Rio Grande Mud Pie

Growing up, my family Christmas eve tradition was going out for fajitas.  My mom reasoned that we would spend Christmas day cooking up a big meal, so she didn't want to spend Christmas eve in the kitchen as well.  To keep with the family tradition, I invited some friends over for a fajita dinner on Christmas eve and made this pie for dessert.  It's a fantastically decadent pie that combines chocolate, chiles, nuts, and dulce de leche.

Christmas Eve Rio Grande Mud Pie

Ingredients

pie crust

2 cups pecans

4 tablespoons brown sugar

1 Tbs. New Mexico Chile powder
2 teaspoons melted butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon water

pie filling

1 cup butter

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoon Ancho chile purée

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pie topping

caramel/dulce de leche/cajeta (delicious when homemade, but a big time saver and also quite good out of a can)

For the flour in the pie filling, I used sweet rice flour to keep the pie gluten free.

Directions

Preheat the over to 325° F.

Place pecans, brown sugar, and chile powder in a bowl or food processor.

Add melted butter, vanilla and water. With the food processor or a hand blender, grind the nuts until the mixture becomes a fine texture (though I left some bigger pieces of nuts for added texture).

Press into a pie pan.

Bake at 325° F for 20 minutes.

Make the Ancho chile purée  by removing the seeds and stem from one ancho chile pepper. Tear it up into small pieces and place is a small bowl or mug.

Just barely cover the Ancho chile pieces with boiling hot water, and then let it soak the until the chile becomes tender.  Purée in a food processor or with hand blender.

Melt the butter and chocolate chips.  You can do this in a double boiler, but I took the short cut of melting it in my microwave for about 2 minutes.

Beat in the eggs.

Add sugars and flour.

Stir the Ancho chile purée and cinnamon.

Pour filling into pie crust.  After adding the cinnamon, some of the butter because to separate a bit, but I just poured it all in the pie crust.

Bake at 325° for 60 minutes.  I placed a cookie sheet underneath to catch the bit of dripping butter that separated…

Once the pie cools, spread caramel/dulce de leche/cajeta on top.

The pie was a big hit! And the pie went well with a bit of eggnog ice cream.

Amaretto Raspberry Granita

I saw a picture in the newspaper yesterday how there's wild blueberries ripe for picking already even though it's still the first half on July! Because of my hectic winter, I still have a bunch of raspberries in my freezer from last summer that I never got around to using, so I thought it was time to use them up.

My friends Casey and Andy came over to play my board game Mooseopoly last night.  I created this board game as an informal education outreach tool for the Yukon Flats region of Alaska to teach the students there about moose ecology.  Basically, it's more like the board game The Game of Life than Monopoly, but the name seemed more fitting.  Casey is a ungulate ecologist focusing her PhD research on moose dynamics in Interior Alaska, so she's been curious to try her hand at Mooseopoly for awhile.

To use up some of my frozen raspberries, I made this Amaretto Raspberry Granita for dessert.  I thought about making a sorbet, but this seemed easier since I don't have an ice cream maker-- the granita is just stuck the freezer for freezing.

Amaretto Raspberry Granita

Ingredients

1 cup water

3/4 c sugar

3 c (frozen) raspberries

1 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp Amaretto liqueur

Directions

Place the water and sugar in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and dissolve all of the sugar.

Pour the lime juice over the berries.

Pour the sugar syrup over the berries.  (If using fresh berries, cool the syrup first before pouring over the berries.

Muddle the berries in the sugar syrup to release the juice from the berries.

Strain the berry sugar mixture into a shallow container.

Stir in the Amaretto liqueur.

Place the container in the freezer.  Stir periodically as it freezes (~6-8 hours).

 

 
  

Super easy chocolate-banana cream pie in a walnut crust

Visiting my friend Tristan, we made this fantastic pie!

When you live in Alaska and travel down to the Lower 48, you try to cram as much as possible into every trip.  I just attended a conference in Estes Park, Colorado.  Since I was in the neighborhood I decided to take a road trip around the Four Corners region, visiting friends in the area.  

Tristan, one of my best friends from high school, lives in Farmington, NM, and she said that she would bake a pie if I came to visit her.  I would have totally visited her without the promise of a pie, but that made it a totally sweet deal!

Tristan, me, Heidi, and Stacey hanging out at the Village Inn parking lot circa 1993

When I arrived, we discussed what type of pie we should make, and this is what we came up with: a chocolate pudding pie with bananas and whipped cream in a walnut crust.  

Chocolate-banana cream pie in a walnut crust

Crust

1.5 cups walnuts

3 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp butter

Filling

1 package Jell-chocolate pudding

2.5 cups milk

2-3 bananas

1/2 pint whipping cream

2 tbps sugar

Preheat the oven to 325˚.

In a food processor, add the crust ingredients and mix together.  Press into a 9 inch pie plate and bake for 10 minutes.  Let it cool completely.  We stuck the crust in the freeze to help it cool since it was about 95˚ degrees outside.

Add the chocolate Jell-O pudding mix to 2.5 cups of milk and mix with an electric mixer for 3 minutes until the pudding is firm.

