Mom’s Monkey Bread, circa 1970

December 23, 2016December 13, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 18 Comments

I wasn’t planning on writing another blog post before Christmas, but I have a hard time saying No to a recipe request from one of my brothers, especially when they bring up food memories that involve our mother. My brother Sam wrote, “Judy, Mom always made sticky buns in a cake pan that had the centerpiece cut out. They were very popular. Do you remember how to make them?”

He was talking about Monkey Bread. I really had to think hard to remember how Mom made it back in the Seventies. Remembering brought me to a happy place in our childhood kitchen with the big bay window over the sink that overlooked the entrance to Bay View. I was happy for the challenge.

Sam, here is my first attempt in forty years at making Monkey Bread. The big white blob is cream cheese frosting. Although I knew what kind of pan you were referring to when you wrote “a cake pan that had the centerpiece cut out,” I didn’t have an angel food cake pan, so I used a Les Creuset Dutch oven. It did the job. Do not use a tube pan with a removable bottom as the butter will leak out and make a mess.

When I went to the grocery store to find loaves of frozen bread dough, it was nice to see they still stocked the five-pound packages I used as a kid. You will need two loaves for this recipe. Be sure to defrost them about thirty minutes before you plan to bake. There is no need to let them rise first.

Ingredients:

2 loaves (2 pounds) frozen bread dough, thawed
1 stick (½ cup) butter
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
½ cup chopped walnuts or raisins (optional)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350º
Grease a deep 9 or 10-inch cooking container.

Mix together sugars and cinnamon.
Melt butter in a pan until just melted. Stir in vanilla. Remove from heat.
Cut loaves into pieces, as shown in the photo below.

Drop individual pieces of dough into the butter and stir until each piece is evenly coated

Take each piece out and roll it in the cinnamon sugar—place in a greased baking pan. Let rest for about 15 minutes. It does need to rise in the pan before cooking.

Bake for about 45 minutes. The dough will rise as it cooks. The top layer will turn golden brown and be firm to touch when it is ready. If you don’t cook the bread the full amount of time, the lower dough balls will be doughy even though the bread looks done on top.

Let cool for five minutes and then flip onto a serving plate.

Frosting:

½ package cream cheese, softened (½ pound)
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
¼ teaspoon vanilla
dash of salt

Mix ingredients together until well-blended. Thin with more milk if desired.

Serve bread with cream cheese frosting on the side or drizzled on top, as shown in this gorgeous photo sent to me Christmas morning by my Aunt Rachelle.

Merry Christmas to Rachelle and my brothers!

Appetizers:
Cranberry and Hot Pepper Jelly Brie Bites
“Croatian Cheese” a Flavorful Appetizer Made with Feta and Goat Cheese
Roasted Tamari Almonds

Brunch:
50 Ways to Make a Frittata
The Biscuit King
Sorghum, Oats, and Cranberry Granola
The Navel Mary Way: How to Peel an Orange
Fruit and Nut Bread

Desserts:
Mrs. Walker’s Cranberry Nut Pie
Italian Ricotta and Lemon Cookies
A Cake for All Seasons
Lily’s Red Velvet Cake

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Mom’s Apple Pie with Cheddar Crumble Topping

October 3, 2016July 24, 2021 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 27 Comments

The nooks! The crannies! I love this pie with its unique cheddar crumble topping. I make it when the weather first turns and apple trees in the area are weighed down with fruit. When I took this pie out of the oven, it looked so gorgeous and smelled so good I found myself humming, “You’re just too good to be true” in sheer anticipation of taking my first bite. Mom’s Apple Pie never disappoints.

This recipe calls for a single crust on the bottom and a streusel-style crumble made of cheddar cheese, butter, flour, sugar, and salt, on top. Every time I make it, I add a just little more cheddar as I try to figure out just how much cheddar is too much for I love getting a taste of cheddar in every bite! Right now, I’m up to 1⅓ cups or four ounces. Mom’s original recipe called for 1/2 cup of cheese.

