this part is a work in progress

RECIPES

BUTTERMILK PIE + GO-TO PIE CRUST

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of flour
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 2 tbs of sugar
  • 1/2 cup of oil
  • 3 1/2 tbs of buttermilk or milk

  • 1 1/4 cups of sugar
  • 1/2 stick of butter (melted)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tablespoons of flour or baking cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup of buttermilk
  • a pinch of nutmeg and allspice
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Pour the first five ingredients into a pie pan and mix it all together until it is a solid mass. You may want to hold back around a tablespoon oil to check first and make sure the dough is not too wet.
  3. Press the dough into the sides and bottom of the pan to form the crust, making sure that no part is overly thick.
  4. Using a fork, gently stab a bunch of small holes across the entire bottom of the pie. This will help the bottom caramelize and keep it from forming bubbles.

  5. Next, pour the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl and mix thoroughly until it is all dissolved together. Make sure the melted butter is not hot because it will curdle the eggs and mess up the pie's texture otherwise.
  6. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake it for 10 minutes. You can also prebake before adding the custard using pie weights for around 7 minutes, but it is not required.
  7. After 10 minutes turn the oven down to 325 and bake for around an hour, making sure that no part is burning and that the custard is not becoming *completely* solid.
  8. Finally, let it rest until cool and serve it with whipped cream and fruit.

Description

This is a buttermilk pie recipe I adapted from two different recipes: PiePaw's pie crust from Brenda Gantt and Mama Sue Garrett's pie filling, both on youtube. If you aren't from the American South or have never heard of it, buttermilk pie is basically a custard pie that uses full fat buttermilk. It's functionally the sister of another famous Southern pie, the chess pie, and in my opinion its the better of the two. The buttermilk just adds a lot, but to be honest there's not much difference even some chess pies will use buttermilk. This is a very cheap pie to make and you can add stuff to it very easily, just don't try it with strawberries, they turn grey and release a lot of liquid when baked.


Grandma's No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 stick of butter (my mom uses margarine)
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 3/4 cup of milk
  • 1/2 tsp of vanilla
  • 3 tbs of peanut butter
  • 5 tbs of cocoa powder
  • 2 cups of oatmeal

Instructions

  1. Bring the milk, sugar, and butter to a rolling boil in a pot for 3 minutes.
  2. Remove the pot from the heat and add the remaining ingredients.
  3. Stir until fully combined and then scoop onto a sheet of tin foil or parchment paper in cookie sized portions and allow to cool.

Description

This is my grandma's no-bake cookie recipe which she passed down to my mom. My mom does not like cooking at all, but every once in a while she would decide to make a batch of these chocolate oatmeal cookies. They're easy to make and they only really get one dish dirty, which was a big plus for her because I have a lot of siblings and my dad was usually not home. These cookies are super good with milk and are basically crumbly fudge with a little bit of texture added. They are somewhat temperamental with regards to how they set up, the ideal one should feel fully set and not wet or sticky at all, but occasionally for whatever reason they will just be globs of chocolate and oatmeal. My best theory, that I have yet to test, about how to solve this is possibly by substituting the margarine for butter and the cocoa powder for unsweeted bars of baking chocolate, as these can help things harden when cooling.

BASIC BUTTERMILK POUNDCAKE

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups of flour
  • 2 sticks of butter (if you use salted butter you don't have to add salt later, but otherwise make sure to add a 1/2 tsp of salt)
  • 3 eggs and 1 yolk
  • 1 half cup of buttermilk
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • extra tablespoon of butter milk or flour if you add additional wet/dry ingredients to ensure the hydration is the same

  • 1/2 cup of sugar - for the struesel
  • 1/2 cup of brown sugar - for the struesel
  • 1/2 cup of flour - for the struesel
  • 1/2 stick of cold butter - for the struesel

Instructions

  1. Make sure *all* ingredients are as room temperature as possible, leaving them out in premeasured containers overnight is ideal as long as its room temperature in your home. But placing them in sealed containers into a slightly warm water bath can also work as long as you don't accidentally cook or deactivate anything
  2. set an oven to preheat to around 350, maybe a little more if your oven has problems staying at temp.
  3. Put the butter, sugar, salt (if you're using unsalted butter), and baking powder into a mixing bowl and cream it heavily with a standmixer or handmixer until it lightens in color and is very well mixed.
  4. Add in eggs one by one and make sure that all of the egg has been emulsified into the creamed butter before you add another one. If this is done too quickly or the eggs aren't the right temperature, the batter will break and look like oily goop and affect the final cake.
  5. Add in alternating tablespoons of buttermilk and flour and mix very gently but thoroughly with a spoon so that you don't accidentally knead the flour and make it into a tough dough. You can use more than a table spoon of the flour, you mainly just don't want the liquid to break the batter. These two steps are the hardest because the dough will absolutely fall apart if something isn't right or you move too quickly. If this happens, you can try letting it sit before mixing again or you can just accept it and move on.
  6. Mix in the vanilla and pour the batter into a 9"x5" metal loaf pan, hitting it on the table and running a knife or chopstick through it to make sure there are no big bubbles. If you want to make a 10" tube pan version, double almost everything everything, but use 3 2/3 sticks of butter and 5 eggs plus a yolk instead.
  7. Optional: If you want struessel on top of this, mix the extra 1/2 cups of flour, sugar, and brown sugar and cut the butter into tiny chunks. Mix them in and crumble them even smaller into the dry ingredients with your hand like you're making some kind of pastry so that it turns into a kind of wet sand texture of buttered flower. Press it in your palm into a big clump and gently break it into large chunks onto the wet batter or any other kind of batter or dough. Press it down slightly so it doesnt just fall off.
  8. Bake for an hour, checking occasionally to make sure the top doesn't need to be covered with tinfoil. If the split part at the top looks wet or oily and a knife or toothpick comes out with batter on it, it needs to keep baking for a bit.

Description

This is my poundcake recipe that I made in a fit of hyperfixation over the course of a couple weeks. I literally was dreaming about poundcake every other night and after comparing around 5 different recipes this was the one I settled on. I've done lots of cooking and baking, but this is the first recipe that I've made by myself that was something really technical like a cake. The best ways to make this are with either the struessel, powdered sugar, or a glaze (which I'll have a whole other page for), but no matter what you should probably drink something with it. You can change this up by adding a few table spoons cocoa powder, lemon zest and juice, chocolate chips, cut fruit and berries, or basically anything. Just make sure that you balance any dry or wet stuff you add with a table spoon of an opposite ingredient like flour or buttermilk. Also strawberries do not bake well, so if you go that route, swirl some strawberry jam into the batter instead or something because fresh ones will turn grey.