Cranberry White Chocolate Scones

I meant to make these back when I made the Savoury Sunday Scones but I ran out of time. So I just had a package of defrosted cranberries sitting in my fridge for AGES. I felt bad about those poor cranberries, so last weekend I whipped up a couple batches of this recipe from Chew Out Loud, one to eat right away, and the other to freeze unbaked as a giftie for Cait.

First, make sure you have 1 cup butter sitting in your fridge (or better yet, freezer).

Preheat your oven to 400°F and start with 4 cups flour (if you think that’s a lot of flour, imagine how much I had when I doubled the recipe. Okay, you don’t have to imagine: you can just do the math, I know). Whisk that together with 2/3 cup granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon salt.

The original recipe calls for 1 cup sour cream, but I only had a very little bit. So I thought I’d add in some yogurt, but I only had lemon meringue flavoured yogurt (still, citrus and cranberry are a great combination). But I didn’t even have enough of that. So I added in some dregs of whipping cream I had lying around.

I ended up cleaning out all three containers.

So. In a bowl, mix together 1 cup sour cream (or your dairy Frankenstein equivalent), 2 large eggs, and 4 teaspoons vanilla. Set that aside for a minute or two.

Grab your super cold 1 cup butter and grate it into your flour mixture. Yes, grate it. It’s oddly satisfying to grate butter. I always enjoy it, though I hate grating cheese.

Use a spoon to stir it into the flour. I went ahead and used a pastry cutter on it as well just to ensure I didn’t have huge clumps of grated butter in places where they shouldn’t be.

Stir in half a package of white chocolate chips (I used a whole one because I doubled the recipe).

Now tip in your liquids and stir them until just combined.

Add in half a package of fresh cranberries (again, I used a whole one because of doubling the recipe).  Stir those into the mix.

I tipped the whole thing out onto a work surface to squish and kind of knead gently into a cohesive mass.

I split it into four balls (two if you’re not doubling).

I flattened the balls into disks, which I cut into 8 equal wedges.

Whisk an egg in a small cup with a tablespoon of water and brush the egg wash over the scone wedges. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar.

Bake those suckers on parchment-lined baking sheets for 14-17 minutes, until they’re a nice pale brown all over. Serve warm!

Nanaimo Bar Cheesecake

If you’re Canadian, you’ve probably had a Nanaimo Bar once or twice in your life. If you’re not Canadian, you probably SHOULD have a Nanaimo Bar once or twice in your life.

My sister-in-law Mags sent me this recipe as a not-so-subtle hint about what kind of birthday cake she’d like this year (her birthday was February 15th). We usually celebrate her birthday jointly with her dad’s, Papa John, whose birthday is on February 19th. But with a bunch of travel on all sides, we ended up postponing their birthday celebrations until this past weekend, which was MY birthday. So this is a joint cake for the three of us. And it’s amazing.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grab a food processor and chuck in 5 tablespoons cocoa powder, 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1 1/2 cups graham crumbs, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, and 3/4 cup dried coconut.

Give it a good whazzing, then drizzle in 4 tablespoons melted butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla and whaz it again, until you get some crumbly mixture.

Take your crumb mixture and dump it into a 10″ springform pan. Press the crumbs into the bottom and a little up the sides, making sure to press extra hard in the corners (I didn’t and it was a little too thick there, so that’s why I am warning you).

Shove that into your oven and bake it for 5 minutes. When you pull it out, leave the oven on and shove in a large (9″ x 13″) pan of warm water and put it on the rack below where you will be cooking your cheesecake.

Now, in the bowl of a stand mixer, chuck 4 250g packages plain cream cheese (remember that room temperature cream cheese makes smoother cheesecake). Beat that up until it’s smooth and lovely.

Then, one at a time, crack in 4 large eggs, scraping down the sides of the bowl and beating the whole time.

Now you can chuck in 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 1/3 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 3 tablespoons vanilla custard powder.

I used Bird’s custard powder here, because that is all that is traditional and right in the world. Beat that up until smooth.

Pour the mix into your baked crust above your pan of water and bake for 1 hour.