Yield: One 9-inch deep-dish pie

Filling Ingredients:

1 pie crust (I love Trader Jo’s Pie Crust)
3 pounds apples, peeled, cored, and sliced (8 cups, or 2 pounds when cleaned)
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon lemon zest
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg or ground cloves (optional)

Topping Ingredients:

1⅓ cups cheddar cheese (4 ounces), shredded
4 tablespoons (2 ounces) butter, chipped into pieces
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425º. If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven on the middle rack and let it preheat along with the oven. Starting the baking process in a very hot oven with a pizza stone helps to ensure a cooked bottom crust. Place a baking sheet on the oven rack beneath the pizza stone to capture any juices that bubble over.

Mise en place

Roll out pie crust and place in the bottom of the pie plate. Fold edges in and crimp to make it pretty. Set aside.

Peel and slice the apples with a paring knife, or try one of the modern conveniences out there for peeling and slicing. Set sliced apples aside.

Mix filling ingredients in a bowl. The apples should be at room temperature to ensure even cooking. Set aside.

Mix topping ingredients until the streusel forms small chunks. I mix the topping ingredients either in a food processor

Or in a bowl with a pastry blender or mixer. Set aside.

Put It All Together

Pour filling into the prepared, uncooked pie crust. Pack the apples down

Place pie on the pizza stone and set the timer for 15 minutes.

When the timer rings, spread the topping mixture evenly over the pie filling and decrease the oven temperature to 350º. Set timer for 30 more minutes.

When the timer goes off, the topping should be lightly browned. Place a piece of foil loosely tented over the top to slow down further browning of the streusel.

Cook for another 20-30 minutes. The interior of the pie isn’t done until you see the juices start to bubble over.

The pie on the left has a fine crumb. The one on the right was processed a little longer until it clumped. I like the taste and texture of the clumpier topping.

Voilà!

Finally, Waste Not, Want Not

My family and I get the apple slices; the chickens get the scraps.

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Ellen’s Most Moist Zucchini Bread

July 12, 2016February 5, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 31 Comments

I love this recipe for zucchini bread. When my children were young, we lived in one of those neighborhoods where there were lots of children, fenceless backyards, car pools, and lots of sharing of recipes. This was one of those recipes. Lucy, our perky neighborhood teen babysitter, used to ride her bike down Sneed Road to our house; believe me, my children were as happy to see her as I was. One day, she brought a loaf of her mother, Ellen’s, zucchini bread. It was unusually moist and dotted with colorful green flecks from the zucchini peel.

The flecks give the bread texture and color that make it visually appealing.

The only change I made to Ellen’s recipe was to add more zucchini, nuts, and chocolate chips. One of my sons will not eat zucchini but loved this bread.

What to do with a baseball bat-sized zucchini?

Like for many of us, I often make zucchini bread when I find one of those baseball bat-sized zucchinis in the garden. If you do that, too, be sure to remove the large seeds before grating the flesh by quartering the zucchini into long strips and cutting out the triangular-shaped seed section. For large amounts of grating, I use the shredder blade in the food processor. Put the grated zucchini in a colander until ready to use. They will start to sweat, and you want that liquid to drain away.

Have no idea how I missed this! 7 pounds 6 ounces

Yield: 2 loaves or 1 loaf and 2 mini-loaves

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 pound unpeeled zucchini (a tad over 3 cups when grated)
1 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped
(Optional: add ½ cup chocolate chips)

Mise en Place:

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325º if glass pans, 350º for metal pans. Grease loaf pans.

Coarsely grate the unpeeled zucchini and set aside. If liquid forms at the bottom of the container while it rests, discard it.

Beat eggs in a mixing bowl for 30 seconds on medium speed.

Add the oil, sugar, and vanilla and mix for two more minutes on medium-low speed. Beating these ingredients together at this point in the recipe is one of the things that gives fruit bread “lift” by incorporating air into the batter.

Add the dry ingredients: the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. Remember, when measuring flour, spoon it into a measuring cup and level with a knife as opposed to packing the flour into the measuring cup by dipping it into a package of flour. You can read more about measuring ingredients in my home ec post.

Mix on slow speed for 30 seconds. Mix gently, you don’t want to stimulate the gluten in the flour to become tough and elasticky.

Add the nuts and zucchini and mix on slow speed until just mixed, about 30 seconds max.

If you plan to add chocolate chips, stir them in now.

Pour batter into prepared pans.

Cook for about an hour, or until a knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan for about 15 minutes and then remove from pan and allow to continue cooling on a wire rack. I usually need to use a knife to loosen the bread from the edges of the pan before turning it over to release it.

