I just carried Kenna upstairs and put her down for her nap. Wow! That was a workout!
I calculated the weight I just carried up the stairs. Kenna's weight of 20+ lbs, as well as my weight (which includes leftover weight from Kenna's pregnancy and newly gained weight for this one). Ack! Quite a bit of extra poundage! Apparently, I could use a little exercise. Or fewer goodies in the house tempting me.
But that's not the purpose of this post.
The purpose is really to share a wonderful pie crust-making tip that I learned recently and have used twice now with success. My family loves, loves, LOVES, biscuits and pies. Who doesn't, right? But of course, being a from-scratch kind of baker that means spending quite a bit of time breaking down the butter and flour into the lovely pea-sized pieces that you need. A few weeks ago I flipped through a cookbook of clipped recipes that my Grandma made for me when we first moved to Medford (thanks, Grandma!). It had a photo of someone grating cold butter into a bowl of flour! So simple! So much faster!
The colder the butter (I used frozen this morning), the better it seems to work. In no time at all I had two piecrusts ready for the filling or baking that they needed. Perfect!
As a side note, I much prefer using butter over shortening because I like how the piecrusts taste. I don't know if shortening would work as well - could you stick those pre-measured bars in the freezer?
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
2 comments:
I just made a pie (including crust) today. I used our pastry cutter and it was soooo easy to break up that butter. I don't remember using it before because I forget that we have it (one of Brian's purchases), but it could have saved me a LOT of past frustration.
Your tip sounds cool too though. Wish I'd known that one in the past.
Here's a tip as well that I noticed for the first time in my cookbook: To foil-line the crust edge, I used to use several thin strips and pain-sakingly try to mold them around the edge. Without fail, it was quite a hassle and the foil doesn't stay on that well. The tip I noticed today was to take a full square of foil, fold it into quarters, and cut out the corner to make a 7 inch circle in the middle. I cannot tell you how much I WISH WISH WISH someone has showed me that years ago!
I've never had success with my pastry cutter. I think I might have a cheap one, though.
The tin foil tip is a good one. Especially for something like quiche in which the center takes longer to cook than the outside.
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