Category: Cooking and Baking

Vanilla Pie

Desserts

My husband and my Dad both love the flavor of vanilla.  My Dad has loved it as long as I can remember; my husband has acquired a preference for it in the past year or so.  When I saw a recipe for vanilla pie, I had to try it.  I tried it for National Pie Day, actually.


You’ll need pastry for one 9 inch pie crust.

For the filling:

1/2 cup white sugar 2 Tb. flour 1 egg, well beaten 1 cup maple syrup 1 cup water 1 tsp. vanilla For the topping:

3/4 cup brown sugar 1/3 cup butter 3/4 cup flour 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. baking powder Place all ingredients for the filling in a heavy sauce pan and cook over medium heat until thick.  Whisk every minute or so.  (The recipe said about 5 minutes but mine took longer than that).  Set aside to cool.

Combine ingredients for the topping in a bowl and cut with pastry blender or knives to make pea-sized crumbs.

Place pie crust in pie pan.  When filling is cooled, pour into pie shell.  Top with crumb mixture.

Bake at 350 for 50 minutes or until nicely browned.


Our conclusion was that this pie tastes a lot like pecan pie but without the nuts.  My husband like it a lot, especially because he dislikes pecans.  It was a hit with the entire family and will definitely go on our list of delicious pies.


This pie tastes great served warm or cold, and of course it’s even better with some good vanilla ice cream.

Recipe from Sweetapolita .

HH

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Pecan Praline French Toast

Breakfast

Mmmmm.  I saw this recipe in Southern Living magazine and had to try it.


You know how much I love make-ahead breakfasts.  This one was prepped in about 5 minutes.  Even better than that was my family’s response:  delicious.


Ingredients:

1 loaf french bread 1 cup packed brown sugar 1/3 cup butter, melted 2 Tb. maple syrup 3/4 cup chopped pecans 4 large eggs 1 cup milk 2 Tb. granulated sugar 1 tsp. ground cinnamon 1 tsp. vanilla extract Put it together:

Cut ten (1 inch thick) slices of bread.  Stir together brown sugar, melted butter and maple syrup.  Pour into a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking pan.  Sprinkle pecans over brown sugar mixture.

Whisk together eggs, milk, granulated sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.  Arrange bread slices over pecans, then pour egg mixture over bread.  Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours.

Preheat oven to 350.  Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve immediately.


My kids liked to drizzle a bit of the brown sugar sauce from the bottom of the pan on top of their french toast.  You could add whipped cream to this dish as well, but we tried it as is and liked it a lot.  One of my boys commented that it was more dessert than breakfast, and that he’d eat it with ice cream.  It is very sweet, but I don’t mind occasionally serving a pan of this alongside the massive amounts of eggs I have to cook to feed my little crowd.  And because there are so many of us, we all ate just one piece.  Perfect.


The weekend is here.  This dish would be a fun surprise to greet your family with on Saturday morning.  I hope you like it as much as we did!

Hopeful Homemaker

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Bacon, Asparagus and Cheese Sandwiches

Musings on Life and Beauty, Sandwiches and Wraps

I like funerals.

I was thinking last week that I know more people who have passed away in the past six months than I know people who’ve had a baby in the same six months.  Is that a function of my age, or are a lot of people dying?

I don’t like people dying, but I do like funerals.  I have never been sorry to have attended one, and I’ve always learned something inspiring.  I also like all the stories and memories that surround them.  I was reminded of this at the viewing for my Dad’s cousin on Monday night.  You learn so many things about people and make so many connections when you attend events of this kind.  As sad as they are, they’re uppers in their own strange way.  They remind you what really matters in life.

When I was at my Aunt’s funeral at the end of January, I learned something about my Dad that I’d never heard before.  He started telling her four sons about how, when their mother died while they were still kids, Aunt Laurie was the one who went to the kitchen and prepared some of the meals that their recently deceased Mom had made for the family.  He spoke of how comforting it was to him, how it made home feel more like home, how much it meant to him and to their Dad.

Then my cousin asked, “What did she make?”

His reply:  “Bacon, Asparagus and Cheese sandwiches.”


And they all smiled.  They said it was her favorite food all her life, that she would make dinner for the family and then make one of these sandwiches for herself.

My sister and I looked at each other and said, “We’ve never heard that before!”

So I made some for my family and told them, “This is something that your Grandpa Sheffield ate when he was growing up.”


Ingredients:

1 lb. asparagus (I went for super thin so they would be easy for my children to bite) 1 lb. bacon shredded cheese hamburger buns I steamed the asparagus and cooked the bacon.  Then I sprinkled cheese on the insides of the hamburger buns and broiled them until the cheese was bubbly.

Then I cut the bacon strips in half, placed two on the bun and put a bunch of asparagus on top.  Add the top of the bun and you’re done.

And guess what?  My family LOVED them.  A few of them aren’t partial to the asparagus, but that’s no surprise.  In general they were a big hit.  Even my husband was impressed.

Who knew that a long forgotten story of comfort food could turn out to be a new favorite?


As I said, you learn some great things at funerals.  And occasionally you get a new recipe.

Hopeful Homemaker

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