When it’s done, turn the oven off and crack the door just a little bit and wedge it with a spoon. Leave that for 1-2 hours until the cheesecake is room temperature.

Don’t fret about that crack. It’s not a big deal. Transfer the cake to a nice plate with care. Chill the cake for a little while.

To make the lovely ganache that goes on top, toss 1 cup cream and 1 cup chocolate in the bowl of a double boiler and heat until the chocolate melts.

Whisk until smooth, then let it cool to room temperature.

Now gently pour it on top of your cooled cake. I had a lot of ganache so I carefully guided it down the sides as well.

Chill your cake until the ganache is set.

Serve to all your birthday guests!

Melting Moments

This quick recipe produces a large amount of finished cookies with little effort on your part. I pulled it out of the Ottawa Citizen back in December. I think that due to their dense nature you could easily switch out the flour for a gluten-free option.

Start by whisking together 3 cups all-purpose flour and 1 cup cornstarch.

Then get zesty! The recipe calls for the finely grated zest of 5 limes, but I only had 3 limes, so I added a large orange into the mix.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat 2 cups butter until smooth and creamy.

Then tip in 1/2 cup icing sugar and beat that until it’s fluffy and wonderful.

Add in your lime zest, together with 1 teaspoon ground cardamom and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and beat that to combine the ingredients.

Add in the flour and mix that until it’s all incorporated.

Cover and chill the dough for an hour until it’s firm.

When you’re ready to go, preheat your oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a teaspoon to scoop out the batter and form it into 1″ balls.

Plop those on the baking sheets (they won’t expand much so you can put them pretty close together).

Bake those suckers for about 10-14 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies just start to brown. Remove them from the heat and let them cool for about 5 minutes.

Grab 1/2 cup icing sugar and dump it in a bowl. Roll the still-warm cookies in the sugar and set them on a wire rack to cool completely.

Roll the cookies again when cool in another 1/2 cup icing sugar and serve. I’d recommend serving them with a beverage, as they tend to fuse people’s mouths shut when they eat them!

The Molly Cake

Mrs. Nice’s birthday was back in November and the Pie and I wanted to make her birthday cake a little more personal this year. Papa John and Mrs. Nice now live next to a farm and so their backyard faces a huge field full of very curious cows. At a craft fair recently, Mrs. Nice picked up this gorgeous painting of a cow named Molly, and so the Pie and I tried to re-create at least the sentiment of it as best we could, considering our utter lack of artistic skill.

My frame of reference. NAILED IT.

Start at the beginning first. Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Bring 3 egg whites to room temperature in a decent-sized bowl. You can drop in 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar too, while you’re at it. Leave that alone for a while.

Grab yourself some frozen strawberries. This is from a 1kg package frozen strawberries, which is about 5 cups’ worth.

Plop those in a pot with 1/2 cup granulated sugar and stew them over medium heat until they’re all melted and gooey and lovely.

You can purée them at this point if you wish but I wanted some strawberry chunks in the cake batter so I mashed the goo with a potato masher instead.

Now you can turn your oven on to 350°F and butter and parchment up your cake pan(s). I used my trusty 17″ round cake pan but there is enough batter here if you wanted to use 3-8″ round pans instead and create a layer cake.

Sift together 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 2 teaspoons baking soda and set that aside for a minute.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat together 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup vegetable shortening until fluffy and amazing.

Next, beat in 1 3/4 cup granulated sugar until it’s also fluffy and amazing. Then you can add in 2 teaspoons vanilla (I used vanilla bean paste, my new favourite thing).

Now scrape down the sides of the bowl and plop in 1 egg. Just one. It looks so lonely. Beat it up. Show it who’s boss.

Okay now we put all this jazz together. Take your strawberry goo. And your flour.

Starting with the flour, add about a third of it to your mix and stir to combine.

Add half the strawberries, then another third of the flour (mixing it all in), then the final half of the strawberries, and the last of the flour.

I decided to disobey my normal rules about colouring food and added a bit of red gel paste colouring to the batter to make the strawberries pop.

Then stir in 1 cup sour cream.

Look at that gorgeousness.

