake pan. In a large bowl, stir together cake mix, sugar, baking soda, and spices. Make a well in the center and pour in pumpkin puree, oil and eggs. Beat on low speed until blended. Scrape bowl and beat 4 minutes on medium speed. Stir in chopped nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 12 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 2 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Cream the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy. Beat in powdered sugar until smooth. The recipe only calls for 2 c. of powdered sugar, but I have successfully added as many as 8 cups and still thought the recipe was great! Just add as much sugar as you need! Stir in the cinnamon and vanilla. Frost on cooled cake.

Breakfast Rounds

With school started up again, I've been experimenting with coming up with some new quick and healthy breakfasts to feed Katelee before sending her off to school. This one is definitely a KEEPER! It's fast, easy, pretty healthy, and oh, so delicious! I'm sure it will become a staple meal or snack around our house.

• 4 English muffins, split and toasted (we use whole wheat)
• peanut butter
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
• 2 T. butter or margarine
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Throw the English muffins in the toaster and toast them. When they come out hot, spread 1 T. or so of peanut butter on each one. Meanwhile, core and slice your apple (I put it on my corer/slicer gadget so they come out in nice little flat circles, perfect sized for an English muffin, but cutting them in thin slices would work just as well). Top the peanut butter with apple. In the microwave, melt and stir together the brown sugar, butter and cinnamon. (I put my microwave on defrost so that it melts without exploding and I stir frequently until smooth.) Drizzle the cinnamon mixture over the apple slices. Enjoy! Seriously, kids and adults will gobble these up.

Sugar Cookies & Glaze Icing

I just finished making 200 sugar cookies for a wedding reception, and thought I would share the recipe on here for what I consider to be the best sugar cookies ever! These cookies are soft, buttery, and perfect! I got this recipe from ourbestbites.com, and have copied the following post directly from their website. (My own comments are in red.)

1 C real butter (no substitutions!)
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract (you could use vanilla instead but use almond if you can - it's amazing!)
3 C flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy- about 2 minutes. Add in eggs and extract and mix to incorporate.

In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt and whisk to combine. It's important that you measure the flour properly - spoon the flour into the measuring cup and then level off the top. If you scoop the flour up the amount will be different and could make the cookies dry. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until completely combined.

Shape the dough into 2 flat disks and wrap in waxed paper and place in the fridge to chill for 1-2 hours. If you want your cookies to hold their shape well, the dough needs to be chilled properly. A great tip to speed things up is to immediately roll dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper and place on a flat surface in the fridge. It will chill super fast and be ready to go in no time. I highly recommend rolling the dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper. It took me a bit of practice at first, figuring out how to hold the wax paper down so it wouldn't slide while rolling, but once I got the hang of it it was fast and easy. And then when you remove the dough from the fridge, it's time to cut into cookies and bake immediately. This helps the cookies retain their shape better, because the dough is colder, and it means NO FLOURING the countertop - so much cleaner and faster!

When you're ready to roll out dough lightly sprinkle flour onto your work surface and roll out dough with a rolling pin. (Unless you followed the wax paper tip from above.)

Bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes. The baking time really depends on how you like them. If you like them really soft under-bake them. This is how I like them so I baked them for 8 minutes - perfection! However if you're making large cookies, or ones with small parts or heavy frosting, you might want to be careful because they might break when they're super soft.

About 8 minutes will get you a really soft cookie, a few minutes longer (when they start to just brown around the edges) and you'll get just a little crispiness around the edges and then a soft center, bake even longer (and roll thinner) and you'll get a buttery, crispy cookie that will just melt in your mouth. Any way you do it, they'll taste good. Remove onto cooling racks when you're done and let cool completely. I honestly think these even taste better the second day.

I love this delicious icing recipe because it dries hard enough that the cookies can be stacked and/or individually wrapped. On the other hand, it's not rock hard like royal frosting, so when you bite into the cookies it's still nice and soft and chewy.

Glacé Icing

1 lb powdered sugar (about 3 3/4 C)
6T whole milk (low-fat actually works, but use whole if you can)
6T light Corn Syrup (6T is equal to 1/4 C plus another 2 T)
1 t extract (I use almond because I use almond in my sugar cookies)

With a whisk, combine sugar and milk until smooth (no lumps!) Then stir in corn syrup and extract.

You will use this same recipe for both glazing and piping. The way it is right now is the consistency you want for glazing. It’s smooth and thin, it easily runs off the whisk in a pretty thin drizzle.

To prepare the icing for piping, you just add more powdered sugar. Just eyeball it. You can’t really mess it up because if it’s too thick you just add more milk and if it’s too thin, you add more powdered sugar. I add it in small amounts until it’s a good consistency. For me, it’s when it gets to a point where it’s relatively hard to whisk it by hand. When I pick up the whisk, it still runs off, but in a very slow, thick stream now.

Take your glazing icing and separate it into bowls if you want to color it. I decided to do red (more pink, but I love it!), green, and blue. And I left my piping icing white. Use gel food coloring (you can find it at craft or cooking stores) for more intense colors.

There are many ways to decorate you cookies at this point. I suggest looking at the ideas on www.ourbestbites.com for inspiration, or just decorate as you wish! ENJOY!

I've also used this recipe to make cookie-pops. You can see them here. Such fun!

P.S. This cookies freeze really well! In fact, I almost like them better after being frozen!! I've even frozen them frosted, and they have worked very well.

Mini Pizzas

Katelee had a little lunch party with some friends recently, and I decided to let the girls all make their own english muffin pizzas. The kids LOVED it so much, and I was actually very surprised at how good these tasted! (I thought they would be nasty, but they were quite tasty!)

I know that this isn't exactly a 'recipe,' and is about the easiest thing to make ever, but maybe it will give someone else an idea of what to make for dinner one busy night, and I hope posting this here will help me to remember to make it again someday!

• english muffins
• pizza sauce (there's a good homemade recipe here, though store-bought sauce also works!)
• cheese (I like mozzarella or an Italian blend)
• pizza toppings of your choice

Split the english muffins in half and lay on a baking sheet. Spread pizza sauce on top of each muffin half. Add cheese and whatever toppings you want. Bake at 350 degrees for 5 - 10 minutes, or until all the cheese is melted. Enjoy!