Apple Hand Pies

Apple Hand Pies - made May 17, 2019

Thanks to some idle pinterest strolling, I got the idea to make these apple hand pies. I'm still trolling around for new dessert bar ideas and, having recently tried a full-size handpie when I visited Neighbor Bakehouse in San Francisco (it was delicious, btw), I decided to try a mini version.

My favorite pie is the quintessensial apple pie. Sometimes I go wild and branch out to coconut cream pie (hold the whipped cream topping, just sprinkle the top of the custard with toasted coconut). Pecan pie is also acceptable as long as it doesn't have too much of that gelatinous gluey stuff and the pecans are toasted. But apple always wins out so of course I had to try apple hand pies.

Filling before cooking

After cooking

I don't like pie enough to make it very often. Hence one reason I haven't mastered pie dough. I can make a decent one but nothing special. I cheated for this trial and got those pre-made pie dough. Past experience says it isn't as good as homemade pie dough but I was just in experimenting mode so I wasn't going to be that fussy about it. Plus, there's something to be said for easily rolling out the pre-made dough to a slightly thinner thickness and equally easily cutting the dough into the rounds I wanted to make the pies.

I only used one of the two pie doughs in the package as I have other plans for the 2nd dough. Subsequently, the recipe below makes too much filling. Not a problem with apple pie filling though as I just put the overage into ramekins and covered it with some apple crumble topping I made.

If you want to super cheat, not only can you buy the premade pie dough but you can also buy a can of apple pie filling. I've tried that canned filling once though and honestly, you're better off making your own. It's easy enough to peel and chop the apples and cooking it for a few minutes over a stove top with some sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg couldn't be simpler. Season to taste. I tend to have a light hand with nutmeg (don't really care for the taste) and a heavy one with the cinnamon (Penzey's all the way).

How much filling you use is up to you but careful not to overstuff it or you'll have a problem sealing the dough rounds together. You don't want filling leaking through the cracks if it's bursting out the seams before you even get the pies into the oven.

I sealed a few of the hand pies with the tines of a fork and a couple of others with the round end of a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon, just to try for different looks. The measuring spoon produced something that looked like a big ravioli but the edges got too thin and browned faster than the rest of the mini pie. The fork tines didn't look as pretty but were fine and baked better.

Before baking, make sure you brush the tops, including round edges, with egg wash. They''ll brown better. Also make sure you cut small slits on top of each pie to allow steam to escape.

Overall, I liked how these turned out. I might add a bit more cinnamon and butter to the filling for a little more flavor or, to be completely decadent, some salted caramel sauce, for a more juicy filling. The pie dough actually tasted decent and browned nicely.

The baked versions still weren't as pretty as some of the ones I've seen on pinterest. I still haven't conquered the knack of how to make my desserts come out "pretty". But, hey, they still tasted good and qualify for the future dessert bar I'm planning on. I just need a little more practice on how to spiff them up for a more "professional" presentation.

1 package refrigerated pie dough (or make your own)
3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into small chunks
4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon water to make a slurry

1. Roll out pie dough circles to flatten slightly. Cut out rounds of dough, using a round cookie cutter/shaper. Cover and keep chilled in the refrigerator while you make the filling.
2. Filling: Combine dark brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg until evenly mixed in a large mixing bowl. Add apple chunks and toss to coat.
3. In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, add apple mixture and stir, cooking until apple chunks are tender but not mushy, 5-6 minutes. Add butter and stir. When butter is melted, add cornstarch slurry until sauce is thickened. Remove from heat and let cool.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
5. Wet the outer edges of each dough round with a little water. Place a small scoop of the cooled apple mixture in the center of one round and cover with another. Seal the moistened edges with a fork or the round side of a 1/4 teaspoon measure. Repeat with remaining dough rounds. 
6. Beat 1 egg with a tablespoon of water to make an egg wash. Brush apple hand pies lightly with egg wash. Cut small slits on top of each pie to let steam escape. Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until pies are golden brown.

Easy Oven Baked Pork Chops

Easy Oven Baked Pork Chops - made May 16, 2019 from Lemon Blossoms

This turned out pretty tasty. My biggest problem is I inadvertently baked it for too long. The original blog post from Lemon Blossoms warned against that and I took it to heart but apparently not well enough. I checked it after 20 minutes but my pork chops were so thick and looked raw on top so I left them in for - wait for it - another 40 minutes. Oops.

I probably should've realized what I thought was "raw" looks was really the color of the rub melting into liquid. Sigh. I'm not kidding when I say I'm not much of a cook. However, this was so easy to make and next time I buy thick cut boneless pork chops, I'm trying it again as the rub melted into a tasty sauce and there was a slight "crust" that was crisp on parts of the pork chops.

