New Jersey - Cannoli (Cake)

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts 

Okay, so I'm a little bit behind.  I made last week's dessert on MLK day, but I was traveling and didn't have time to post it.

New Jersey - The Garden State

State #3

December 17, 1787

The third state is New Jersey, having ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787.  New Jersey doesn't have any official state desserts, although blueberries are the state fruit and Jersey Tomato the state vegetable (even though tomato is a fruit).  Everything else I know about New Jersey, I learned from popular TV shows, and those show taught me that there are a lot of Italians in New Jersey.  Therefore, I have chosen the cannoli, which is from the Sicily region of Italy, as the dessert for New Jersey.  

While making this I was reminded of my #1 rule for amateurs like myself - Don't try to improvise, don't try to make your own ingredient substitutes, just follow the recipe - exactly as it is written. 
Understand this, real cannoli are hard to make, and they require some special tools.  When I found all that out, I went for the cake version of the cannoli.  The cake isn't fried like cannoli is supposed to be, so maybe I cheated some.  But this dessert turned out edible enough.  And the Chocolate Glaze is so good, it has become my new fondue chocolate.   There are a lot of different parts to this one, but in the end it turned out to be a nice, gooey mess.  This cake is supposed to have three cake layers and two layers of cannoli filling.  I made mine with two cake layers and one layer of filling (just follow the recipe).  

Cannoli Cake Recipe:

Sponge Cake
1 cup cake flour
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

 Syrup
1/4 cup granulated sugar3 tablespoon water
1/4 cup rum

Cannoli Filling
3 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 ounce semisweet chocolate, finely chopped or grated
1 tablespoon grated orange zest

Chocolate Glaze
1 cup(s) heavy cream
3 tablespoon(s) unsalted butter
2 tablespoon(s) light corn syrup
8 ounce(s) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup(s) chopped unsalted pistachios

Directions:Heat oven to 350F.  Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.
I don't have a springform pan, I just used two 9-inch round cake pans. 
Line bottom of pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper.  Spoon cake flour into a fine-mesh sieve and set aside. 
I also didn't have cake flour - I read that, as a replacement for cake flour, you can use regular flour minus two tablespoons of the regular flour, plus two tablespoons of corn starch.  This is what I used and my cakes were very heavy and dense, so this is not a good substitute for cake flour.  This is the first time today that I was reminded of my rule. 

In a large bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat egg whites and cream of tartar (<-- didn't have it, some places say you don't need it) on medium speed until very foamy.  Gradually beat in 1/2 cup of the sugar.  Raise mixer to high speed and continue to beat until stiff yet billowy peaks form; transfer whites to a large mixing bowl.

I never got stiff, billowy peaks... maybe cream of tarter is needed after all.  Remember the rule.

Add yolks to bowl of mixer (no need to wash) with remaining 1/2 cup sugar, butter, vanilla, and salt and beat on high 3 minutes or until thick, light in color, and fluffy.
Scrape yolk mixture onto whites; sift 1/3 of the flour over bowl and fold in. 

I actually had a sieve, no idea where that came from.

Sift in remaining flour, in 2 additions, folding after each addition, until incorporated. Scrape into prepared pan and smooth top. 

Bake 30 minutes or until top of cake is golden and a pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven; run a knife around sides of cake to loosen. Remove pan sides and invert cake onto a wire rack; peel off parchment. Cool cake completely. 

See how thin, dense and hockey puck like these turned out?  This is what happens when you don't use cake flour. 

Rum syrup: While cake is baking, combine sugar and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat; stir in rum.
I didn't have any rum on hand and couldn't run to the store, so I used root beer instead.  It didn't taste too bad like that.  

Cannoli Filling: With a rubber spatula, press and scrape ricotta through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Stir in sugar, chocolate, and zest. 
Don't go overboard with the zest.  Less is more.  I tried pressing the ricotta through the sieve... ain't nobody got time for that.  That was taking all day, so instead I dumped all these ingredients in the food ninja and gave it a few spins.  

To assemble: With a long serrated knife, cut cake horizontally into three layers. 
Remember I only did two layers instead of three.
Cover cake plate with 4 strips of waxed paper. Place one layer on bottom of cake plate; brush with rum syrup. 

