Baking A Sweet Life

Because I live for key lime pie, I had marked this recipe when I first bought this book. I was *so* glad that it had finally come up in the rotation! Dianne of Diannes Dishes chose our recipe and I had plans to starting baking as soon as I saw it posted. Of course the weekend came (and went) and that’s why I’m a total slacker posting it now, almost midnight on the day of submission!! Not to mention that I cheated some - I bought a pre-made crust. Go on, send me the mean remarks - I can take it. Its the first time I’ve done that in about 6 years. I have a good excuse! I’m taking a cake-decorating class, and I’m not getting home until almost 10:30pm…

The pie part was out of this world. I LOVE coconut, and I LOVE key lime pie. I’m not a huge fan of meringue, I swear that it tastes like scrambled eggs to me, and unfortunately, this was no different. I’ll forgo the meringue next time, and do real whipped cream instead. I’m bringing the remainder to work tomorrow to share in the wealth. I’d write more, but I’m so sleepy - please forgive!

And now for the fabulous recipe!

Florida Pie by Dorie Greenspan

1 9-inch graham cracker crust (page 235), fully baked and cooled, or a store-bought crust
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
4 large eggs, seperated
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup fresh Key (or regular) lime juice (from about 5 regular limes)
1/4 cup of sugar

Getting Ready:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Put the pie plate on a baking sheet lined with parchment of a silicone mat.

Put the cream and 1 cup of the coconut in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring almost constantly.  Continue to cook and stir until the cream is reduced by half and the mixture is slightly thickened.  Scrape the coconut cream into a bowl and set it aside while you prepare the lime filling.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl beat the egg yolks at high speed until thick and pale.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the condensed milk.  Still on low, add half of the lime juice.  When it is incorporated, add the reaming juice, again mixing until it is blended.  Spread the coconut cream in the bottom of the graham cracker crust, and pour over the lime filling.

Bake the pie for 12 minutes.  Transfer the pie to a cooling rack and cool for 15 minutes, then freeze the pie for at least 1 hour.

To Finish the Pie with Meringue:

Put the 4 egg whites and the sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, whisking all the while, until the whites are hot to the touch.  Transfer the whites to a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, or use a hand mixer in a large bowl, and beat the whites at high speed until they reach room temperature and hold firm peaks.  Using a rubber spatula, fold the remaining 1/2 cup coconut into the meringue.

Spread the meringue over the top of the pie, and run the pie under the broiler until the top of the meringue is golden brown.  (Or, if you’ve got a blowtorch, you can use it to brown the meringue.)  Return the pie to the freezer for another 30 minutes or for up to 3 hours before serving.

There is certainly no better way to break the fast than to start the day off with some fabulous fresh baked bread! Lucky for us, this bread takes on so many forms at breakfast time! Bagels, English muffins, cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, french toast, doughnuts, waffles, pancakes, sweet breads, and plain ol’ toast; I’m out of breath already, and there’s so many more…

It is my pleasure to present to you the theme of this month’s BreadBakingDay - Breakfast Breads! Because the options are truly endless, I’m going to only put one restriction on this - it must have a leavening agent of some kind. Quick breads are just as fabulous as yeasted breads for this
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Well, not mine, really, but my blog’s! So glad you could visit! The amazing Jess at Delicious Design Studio did a whirlwind of a job and has me totally tickled with this new site!  She was so incredible and easy to work with; I hands-down recommend her to anyone.  Thanks for everything, Jess :)

The former site, if you had previously visited, was here but I wanted something that didn’t sound so “muffin”ish. I was also aiming for something that was a bit more sophisticated, while incorporating all aspects of baking, since I do a great deal of breads, and not just sweets.  I’m going to move some of my favorite posts from the last site over to this one for easy reference.  Also, the old blog will auto-direct here, so don’t do a double take if you are confused with how you may have arrived  :)

I’ve been so eager to try this bread, and I’m so glad I finally did! The reason I had put it off for so long is that the high extraction do-it-yourself-part had intimidated me. I don’t know why - it ended up being so easy to do, and so worth this 4 extra minutes that it took.

