Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours!  I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  You may not be surprised to learn that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  The focus is on gathering with friends & family, and food!  No materialistic focus or pressure, and plenty of good food!

I’ll be making another Cranberry Chess Pie for one of my gatherings.  By the time the weekend is over, we’ll have eaten 4 Thanksgiving dinners.  Yup, FOUR.  Three will be in Kentucky, and the last will be one I’m cooking!  I’m excited to plan a menu and cook for the first time.  I’m also hoping to have enough leftover turkey to make one of our favorite soups.

This soup is hands down, Nathan’s absolute favorite soup.  As soon as I mention the ingredients, he gets excited because he knows he’s getting this soup.  If you’ve been following my blog since 2008 (and I bet that’s VERY few of you!  haha), you’ve seen this soup before.  This soup is one of the reasons I’m glad I have a blog.  I first started a blog to keep track of recipes I’ve tried & loved.  And this is certainly one that gets made again and again.

This soup is incredibly easy to prepare, and doesn’t need to simmer for hours to develop it’s flavor.  From the first step in cooking this soup, your kitchen will be filled with the most wonderful & aromatic smells.  I can’t describe enough how incredible this soup is!  You really must try it for yourself!  You can use leftover turkey, or chicken in this soup.  We often purchase a rotisserie chicken and use the meat from that for the soup.

Because I often like to update some of the old recipes with newer photos, I don’t want to have duplicate recipes on my blog.  So, just hop on over to the old post, and check out this AMAZING soup!

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Cranberry Chess Pie

I am BEYOND happy to finally be sharing this recipe with you guys.  I first made this last year, the day before Thanksgiving.  I also decided I would attempt my first homemade pie crust.  What turned out was nothing short of ugly, due to what can only be described as “the incredible shrinking pie crust”.  Miraculously I somehow made it work, and completed the pie.  The final product was so incredibly delicious, I knew I’d make it again this year to share on the blog with all of you.  As it turned out, I was asked to guest blog on a local blog I love, and my guest post would run the Thursday before Thanksgiving.  What a great opportunity to share this incredible pie with even more people!  UPDATE 2014: I originally shared the recipe on Styleblueprint‘s site, but I have since decided to publish the full recipe here as well. I’ve loved this pie since 2010, so I want it in my own domain. 🙂

I knew from my first bite of that pie last year I absolutely HAD to make it again in 2011 so I could blog about it. If you are from the South, I would assume you are familiar with chess pie, but I’ll give you a little more info on this southern staple, just in case. Like any food item, the recipe may vary region to region, so I apologize if the recipe I describe is different from the one you know. The chess pie I grew up enjoying was a rich, custardy dessert, with the main ingredients being butter, sugar, and eggs. When I think of chess pie I always think of the crispy crust along the top, and the rich, sweet filling in the middle. When we bought our first house in October of 2010, as a closing gift, our realtor gave us a copy of The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. When flipping through it, this recipe stood out as one I needed to make ASAP! I love this twist on a longtime favorite.

The aroma of this pie baking adds the most amazing smell to your kitchen. It will definitely put you in the holiday mood. Way better than anything you can buy at Yankee Candle. And bonus, you get to actually eat this! The cranberries add the perfect tartness to compliment and balance the sweetness from the custard. And just like my grandmother’s chess pie, you still get the crispy, crackly crust. The cranberries will rise up to the top during baking, so when you cut into it you get a bright burst of pink & red atop a smooth, yellow filling. It’s perfect alongside a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

On this second go round of making the pie, I didn’t want to take chances with another ugly homemade crust.  I purchased store-bought refrigerated crusts, the “unroll and fill” kind.  You can make your own crust if you have more skill than I, or use whatever store brand you are comfortable with.

We took this pie to a gathering at our neighbor’s house, and everyone there really loved it and asked for the recipe. I told them they’d have to wait till it was up on StyleBlueprint! I have a feeling this pie will become a yearly tradition for me, because I really do love it that much. It would easily work for any Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering.