All nice and shiny and sticky when the syrup is on it.

Spoon half of the filling over the layer and spread evenly. Top with another layer, brushing with syrup and spreading with remaining filling. Brush cut side of remaining cake layer with syrup, then place on top, cut side down. Brush outside of cake with any remaining rum syrup. 

Since I cheated and only did two layers of cake instead of three, that meant I had twice as much filling as a normal layer should have.  I should of only used half of the filling but I didn't think of that until much later.  My filling layer was spilling out everywhere and extra gooey because it was twice as big as it should have been.

Now for the good part-----Chocolate glaze: Heat cream, butter, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan until simmering; remove from heat and add chocolate. 

Deliciousness beginning to form.

Let stand 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth. 

Look at that!!

Pour glaze into a glass measuring cup and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes or until slightly thickened. Try your best not to snack on it during this time.   Spread glaze over top and sides of cake. 

Okay, that doesn't look too bad!

Press chopped pistachios into glaze on sides of cake (skipped that part).  Refrigerate until glaze sets. Carefully remove waxed paper strips from under cake.  Enjoy!

See, a gooey, sticky mess.  It ended up tasting decent enough.  Mine had too much zest, the cakes were too firm, and the ricotta was a little sandy because I didn't press it through the sieve, but overall, for a fake cannoli, it wasn't that bad.  And the Chocolate glaze makes up for it. 

You can find the real recipe on delish.com

Pennsylvania - Shoo-Fly Pie

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

The second state is Pennsylvania, having ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787.  Pennsylvania does not have an official state dessert.  However, I read that both the sugar cookie and the chocolate chip cookie have been proposed as the state dessert, but neither are.  Also, some believe the Whoopie Pie originated in Pennsylvania, but Maine has claimed it as its own state dessert.  So, I turn to the "Pennsylvania Dutch*" of Lancaster County for a dessert. 

Pennsylvania - The Keystone State

State #2

December 12,1787

 Shoo-Fly Pie

 As with most things, there are many versions of Shoo-Fly Pie.  The receipe I am using is a modified version of the recipe found in "Mary At The Farm and Book Of Recipes" by Edith Thomas, copyrighted 1915 by Edith Thomas.

1.  Start with an unbaked pie crust.   Grandma wrote and said that the best pie crusts have more shortening than the books say to use.  I took note of this and added more shortening this time and it did seem to work better. 

Pie Crust Recipe:

1 1/2 cup flour

 1/2 teaspoon salt

 1/2 cup shortening Rounded 1/2 cup of shortening

3 tablespoons water  4 or 5 tablespoons of water

 Mix flour and salt.  Add shortening until well mixed (some suggest to use a food processor).  Add water.  Press together and form a ball.  Immediately roll (with a pin that you stuck in the freezer) crust out on floured board to 1/2" to 1" larger than pie pan.  Fit pastry loosely into pan. Trim, leaving 1/2" overhang.  Fold under, flute and prick thoroughly. 

I forgot to prick this one, but since I was baking it along with the filling, maybe it didn't matter.  You couldn't tell a difference in the flavor, I can tell you that.  Overall, it went much better than the first two crusts I made.  

 Shoo-Fly Pie recipe

Shoo-Fly Pie comes in two main varieties, either dry or wet bottom.  I made mine as a wet bottom.  Dry bottom is more layered.  In a dry bottom pie the layers go, bottom crust, crumbs, molasses filling, more crumbs on top.  

Filling:
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Crumbs:
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter

Mix molasses and hot water.  Stir in baking soda until it foams. 
The foaming part was pretty cool.  It bubbled up nicely.  I was too slow with the camera to get a good picture.

Mix flour and brown sugar together.  Stir in the butter.  It should not be smooth but small rivels. 
Someone suggested doing this in a food processor, so I did.  It turned out okay, but not too crumbly.  But it tasted good.

Pour filling into pie crust.  Sprinkle the crumbs on top.

Here it is with the crumbs on top, ready to go into the oven.  My crumbs were pretty thick, I'm not know if this is common.

 Bake for 30-45 minutes

The top kind of gets hard and the molasses part starts to bubble up a bit and peak out along the sides.

Enjoy!