Dry Rub
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

4 boneless pork chops (1-inch thick)
2 tablespoons olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.
2. In a small bowl, mix the dry rub ingredients.
3. Rub the pork chops with olive oil and season them all over with the dry rub. Place on prepared baking sheet.
4. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 140 to 145 degrees. Remove from oven and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Nutella-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Pies...er, mini muffins

Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Pies - made May 16, 2019, inspired by Marsha's Baking Addiction

I didn't actually follow the recipe from Marsha's Baking Addiction in making these but hers was the inspiration for it so full credit goes to her blog. Plus, when you look at her pictures vs mine, you may want to try her recipe instead of mine so you get better looking "pies". Mine were more like "mini muffins gone mutant".

Left is how they should have turned out (from Marsha's Baking Addiction), right is how mine turned out

I had a package of ready made sugar cookie dough from when I was making the Motherlode Bars (also another baking fail, *long-suffering sigh*) and I wanted to use that up so that was the "pie crust" for these. I also wanted to make them smaller than the size of a regular muffin so I put one ready-made cookie dough portion into each mini muffin tin. If you're psychic and haven't read ahead, this is where I made a mistake. Read on, Macduff.

For the Nutella, I used the Costco Kirkland brand hazelnut spread. I've switched to this instead of the real Nutella as it doesn't use palm oil and, to me, tastes just as good. But you can use Nutella if you wish.

For the chocolate chip cookie part, I used my new favorite standby of Basic, Great Chocolate Chip Cookies. Since these were going to be mini desserts, I opted to use mini chocolate chips instead of chunks. Otherwise, I made the recipe as is.

After mixing the chocolate chip cookie dough, the rest of the recipe is just assembly. Lightly grease the mini muffin tins with nonstick cooking spray, drop a sugar cookie ball in the mini muffin cavity, and if you're lucky enough to own a Pampered Chef (or some other brand) mini tart shaper, you can easily make the cookie cups within each muffin tin.

Add a dollop of hazelnut spread in each cookie cup then cover snugly with a bit of chocolate chip cookie dough. So easy, right? Going to come out beautifully, right? Hey, why are you laughing??

Okay, fine, go ahead and laugh. As you can tell from the pictures, once again, how I viewed something and how it actually turned out seemed to be in different stratospheres of my baking universe and reality.

Turns out, each sugar cookie portion in those prepackaged cookie dough things were simply too big for mini muffin tins. And if they don't have enough room, they overflow their respective cavities and mock you. Talk about (mini) muffin tops! Insubordinate little bastards.

Unfazed, and after a self-deprecating mocking laugh (because if you can't laugh at your own baking failures, hang up your oven mitts), I did a little cosmetic surgery: I took out a round cookie cutter almost the same size as the top opening of each mini muffin cavity and cut through those overflowing muffin tops. They still looked nowhere like Marsha's Baking Addiction way-more-professional cookie pies but at least now they looked plausibly like mini muffins with a sugar cookie crust, hazelnut spread filling and a topper of chocolate chip cookie.

Thankfully, they tasted good. They would probably taste better with a homemade crust that didn't have the temerity to bake beyond the confines I put them in but that'll be a future experiment. For now, laugh at my baking fail and go try Marsha's recipe as written.

Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries

Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries - made May 5, 2019 from OOLA

I have a new gadget obsession. Move over Instant Pot and make room for the air fryer. I'd heard of air fryers before and been intrigued but managed to ignore the craze. Then I visited my niece and her fiance in Denver during my time off and they had an air fryer. One whirl of the sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's in their air fryer and I was hooked. It tasted better than the sweet potato fries from Elephant Bar, which had been my previous gold standard  for sweet potato fries. Crisp on the outside but mealy inside. They were amazing and much faster than baking in the oven.

Trader Joe's sweet potato fries from the air fryer

So, when I got back home, despite my inner urgings not to buy anything because I'm moving shortly and would just have to move it, I lasted a whole three days before I broke down and bought an air fryer from Costco. Then the package of sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's. They turned out as well as when my niece and her fiance made them except this time I didn't have to share with either of them, ha.

I've long been on a quest of making my own crispy sweet potato fries "from scratch", aka an actual sweet potato, sold "as is", i.e. dug up out of the ground, rather than from the plastic package from the TJ's freezer section. With the air fryer, I optimistically thought I had a chance. I mean, really, how hard could it be now that I had this swanky gadget?

That would be the foreboding and premonition section of this post for those of you who have seen my prior efforts at this Don Quixote quest. Yes, you guessed it, I was tilting at windmills again. But honestly, it all seemed so easy. I followed the recipe, I read the blog tips, I did it.

Except someone forgot to tell the sweet potato fries to crisp up. They turned out pretty good, taste-wise, as I liked the spice mixture that covered them. Even if said spices burned in my (over)enthusiastic quest to make them crispy so I let them keep on chugging in the air fryer until they were threatening to turn into carbon.

So I tried a second time and this time did the other tricks I've tried before: soak the sweet potato strips in cold water then drain, pay dry and toss in the spice mixture with some cornstarch to add that outer coating for the crispness. Um, yeah. As you can see from the pictures, this time, I had a heavy hand with the cornstarch and it still didn't work. *hands thrown up in despair" #fail

Never mind. I'll always have Trader Joe's....and their packaged sweet potato fries.

