Those might not be baking apples!

When did this turn into a baking blog?

With the muffins a success, I put together an entire pie this weekend. I've used the apples off our tree before, but not for something so apple-heavy. Unfortunately I wasn't too thrilled with the results.

Things got off to a great start though. I was able to pick a number of apples that came right off the tree. The kids helped too so we had some not-so-great looking ones to start with. Not everyone made it into the pie.

This is the recipe I've used since the wife and I have been together, so it's going on 18 years at this point. But this pie came out unbelievably sweet. It makes my teeth hurt to eat a big slice.

Looks good, tastes so-so.

Not that I stopped eating it. I've been slowly chipping away at it since Friday night, and it's almost gone. They have good texture within the pie, so at least they held up well to the actual baking. But the flavor profile is WAY too sweet, even with a healthy amount of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove in there. All its done is put me in the mood for more apple stuff though, so expect some apple cake pictures after we go apple picking in the next few weeks.

baking with our own apples

This week has not been great. Kids waking up too early and then going to bed just in time to be late to school, shitty commute traffic, not hearing back from interviews I thought I did pretty well at, and losses from the Cubs, Bears, and Irish all had me looking for a fall pick me up. Instead of going crazy I decided to bake some comfort food to try and make the back half of this week a little more bearable.

I already had a can of pumpkin open from other baking, so to make sure I got the most out of what was around I grabbed two apples off our tree to whip up some pumpkin apple streudel muffins. Sounds like more work than it actually is.

The apples are starting to drop off the tree so I'm hoping these are in fact, ready to use. I still have no clue what kind of apples they are but the look fine.

So, what we're working with here:

2.5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
pumpkin pie spice
1 cup pumpkin
2 large eggs
3 tbps half & half
1 cup chopped apples

cover with crumb topping
1 tbps butter
1 cup sugar
2 tbps flour

30 minutes later at 375 and you get:

Hopefully these can tide me over until we really go apple picking. Although it sounds like I'm going to get some additional baking time this weekend to use up some more of our apples. Fingers crossed. 

Grilled pizza break

It can't be all woodwork all the time. Sometimes there's grill work, sometimes there's pizza. At the best of times, there can be all three. Today felt like it should be one of those times.

I've gotten a pretty good handle on a papa john's copy dough, and it even makes for a decent base on making your own frozen pizzas. I should post on that too sometime. But today I was more interested in seeing if it would hold up as well on the grill. Sometimes it's just too hot to have your oven running at 515 degrees for any amount of time. Today is one of those times, but I'm a little dubious about pizza on the grill. Lunch for myself is a lot less risky to try out stuff vs dinner for everyone.

This dough is pretty sturdy:

1 packet fast-rising yeast (2 1/4 tps)
2 Tbs sugar
2 cups warm water
Mix and proof 5 minutes. Then add:
1/2 tsp garlic salt
2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 Tbs oil
Mix until dough pulls away from sides of mixer.

I made it as soon as I got home from dropping the kids off at camp, which gave it about 4 hours to rise while I got a run in and then worked on the media stand. I took a break around the 3-hour mark to punch it down and let it rise again for that last hour. It made for what I would consider a great looking dough if I was using the pizza stone.

Prep work can be important when you're on the grill, so I got everything ready while the charcoal lit. This dough is pretty hearty so I was sure it could handle three ingredients without any issue.

There was also oil, sauce, and cheese ready to go.

Once things were lit, on to the grill it went. This was mistake number one. I should have moved the coals for more indirect heat. But it cooked up well before I flipped it and put the toppings on.

Raw dough on, only 3 or 4 minutes I think.

Notice the browns already on the outer crust after flipping it

No time for pictures when you're working with high heats, but things looked really good at this point. Unfortunately, the direct heat ended up charring the bottom almost to the point of being inedible. I'm not a huge fan of wood-fired crust anyway, and this was a deep black char across the bottom of the crust. Too bad.

But it was still a decent lunch, and I learned some lessons in case we ever want pizza but it's too hot to turn the oven on. I'd try it again at least. God I love these Fridays off.

work for hire, as long as I get paid in pizza

Talking about how much I enjoy having the chance to work around the house kind of bit me in the ass this weekend; the in-laws are getting ready to sell their house and they asked if I wanted to put a backsplash in their kitchen. Being the good son in-law that I am I said yes, and that's the story of how I spent my Saturday and some of my Sunday putting tile up.

as blank spaces go it's not too huge

but there's plenty to work around

It's not a huge space, but they went with 3x6 tiles we had to buy individually, so both buying and getting started seemingly took an eternity out of my Saturday. They did do a lot of prep work though, so they had a pretty good idea of the number of tiles and bullnose tiles. Lots and lots of tiles.

so many tiles

Without a sheet I thought it was a little more stressful making sure the initial tiles were level, plus it was stressful doing it for someone else vs for my own kitchen, but once things got moving it was a pretty simple job. Even better, we picked up a dremel to cut the openings for outlets, and once we figured that out it was a much cleaner job than my last backsplash. I was a bit grumpy the late start meant I couldn't get it done in one day, but toward the end everyone came over (grandma had been watching the girl while the wife took the boy to a birthday party) for pizza so I couldn't be too crabby about it.

