Black and Rasp Berry Dandelion Wine

Last year was the first time I made dandelion wine (the above picture is of two bottles still left from last year's batch). It was super easy for the most part and an udder success (though I would be curious to know the actual alcohol content, since it definitely smelt alcoholic upon bottling, but tastes more like soda?). Since last year was so successful, I decided to make an even bigger batch this year :) I freeze the dandelions I pick until I'm ready to brew, so that I can pick them on separate occasions. In reality the amount of dandelions I have is probably only enough to make half of what I'm making, if that, but I know since I'm adding berries to the mix it'll be alright. (BTW - trim the stems off the dandelions, and if you have a lot of time and patience you can also use only the petals. I personally make mine with berries for the added flavor since I talked to someone once who had made it both as straight up dandelion wine and some with berries and they preferred it with berries. One year I do want to make plain dandelion wine, but that involves more dandelions, which I actually find a bit of a nuisance to pick).

Pour boiling water onto the dandelions. And let steep a little while, I filled it about a quarter of the way with boiling water and then filled it the rest of the way with room temperature water. Let this steep for a day or two, covered. You're essentially making dandelion tea to start with. 

 After it's done steeping remove the dandelions (I compost mine). 

Last year I used fresh berries, this year I figured I'd try frozen. I put a bag each of black and raspberries into each bucket, and I put half of the 5lb bag of sugar into each bucket. I then mixed in the juice and zest of one lemon and one orange into each bucket, and topped it off with the same amount of yeast as I'd use in a loaf of bread. 

 Now this part is a little weird. I float half of a stale bagel on top of it all. I'm not exactly sure why this is, but in reading a bunch of different recipes for dandelion wine there was one that said to float a piece of stale bread on top, and I figured why not? But happened to have a stale bagel on hand, and said, ehh, just as well. It seemed to come out fine last year, so why fix what ain't broke? Once all this is mixed together it should be loosely covered and allowed to ferment for about two weeks. You should stir it around once a day. 

Once it's done fermenting bottle it up! Be sure to strain it before putting it in the bottles, I use cheese cloth in a stainer to do this. For bottles I used empty wine bottles I had saved (the ones with screw tops are a blessing in this scenario) and bought some glass flask bottles at the Christmas Tree shop when I realized I didn't have enough bottles. UNFORTUNATELY all but one of the flask bottles I got last year exploded in my parents basement (let me tell you, THAT was a joy to clean up :/ ) This year instead of capping/corking them when I bottle them I'm going to put ballons on top, so that if they do have some fermenting left to do they'll blow up the balloon instead of exploding the bottle. Ahh the learning process. 

Let them sit for at least three months before opening them up to enjoy. This is by far the hardest step of all. Trust me. See you next Tuesday!

Apple Raspberry Pie

Ever since I watched Pushing Daisies (an excellent show btw) a few weeks ago I have been itching to bake a pie. Perhaps it's because I haven't baked much of anything for the past little while, and maybe it's because I've never really made a complete pie by myself.  But mostly, I just wanted to eat some pie! Now having never made a pie before, I figured I should find a recipe, and settled on using this one. 

I froze the butter for about 15 minutes and then I cut it into the flour using two butter knifes, something I've only ever done before to make scones (maybe this summer if you're lucky I'll post about my strawberry scones, they're delightful). 

Once I added the water I mixed it a bit with the two knives and then used a very high tech device called cling wrap to cover the dough as I mixed it with my hands (the cling wrap served the sole purpose of keeping my hands clean). Once it was mixed I balled it up in the bottom of the bowl, covered it with the cling wrap and threw it in the fridge and went to the gym (not even joking, I knew I'd be eating pie that night, duh). When I came home from the gym after hopping in the shower for a bit of a rinse off and attending to my email, I prepped the apples. I cored, peeled and chopped up three big gala apples. 

By now the dough had been in the fridge for a couple of hours. I pulled it out of the fridge and started to get it ready for filling :)

 

I peeked in a few cabinets to check for a rolling pin, which I didn't think we owned anyways. Apparently I should have looked harder, because according to Lilly we do own one, and it's not that hard to find. Oh well. I ended up using a wine bottle to roll the dough out, which worked just as well. After I put it in the pan I trimmed it with my kitchen shears! Which is only really exciting because my nana got me (and every other member of our family) them for Christmas and I hadn't yet had a good reason to use them. So that was exciting. 

The into the bowl with my cut up apples went a bag of frozen raspberries which had thawed, a cup of sugar, a quarter cup of flour, a splash of vanilla, and a nice dusting of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, the whole lot of which I stirred around until everyone had become well acquainted with one another. Then into the pan with the crust it all went (as pictured in the first picture of this post). 

Now my one complaint about the dough recipe is that there was almost enough to cover the top of the pie too ... just not quite enough. So I got a little creative and made it look nice(ish). It then went on a journey into a sweltering 350*F oven for 45 minutes. 

The number one question I walked away with is "how do you know when a pie is done"...you can't stick a toothpick in it. Hind sight 20/20, it could have used a little more time, the apples were ever so slightly undercooked and the crust I think would have benefitted from more time as well. Did it make it any less delicious? Perhaps. But damn was it good. I can only imagine how mind blowingly awesome it would've been if I had baked it just a bit longer. It got gobbled up, and apple raspberry is a winning combination in my book. We (being Lilly, a few friends we had over, and I) were so eager to try it that I did not even think to take a picture of it before it was cut into. But that's okay, because I was eating pie. Delicious pie. Do yourself a favor, bake a pie, and I'll see you next Tuesday!