Apricot Pie

Our daughter's barbecue was a two pie occasion due to my husband's feelings about rhubarb. (See Rum Rhubarb Pie) I figure if we have enough people to warrant extra desserts, go for it. We actually ended up with three pies, because one of the guests brought lemon meringue pie. I chose apricot pie because June is apricot season. They are in the supermarket briefly now, more or less for the month of June, and then that's it.
Apricot pie is pretty easy if one avails oneself of what the British call mod cons. (Modern conveniences.) The chief mod con in this pie is premade graham cracker crust, which does away with the need to crush crackers, baste them with butter and press them into a pie crust shape.
So my advice is to skip all that stuff about the crust, and get a premade one. You will be happier, and no one will be able to tell the difference. The overall pie is sweet, but tangy, due to the grated lemon rind. If you like lemon flavoring, use more. To peel the tiny apricots, drop them in boiling water and leave them there for two minutes.
This pie involves several tricky judgment calls. First, there is cook until mixture thickens. (How long, for God's sake?) Next is, cool until mixture starts to set. Well, if you misjudge this one, you get a pie with a funny consistency, like it has jello cubes of filling floating in an egg white mixture. So, my expert advice is, don't make this when you are distracted. Give it your full attention, especially, the cool until mixture starts to set part. You want to prod the mixture every five minutes or so to see if it is starting to set, or jell.
About the cook until mixture thickens part, I did not spend long minutes over the stove, mainly because I didn't have those long minutes. I wanted to go to bed. I cooked the mixture in a double boiler, which is a metal or glass bowl sitting over a saucepan of boiling water, for around ten minutes, and figured "Close enough for government work." I say this a lot when I don't want to do whatever it is I am doing any longer.  It is somewhat hard to judge thickness, because the apricot pulp makes the filling seem thick. Ten minutes should be okay.
 The guests enjoyed the pie. Definitely a worthwhile effort.

Apricot Pie

Graham Cracker crust
16 graham crackers, crushed
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
 1/4 cup melted butter
Filling
3 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups apricot pulp made by skinning and pitting ripe fruit and blending in an electric blender
1/4 teaspoon graded lemon rind
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
6 ripe apricot, peeled and halved
whipping cream

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. To prepare crust, combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, cinnamon and melted butter and mix well. Press into the bottom and sides of a nine-inch pie plate.
3. Bake eight minutes. Cool.
4. To prepare filling, beat the egg yolks with one-half cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the apricot pulp, lemon rind and salt and place in the top of a double boiler.
5. Heat, stirring, until mixture thickens. Soak the gelatin in the water and add to the hot mixture. Stir to melt gelatin. Cool until mixture starts to set. (Watch like a hawk, here.)
6. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining sugar and fold into the cooled apricot mixture.
7. Pour into the cooled shell and chill. Garnish with the apricot halves and whipped cream.
Makes six servings.