Saturday's quitting point

Day two went much quicker but still took longer than expected. My 90 minute estimate easily turned into twice that. More outlets and a window took me so much longer than two plain walls, pretty much reducing my weekend to the role of human pillow, which I am currently playing with the girl snoring away on me. Ah, dad-life.

The bright side is the wife knows how much I hate grout, so now that the tiles are on the wall my part of this project is done. The other bright side, other than getting a dremel out of this, is I'm wondering if I should build a console table for their entry way to help with staging. Always cool to find a reason to put a project together.

Quiet time turns into baking time

The wife's birthday is this weekend, so while she's out with the kids I tried to get a surprise cake baked and frosted before everyone gets home. It was moderately successful.

I don't know if this will stay a surprise, since I asked the boy what kind of cake he thought Mommy might want for her birthday so I would have some cover on the flavor combination. He could be blabbing about it to her right now for all I know. Hopefully not though, b/c I don't feel like I nailed her gifts so a surprise is going to go a long way.

Anyway, instead of making a simple cake I thought it would be nice if I tried to fancy it up a little bit as a layer cake. Despite being someone who dives into drywall or tile with little to no experience, the decision to make a layer cake had me wondering if I was in over my head at points. I'm not the biggest fan of baking, even as someone who's spent a lot of downtime learning his way around a kitchen. It's a weird combination of rigidly adhering to directions while also physically messy; two things that have their place but together I find them incredibly annoying.

With some googled tips on baking a layer cake things ended up okay though. I remembered to line the pan and evened things out. Plus, baking gave me some time to get laundry done so there's a clean karate gi for tomorrow, plus a little dinner for myself.

The liners worked really well, actually, and things stacked up okay once it was time to bust out the frosting. This part I liked, since more was better.

The sides had me a little dubious, but things came together decently and now I'm just waiting for everyone to come home. And what's that in the background?

Yeah, that was my dinner. For whatever reason making a pizza sounded like the perfect way to add a little more chaos to the evening, but it gave me something to do while the cake cooled, so everything worked out. Now I just have to wait for everyone to come home.   

Steak steak steak steak steak

The week the wife has to spend out of town is one of my least favorite weeks of the year but it does have some perks. When it was just me and the dog we’d order multiple pizzas and eat the left overs until she got home. With kids that doesn’t sound quite as glamorous/debauched as it used to so I was looking for a more adult option to try. And since even they were going to be out of the house for a night, why not set off the smoke detectors cooking a big steak. 

That's a surprisingly good looking cut of beef.

A quick trip to wallyworld and I dug up a discounted NY strip, thick cut but had to be used by that day. ‘No problem,’ I thought to myself, I’m sure I’ll cook off anything harmful. So off I went to season and sear and enjoy. A little more work than simply ordering a pizza but for a bigger reward.

Simple.

I coated it in oil, pepper, and garlic salt as soon as we got in the house. I left it out while the oven heated up, and when it had reached 450 I put the skillet on a burner and got ready to smoke things out. Open windows, covered smoke detectors. A little more oil on the pan and away we went.

Almost...

Based on the quiet sizzling noises I got when steak first hit iron I think I should have let the skillet get a little hotter. But at that point I couldn’t wait for some steak. Two minutes on each side, 30 seconds on the edges. Better sizzle after a flip, and things were looking good. Dropped some butter in the pan and threw everything in the oven for 5 more minutes with an extra flip thrown in there just for luck.

Closer...

First look after 5 minutes had things still looking a little blue for my liking but 90 seconds more seemed to do the trick. Tin foil tent, rest while I poured a whiskey, and then, finally, things were ready.

Oh yeah.

More work than ordering a pizza but sooooooooooooo worth it.

So good.

I really do hate this week but little like a thick steak cooked exactly how I like it make things a lot easier to deal with.

Now who's hungry?

Hey, that's a nice surprise.

Turns out we had a surprise in the backyard this summer, when the tree we thought had crab apples on it kept going to produce some full size apples. But by mid-September they had clearly grown into full-blown apples, and it’s pretty obvious we need to look up some tips on caring for an apple tree before next spring.

Eh, I've seen better looking apples but what the hell.

Droops aside, there were some semi normal-looking apples on there, even if they aren’t the prettiest. So we took one off this weekend and it actually tasted pretty good. A little tart, but it had more flavor than I was expecting. So what the hell, let’s pull three or four off and make a baked apple pancake. What’s the worst that could happen?

Now we're talking.

The worst that could happen is probably pretty dire in actuality, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Really all that happens is I always get a sticker crust when I was trying for a crunchier one, b/c try as I might I just cannot replicate the experience of a Clarke’s baked apple. Oh well. Let’s just get some ice cream to go with it, and maybe make sure we know how to take better care of the tree moving forward. 

I need to cook more often.

I hate to see summer turn to fall but my god I can't wait to go apple picking. Apple cake, apple pie, apple slices, apple donuts, apple fudge, apple cider, apple everything. Bring it on.