Cooking for Seven

{Grandma’s Cooking School is my chronicles of the informal cooking lessons that my Grandma graciously decided to give us girls. I have compiled a list of all the lessons so far. Enjoy!}

This summer, Grandma decided that it was time to give us girls some cooking lessons. We planned to begin this fall, but everything got a bit crazy. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we were able to take our first course: Banana Cream Pie!

Grandma is such a patient, joyful teacher. She doesn’t have to do everything to make sure we do it right. She encourages us to be involved in every step.

It seems she has magical hands. From years of experience, she knows little secrets to success. Like adding a little water to your pan before you pour in the milk to keep it from scalding.

This pie is so delicious. I won’t lie and say it’s easy, because it isn’t - especially if you decide to make French Custard for the filling and meringue for the topping. But it is worth it.

By the way, I didn’t JUST take photos. I got involved, too! Here’s the proof.

I would give you the recipe, but I didn’t ask Grandma for permission to publish her secret recipes across the Internet. So I’ll leave you with this from her very old Betty Crocker cookbook.

**Next time on Grandma’s Cooking School: Chocolate Crepes!**

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We have had a wonderful crop of squash this year. I love lightly sweetened squashed, baked with crunchy pecans,  then smothered with butter to serve. Or butternut squash soup. But for my first squash creation of the year, I decided to make pie.

This pie came together almost effortlessly, even with all of my usual (somewhat crazy yet healthy) substitutions. Of course I didn’t want to sweeten my pie with white sugar, so I used maple syrup instead and reduced the cream by 1/4 cup. For the crust, I just couldn’t stand to use all white flour, so my sister used half whole wheat.

Speaking of the crust, this is my new favorite recipe. No rolling required, and the result is a crispy, tasty crust. My “healthy” version appears below the pie recipe.

The most rewarding thing about this pie was Dad’s reaction. He doesn’t really like pumpkin pie, but he loved this one. The crust was just to his liking, and when I mentioned that the texture could be a little smoother for my tastes, he disagreed. Is there any better reward for cooking?

Winter Squash Pie

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Adapted from Taste of Home

Ingredients

• 1 cup pure maple syrup
• 1 cup cooked winter squash, mashed with a little cream or milk
• 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I reduced this to 1/8 because Dad dislikes nutmeg)
• Dash salt
• 1 unbaked pastry shell (recipe below)
• Whipped cream

Directions

1) In a bowl, combine the first eight ingredients.
2)Pour into the pastry shell; bake at 375° for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°; bake for 45 minutes or until set. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled. Garnish with pie crust leaves and whipped cream.

Yield: 8 servings.

Whole Wheat No-Roll Pie Crust

Adapted from Joy the Baker

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup (4 Tablespoon) frozen butter that has been grated on a cheese grater
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used gently melted coconut oil)
• 1 Tablespoon cream cheese, at room temperature
• 2-3 Tablespoons cold milk

In a medium sized bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar.  Whisk together.

Add frozen grated butter and cream cheese.  With your fingers, work the cream cheese and butter into the flour mixture, breaking the butter and cream cheese up until they’re well incorporated into the flour.  Some butter bits will be tiny, others the size of small pebbles.  The dough may even begin to come together in a rough, sandy kind of way.

Combine the milk and oil.  Whisk together.  Add all at once to the flour and butter mixture.  With a fork, begin to combine the ingredients, making sure that all of the flour mixture is introduced to the liquid.  The mixture does not need to come together into a ball.  Leave it a bit shaggy and dump the dough into a clean 9-inch pie plate.  With your fingers,  press the dough evenly into the bottom of the pie plate and up the sides.  Try to get the dough as even as possible, but don’t worry too much about finger indentations.  You can’t fight that.

Place the prepared crust in the freezer while you preheat the oven and prepare your filling.  If you’re going to pre-bake your crust, heat the oven to 350 degrees F and line the chilled pie crust with foil, weigh down with beans, and bake for 10 minutes, covered.  Remove the foil and beans and bake for 4-6 minutes uncovered until golden brown.

If you need an unbaked pie crust, simply remove the crust from the freezer once your filling is made, fill your pie and place in a preheated oven.  Bake according to recipe.

Yield: One 9-inch pie crust