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Cranberry Chess Pie

Yield: 1 pie

Ingredients:

1 rolled-out basic pie dough (recipe below)
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp finely grated orange zest
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries,coarsely chopped

Pie Crust:
1 1/4 c. flour
1 Tb. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter
3 Tb. ice cold water (may need a bit more if not coming together)

Directions:

Roll pie dough out and transfer to a 9-inch pie dish. Crimp edges and refrigerate or freeze until firm. About 30 minutes. Meanwhile, place an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Partially bake the pie shell. Transfer to a wire rack and cool. Leave oven on.

In a bowl, whisk together the sugar, melted butter, and salt. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until smooth after each addition. Stir in the flour, then the buttermilk, vinegar, and orange zest, mixing well. Stir in the cranberries. Scrape the mixture into the partially baked pie shell.

Bake the pie until the top is lightly golden brown and the filling is firm, 50-60 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely. Cut pie into wedges and serve at room temperature.

Pie Crust:
Mix together the flour, sugar and salt. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal with butter no larger than small peas. Add the water and mix with a fork just until the dough pulls together.

Pat into a ball and flatten into a disk. Lightly flour the work surface and rolling pin then roll out. Re-flour as needed and turn dough to keep from sticking.

Makes 1 crust.

from the Williams Sonoma Baking Book

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Sweet & Spicy Hash Browns

Yet another busy busy week for me it seems!  Last weekend we got out of town for my birthday.  We took a short trip up the interstate to Louisville, KY and stayed at the incredibly beautiful & historic Brown Hotel.  If you’ve ever heard of a “Kentucky Hot Brown”, this is where it began.  I had all intentions of eating one, until I realized it was $22.  Umm… Maybe another time!

We also dined out with friends at Garage Bar, a fantastic new restaurant with wood fired pizzas, and an oyster & country ham bar.  Nathan & I shared the Brussels Sprouts Pizza that was also topped with roasted garlic, cream, and smoked bacon.  HOLY YUM!

And one of the best parts of my birthday weekend?  Getting to tell our families there will soon be an addition to our family!  Nathan & I are excited to announce we’re having a baby!  Our little one is scheduled to arrive in late May.  If you follow me on Twitter/Instagram you already know this, but I felt I oughta share it on here too.

Ok, ok, onto the recipe.  This is the sweet potato hash I made the morning I made the Swiss Chard & Canadian Bacon Quiche.  I had a surplus of sweet potatoes due to my CSA and a friend’s garden.  I loved the mix of sweetness from the sweet potatoes & brown sugar, and the spiciness from the chile powder.  This was a great accompaniment to the quiche.

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Sweet & Spicy Hash Browns

Yield: 1 1/2 cups

Prep Time: 10 min

Cook Time: 20

Total Time: 30

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter
1 large sweet potato, scrubbed and shredded
1/4 onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions:

Melt butter in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Place shredded sweet potatoes and onion in the pan; cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until sweet potatoes are tender and onion is translucent, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the chipotle chile powder, garlic powder, and brown sugar. Cook, uncovered, until potatoes are golden brown on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Turn and allow the potatoes to brown on the other side.

from All Recipes

PS. If you want to see a truly hilarious response to our announcement, check out how I announced it to my lifelong hometown friends.

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Happy Birthday to ME!!!

That’s right.  It’s my birthday.  Ok, technically my birthday is not today, it’s Saturday.  In the photo above I’m obviously rocking an awesome 1991 perm, but I’m also showing off the birthday cake my mom made me.  A gumball machine with real gumballs on it.

Flashforward 20 years (20 YEARS?!), and I’ve got another cake to share with you.  One with bourbon in it.  Oh yeah…  Being grown up has it’s perks.  But you won’t find the recipe here, it’s a guest blog I did for Jen of Beantown Baker.  She’s been asking me for ages to guest blog for her “Friday Faves” series, and I’ve always been too busy!  First I was buying a house.  Then I was planning a “non wedding” wedding.  But finally, this last time she asked I able to do it.  To hear all about the Tipsy Cake, and a little bit about the awesome new cookbook the recipe came from, Desserts from the Loveless Cafe head on over to Beantown Baker!

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