Relaxed cooking days and egg wash

egg wash

Today is drizzly and damp and chilly here in Kansas City.  We've had a bit of winter weather with ice and snow yesterday, but today it's above freezing for a least most of the day.  Later it will dip below and everything will start to slick up again.  Snow perhaps tonight and tomorrow.  I love days like this, days which just seem made for filling a home with the aromas of good food.  I started my day with an hour and a half of practice on the piano, and my morning is now clear and much of the afternoon as well as I don't have my normal complement of piano lessons to teach today.  So I'm spending the rest of the morning listening to Chopin, Ginastera, and Haydn while I cook and bake.  

apple slab pie ready for the oven

I'm making apple slab pies today.  These are basically pies without a pie dish.  They are particularly good for those who wish a greater crust to pie filling ratio than one usually finds in a pie.  They are a bit rustic or casual in nature, in essence a great big hand pie, but you don't eat it by hand because it's too large to do so.  

apples resting in sugar and spices

Lots of apples, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla go into the filling with just a bit of flour to help in thickening.  Pie dough is rolled out into a rectangle and filling is placed on one half.  The other half of the dough is pulled over the filling and crimped to seal it.  Then the whole thing is brushed with egg wash and dusted with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sanding sugar. 45 minutes or so in the oven and you have a great dessert.  Egg wash is a marvelous thing but people often tell me they don't always like to use it because it's hard to get the eggs completely mixed by hand since those egg whites like to hang together.  The answer to this, I learned long ago, is to add a pinch of salt to your egg wash.  The salt denatures, or breaks down, the proteins which means the egg wash is now much easier to brush onto any sort of dough.  When you add that pinch of salt, you have to a wait a minute or two for it to act on the egg.  But after that, it is much easier to whisk with a fork and then brush on your pies.

hot milk cake

  I always make extra when it comes to pie fillings.  I like to err on the side of abundance when it comes to having enough to fill a pie or a tart.  So the extra that's left over gets repurposed.  Today that extra is simmering on the stove in a saucepan, breaking down the apples, cooking everything until the mixture is a rich and very soft compote.  This will then be put on slices of hot milk cake which I made yesterday.  If I had ice cream, it would be great on that as well.  Never toss out your extra pie fillings for they can always be used to enhance something else.

As I said, this is a nice day.  I will be starting to prep some things for weekend orders: deviled eggs and pecan shortbread and oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie flats are all going out to different people Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie flats are something I've never given out to anyone before.  I love them.  They are very crunchy and have a wonderful flavor.  I'm hoping everyone loves them as much as I do.  To anyone who is reading this, enjoy this chilly January day and stay warm with some good food.