Trifle Pudding

Trifle Pudding is one of three trifle recipes in the Southern section of the cookbook. Was a time when trifle was beloved of southern hostesses. This is a day before kind of a recipe, since it has a couple of steps and has to chill.  The novice cook would be advised to practice before trying this one at a dinner. The base is custard, mixed with whipped cream in a bowl lined with ladyfingers and almond macaroons.
 Call me an old fart, but I would hazard a guess that many cooks today have no idea what custard is, let alone have made any. British readers, assuming there are any, know about custard sauce, which I suspect is made from a dry mix, but nobody in America even eats custard anymore.
Custard is a dessert made from eggs, sugar and milk. In the 1920s, 30s and even into the 40s, it was fed to small children and the elderly. It was supposed to be nutritious and easy to digest. The nutritious part was probably true. Milk contains vitamin D and calcium. Eggs contain protein. As far as the easy to digest part, I can't say, never having had any issues with digestion. When I was a kid, homemade custard was supplanted by Jello Pudding and Pie Mix. My mother had neither the time nor the inclination to stand over a stove stirring a custard for her little children. Beechnut baby food for her.
Irma Rombauer Becker devotes half a page in The Joy of Cooking to custard.  There are two kinds, baked and cooked on top of the stove. Becker suggests always cooking top of the stove custards in a double boiler, a metal or glass mixing bowl set in a saucepan over boiling water. This method prevents the custard from cooking too quickly and scrambling the eggs. Becker, who is usually above the unexplained clichés of cooking (cook until done) (Huh?), uses a phrase that sets my teeth on edge, "cook until the mixture coats the back of a spoon." Well, this is completely unhelpful, given the fact that many custard based pie mixtures coat the back of a spoon as soon as they are placed on the stove. In my experience, these mixtures have to be cooked at a low heat (3.5 on a gas stove) for ten to twenty minutes. And yes, stirring constantly is necessary if you don't want to have a pan full of orange-flavored scrambled eggs. Stirring over low heat results in the creamy consistency we love in chilled pies.
My advice to a novice cook, or even someone who has plenty of cooking experience but has never made a custard before is to invest in a dozen eggs and make custard before attempting a fancy dessert for a party. Make it, eat it, and see how it turned out. If it isn't the way you want it, (watery, perhaps) try again and turn the heat down.
Once  you have gotten past the custard, you have the ingredients. I got all the unusual ingredients at my local unusual store, Rodmans, on Wisconsin Avenue in DC, a combination gourmet food shop and electronics store. Almond macaroons are also known as amaretti, and can be purchased on the internet at www.CookiesFromItaly.com. Apparently there are two different kinds of ladyfingers in the world of cuisine, hard and soft. Hard come from Italy. They cannot be split in half, so if you get those, just smear the jelly on the outside of the ladyfingers. Soft are baked here. I have never noticed soft ladyfingers in my local Safeway. If one looks on the internet, apparently they are available at Walmart.  That is not really a good reason to shop at Walmart, in my opinion, but what the hell.
   The amaretti and the ladyfingers are sprinkled with dry sherry. Sherry is a wine from Spain that is a rich brown in color with a sophisticated taste. Do not, under any circumstances, buy cooking sherry. That is sold in the grocery store and has salt in it to make it undrinkable. You don't want salt in your fancy dessert, now do you? Go to the liquor store and invest $18 on a decent bottle of sherry, like Dry Sack or Gonzalez Byas. Then, when the weather gets cool in the fall, sit down in the evening and pour yourself a glass of sherry. You will be glad you did. One does not drink it with ice.
If you don't drink, leave it out. That is preferable to cooking sherry.
I churned this out in the morning for dinner with our friends, Rich and Mary Alice. They seemed to like it, and I sure did.

Trifle Pudding

1/2 cup blanched almonds
1/4 pound (four ounces) candied cherries
1/4 pound ladyfingers
1/4 cup tart currant or beach plum jelly
1/2 pound almond macaroons (amaretti)
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 1/2 teaspoons corn starch
1 1/2 cups milk
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons sugar
2 cups heavy cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the almonds on a baking sheet and bake until they are toasted, stirring occasionally. Do not let them burn. Turn off oven and let almonds cool.
3. Chop the almonds and chop the candied cherries.
4. Split each ladyfinger in half and smear the split side with jelly. Arranged layers of jelly-smeared ladyfingers and the macaroons over bottom and side of a round glass mixing bowl. Sprinkle with the sherry.
5. Place the cornstarch in a saucepan and gradually add the milk, stirring with a wire whisk. Beat the eggs and add them along with half the sugar. Bring gently to a boil, stirring constantly, to make a custard. Do not cook over high heat or too long or the custard will curdle. Let cool and fold in chopped cherries.
6. Whip the cream and, before it is stiff, beat in the remaining sugar. Fold the whipped cream into the custard and pour the mixture into the prepared bowl. Chill. When ready to serve, sprinkle with chopped almonds.
Makes six servings.

