South Dakota - Kuchen

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

The seventh state is South Carolina, having ratified the Constitution on May 23, 1788.
However, since I didn't play too close to the details when I was looking for recipes, I got my South states mixed up and ended up making South Dakota instead of South Carolina.   So....

The fortieth state is South Dakota, having ratified the Constitution on November 2, 1899.
South Dakota does have a state dessert, Kuchen.

Kuchen celebrates the rich cultural heritage and traditional food of the State's German ancestors. Kuchen is derived from an Old German word for "cake". The word originated in the 1800's, and it describes various types of coffee cakes made from a sweet dough and a wide variety of fillings.

The recipe that I used for Kuchen came out much more "new-world" than how I thought Wikipedia presented Kuchen. My Kuchen end-product was almost like a fruit pizza, if you are familiar with that.   I was expecting some old school, thick, pastry, crusty thing. Wasn't even close, but it ended up very tasty! There are three parts to this Kuchen, bottom crust layer, middle filling, and topped with apples and sugar. On to the recipe, The Official State Recipe for Apple Kuchen from South Dakota.

Ingredients:
For the crust:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold and cut into pieces

For the filling:
1 pound cream cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, at room temperature

For the topping:
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, if desired, cored, and thinly sliced

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Lightly grease and flour a 9x13-inch pan.
Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl or food processor fitted with a steel blade and mix to combine.

Using the Ninja to mix things up is the easiest possible way to go about it.

Add the vanilla and butter, a little at a time.

You want your mixture to be a little crumbly, not smooth, so that it can be pressed together. You aren't looking for a smooth batter, but something that looks like it can be pressed together, kind of like a pie crust consistency.

Press into the baking pan and bake in oven until slightly golden but not brown, about 12 to 15 minutes.

See, it needs to have a little bit of texture to it.

Let crust cool.
Because I am always in a hurry, I didn't let it cool completely. It only cooled the amount of time it took me to finish the next steps.

Lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees.
Or turn it off... it will probably still be at 400 when you are ready to put the crust back in. Just don't forget to turn the oven back on if you turn it off.

To make the filling:
Mix the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in mixer (preferably with a paddle) and beat until creamy.
Add the egg, mix to combine, and pour over the cooled crust.

To make the topping:
Place the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and mix to combine.
If you haven't already, peeled, if desired, core and thinly sliced 3 Granny Smith apples.

If you wait until now to slice the apples it will give your crust extra time to cool. I never peeled the apples. If you do, it will make cutting into the Kuchen easier.

Place the apples on top of the filling in two or three columns.

If you want to get fancy, you can make designs with your apples and how they are laid out.

Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar and transfer to the oven.
Getting close now!

Bake until firm and a rich brown, about 20 minutes.

Cut into 20 to 24 pieces


Enjoy!

Massachusetts - Boston Cream Pie

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

The sixth state is Massachusetts, having ratified the Constitution on February 6, 1788.  Massachusetts does have a state dessert, and it's the only dessert I can think of when I think of Massachusetts, Boston Cream Pie.   This "pie" is actually two layers of cake with a cream filling layer between and topped with a chocolate frosting/glaze.  Boston Cream Pie is/was made famous from Boston's Parker House hotel.  

Massachusetts - Boston Cream Pie
State #6
February 6, 1788
Seeing how my grandfather is from this area, I went to the family cookbook for a recipe.  Unfortunately, there wasn't one to be found there.

The Boston Cream Pie has three parts. 
1. The Cake. 
2.  The Filling. 
3.  The Frosting.

Ingredients
For the cake:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup shortening
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the cream:
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract


For the chocolate glaze: 4 1/2 tablespoons butter
3 squares (1 ounce each) unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
About 2 tablespoons hot water

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Grease and flour a round layer pan, 9 x 1 1/2 inches.
In a bowl combine all cake ingredients.  Combine well while scraping the bowl occasionally to get everything mixed well.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
This part was super easy, just mix everything up.  No pics of this because who really needs to see me mixing up ingredients?

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.
Cool 10 minutes, then remove from the pan to cool completely on a wire rack.

Here is my cake part.
If you look at the bottom half portion (top part in picture), you can see that I didn't quite get it to come out of the pan cleanly and had to try to get a knife in there to loosen it up.

For the cream:
Mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a 2 quart saucepan.
In a glass measuring cup, mix milk and egg yolks.
Pour and stir the milk mixture gradually into the sugar mixture.
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and boils.

