Sweet Melissa Sundays: Throwback to the Honey Beescotti

This week, Jaime from Good Eats ‘n Sweet Treats chose the famous Bee Stings for our bake.  They’re similar to miniature Boston Cream donuts, I think, but baked and with a slivered almond topping.  Unfortunately, from the looks of the recipe and the comments of the other bakers, it seemed that if you don’t have a stand mixer with a dough hook, you were going to be hosed with this recipe.  The dough is super sticky, and a lot of people who added extra flour to make it more workable ended up with “hockey pucks” (their words, not mine).  Since I don’t have a stand mixer down at school, I opted to sit this one out.  Instead, I decided to go back to the beginning of SMS, since I missed the first few challenges, and make the Honey Beescotti, which is probably one of the cutest names I’ve seen in a while.  It was originally chosen by our “fearless leader”, Lorelai at Mermaid Sweets.

The first step of this, for me, was to make candied orange peel.  I decided to just bite the bullet and do it myself, using Giada’s recipe from the Food Network website.  It only uses one orange, so it made almost the perfect amount of peel for this recipe.  I only had two little strips left over.  Unfortunately, I had to make the orange peel twice, because it burnt really badly the first time.  I kept thinking “This seems like it could go south really quickly, this boiling sugar water thing”, and then I left the kitchen for a couple minutes and it did.  And I started swearing.  I hate cleaning burnt sugar.  The second time, I kept the heat lower and didn’t leave the kitchen the whole time, and it turned out just fine.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the second time, because I was a tiny bit terrified that I was going to have to deal with burnt sugar yet again.

The dough for this came together really well.  And, lucky me, since I was doing this bake after the fact, I had the comments of everyone who’s already baked it, so I knew the dough was going to be super sticky and would need to be chilled really well.  I also added an extra (roughly) 1/4 cup of flour to counteract some of the stickiness.  To be honest, I don’t really know how much it helped, since the dough still stuck to every possible surface like mad!  Several bakers had also commented that the “beescotti” spread a lot when baked, so I made sure to keep them as cold as possible until I got them into the oven.  They turned out very well, if I do say so myself.

My only complaint about this recipe was that the caraway seeds were overpowering.  The only time I can think of that I’ve had caraway seeds recently is in Irish Soda Bread, where the flavor didn’t seem quite as strong.  I felt like it was the dominant flavor in the biscotti, and I had really been looking forward to the orange/almond flavors.  I’m a freakish fan of almond extract, so I was hoping that flavor would shine through.  I would definitely be willing to make this again, but I would seriously reduce, or maybe even alltogether omit, the caraway seeds.  To my surprise, Mike really liked these- go figure, boys always surprise you!

Anyway, pretty please check out the SMS blogroll to see what everyone thought of the Bee Stings- I’m really jealous I couldn’t participate this week!  And I’ll be posting later this week about my mini-trip I’m taking tomorrow to the happiest place on Earth- no, not Disney World.  Ok, the happiest place on Earth if you like Wilton products 😀

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sour Cherry Pie with Pistachio Crumble

Better late than never, right?  I made this pie over a week ago, while my grandparents were in town for Memorial Day weekend.  Unfortunately, I completely forgot to post it!  I had one of those odd feelings all week, like I was forgetting something, but had no clue what it was until Wednesday afternoon, when it hit me.

Anyway, back to the pie.  Last week, Michelle from Flourchild chose our recipe.  Make sure you check out her blog- she just ran a 5k this past week!  I was really excited for this recipe because, you’ll never believe it, I’ve never made a pie before!  My family likes pie, but sweets around our house are usually cookies or brownies or something like that, with an occasional cheesecake thrown in.  My dad claims that in the 23+ years they’ve been married, my mom has never made a pie (although my mom argues she’s made three, thankyouverymuch).  So, that was the other reason I was excited for the timing of this pie.  My grandparents make pie at least for every big holiday.  My grandpa makes the crust while Grandma makes the filling.  So, since my grandparents were going to be in town for Memorial Day… perfect timing!

I actually don’t have any pictures of the pie while I was making it, because I was trying really hard to pay attention to the process of making the dough.  I thought it was going to need a teaspoon or so more water, but my grandpa explained that the reason you wrap the dough in plastic wrap is to let the water get into every bit of it, so we didn’t need to add any more water.  I thought the dough came together really easily, actually, for as much hype as people have about pie crusts being difficult to make.  The crumble was super easy, too.  I used lightly salted pistachios instead of unsalted, and I think I liked it better that way, because they provided a nice contrast to the sweetness of the filling.  That was especially nice because I used frozen sweet cherries instead of the tart cherries called for in the recipe- my mom and I both looked and couldn’t find sour cherries!  This was actually discussed on the “message board” on the SMS homepage a lot.  I ended up reducing the sugar a bit to make up for the sweetness of the cherries.

I was really happy with this pie overall.  Everyone said they liked it, and I did too.  Well, ok, I kind of have issues with cherry pies because I feel like cherries get a weird texture when they’re baked.  Something about the skins forcing them to keep their shape, but the insides being mushy.  Pretty much any other baked fruit, no problem, but cherries and grapes and fruits like that… they weird me out.  But I really enjoyed the taste of the filling coupled with the crumble, and I thought the crust came out really flaky, which I was really excited about.  I would definitely make this again, and I would take pictures of it outside next time.  It was overcast and gloomy out, so we ate inside, and my camera wasn’t happy with the lighting.  But the time I tried to use the flash it reflected off the green pistachios and made the pie look like a glowing spaceship!  I think I just need to spend a little bit more time with my camera.

Anyway, you should check out what all of the other bakers thought of this pie at the SMS blogroll, since I heard the overall opinion was FANTASTIC!  Please?