Sesame Date Pie

Easter Saturday was a busy time. In the morning, I went to Saint Margaret's Church with my husband Bob to help decorate the sanctuary for Easter. Being about as creative, artistically speaking, as a rock, I get the jobs that involve manual labor, unpacking the spring flowers and filling the votive candles with liquid wax. Bob arranges them so the pulpit looks like it is sitting on a small hill dotted with hydrangeas and other colorful blossoms.
At noon, I sped off to Nationals Stadium with my friend Pat to see my first baseball game of the season. The Nats played valiantly, but alas, lost, 4-3.
So it was, that when I finally got home and began work on the pie for Easter lunch, I was tired. This dessert had already undergone one transformation. It was going to be Rum Rhubarb pie, but neither Safeway nor Whole Foods had any rhubarb.  I plumped for Sesame Date Pie, except I didn't remember the sesame part, and used a premade pie shell. So, what I ended up with was Sesame Date Pie minus the sesame.
 Anyhow, this is definitely a day before recipe. The timing is finicky and it has to jell. The cook is much better off getting down to business the night before. As I said, I used a premade pie shell. The sesame seeds are supposed to be incorporated into the pie dough. I can't say anything about the directions for the pastry since I didn't make it.
This is one of those double boiler recipes that have useful directions like "heat mixture until the gelatin and sugar are dissolved (easy) and mixture coats the back of a spoon" (#%&!) Not a helpful direction, in my book. I put the gelatin and water in the double boiler and added the milk, egg yolks and sugar. Recipes involving milk, eggs and a double boiler require pretty constant stirring to make sure the eggs don't cook. You can tell that the gelatin and sugar are dissolved when you no longer hear them scratching on the bottom of the bowl when you stir. Coating the back of the spoon is an entirely different matter. I cooked and stirred for 25 minutes before the mixture seemed to have thickened and was coating anything.
Then, the recipe says to add the vanilla and the rum or cognac and chill "until the mixture starts to thicken" This means keeping a close eye on the mixture because  one does not want it to harden. I left the bowl in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. The mixture was a little thicker than I would have liked, plus it continued to harden even after it was taken out of the frig. So, if you want a pie that looks like the picture on the box of pudding and pie filling, watch it like a hawk.
The pie that I started at 6:00 finally went into the refrigerator for the last time at 9:00 when I sat down and fell asleep in front of Inspector Lewis on PBS. I was too tired to make the mini clam pies I intended to make for the Easter hospitality hour. Anyhow, make this pie the night before you want to serve it and use the timer.
Dates are not something I am naturally drawn to. In fact, it is hard for me to understand the appeal of the things at all, but the pie turned out fine, and the guests seemed to like it. Only my husband ate the alternative dessert provided when I thought I was making rhubarb pie.

Sesame Date Pie

Pastry:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, lightly toasted
3 tablespoons cold water, approximately
Filling:
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup less two tablespoons milk
2 eggs separated
6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons run or cognac
3/4 cup heavy cream, whipped,
1 cup pitted fresh dates, finely chopped (The dates I bought at Whole Foods were dried.)
whole dates

1. To prepare pastry, place the flour, salt, shortening and butter in a bowl. With a pastry blender or the finger tips, blend the fat into the flour until mixture  resembles coarse oatmeal.
2. Using a fork, stir in the sesame seeds and water to make a dough. Wrap the dough in wax paper and chill briefly, about fifteen minutes.
3. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured board or pastry cloth and fit into a nine-inch pie plate. Decorate the edge and chill shell fifteen minutes.
4. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 425 degrees,
5. Prick pie shell with a fork. Bake twenty to twenty-five minutes or until baked and golden. Cool.
6. To prepare filling, soak the gelatin in the water in the top of a double boiler. Beat the milk with the egg yolks and add with four tablespoons of the sugar and the salt.
7. Heat mixture over hot water until gelatin and sugar are dissolved and mixture coats the back of the spoon. (I had the gas on 4, which is medium heat, and cooked it for twenty five minutes. Stir it regularly.) Remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla and the run or cognac. Chill, stirring occasionally, until mixture starts to thicken. (about 20 to 25 minutes).
8. Fold in the whipped cream and chopped dates.
9. Beat the egg whites until frothy.  Gradually beat in the remaining two tablespoons of sugar. (That means sprinkle it in a little at a time as you beat.)Beat until mixture is stiff. Fold into date mixture. Pile into pie shell. Chill well. Garnish with whole dates before serving. Makes six servings.