2 large sweet potatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
kosher salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
cooking spray

1. Slice the sweet potatoes into half-inch slabs and then into strips of equal size. Place the strips in a medium bowl and add the olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, paprika, onion powder and garlic powder. Toss to coat the strips.
2. Lightly coat the basket of air fryer with cooking spray. Preheat your oven to 380 degrees. 
3. Place half of the sweet potato strips into the air fryer basket and cook them for 5 minutes. Flip the fries in the basket with a pair of tongs to brown all the sides evenly. Continue to cook the fries for an additional 5 minutes or until the fries are crispy and slightly brown. Transfer the fries to a cooling rack. Repeat steps above for the remaining strips. Serve immediately.

Steak Marinade

Steak Marinade - made April 23, 2019 from Hip Foodie Mom

I finally bought some lemons so I could try one of the steak marinade recipes I'd pinned on Pinterest. And now that I've figured out how to cook flank steak without it becoming rubbery, it's my go-to meat of choice.

I also bought a garlic bulb since I ran out of the jarred garlic from Penzey's so I used fresh garlic this time. Truth to be told, I might've been a little too heavy-handed with the garlic. This marinade was pretty flavorful and had a nice bite with both the garlic and the lemon juice. No blandness here.

But still, it was a good marinade and easy to throw together. Even easier to cook. I would definitely make this again.

1/3 cup soy sauce
1 heaping tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons dried basil
1 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1 teaspoon fresh minced garlic

1. Place meat into a large ziploc bag. Using a bowl, pour in all of the ingredients and whisk until thoroughly mixed.
2. Pour marinade into ziploc bag, directly over the meat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 5 to 8 hours. Grill meat and serve warm.

Instant Pot Pork Adobo

Instant Pot Pork Adobo - made April 23, 2019 from The Recipe Pot

Now that I'm on my pseudo-semi-retirement for a few weeks, I'm doing more cooking and, in case you haven't been able to tell yet, less baking. Hard as it is to believe, I think I've lost my baking mojo. I used to want to try a bunch of different dessert recipes, troll pinterest, go through all my baking books, yada yada. But, in the temporary condo I'm staying in, there aren't coworkers and friends all around me to gobble up my baking experiments. My parents and my sister can only consume so many empty calories and I'm cutting back on carbs and sugar. (I know, who am I?)

So in times like these, I try my hand at cooking instead. Of course, don't think this means I turn into a gourmet chef or a chef of any kind. I enjoy eating, not cooking. But I can cook passably enough that I can eat my own cooking (more or less) and being off from work gives me enough time to look for recipes, buy ingredients and actually cook. Cooking for me is always a production. In a 10-ingredient recipe, I will likely only have 1 or 2 ingredients on hand and would have to buy the rest. Or I'd have most of it but would be missing one key ingredient.

Such as for this one. I had half an onion left after the Penne Alla Vodka with Chicken recipe, I had thick-cut pork chops from a prior Costco run, I had the spices, I had the soy sauce and vinegar. But I had run out of Penzey's minced garlic and didn't have enough for the recipe.  Fortunately, there's a grocery store within walking distance of my condo so going to get a bulb of garlic became part of my workout for the day.

I love Filipino adobo. My mom makes it and she makes it well. I can make a passable adobo and liked the last Chicken Adobo I made in my instant pot. So I thought I'd try my hand at Pork Adobo this time. The recipe is as easy as it looks. I cut up the thick cut pork chops into cubes. I didn't have pork butt but figured the chops would be good enough. "Sauteed" the pork chunks and threw the rest of the ingredients into the Instant Pot. When it was done pressure cooking and had released pressure, I let it boil on Saute for another 20 minutes. I don't know that the sauce thickened as much as evaporated so it wasn't so plentiful but that's also how adobo is traditionally made. My mom lets it boil until the sauce is reduced and the flavor has intensified. Not to mention the meat becoming tender. Which it did thanks to the Instant Pot.

The sauce turned out a bit more bland than I expected. I'm used to adobo having a bite, primarily from the vinegar. At least, my mom's does and that's what makes it abobo and delicious. It could be because I didn't eat it with rice which is the perfect accompaniment to the sauce but next time, I think I would up the vinegar, brown the garlic and leave off the onion. My mom doesn't make it with onion and she confirmed she uses a 3:1 ratio of vinegar to soy sauce in her adobo. I'll have to try that next time.

1 tablespoon canola oil
3 pounds pork butt, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
salt and pepper to taste
1 onion, peeled and sliced thinly
6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup water

1. Using the Saute function on Normal, heat oil. Add pork cubes and cook, turning as needed, until browned on all sides. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. Add onions, garlic, peppercorns and bay leaves.
3. In a bow, combine vinegar, soy sauce and water. Pour into the pot over meat mixture.
4. Close the lid, making sure the valve is on Sealing position and cook on High pressure for 10 minutes. Do a quick release and open lid.
5. Turn on the Saute feature on Normal and simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes or until sauce is thickened.
6. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper as needed. Serve hot with steamed rice.