Pecan Pie Cups

Pecan Pie and I have a long history dating all the way back to freshman year of college. Something about the veneer of sweet pecans over a thick, sugary layer on top of a flaky crust, it just oozes perfection. I immediately undertook an effort to learn to make a pecan pie and was very successful. Every year at Thanksgiving I started making my pies, but not this year.

Without an oven, making a delicious, sweet pecan pie is not in the cards. Instead, I set out to miniaturize the treat, and came up with pecan cups. By removing one pie from your line-up, this recipe can really streamline your kitchen operations. You can make your apple pie in the oven, while these guys bake in the toaster. Think of what you can do with all that saved time.

To start, all you need is a pie crust, 1 egg plus an extra yolk, corn syrup, sugar, brown sugar, chopped pecans, butter, and a mini-muffin tin.

I made the pie dough from scratch, but a store bought roll out one would work just fine.

First, combine the sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup and eggs in a bowl. The mixture will be VERY thick, so I added about a tablespoon of milk and a little more corn syrup. It looks gross, but tastes delicious. We add in the extra yolk to make the mixture a little more custardy than your standard pecan pie, it will help everything stay in the cup at the end, or so I like to think.

 

Melt the butter and let it cool for a minute. Then stir it quickly into the mixture.

Now, roll out your pie crust to the normal thickness, until it is about a 9" round, and using the bottom of a glass, cut out as many small circles as you can. Remember to roll up the scraps and reroll it. You will need about 24 cups to use all of the filling.

DO NOT forget to adequately flour your rolling surface, or else all of your circles will stick and deform. A slightly larger circle may work better, I haven't tried it, but the back of the glass works fine for me.

Preheat your toaster oven to 350 and grease your mini muffin tin. Press in each circle, stretching it a little bit so that it covers the surface of each muffin form.

 

Now, put the pecans (I put in three or four GENEROUS handfuls) into your sugar mixture and spoon in to the cups. I filled each one up, I think it's the only way.

Pop the little bites in the toaster oven for about 25 minutes, or until the filling is mostly set. Take them out and let them cool in the pan. Then pop each one out and enjoy

 

So small, and so delicious. Just the perfect amount of pecan pie: you won't feel too guilty, but you still get all the gooiness of a regular sized pie. When you bite in, the filling bursts into your mouth, while the pecans on top add a nice crunch. The crust is perfectly flaky. It's everything you could want.

Here's the recipe so that you can try them yourself.

Perfect Little Pecan Cups

Ingredients

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted 

Several large handfuls of Pecans, chopped (3/4 - 1 cup)

1 egg, plus an extra yolk

Pie crust, rolled out, cut into circles with about 1-1.5" diameter

1. Combine sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup and eggs in a bowl. If the mixture is too thick to stir, add in 1 tbsp milk and a little more corn syrup.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan and let cool for a minute, then stir into the sugar mixture.

3. Preheat toaster oven to 350. Grease the mini-muffin tin and press dough circles into each muffin form.

4. Add the pecans to the sugar mixture and fill each cup.

5. Place in the toaster oven for 25-30 min, or until filling is set and crust is golden. Remove, let cool in pan and then pop out of the forms. Enjoy!

Miniature Jalapeno Cornbread

So, this whole blog business started when I wanted to make some cornbread for some wonderful chili I was having for lunch. Without an oven, I thought that it might be impossible, but with the help of some tiny loaf pans and the old toaster oven, I got it done. I wanted to share my inspiration with you guys

So, most of this recipe comes from Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything", with some add-ins and and a slightly different procedure. First though, the cast of characters.

So, most recipes for cornbread would start off with preheating the oven to 350. Lucky for us, toaster ovens take about 3 seconds to preheat, so we'll take care of that later.

You make be wondering what vinegar is doing in the picture above. We're getting there. First put your milk (One and a quater cup) in a microwave safe bowl and nuke it for a minute. We're going to sour the milk (if this makes you squeamish, use an equal amount of either buttermilk or yogurt), so drop 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to the mix.

While that's curdling, let's move on to the dry ingredients. Add in corn meal (medium grind), flour, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl and stir them around. If you're paranoid about clumps, you can sift them together. You will likely only succeed in making the front of your shit yellow, which is fine if you were already wearing yellow.

I love cornmeal, it's such a pretty yellow and it's much more textured than flour. Try using it next time you're frying up a chicken cutlet, it makes a huge difference. You could also go crazy and make cornmeal chicken cutlets with polenta pancakes and MORE polenta, but only if you're like me.

Anyway, now the jalapeno. For this, you are going to want a small paring knife, like the one below.

Cut off the top of jalapeno and cut it lengthwise.