 This pie is not as sweet as most.  But the crumbs on top make up for the lack of sweetness from the molasses.  We had ours with whipped cream and coffee.  All three test tasters gave it their approval, although they did prefer the Indiana Hoosier Sweet Cream Pie. 


Cost:
Molasses - $2.78
Project Total: $16.09

*Dutch, of course, meaning German and not the Netherlands, more info on that here: 

Indiana - Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

The first state is Delaware, having ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 7, 1787.  Delaware's official state dessert is peach pie, although there isn't too much of the peach industry left in the state.  Since peaches are out of season and I can't find any here in the great state, I'm choosing another state to start this journey.

Indiana - The Hoosier State

State #19

December 11, 1816
 

I've chosen Indiana for a few reasons.  1. The wife's family is from there, and I've been to the state numerous times but I have never had Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie.  2.  I had my eye on this pie since I first saw the list but hadn't had a chance to make it yet.  3.  It's easy, needing only a few ingredients. 

To get started I needed to make another pie crust.  Here's a problem I had: I made and baked the crust yesterday, but I thought I needed an unbaked crust for this recipe.  Turns out, either way, baked or unbaked, would of been fine (I think) it just depends on which recipe you use.  I wanted to use an unbaked crust and I wanted to try to make one again. What happened to the baked crust from yesterday?  I dumped some jello pudding in the center and sliced it up.  That, is the state of a cheap pie.   And that crust yesterday was as dry as a communion cracker and I could barely cut through it to make the pieces. 

I thought I might use a different crust recipe, but in the end decided not to.  I did a little reading to see how I could improve it, but didn't really find anything too substantial.  Overall, crust making went much better this time.  One thing I did differently is that I spent more time mixing the flour and salt with the shortening.  Also, I did read that things need to be cold, some recipes even say to refrigerate the dough before rolling it out.   With that in mind, while I made the dough, I placed some ice packs on the counter where I would be rolling out the dough and I stuck the rolling pin in the freezer.  Then, when rolling out the dough, the parchment paper goes between the dough and the pin, not between the dough and the counter.  Remembering that did help a lot.  

See?  Look how nice and flat and un-cracked it is!

I was even able to kind of flute it.  It's not perfect, but better than last time.  Does this mean I'm now a flautist?  I've always wanted to be in a marching band.

On to the pie!

Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

2 cups heavy cream 

1/2 cup all-purpose flour 

1/2 cup brown sugar 

1/2 cup granulated sugar 

3 tablespoons granulated sugar, for sprinkling 

1/2 cup whole milk 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

9-inch piecrust 

1 tablespoon unsalted butter 

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon  

Preheat oven to 350F. 

For filling: In a medium bowl, combine heavy cream, flour, brown sugar, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, milk, and vanilla.

Very easy.  Six ingredients all mixed up.

 Fit crust into a 9-inch pie pan and dot bottom with butter. Pour filling into crust.

When I started pouring this in it filled up to the top of the crust.  No skimping!

Combine cinnamon and remaining 3 tablespoons sugar and sprinkle on top.

"Spinkled" in an unbaked crust.  Either the crust will come out raw or it'll be perfect.  At least there isn't anything in crust other than flour, salt, and shortening.  And those can't kill you.  ---Well, eating them raw won't kill you at least.

Bake pie until set and center is firm to touch, about 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack.

The top of mine became set/hard, so I took it out of the oven.  And, notice my fluting isn't great.

While cooling I saw this crack in the pie.  It went all the way around the edge like this.    Everything on the top was hard, but the insides still had some wiggle, so I put it in the fridge because when it comes to pie cooling, we always choose speeding things up rather than letting it cool naturally.

Here's the finished product!

I think the different "layers" are because it isn't completely cooled all the way through yet.  The pie is nice and sweet with an almost custard like texture.  

 
There are a lot of recipes for Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie, or Sugar Pie.  A couple of recipes even said you could mix the ingredients in the pie crust.  Just dump them in and mix them up.    This recipe is from delish.com

Cost:
Heavy Cream: $2.31
Vanilla: $3.48
Today Total: $5.79
Project Total $13.31

Weight: Unchanged, 151

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

Let's start this with a confession: I'm not a baker, at least not in an experienced way.  This will be a learning process, but I have a couple taste testers on board who are willing to eat anything, so we'll see how it goes.  Hopefully, by the end I'll be able to make something presentable enough for the next holidays.

