Some Sanity in the Madness

It's that time again this year. Time to start your OVENS!! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Every year I go baking mad and it all starts with the baking marathon that is Thanksgiving.  My very large family still gathers together every year even though we have all grown and had our own families.  In this gorging spectacle my job has always been the pies.  I love to bake, if you don't... tough cookies and nasty store bought brick cookies to you too.  I'll add a few more tips for Thanksgiving to satisfying even the most baking challenged.

Various Thanksgiving Tips

Even with all the dangers of stuffing turkeys people still enjoy doing it.  Nothing like bonding over a family struck down with food poisoning.  To be safer this holiday after draining the excess blood from the turkey heavily sprinkle kosher salt on the inside cavity of the turkey.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes and rinse in cold water.  The salt will draw the excess blood out of the cavity.

A good time saver is to cut all the vegetable for the hor'dourves tray the day before and just store the cut vegetables in an ice bath in the fridge.  You can also cut the veggies in to decorative flowers if the mood strikes you.  The easiest to make by far is a mum.  Cut a criss-cross pattern (4 lines intersecting from 2 different sides in an X) into the top half of a radish and store in an ice bath for it to "bloom" open.

When making your apple pies this year for thanksgiving be sure you simmer the apples in a pan before baking in the pie shell.  If you don't precook the apples you could end up with a large gap between the top crust and the apples. 

A extra tip when making the pie dough crust use ICE cold water.  It keeps the fat from blending easily with the flour.  The less you blend the dough the flakier the crust. I prefer placing all my ingredients in the freezer after measuring out the dry ingredients (salt and flour) into a freezer bag.  In a separate bowl cool the fats (butter or shortening).  I cool all ingredients separately for 30 minutes before blending together as usual.

While baking your pies and the crust starts to darker long before the pie will be done. Make a ring around the outside edges of your pie with tinfoil.

To get that extra golden look to your crusts lightly brush the crusts with a egg wash.  Sprinkle with sugar to give it extra crunch.

Egg wash for browning baked goods. 1 egg whipped with 1TB water.  Brush on baked goods lightly to get a golden sheen.  Then bake as usual.  This will even work well on rolls.