Fruited Eggnog Pudding (Gluten Free)

Fruited Eggnog Pudding is definitely a day before recipe. It is not hard, but it takes time, as well as an impressive collection of liquor. It has to chill so the cook is much better off making it the evening before the dinner party, thereby ensuring peace of mind on that issue
I made it on Saturday afternoon for Sunday night's dinner, the same dinner that I made the grits balls for.
I was delighted to be using up several stray ingredients, such as dried fruit, left over from fruitcake making, chopped walnuts, just sitting in the refrigerator, golden raisins, (I used regular old brown.) and the booze. What I didn't do was check on the gelatin. When came time to dissolve the gelatin so it could be added to the eggs, etc., I was horrified to see that I only had one envelope when the recipe called for three. However, the time was getting on for 4 o'clock and I had to meet my husband Bob at 4:30, so I just said to hell with it and used one. Result, pudding less stand up than it would have been with three envelopes of gelatin.
I found the recipe contained many imponderables. For example, it says to beat the egg yolks until they are "very thick." and lemon yellow. How thick is very thick? Do the eggs have to look exactly like a lemon? I beat the yolks for about 5 minutes. They did thicken and showed the tracks of the beaters, but were not lemon yellow, mostly, I believe due to the fact that I use organic eggs. The yolks of organic eggs are a much deeper yellow than the yolks of non organic eggs. The color did lighten somewhat. I think 5 minutes is enough.
"Gradually beat in the sugar." What does that mean? Basically, it means not to dump the whole 3/4 cup into the egg yolks at the same time. You could spoon the sugar in, a couple of tablespoons at a time and beat for the count of 30 if you are a perfectionist.
It says use a nine cup mold that has been "lightly oiled." What is a nine cup mold and how does one lightly oil same? Well, in the 30s, 40s and 50s, molded salads and desserts were all the rage.

The molds of the past looked like this, a tin-lined melon mold. I used a large red bowl. To lightly oil it, I took a clean paper towel and soaked it with vegetable oil. I then rubbed the inside of the bowl with the oily paper towel. Since I did not have three envelopes of gelatin, it didn't matter anyway, since the pudding was somewhat soupy, and not as stand-up as it should have been.
Don't worry about  not having a mold, but if you would like one many of different sizes, types and designs are available on e-bay.
I also discovered one more shortage in the cooking process. The recipe calls for a cup of bourbon. We had about half a cup. Since we don't drink hard liquor much anymore, I was disinclined to go out and buy a fresh bottle of bourbon. Altogether, what I had added up to one and 1/4 cups of hard liquor, so I figured that would be enough. It was. In case you are not much of a drinker, but want to make this dessert, you can always buy little bottles, pints, or half pints for cooking.
The dessert turned out well. It may have been too much in a meal that started in the living room with deep friend grits balls, went on to roast beef with Bob's special potatoes and broccoli soufflé, salad, and finally the dessert. The guests seemed to like it even if they were stuffed like geese.

Fruited Eggnog Pudding

1 cup chopped mixed candied fruits
1/4 cup roughly chopped pecans or walnuts
2 tablespoons golden raisins
1/4 cup cognac
12 egg yolks,
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark rum (Light rum works just as well if that is all you have.)
3 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
1 cup bourbon
2 cups heavy cream, whipped
2 tablespoons vanilla
Whipped cream for garnish
pieces of candied cherries

1. Soak the mixed fruits, nuts and raisins in the cognac,
2. Beat the eggs until very thick, lemon colored and smooth. Gradually beat in the sugar.
3. Add the rum and beat in well. Chill the mixture until it is at refrigerator temperature, about 40 minutes.
4. Soak the gelatin in the water. Heat to dissolve the gelatin. Add the bourbon and stir into the chilled egg mixture quickly and thoroughly.
5.  Fold in the whipped cream and vanilla and continue stirring until the mixture begins to thicken.  Fold in the soaked fruit and nut mixture and pour into a nine-cup mold, which has been rinsed with cold water or lightly oiled.
6.  Chill  at least five hours or overnight. Unmold and decorate with whipped cream and candied cherries.
Makes about 12 servings.
Note: If a nine-cup mold is not available,  divide the mixture between a six-cup mold and a three cup mold. When ready to serve, unmold and place one atop the other.