This bread was gargantuan! But so incredible. It was probably 14″ across, and about 8″ or 9″ tall. This would be my first jumbo-sized loaf, and it really could feed an army. Well, a small army. Maybe a small baseball team. Anyway. I have an electric mill and normally mill my own wheat, spelt, kamut, etc for my whole grain breads. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to sift anything out of it, since the entire wheat berry is milled at the same grind.
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This month’s Bread Baking Day theme was simple - the bread must include oats. Astrid of Paulchen’s Food Blog was our lovely host this month, and I thought there are so many options that I was paralyzed by indecision for the first 3 weeks that this challenge was posted. I decided that I wanted to incorporate fruit, and I was in the mood for something quick, specifically a quickbread! I decided to do a variation of the Peach Oatmeal Bread in King Arthur’s Whole Grain Baking book. I thought that peaches would be super appropriate since I reside in the official peach state. :)

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Its Tuesday, and that means that the TWD’ers are back at it again. This time it was carrot cake! I’ve been wanting to make carrot cake for a while, but I’ve got so much going on it the kitchen, it had just taken a number and was waiting at the back of the line. So, luckily for it, its number was called this week, and I got to play around with one of the tastiest recipes I’ve made in a while.
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When Holly of Phemomenon asked for participants in her one-off foodie event, “Blogging for Babies - An Invitation for Little Wonders” I didn’t hesitate to say yes. This is an event to promote the March For Babies, which does amazing work in the way of improving the life quality of infants, both full term and premature.

I have a particular interest in causes like this one because I work at a childrens’ hospital, specifically doing anesthesia on these little miracles. We sometimes have to anesthetize patients as little as 23 weeks gestation, and they barely weight ONE pound. They are so tiny, and are fighting so hard for their life. Its both heartbreaking and amazing, and I’m so glad that there are organizations like this that are able to help these little ones make it through this rough start to life. Please consider going to the link above to donate to this cause - your money will be truly well spent.  Please see below for Holly’s personal statement to everyone regarding this event/cause. Read the rest of this entry »

The difficultly level of this bread is marked as “advanced” in Maggie Glezer’s book. I took one look at that and thought, what the heck. I’ve got a bread class under my belt, and I just won’t take pictures of it if its inedible :).

I adapted the recipe from her book Baking Across America, and this particular recipe is from Della Fratoria’s Bakery. I happened to have all the ingredients on hand which was about 70% why I chose to get started on this recipe last night. The other 30% was that it used sourdough starter, and I’m always looking for a reason to use it! I keep my starter at 100% hydration, and adapted the recipe to account for that.
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I’d been daydreaming about trying my luck at English muffins ever since I saw Susan’s post at Wild Yeast. They just looked so tasty, and so much better than what you get out of a package! I’m so glad that I tried them - they are every bit as good as she promised. I didn’t know until I was about to make them, that English muffins are not baked - they are merely cooked on a griddle (or nonstick skillet in my case) on both sides, much like a stiff pancake batter. I was also surprised by how much milk they required.
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Okay, so not really, but it was fun to make these little bites of chocolatey goodness. Dorie’s recipe for Gooey Chocolate Cakes were what was on this weeks TWD agenda. I had opted to make miniature versions, simply because I wanted to bring all of the left overs to work (especially since hubbs is out of town) and I thought that it would be nice to have more to share - 15 in fact. Dorie says that you definitely need to serve this with something - its too rich to stand on its own, and I’d have to agree. I plated it with some fresh cut strawberries and some seedless raspberry preserves (that I used yesterday in Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake, no less!) and those flavors balanced the richness nicely. I just wish I had thought ahead enough to pour a glass of milk, but I was too focused on eating chocolate.
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