Category / Schroeder Family Recipes

by schrackert

Company Pie Crust

My family loves pie, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving I thought I’d share the family pie crust recipe. I like to find any excuse at all to make it… pie, quiche, pot pie, more pie. This isn’t actually grandma’s pie crust recipe. It comes from one of my mom’s central Minnesota church cookbooks. It’s delicious…. flaky, sweet, rich, moist. Yum. Of course, with pie crust it’s all about the technique. Even the best recipe can fall apart with a few wrong moves. So, read on for some tips.

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This recipe is for an all-shortening pie crust, no butter (although butter crusts are yummy too). My aunt gave me one of these incredible “wonder cups” for my wedding shower almost five years ago. It works… (wait for it….) WONDERS when trying to measure shortening, butter, peanut butter or anything else creamy like this.

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Combine the dry ingredients and cut in the shortening.

This pie crust recipe uses a great technique for liquid. Separate the eggs and put two egg yolks in a liquid measuring cup. Then, fill to the 2/3 C mark with milk.  Use a fork to whisk the two together and then pour into the dry ingredients. With your fork, stir gently and combine until JUST moist.

Put in the refrigerator until nice and cold… 30-60 minutes.

eggs

When ready to roll out your dough, generously flour a surface. Take half your dough (the recipe makes two crusts). Your dough will want to fall apart and should be pretty wet. Shape your dough into a ball, flour it, and then shape it into a disk. Flour both sides before rolling. With as few rolling pin motions as humanly possible, gently roll from the center outwards.

A pie crust stays beautiful and flaky ONLY if you mess with it as little as possible. If you overwork it, it becomes tough and sad. I like a pretty thick crust, as you can see from the photo below. Once you have it to the thickness you want, gently roll it onto your rolling pin and unroll it onto a greased pie pan.

Rolling the crust

Once your crust is in the pie pan, carefully flute the edges.

pie tin

For Thanksgiving, we wanted to make a vegetarian quiche for my husband. We pre-baked the crust for about 10-12 minutes at 350. Then we mixed 4 eggs (we could have gone with 5) with a little whole milk, half and half and dried basil (because garden season is over and we didn’t have fresh and didn’t want to waste money on the expensive kind from the store), and a little shredded gruyere. Add a little salt and pepper and pour into the pre-baked pie crust. Then we added tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.

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Bake for 50-60 minutes at 350 and enjoy!

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COMPANY PIE CRUST

2 1/2 C flour
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt
1 C vegetable shortening
2 egg yolks in cup. Fill to 2/3 C mark with milk.

Blend dry ingredients to course stage. Add blended egg and milk to dry ingredients. Stir with fork into ball. Roll as usual.

Makes two crusts.

by schrackert

Best Apple Crisp Ever

One could argue that fall in Minnesota is essentially over. We’ve already had a couple of weeks of snow and bitter cold. The down jackets and Sorels are in constant rotation. But today, it’s 40 degrees! The snow has melted and we can see the leaves in our front yard that we never found the time to rake. Knowing that five months of winter are on the horizon, I’ve decided to squeeze out as much Minnesota fall as I can today.

Jeremy and I had a CSA this summer… a HALF CSA share. Like most normal people in the world who optimistically order their CSA share in the spring, we had a pretty hard time using all of our produce every week. That’s why, a week before Thanksgiving, I still had a huge bowl of amazing apples in a bowl on my counter. But let’s be honest, they weren’t really looking all that amazing today. They were probably about a week away from being tossed into the woods for the deer.

But, with a little bit of creative paring knife work, I was able to save most of them!

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I was excited to find this apple crisp recipe in grandma’s recipe box for a couple reasons. First… apple crisp… need I say more? But look at the two recipes below! The one on the left is one I copied out of my mom’s recipe box when I moved to Chicago when I was 21. (Please forgive the embarrassing typo of “walnets.”) I pulled out this recipe earlier this fall and realized that I never copied over the amount of butter to use! When I made it I used one stick. Note grandma’s original recipe on the right calls for TWO sticks. Clearly everything is better with more butter. Thanks, grandma.  The final thing I love about this recipe is that minus the missing butter… the recipe is the same almost word for word. It’s like I just got a hug from grandma.

Recipe

Now for the recipe. Start by cleaning your apples. It’s the worst part really… but good things come to those who peel and chop apples.

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Next… when your baby starts crying in the middle of baking delicious, gooey apple goodness…. strap him on and keep peeling.

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When preparing your 9×9 baking dish, I suggest just grabbing a fingerful of the soft butter on your counter and smearing it along the bottom and sides. Fill 2/3 of the way to to top as grandma clearly writes, and you’re good to go.

Next you’ll get your ingredients together for the streusel topping. The recipe calls for quick oats. I only had old fashioned oats. I think they work just fine.

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The recipe doesn’t explicitly tell you to do anything with the walnuts, but it would be a crime not to toast them first. Stove top toasting is my method of choice. Just don’t forget about them. They go from perfectly toasted to burnt pretty fast.

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The streusel topping is pretty easy. I used a full 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, because 1/4 teaspoon seemed stingy. My two big tips are to chop your butter before adding it to your dry ingredients to make your life a little easier. Also, keep it in the fridge until you use it. You’ll want it nice and cold. My butter got a little warm because… you know… kids. But it’s butter and is delicious always.

Streussel

When pouring your streusel topping on the apples, be gentle. If you pat it down too aggressively your streusel topping will be just a little sad. You want happy, fluffy, crunchy streusel topping.

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Bake for 50-60 minutes and serve warm with vanilla ice cream. The vanilla bean kind. And Breyers if you have it. Don’t waste your time with whipped cream.

final

APPLE OATMEAL CRUNCH aka APPLE CRISP

About 6 medium apples
1 C flour
1 C brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 C butter
1 C quick oatmeal
1/4 C walnuts (optional)

Fill well buttered 9″ x 9″ baking dish 2/3+ full with chopped or sliced apples.

Combine flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Blend in butter as for streusel topping. Add oatmeal and walnuts. Mix well and pour over apples.

Bake at 350 for 50 to 60 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

Update: I just talked to my mom about this recipe and it is actually hers! The credit given on my poorly copied recipe was correct. Grandma copied it over because She liked it so much. Mom got the recipe from one of the old Lutheran church cookbooks from generations and generations of farmers. No wonder there is so much butter in the recipe!