Honey Bourbon Nut Pie

My super awesome uncle Greg came to New York for a couple of days recently. He's never seen me in my natural habitat before, so needless to say I was very excited and wanted to make something special for his visit. He and my also super awesome aunt Sharon are both serious nut fiends, so I decided on a nutty tart of some kind. I got the idea for this pie from this tart, but I used a lot more nuts & put the orange into the caramel itself, and added
molasses and bourbon to the mix. Unfortunately I had loaned a friend my tart pan -- though, it turns out, she had returned it and I just couldn't find it. Oh well, it was a happy mistake, becuse I like the pie version! Nice and thick, and after it's been in the fridge you can eat a slice of this sucker with your hand. When hot it's pretty deliciously gooey.

Pies & tarts are tricky, and I have gone out of my way to get a lot of practice making them lately. Ice water & cutting in cold butter is part of the key, I feel, and if you cut it into cubes or thin slices it is much easier to get the consistency right. The coldness matters! Keep your fingers out of it as much as you can.


Buttery Pie Crust
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 TBSP sugar
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cold & cut
8+ TBSP ice water

This recipe yields 2 pie shells, or one pie w/ lattice top.
In a medium/large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients. Toss in the cold butter cubes and cut them in with a pastry cutter or hand mixer until it looks like coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the ice water in and mix until dough forms. Shape the dough into two discs about 5" around, wrap in plastic & refrigerate or freeze for at least 1 hour.

Remove 1 dough disc from the cold. Set a piece of wax paper on top of a thin plastic cutting board, lightly dust it with flour, and set the dough on the flour. add another dash of flour, another sheet of wax paper, and roll out to a roughly 11" circle. Peel up the wax paper & dust more flour occasionally, and flip the dough so you can be sure it's not sticking to the paper. When the dough is ready to go, remove the top layer of wax paper, set the pie pan face down on top, and flip the cutting board over. It never fails me!
Gently press the dough into place & shape the edges. Freeze for 20 minutes before filling & baking.


Honey Bourbon Nut Pie
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tbsp molasses
zest of 1 orange
2 tsp orange juice
1/3 cup honey bourbon
2 1/4-2 1/2 cups total, mix of: almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans, macadamias, hazelnuts, etc. salted or not.

Preheat the oven to 350º.
Bring the cream, sugar, honey, & molasses to a boil in a sauce pan, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. (I recommend getting a heatproof rubber spatula if you don't already have one, it is very handy!) Keep stirring until the mixture thickens a little, add the orange zest, juice, bourbon & stir a little longer. Remove from heat, stir in the nuts, and pour into the pie crust. Bake for 30 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Let cool partially before serving, and add some whipped cream - or better yet, butter pecan ice cream. You can never have too many nuts.

Banana Cake with Nutella Buttercream

After a while you get sick of making banana bread all the time. Since I'm baking a lot of cakes this summer to get practice for my mom's wedding cake in a few months, I decided to turn my overripe fruit into cake for a change. Just another step in my self-imposed cakemaking bootcamp.

It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to play with the butter-to-Nutella ratio in the icing, let me know if you do.

Banana Cake
2 1/2 cup flour
5 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
4 ripe bananas, slightly mashed
3/4 cup butter, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Beat bananas with a hand mixer (because it's more fun than using a fork). In a separate bowl, beat sugar, eggs, baking powder, and butter at medium speed about four minutes until fluffy. Add banana mush, beat 30 seconds. Sift flour over the mixture and beat in at low speed for 30 seconds. Pour into two 8" round greased cake pans and bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before assembling.

While the cake is cooling, make the buttercream.



Nutella Buttercream Icing
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter at room temperature
1 cup Nutella
pinch of salt
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 tsp milk (or more as needed)

In a medium bowl, cream butter and nutella until smooth. Add salt and sift the powdered sugar over the butter mixture, beat in until smooth. Add the milk and beat at high speed until fluffy. Add more milk or powdered sugar if needed to achieve the thickness you want.