Beat your room temperature egg whites until stiff peaks form. Yay, meringue!

Ever so gently fold those fluffy whites into your batter. This batter is pretty dense and produces a pretty thin cake so you need all the fluff you can get.

Smooth the batter into your cake pan(s) and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the pan comes out clean.

Set the whole shebang on a wire rack to cool completely.

Now, if you’re not making a giant cow out of your cake, you can skip this whole segment. If you are making a giant cow out of your cake, then I hope yours turns out better than mine because you are less terrible at art.

So with the giant cake laid out on a board, I cut out the shape of the cow’s head, and then from what was left I cut out the horns and the ears. It’s all symmetrical.

Then I laid it out.

I had to move everything around on the board to get it to fit, and the cake was so sticky it was a hard job to do it without disaster. And now it looks like the Chicago Bulls logo (GREAT GIFT IDEA FOR BULLS FANS FOLKS!).

The Pie thought we should add a bit of extra cake at the snout. Now we need some frosting.

I needed two colours of icing, so in two double boilers I melted 4 oz dark chocolate and 4 oz white chocolate, respectively. If you’re just doing one colour then obviously just use one double boiler and 8 oz chocolate. When that’s all melty and smooth, set it aside to become less horribly hot.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 2-250g packages plain cream cheese (room temperature) until they’re silky smooth. Remember, the warmer your cream cheese is, the less lumpy the frosting will be.

Beat in as well 1 tablespoon vanilla (again I used the paste because I love it), 3/4 cup heavy (whipping) cream, and 3/4 cup icing sugar.

Then I split the frosting between two bowls. Hello, beautiful. Look at those little flecks of vanilla seeds.

Then I poured the now-cooler white chocolate into one bowl, and the now-cooler dark chocolate into the other and stirred them up.

Ready to decorate!

I started with the white, because … well, I just did.

Then I filled it in with the dark chocolate. The nostrils are wonky because I dropped a huge gob of icing accidentally and so that’s just how it had to be. TADA! Not fine art, but highly tasty, and Mrs. Nice loved it.

Egg Nog?

I love egg nog.  So much so that I wish I could have it all year ’round.  So of course I learned to make my own.  And every time I offer it to people, I try to do it in Denholm Elliott’s voice from (my favourite movie of all time — don’t judge) Trading Places.  He’s just so emphatic.

I know.  I don’t know why I showed you that. I just love egg nog that much. So when I found this recipe on Design*Sponge I knew the time had come. THIS WAS IT.

So first you start by creating an ice bath. That means either filling your sink with water and ice cubes, or a large bowl that will hold your pot. My sink is terrible at retaining water (not my sink, not my problem), so I opted for a heat-proof bowl.

Then grab a medium-sized pot and crack in 6 whole eggs. Give those a thorough whisking.

Pour in as well 2 cups whole milk (we call it homogenized here in the Great White North), 1 cup heavy (whipping) cream, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar.

Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the custard (because that’s what it is) thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Resist the urge to speed things up by turning up the heat. That’s how you get scrambled eggs plus milk. Not cool.

Plop the pot into the ice bath. Add in 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and whisk the whole shebang for about 3 or 4 minutes.

Put the lid on the pot, haul it out of the ice bath, and let it come to room temperature, about an hour (I had some errands to run so I actually put mine in the fridge for about four hours and it was fine as well).

Next, strain the egg solids (those lumpy bits) out of your custard by pouring it through a sieve over a bowl.

You can throw these out. Or compost them like a good citizen.

Now whisk in your booze***. The original recipe calls for brandy or rum plus bourbon, but the Pie and I are not bourbon fanatics like Trav, so we opted for 1/2 cup rum plus 1/2 cup maple whisky.

Whisk that whisky right in there.

Might as well add a few dashes of grated nutmeg as well.

Now pour 1 cup whipping cream into a bowl and beat the crap out of it until it forms stiff peaks.

Then fold that gorgeousness into your eggnog.

Let your eggnog chill for a couple of hours before drinking. It’s like drinking whipped cream, essentially. I personally don’t think the recipe would be that good without the alcohol to kind of dilute it, so if you’re looking for a non-alcoholic version, this is probably not it.