You can see that it is getting thicker by the way it is sticking to the sides of the pan... And it also feels thicker as you are stirring it up.

Boil and stir for one minute. Remove from the heat. Stir in vanilla and cool completely.

Once cooled it looks like this.  Pretty thick and color is between yellow and white.

To make the chocolate glaze:
Heat butter and chocolate in a 2 quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly until melted and smooth.

When you combine the butter and chocolate it is pretty runny.

Remove from heat and stir in sugar and vanilla.

Then, when you stir in the sugar and vanilla it becomes pretty stiff and hard to stir.

Stir in water, one teaspoon at a time, until smooth and of spreading consistency.

I honestly had my doubts about this step.  I thought there was no way it would work.  But it does!  Stir in each teaspoon of water completely before going to the next one. 

The glaze should be just slightly runny but still solid.

To assemble the cake: 
Split the cake in half horizontally and place the bottom half on a cake stand orplate.
Spread cream evenly on top to within 1/2 inch of the sides.
Place the top of the cake on top of the cream.


Spread the top of the cake with chocolate glaze, letting it run slightly over the sides.

Once I got to leting it run off the edges it didn't run as smoothly as I thought it would.  But if you let it sit it should eventually migrate down.  Then you can put it in the refrigerator to finish making it solid.

Enjoy!

Connecticut - Election Cake

50 weeks, 50 states, 50 desserts

The fourth state is Georgia. Obviously, anything with Georgia must include peaches. Since peaches are still not in season I’m skipping Georgia for now. That makes Delaware and Georgia that I have skipped due to peaches being out of season.
The fifth state is Connecticut, having ratified the U.S. Constitution on January 17, 1788. Connecticut does not have any official state foods. However, they are home to a well-known cake, Election Cake. This cake dates to the 18th century and while probably not originally made in Connecticut, it does have strong ties to Hartford, Connecticut.

Election cake is a yeast “cake” that is really more bread-like and is sweetened with fruits or nuts.

Connecticut - The Constitution State and the Nutmeg State
State #5
January 17, 1788

Last time I was reminded of my #1 rule – Don’t try to improvise, just follow the recipe – exactly.  This time I was reminded of my #2 rule – Read the recipe and instructions completely before starting.

This cake is pretty easy to put together.  I didn’t do as well as I should have with this part, but it does help if the milk and eggs are at room temperature when you start.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon yeast
1 cup milk, lukewarm
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
4 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon nutmeg and/or cinnamon
1 cup raisins chocolate chips
1/2 cup brandy

Instructions:
Dissolve the yeast in the milk and set aside.
The warm milk helps the yeast to dissolve better and quicker.

Combine the butter and sugar in a mixer. Beat eggs and add to the butter and sugar.
I always think of just eating some of the butter and sugar.  That's probably not the healthiest choice, but it looks so good when it's all light and fluffy.

Add the yeast and milk and mix well.

Add the brandy.
“I love cooking with wine—sometimes I even put it in the food” - possibly Julia Childs and/or maybe W.C. Fields

Sift together three cups of the flour and spices, then add to the wet ingredients.
The cinnamon gave it this nice reddish color.

Gradually add the raisins chocolate chips.
I used chocolate chips instead of raisins or fruit or nuts. Why wouldn't you? By the end, for a cake that wasn't supposed to be sweet, it turned out pretty sweet.

Knead in the remaining flour.
On a floured board, knead until smooth and elastic.
When I got to this part I realized that the dough was elastic and it did remind me of bread dough more than cake.

Butter a tube pan or two small loaf pans. Put the dough in the pan and allow it to rise until doubled.
Two things I didn't realize until I got to this part. See rule #2 above.
#1 Butter the pan-notice the can of Pam in the background.  That took care of that oversight. 
#2 Allow the dough to rise until doubled----I started this thing at like 9pm, I didn't have time to let it rise until doubled.  I was lucky to find enough free time to get this far.  So, I tried a couple different things to and got it to rise some; not nearly enough, but I had to go with it.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake 35 to 45 minutes. Turn out on a rack to cool.

Looks pretty good!


Because it didn't have a chance to rise properly, it was little dense, but tasty.   And it was better when it was not in the refrigerator overnight.

Top with favorite frosting.

Frosting?!   You got it!  I used the same chocolate glaze from the Cannoli.  See? I told you it turned out pretty sweet by the time I was done.

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