My friend, Patty, describes how she made the recipe gluten free in the Comments section. Patty also substituted 3/4 cup of honey for each cup of sugar. This makes for a darker bread that is delicious, but needs to be called Honey Zucchini Bread because the final flavor left in your mouth is honey instead of zucchini.

I never thought of adding chocolate chips to this recipe until I started making my cousin’s recipe for pumpkin bread: Marion’s Crazy Good Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips. I thought her recipe was great with chocolate chips, and since zucchini and pumpkin are in the same family, I thought, “Why not?” It was delicious! Surprisingly, not too sweet.

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Zeyda’s Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

May 28, 2016May 26, 2022 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 10 Comments

When I was growing up, my stepfather’s favorite pie was strawberry rhubarb. I often made it for him when I was in town for Father’s Day. I grew to love it myself.

It is the perfect combination of sweet and tart tastes; right up there with my other favorite sweet and tart combo, Ricotta and Lemon Cookies.

Rhubarb is a perennial plant that is considered a fruit. It has pale green to crimson red stalks, depending on the variety, and green leaves that are poisonous to eat. The stalks look similar to Swiss chard.

Because the stalks are most often used in desserts, specifically pies, you will sometimes see rhubarb referred to as “pie plant” in older cookbooks.

This is my time-honored recipe for making this scrumptious dessert.

Yield: Makes one deep-dish 9″ pie

Ingredients:

6 cups hulled and quartered strawberries (2 pounds after hulling)
3 cups sliced rhubarb (1 pound, maybe 6 stems)
Zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
1 9-inch double pie crust
1 egg and a little sugar for the egg wash

Mise en Place:

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 425º

Prep the strawberries and rhubarb as shown.

Prepare the pie crust: I like to use Trader Joe’s frozen pie crusts. Once the crusts come to room temperature, which takes about 90 minutes, unroll one crust leaving it in its plastic packaging as you do. You’ll find that the dough breaks up into wide strips as you unroll it. Not a problem, just use a rolling pin to lightly rejoin the cracks while the dough is still sandwiched between the plastic. Next, remove the plastic covering from one side of the crust. Using the corners of the remaining plastic square, lift the crust, turn it over and plop it into the pie plate. Continue to leave the plastic on as you then press the pie crust down into the pie plate. Remove the plastic and the bottom crust is now ready for filling.

Put the strawberries, rhubarb, lemon zest and vanilla in one bowl and mix gently. Put the sugar, cornstarch and salt in another bowl and mix.

Gently mix the contents of both bowls together for about ten seconds.You don’t want it to become soupy. Pour mixture into the pie plate.

Roll out the second pie crust in the same way as described above. Remove one of the plastic coverings and use the corners of the remaining covering to position the top crust centrally over the bottom crust. There should be an overhang of dough. Next, remove the last plastic square and go around the rim of the pie and tuck the top crust edges in between the pie plate and the bottom crust. This should create a nice seal to keep the filling in the pie.

Flute the two crust edges together, using your fingers as shown in the pictures below, to make a pretty edge for your pie.

Using a fork, beat one egg in a small bowl. Use a pastry brush to spread the egg wash over the top of the pie all the way to the edge. If the egg wash puddles in the dimples in the crust, use a paper towel to mop them up. Lightly sprinkle sugar over the top.

Using a knife, cut small slits into the top crust to allow steam to escape as the filling cooks. Place the pie on a baking sheet to collect any juices that bubble out. Bake pie at 425º for twenty minutes on the middle oven rack. Best to set a timer. Lower oven heat to 350º and cook for about 45 – 50 minutes longer until crust starts to turn golden brown and you can see the juices bubbling.

This pie was so gorgeous, I started humming You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you …

Cool slightly and serve. Vanilla ice cream would be great with it. If you want the inside of the pie to be firm, you’ll need to refrigerate it until the filling cools down and sets.

Related Posts on Cooking with Strawberries
Oven-Roasted Strawberry and Rosemary Jam
Very Berry Clafoutis

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@judyschickens

Italian style meals, sustainable gardening tips, and lots of segues in between

Sweets

Mom’s Monkey Bread, circa 1970

Mom’s Apple Pie with Cheddar Crumble Topping

Ellen’s Most Moist Zucchini Bread

Zeyda’s Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

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