*** That said, however, if you want to try this particular recipe without the booze, this is what I recommend: instead of adding 1 cup booze, add 1 cup whole milk, and then when it gets to the final 1 cup whipping cream, just add it in without whipping. Then the whole thing is much less solid and easier to drink on its own.

Holiday Sandwich Cookies

Cait and I seem to have developed a tradition in recent years of getting together and baking something in time for the holidays. Usually there’s much yelling (both at each other and at what we’re doing) and definitely too much giggling. Last year we made biscotti, and the year before that we came up with those rum balls that got us wasted. This year I got to pick, and, as I’ve been craving Oreos recently, I went with that for inspiration and found this recipe from Chatelaine.

It started with us making a trip to Dollarama for some unrelated items, and Cait managed to find a three-pack of teeny tiny Santa hat hair clips. Note our manic expressions. I’m surprised mine actually stayed in my hair the whole night.

It did not stay in Gren’s hair. He was not a fan.

Start with your dough, because you’ll need to refrigerate it for a bit. In a bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, and 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (I doubled the recipe because there were two of us).

Then, in the bowl of your mixer, plop 1 cup room temperature butter and beat it with 1 cup granulated sugar until it’s fluffy and lovely.

Then drip in 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 egg and beat that until fluffy.

Slowly, using a shield, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat until well combined. The dough will be very stiff.

Separate that into two sections, flatten them into discs, and chuck them in the fridge for at least an hour. I made ours into little logs, which we then labeled “poos” for the rest of the night. We are very mature.

Now you can make your filling. Beat up 1/2 cup room temperature butter until soft and creamy, then add in 2 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar (slowly) and beat until combined. Drizzle in 2 tablespoons (or more) whipping cream until you have a nice thick fluffy icing. Then you add in 1/4 cup crushed hard candy.

Now, Cait made hers with crushed candy canes (the recipe calls for peppermint candies but they’re pretty much the same).

I, however, have a strong aversion to candy canes. So I used Werther’s hard candies instead.

Here is Cait smashing up some Werther’s for me.

So we split the icing into two parts and mixed the candy canes into one half and the hard caramels into the other.

Now, when your dough is chilled enough, preheat your oven to 375°F and spray several baking sheets or line them with parchment (which is what I did). Grab one of your chilled discs of dough and roll it out on a floured surface (or between two sheets of waxed paper, which is what I’m doing here). Dust things with flour if they get sticky.

Use cookie cutters to get some good sandwichy shapes. Cait was in charge of this as I rolled out the dough. She was very careful to make sure she made at least two of everything, for sandwichy purposes.

Gather up your scraps and chuck them back in the fridge to re-roll after ten minutes or so. Make sure to use all the dough! Place the cut cookies on your baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through. The cookies will expand somewhat so don’t put them too close together.

Set the baked cookies on a wire rack to cool completely.

Cait made this cookie corgi specially for the Pie.

Now sit down with your cooled cookies and your frosting and a small knife and start pasting icing onto one side of a cookie. We watched Elf as we did this, to get into the holiday spirit.

Match it up and squish it down (not too hard – they will break if you press them too hard).

And that’s it. Sandwiches! They’re supposedly best eaten the day they’re made but I actually preferred them the next day when they were a little chewier. But that’s up to you.

Store whatever you can’t eat in an airtight container.

Homemade Sugar Cubes

This quick DIY comes from nifty thrifty things and would make a great last-minute gift for someone who likes a little bit of sweet in their tea. It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s something you can customize with your own flair, and, my favourite: it’s as cheap as you want it to be.

The basic ingredients you need for this are crystallized sugar and water, though you can dress the sugar and water up as much as you want. Here I have an organic coconut sugar, which adds a bit of flavour to things you sweeten.

Grab your sugar, a small bowl of water, another small bowl for mixing, and a pretty ice cube tray or candy mold. And some wee tea spoons.