Minetry McCoy's Miracle (Dessert)

Minetry McCoy's Miracle is one dessert that lives up to its name. It is one hell of a good chocolate dessert. It ought to be, after all, since it contains a pound of butter. It is somewhat time consuming to make, but not difficult. The cook does not have to stand for hours over the stove stirring a mixture that stubbornly refuses to thicken. There is a good bit of separating, beating, mixing and melting, all done the day before. On the up side, it is completely delicious, and will be finished long before your dinner party, allowing you some time to wash your hair, or the kitchen floor, as the case may be.
I decided to  make M.M.M. because of a package of ladyfingers. Our daughter's friend, Laura, is living in our basement for a while. She offered us the ladyfingers. While there were several unmade recipes calling for ladyfingers in the southern section of the cookbook, this one looked like the best. My husband wanted to make Charlotte Russe, another dessert requiring ladyfingers, but I frankly couldn't see the point of a dinner party without at least one recipe checked off the list.
There are two issues. Number one is it uses raw eggs. My daughter advised using organic eggs. I buy organic eggs anyhow because of an article I read about some horrible substance that mass chicken farmers use to feed their chickens. Readers will have to use their own judgement on that. I can say, I am writing this on Wednesday after we ate it Saturday night, and no one has dysentery or other ill effects.
 Number two is that of an ingredient, amaretti, or Italian macaroons. Thanks to the Internet, these are readily available for less than $5. Google will send you to a website called www.ilmercadoitaliano.net, which will allow you to order these tasty little cookies and have them on your kitchen counter in two or three days. Desdeforunamente, as they say in Spanish speaking countries, I did not avail myself of this wonderful cooking resource. At 8:00 on Friday night, I realized I didn't have the cookies and got on the phone to Safeway. Safeway didn't  have them. So I hopped in the car and went up to Whole Foods, where the cocktail party they run every Friday night had just dispersed. I wandered around Whole Foods for about 15 minutes in a daze of fatigue, but amaretti were not to be found.
It's kind of a technical problem because there are already two radically different kinds of macaroons on the market, neither of which I wanted. I didn't want coconut macaroons, and I didn't want what I can only term French macaroons, which are the scarlet, fuchsia, violet and baby blue cookies that look something like tiny hamburgers in rainbow colors. Bob had said amaretti look something like vanilla wafers.
So, after a last scan of the cookie shelves, I grabbed a box of vanilla wafers. The first instruction is for the amaretti to be soaked in bourbon. However, the little wheels in what my children occasionally call the pea brain were turning. Since amaretti and amaretto were virtually the same word, how about sprinkling the vanilla wafers with amaretto, the Italian liqueur famous in my house for making mai tais? That's what I did. I didn't use as much amaretto as the recipe called for, to hold the cookies together. As it was, they were somewhat soggy.
I beat the egg yolks before I creamed the butter and sugar, figuring it was probably okay to cream the butter and sugar with a little egg yolk.the directions say beat until light in color. I beat my egg yolks for about four minutes. One would need paint chips to detect lightness, but it seemed to be fine.  I mixed in the melted chocolate, vanila, pecans (after a discussion of what you call them,) (Is it peCANS, pee-cans, or what?) and whipped the egg whites. In the meantime, Bob, my husband, dealt with the ladyfingers. The recipe says split them, assuming they are similar to cake. These were similar to cookies, so they could not be split. He lined the spring form pan with them.
After that, I lined the base of the pan with the vanilla wafers, and began layering chocolate mixture and cookies. All went into the refrigerator.
The next night, before the guests came, Bob decanted the miracle. Unfortunately, he hadn't see the picture of the completed miracle and took it out of the pan upside down. What we see in the picture is a mosaic of vanilla wafers, not the lovely yummy chocolate topping. But I must say, it did not detract from the guests' enjoyment of the dessert. This one is definitely a keeper. Hats off to the inventive Ms. McCoy.

Minetry McCoy's Miracle

1 pound sweet butter
2 cups sugar
12 eggs, separated
48 amaretti (Italian macaroons)
1 cup bourbon
4 ounces (four squares) unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans
24 double ladyfingers, approximately
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, whipped

1. Day before, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat the egg yolks until light and beat into creamed mixture.
2. Soak the amaretti in the bourbon. (or amaretto, if you prefer.)
3. Beat the chocolate into the butter mixture. Add the vanilla and pecans. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry and fold into the chocolate mixture.
4. Line a ten-inch springform pan around the side and on the bottom with split ladyfingers. Alternate layers of soaked macaroons and chocolate mixture in the lined pan. Chill overnight.
5 Next day, remove the sides of the pan and decorate the top of the dessert with whipped cream. Makes sixteen to twenty servings. (Minetry believed in modest little slices, apparently. We got about 10-12 servings out of this.)