Slice the bananas into 1/8th to 1/4 inch slices.

Whip the whipping cream with an electric mixer until you have firm peaks; mix in ~ 2 tbsp of sugar after the whipping cream is able to form firm peaks.

Once you have the crust, banana slice, chocolate pudding, and whipped cream ready to, start assembling the pie.

Begin by placing a layer banana slices over the bottom of the crust.

 

Pour the chocolate pudding over the banana slices; add a second layer of banana slices over the chocolate pudding.

Spread the whipped cream over the banana slices and top with any leftover banana.

 I'm not sure how well or long this cream pie will keep in the refrigerator; it was devoured fairly quickly!

"What to do with this leftover rice?" Rice Pudding

I like rice, but it's hard to make in single-serving quantities, and it's never as good as leftovers as it is freshly cooked.  And I get bored with food fairly easily, so after eating something once or twice, any additional leftovers tend to sit in my refrigerator until the take on a life of their own (hence why I love dinner parties since many mouths leave few leftovers!).  A few days ago, thanks to Trader Joe's Indian Curry Simmer Sauce, I made some chicken curry and Basmati rice.  Since I'm hiding away in my parents' cabin in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia writing my dissertation, there's no one here to eat the leftovers but me.  And I'm avoiding driving down into town to have to buy groceries.

So, what to do with this leftover rice?  And then it occurred to me... Rice Pudding!

 I scoured through the kitchen cupboards and found the ingredients I thought would work best...

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

1 c milk
1 egg
2 tbsp maple syrup
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
small splash of vanilla extract
1 c leftover cooked rice
1 tbsp butter
1/8 c craisins
1/8 c sliced almonds

Directions

 In a sauce pan, add the milk and egg.  Mix together thoroughly.  Add in the maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla extract.  Then add in the rice.

Over a low heat, bring the mixture to a simmer and simmer until much of the liquid has evaporated (10 minutes or so?)  Stir regularly so the bottom doesn't burn

Once the pudding is cooked, stir in the butter.  Add the craisins and sliced almonds.

 While the rice pudding turned out great, the best part was sitting outside in the sunshine and 60° weather while enjoying it...

and listening to the bubbling brook.

Spiced pecan pie cheesecake with GF graham cracker crust

So, this recipe is actually three different recipes that I integrated together.  Since I've been so heavily focused on my dissertation for the past few months, I haven't baked anything in quite awhile, so I was excited to give it a try and make this dessert for Christmas dinner with friends.  

Finding the gluten-free graham crackers was a Christmas miracle.  I tried to find them in the gluten-free section of the usual grocery store on Christmas eve; not only was the store was a complete madhouse, but I couldn't find any GF graham crackers or even ginger snaps there.  So, I rushed over to the health food store and arrived at 3:55 pm.  They were closing early and the sign said that they'd be open until 4 pm, but the door was already locked.  Lucky for me, one of the employees was sitting in her car getting ready to depart.  She asked me what I needed, knocked on the door until they opened back up, and asked if they had counted the till yet.  Since they were just getting ready to count the till, they let me in and sold me a box of GF graham crackers.

On Christmas Day, my friend Emily hosted a fantastic celebration Goldstream-style with lots of delicious food, libations, and a full night of games!

It was a bit of a gamble to bring this to Emily's since I had never tried to make it before, but it turned out pretty darn good.  It is incredibly rich and can really use a bit of coffee to go with it...

Spiced pecan pie cheesecake with GF graham cracker crust

Ingredients

crust

1 1/2 c gluten-free graham cracker crumbs

1/4 c sugar

6 tbsp butter

cheesecake filling

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/4 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

pecan pie topping

2 cups pecans 

2 eggs

1/2 c sugar

1/2 cup light corn syrup
3 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg  

 

Directions

crust

 

Cut the butter into small piece and melt.  Crush the graham crackers into fine crumbs.  I usually stick them in a plastic bag and crush them with the back of a cup.  Mix together the butter, graham cracker crumbs, and sugar.

Press the crust into the bottom of a springform pan and bake at 375° F for 7 minutes.  Since I always seems to have butter melting out of the bottom of my springform pan and dripping down on the oven's heating element (perhaps a consequence of picking it up at a garage scale years ago), I always place it on a cookie tray covered in aluminum foil when I stick it in the oven. Then to cool the crust down after it comes out of the oven, I stuck it outside on top of the snow... 

cheesecake filling

Blend together the cream cheese, egg, sugar, and vanilla extract until smooth.

 

Pour on top of the graham cracker crust,

and spread the cheesecake filling evenly.

 

Reduce the oven temperature to 350° F and bake for 15 minutes.

pecan pie topping

Whisk together the 2 eggs and sugar.

Mix together the cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Mix in the light corn syrup, melted butter, vanilla extract, salt, and spices.

Whisk until well blended and smooth.

If the pecans are not already toasted, spread them in a pan (I like to use parchment paper to line the pan) and bake at 350° F for 5-8 minutes.  Watch them carefully so they don't burn!

Spread the toasted pecans over the cooked cream cheese filling layer, and then drizzle the spice mixture over the pecans.  Bake 350° F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the center sets.

Cool before serving!