Pour about 1/2 cup of the sugar into the mixing bowl, and use one of the tea spoons to dribble a little bit of water onto the sugar. Like, very little. Mix it in with the other spoon. Keep adding a little bit more at a time, a few drops here and there, until you kind of have a sugar paste, but the sugar has not yet dissolved. If you get that far, then you’ve gone too far.

Spoon the sugar paste into the ice cube tray or candy mold and press it down with your fingers to compact it. Then do the whole thing again until you’ve filled up the entire tray.

I spritzed a bit of water on the top of this tray to tamp things down a bit.

Leave that to dry overnight, then pop the cubes out and enjoy! Make sure they’re totally dry before you remove them, or they will crumble …

Other options: if you’ve ever made vanilla sugar before, by whazzing a dried vanilla bean with granulated sugar in a food processor and leaving it to “steep” for a week or so, then I’m sure you’d love the option of making vanilla sugar into cubes.

Another idea would be lavender sugar, which you make the same way as vanilla sugar (but with lavender flowers, silly, not vanilla beans). I added 2 drops pink and 2 drops blue food colouring to make it purply.

You could also do this with brown sugar, as opposed to white sugar, though the darker the sugar is the less water I would use, as it’s already pretty sticky with molasses.

Finally, what about changing up the water options? You can use rose water or orange blossom water instead of regular water to add a lovely aroma to your sugar cubes. I added a drop of food colouring to the rose water to add a tint to the cubes.

Apple Streusel Muffins

A couple weeks ago, in the beginning stages of November, I had a strong hankering for apple muffins. I was reading a book where one of the main characters kept making them and I just couldn’t resist the temptation anymore. I found this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and the rest is really history.

Let’s start with the streusel crumb topping, shall we? It’s what elevates these simple muffins into items of historic greatness. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a bowl, then dump in 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Give that a good stirring.

Then add in 2/3 cup all-purpose flour and mix it up with a fork or your hands.

You’re going to get a lovely crumbly mix. Set that aside for a minute.

Now, preheat your oven to 425°F. I know that seems high, but don’t worry, we’ve got a plan. You might want to grease or butter a muffin tin while you’re at it. I also set 2 large eggs in a bowl of warm water to bring them to room temperature. Because I didn’t plan ahead.

In the bowl of your mixer, cream 1/2 cup room temperature butter until all fluffy and amazing. Then add in 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup granulated sugar and beat that up again.

Why yes – that granulated sugar IS pink. It’s a long story.

Then add in your 2 large eggs and beat until fully combined. Don’t forget to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Now add in 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, and 1/2 cup yogurt (any flavour). You can use sour cream if you have no yogurt. I had neither sour cream nor yogurt, so I used buttermilk. Well, I had no buttermilk either, so I used milk that I had soured with lemon juice.

Now, peel and chop up 2 medium apples – you want about 1 1/2 cups diced apples for this. Can you peel your apple all in one piece? It’s one of my special skills.

In another large bowl, whisk together 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. The original recipe also calls for a teaspoon of baking soda but I found I could really taste it in the muffin so I would leave it out.

Add your wet ingredients to your dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Plop in your apples and 1/4 cup milk (any kind) and mix that up again.

Scoop that glorious stuff into your prepared muffin tin, filling the whole cup.

Sprinkle generously with the streusel topping and shove that in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for a further 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the centre muffin comes out clean.

While the muffins were baking, I glanced out the window and the bright sunny day had suddenly become a blizzard.

And then the sun came out again. Though the snow kept falling.

Set the hot muffins on a wire rack to cool down and start on your glaze.

Whisk together 1 cup icing sugar with 3 tablespoons heavy cream and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Drizzle that insanity over your still warm muffins.

Eat these glorious gems within a couple days, as they will tend to get soggy over time.

Nutella Blondies

For the end-of-year potluck for our softball team, the Pie elected to make these ooey-gooey sticky-sweet masterpieces. If you’re in the mood for a serious sugar overload, then this one is for you. The original recipe makes one 8″ x 8″ pan of thin squares. We doubled it to create a slightly thicker version in a 9″ x 13″ baking pan, so the recipe below reflects that.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and butter your pan. Line it with parchment paper and butter it again. Because of course you need the extra grease in this recipe.