  Make sure you take out all of those seeds, they can be REALLY hot. If you're not a fan of heat, you can use a tablespoon of diced pablano pepper instead, or leave it out entirely.

Cut each half into about 6-8 small sticks and proceed to dice those into small pieces.

Now add the jalapeno to the dry ingredients and stir it around. This will coat the pepper in flour and prevent it from sinking to the bottom during baking. Remember, don't rub your eyes or nose after handling the pepper. I happened to do both, and the pain is just now starting to go away.

Put some butter (or olive oil, or bacon fat) up on the stove now and melt it. I tried cooking the jalapeno with the butter once, I managed to disperse the capsacin levels in the olive oil (that's what I was using), but also succeeded in buring the peppers... oops.

So, now your milk is full curdled, it should look like this

Kind of gross, but it will be wonderful. Beat in an egg and add some of this guy

Add as much as you'd like, but atleast a quarter of a cup. It's easier to mix the honey in with the wet ingredients, since it will dissolve in the warm milk.

NOW is the time to preheat the old toaster oven and take out three 2x4 (I think) loaf pans and grease them up really well. Trust me, I skipped the greasing step once and got a bunch of delicious loaves that looked like they'd been through the war. Make sure that you leave the little metal guard in on the bottom of the toaster, if you overfill the pans it will stop the batter from hitting the heating elements.

They're really adorable, right. So, on reason I love the toaster oven is the glass front. It lets me watch the cornbread while it's baking. I'm just upset I couldn't get a shot.

So, add the wet team to the dry team, and at the very end throw in the butter. Fill each of your loaf pans about half way. You may have a little extra batter, but that's cool.

After the oven had preheated for about 5 minutes, throw those bad boys in for 25-30 minutes, or until the loaves look brown around the edges and a nice golden yellow on top. Take them out, get them out of the pans and enjoy.

Look how pretty they are as whole loaves, and as slices. Can you see one of the curds?

I know it seems gross, curdled milk and all. Really though, each curd is like a little bubble of moisture in the bread. There's nothing worse than DRY, mealy, crumbly cornbread. This is exactly the opposite, it's moist, succulent, almost cakey cornbread. It has just the right combination of heat and sweet to make you want to eat a whole loaf. Not that I did...

Here's the recipe for you guys.

Miniature Jalapeno Cornbread (Inspired by the recipe from "How to Cook Everything")

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups cornmeal

1/2 cup flour

1 1/2 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp salt

1 jalapeno, diced

1 1/4 cups milk (or buttermilk, or yogurt)

1 tbsp white vinegar (only if using milk) 

2 tbsp butter or other fat

1 egg

1/4 cup of honey, plus extra

Steps

1. Sour the milk by warming it in the microwave for 1 minute and then adding the vinegar (skip this step if not using milk)

2. Combine dry ingredients (or sift them), add diced jalapeno and make sure it is coated in the dry mixture.

3. Preheat toaster oven to 350 and grease 3 1x4 (or something like that) loaf pans.

4. Melt the butter (or heat the other fat) on the stove and allow to get pretty hot.

5. Beat an egg into the soured milk and dissolve the honey in it.

6. Add the wet to the dry, stir gently, then add the butter.

7. Fill loaf pans about half way and place in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges of the loaves are golden brown and the tops are golden yellow. Enjoy!

(P.S. I know the shots are all mirror imaged, and no I don't live in some backwards world. I took all of the photos with my MacBook this time, and the camera does everything reversed.)

Help! My Apartment Has No Oven

Hi all,

As you may have guessed, I'm an aspiring foodie who moved into an apartment that is ovenless. I mean, what's a guy to do in this situation? No money to get it fixed, but an appetite for good food. Luckily, the trusty toaster oven in our apartment is a great replacement.

So, about me. I'm a 23 year old Math graduate student (I'll try to keep the math to a minimum in posts). I really love to cook, and before moving in to this apartment I had a blossoming passion for making bread. I also think that it's really cute when food comes in miniature, individual portions (it's really adorable... I promise).

In the future I hope to publish recipes with tips for how to miniaturize all your food, and also plenty of pictures (some of which will be taken by my very talented sister) to show you how to and what to use to make tiny bites of wonder. Maybe I'll even post some toaster oven cleaning tips, so your roommate won't be able to tell what you made based on the crumbs left near the heating element.

Let's talk possibilities: there are tons of foods you can make without ever turning on the gas in the big box. I eventually want to figure out a (clean) way to make little pecan pies (oh my god, Pecan Pie... my first love), maybe even in time for Thanksgiving. Quick breads, yeast breads, chicken, it's all possible. Yum. I'm excited... and hungry.