In the weeks leading up to the holidays, I saw a couple lists that were interesting.  The first list showed a dessert from every state.  The list was trying to say, "If you were to make or buy someone a dessert representing a particular state, then this dessert is what you should make or buy."  The other list showed good food gifts from every state, whether dessert or not.

Because I like our united states and how they differ, and because I like to challenge myself, and because I like to eat, and because I have dreams of grandeur, this is what I came up with:

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

A dessert a week highlighting one of our great states.

The lists that I found will be used for some states and not used for others.  Why am I not doing the lists as I found them?  For some of the states the lists would have things like "Seasonal Fruits With Ice Cream" and I think that is too broad and generic of an idea.  I will be narrowing it down and doing one particular thing.  Also, the lists sometimes didn't take into account if a state had a particular dessert already in place as the "state dessert."  So, I will be figuring that all out and presenting my final choice and baking results.  

The states will be highlighted in the same order as the states adopted the U.S. Constitution.  The date that each state adopted the U.S. Constitution is considered the day of statehood.   This is also the order that the 50 State Quarters were released.  

In preparation for my first state I need to make a pie crust.  I was warned that there is a "feel" to making a pie crust and that it might not go so well the first few times.  Ignoring this advice, I forged on.  

Here's the recipe (in blue) from the family cookbook.  It also says "from Betty Crocker" next to it, so I'm pretty sure this isn't a secret recipe.  There are a ton of pie crust recipes online, maybe I'll try a different on next time. 

For One Crust Pie

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 shortening

2 tblsp cold water

Preheat oven to 450F.  Mix flour and salt.  

Add shortening; mix with fork until it looks like mealy. 

I'm not sure if this is mealy, but this is what I ended up with.

Sprinkle with water; mix with fork.  

Gather dough together.  Press into ball.  

See how the dough is "cracking" that should tell you that it is too dry.

Immediately roll crust out on floured board to 1/2" to 1" larger than pie pan.  

Floured board?  Didn't have one of those.  I saw a trick about using parchment paper because the dough won't stick to the paper.  That didn't work either because the paper kept slipping whenever I tried to roll the dough out.  Next, I did what my momma taught me, put the dough straight on the (clean) counter top.  That worked the best.  However, actually rolling the dough out was a struggle.  It would either stick to the pin or to the counter, or it would break apart in weird places.  I believe the problem was that the dough was too dry.  Remember this, water "glues" the dough together and flour makes it where it doesn't stick to the pin.  I ended up trying to make it all work by sticking loose pieces together to make a piece large enough for the pie pan.  I finally got the dough pressed out enough that large enough and to a somewhat consistent thickness.  

Fit pastry loosely into pan.  

Since I worked the dough so much it was pretty stuck to the counter, I had to loosen it up by sliding a knife between the dough and the counter top so that I could carefully place it in the pie pan.  

Trim, leaving 1/2" overhang.  

Trimming was no problem.

Fold under, flute, prick thoroughly.  

I did manage to fold under somewhat.  No chance I could flute without it all crumbling to pieces.  Pricking was pretty easy, but didn't know if I should prick all the way through the dough until the fork hit the pie pan or if I should just poke the crust but not go all the way through.   

Bake shell 12 to 15 minutes or until light brown.  
It seemed so dry that I was afraid the whole thing might go up in flames.  Or be as dry as a communion cracker by the time is was finished.  

Here's the finished product.  It's not pretty, but it didn't turn out too bad.  It looks edible at least.  And what's a pie crust for other than to hold the good parts of the pie.  Is that sacrilegious to say?  You can see all the places that I tried to glue pieces together to make it whole.  And where I failed at doing that.  And it might still be as dry as a communion cracker.

Note:  When I roll out the pie crust, I have a rolling pin that is filled with cold water.  Works like a charm!

If you made it down this far, I'm also going to be keeping track of costs and my weight.  Hoping both don't balloon out of control.

Costs:
Shortening: $3.64
9inch pie crust: $3.88
I had some freebies since I didn't need to purchase flour, salt, or water.
Project Total: $7.52

Weight: 151