Now, melt 1 cup butter (I know, that’s a lot of butter) and set it aside to cool a bit until it’s not molten.

Pour the slightly cooled butter into a big bowl with 2 large eggs, 2 cups brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons vanilla extract. Whisk that together until smooth.

Plop in 2 cups flour and stir until combined.

Next add in 2 cups peanut butter chips, or half peanut butter chips and half chocolate chips (we ran out of peanut butter ones). Stir that up.

Spread your dough/batter into your pan. It’s easiest to spread into the corners if you butter your hands and press down.

Next, heat up 2/3 cup Nutella (or comparable chocolate hazelnut spread) and pour it in long lines on the surface of your blondie batter.

Use a skewer or knife to drag the hazelnut spread horizontally across and through the batter to create a marbled pattern.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, and then set on a wire rack to cool completely. These will look slightly underbaked, but they’re supposed to be gooey. So when it’s cool, cut it into small squares and enjoy!

Momofuku’s Crack Pie

When I first saved this recipe in my Evernote folder, “crack pie” was super trendy. But that was like FOUR YEARS AGO. I am so not trendy. But I had 8 egg yolks left over from making meringues and this is a great way to use them up. The measurements are a bit finicky, probably, I suspect, because they were converted from metric for American audiences, but still workable. I made the cookie crust the day before, just because there are a lot of steps to follow.

To make the oat cookie for the crust: Preheat your oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Technically you’re supposed to do this in a 9″ x 13″ pan but mine was dirty so what’re you gonna do …

In a bowl, whisk together 2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, 1/8 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/8 teaspoon baking powder.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream together 1/2 cup butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, and 3 tablespoons granulated sugar.

Beat in 1 egg until well combined.

Then tip in your flour and mix that in well.

Finally, add 1 cup oats and stir until fully blended.

Press your cookie dough (because that’s what it is, surprise!) onto your pan.

Bake for 20 minutes, then cool it completely on a wire rack.

Those black spots are my buttery fingerprints, burned to a crisp.

Bust it into pieces.

To construct the cookie crust: Take the crumbled bits of cookie and chuck them in your food processor together with 1/4 cup butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar and pulse until you have fine, clumpy crumbs.

I actually found it easier (because my processor is super small) to pulse the cookie on its own and then add in the butter and sugar.

The crumbs should stick to themselves when you press on them.

Divide the crumbs between 2 10″ pie pans. These are 9″, which will make the filling a bit thicker which means I will have to bake them for a little longer but that’s fine. I rarely use my 9″ pans as it is, so don’t freak out and buy a 10″ one unless you plan on making a lot of skinny pies.

Press the crumbs onto the bottom and up the sides of the pan. I may have gone a bit too high up the sides. Crack pies are pretty low-profile.

Now, in a bowl (don’t use a mixer for this as you’ll beat in too much air), whisk together 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons brown sugar, and 1/3 cup plus 1 teaspoon powdered milk (if you are unfamiliar with powdered milk, you can usually find it in the coffee/tea aisle of the grocery store).

Melt 1 cup butter (it’s a lot, I know) and stir into it 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Gently whisk the butter/cream into the sugar/powdered milk.

Then grab your 8 egg yolks. I am so pleased with how these fit into my storage container. It’s highly satisfying.

Ever-so-gently whisk the yolks into the rest of the mixture, careful again not to mix in too much air (fluffy crack pie filling will puff up and be way not as good).

Divide the filling between the two crusts.

The recipe told me to bake the pies one at a time, but as it involves temperature changes I decided it would be a waste of energy to do so, so I did them both at once. Bake the pies for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 325°F and bake for a further 10 minutes, until the surface of the filling is a nice even brown and bubbling. I had to bake the one in the white pan for an extra 5 minutes, simply because it was thicker.

Set the pies on a wire rack to cool and then cover them and shove them into the fridge. Crack pie is meant to be served cold, and even cold it’s gooey, like a giant butter tart. It’s a bit obscene, actually.

Before serving, dust the surface of the pie with icing sugar.

Slice and serve!