Butterscotch Macadamia & Cashew Cookies

I confess! I didn't bake the cookies in the photo, nor did I take the photo. My friend Matt baked
this batch, with my recipe, and I'm pretty sure his lovely wife Brooke took the photo. They are big big fans of these cookies - Matt claims to have made variations of them 4 times recently. I believe him, and you will too once you've tried them. Yeah, I'm smug about it. They've gotten really good reviews.

These are really soft, really buttery and if you get nuts with salt on them there's a nice sweet-vs-salty kick. Walgreens has lightly salted mixed cashews & macadamias pretty cheap. I stock up when they're on sale. You can use just macadamias, or pecans, or walnuts, or no nuts at all, switch the chips to chocolate or white chocolate or peanut butter chips. Really, do anything you want as far as the add-ins go. The base of these cookies is really flavorful and I doubt there's anything you could throw in that wouldn't be good.

Butterscotch Macadamia & Cashew Cookies

1 cup butter at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup lightly chopped macadamias and cashews

Preheat the oven to 325º.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until creamy. Beat in the brown sugar, scrape down the bowl with a spatula, then beat in the granulated sugar until fluffy. Add the egg, beat it in, then beat in the yolk. Scrape down the bowl, add the vanilla, and beat again.
Add the flour and stir it in with a wooden spoon. Add the butterscotch and nuts, and stir just until evenly distributed.

Roll teaspoonfulls of dough into rough balls and place them 2" apart on a cookie sheet. Bake in the upper middle of the oven for 10-12 minutes or until browned around the edges. They will continue to bake after they are removed from the oven, so don't overbake them. Somewhat chewy centers are the key.

Pecan Waffles with Honey Butter

If you don't have a waffle iron, it's time to buy one. Waffles are so quick, easy, and versatile, your weekends will be forever changed for the better. You substitute the chopped pecans for chocolate chips, blueberries, chopped ham or bacon, or any number of other things. They're also good plain with just the standard butter and syrup, or berries and cream, whatever floats your boat.

Pecan Waffles
makes 5 waffles, 20 minutes start to finish

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat your waffle iron.
In a measuring cup, add the lemon juice to the milk and set aside.
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, brown sugar, and chopped pecans.
Add the egg and oil to the milk, then pour into the dry ingredients and stir until combined.
Pour 1/3 cup of batter on the center of the waffle iron, close it and bake until golden brown. Serve with honey butter sauce:

Honey Butter Sauce
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Melt butter in the microwave, add the honey and spices and stir (preferably with a tiny whisk) for about 2 minutes until they are well combined.

Extra Nutty Brownies

Brownies come in all kinds, from cakey to fudgy and everywhere in between. Generally I prefer really fudgy brownies, practically fudge with a little flour thrown in. These are not that. I'll post a fudgy brownie recipe soon. In the meantime, these are still really good, I mean, how can you go wrong with brownies? These are moist and chewy but cakey around the edges, full of pecans and walnuts with a richness that begs for milk, with just a little extra vanilla and salt in the mix to really bring out the flavor of the nuts. You can add more nuts, like macadamias or almonds, or trade them all out for peanuts for a different flavor experience altogether.

Extra Nutty Brownies

Prep time 10 minutes, Baking 30 minutes.

4 1-oz squares unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter
2 tbsps strong coffee
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup pecans
1/3 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 325º. Grease an 8" square baking pan with butter or cooking spray.
In a small sauce pan on low heat, slowly melt the butter, sugar, and chocolate, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula (preferably a heat-proof one). Pour into a medium bowl and stir in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Add the flour and salt, stirring well, then add the nuts and stir them in. Pour into the pan and bake for 30-35 minutes. Cut into squares once they're cooled for cleanest edges. If clean edges don't matter to you, dig in as soon as the steam stops.