The cookbook was a Christmas gift from very good friends of ours. She has had a blast reading it as well as cooking from it. She chose a Goulash recipe for the main course tonight that her Daddy very much enjoyed. I didn't care for it because it had mushrooms in it, not one of my favorites. But it was good even with my picking out the pieces of 'shrooms.
Then for dessert she wanted to make an apple pie. I had to go into work for two hours today and this was when she decided to start all of this...may have been a good thing because I'd have freaked with where she moved some things from the kitchen to so she had plenty of working space.
This was the pie recipe she chose. Not one of the easiest to make either. She was less than thrilled to have to use shortening for making the pie crust. I had to giggle because she'd have really disliked the lard my husband and I grew up on with so many of our foods as kids.
She used my MIL's hand me down KitchenAid™ mixer which has been a great item to have in the kitchen. She even used my Pampered Chef™
apple corer/peeler that I haven't used in ages. As well as my juicer. She was loving all of the gadgets that I have for cooking. I got a "Mom, you have a lot of really neat tools." What a compliment!
She also had quite the amount of pots and pans. On the upside though she was rinsing them and loading the dishwasher as she went. Training her well.
We didn't have any room in the refrigerator to chill the pie dough, so I had her cover the bowl to sit it out on the porch for about 20 minutes. Didn't dare let it there any longer with the temperatures and the wind chills or it would have froze.
She had then rolled out 1/2 of the dough. She did okay except she couldn't get it off of the board. (hadn't used enough flour). I got out my handy dandy rubber scrapper to pick up the dough to re-roll it with a bit more flour. I managed to impress her; with four to five strokes of the rolling pin I had a 9" - 10" circle for the bottom crust. (I even impressed myself, it's been ages since I've done this!) Then her question was "How do we get it into the pan?" I loved showing her these tricks...wrapped it around the rolling pin and Viola! Trim the excess, fill with the apples and spices mixture, put on the top crust, a few vent slits and ready for the oven. Had a little bit of dough and filling left over so she made a dumpling for her Daddy, too.
She was afraid to use my Longaberger™ Pie Plate - she didn't realize that they could be used for regular baking like my Pfaltzgraff™ stoneware. I had to smile (giggle) at her innocence. Love it.
She had a wonderful afternoon and is learning so many skills that will last her a lifetime. Judging by the picture I'd say she had a great time today, a bit messy, but fun.
This story will make a wonderful double page layout in one of my future albums. Such great memories.
