Sugar Free "Icebox" Pie

Given that we know about sixteen people that are diabetic (and I'm related to at least half of them) I've been thinking that I ought to come up with some more sugar free recipes. We celebrated my father-in-law's birthday last week, and since he was one of the diabetic people that we know, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to test out a sugar free recipe from my mom. It's super easy, a no-bake pie, but it's delicious and refreshing, and you really can't even tell that it's sugar free.

I did make my own graham cracker crust, which makes it not quite sugar free, but you can easily buy pre-made sugar free crusts. I just like the taste of homemade crusts a lot better.

All it takes is sugar free jello, sugar free whipped topping, some ice and some boiling water, and a few add-ins if desired. I made two with orange jello, and split a small can of well-drained mandarin oranges between them. I made another with raspberry jello and added 3 oz of chopped sugar free dark chocolate. Both were really good....one of my mandarin orange ones came out with a slightly soggy crust, but the other one was fine, so I'm not quite sure what happened there. But each pie was creamy, cold, sweet, and quite pretty looking. I decided to forgo blowing out candles, since I was afraid that the heat of the candles might melt them a little bit, but they were festive in their own candle-less way. The raspberry chocolate one came out looking especially pretty. So make a diabetic happy, go make a sugar free pie!

Sugar Free "Icebox" Pie

one (9 inch) sugar free graham cracker pie crust

one (0.3 oz) pkg sugar free jello

one (8 oz) pkg sugar free whipped topping, thawed

2/3 cup boiling water

2 cups ice cubes

optional: 3 oz sugar free dark chocolate, chopped

or one small can no sugar added fruit, well drained

Dissolve the jello in boiling water, whisk till completely smooth. Whisk in 2 cups ice cubes, stir for 2 minutes, or until jello starts to quick-set, remove any remaining ice cube pieces. Fold in whipped topping. Fold in fruit or chocolate if desired. Spoon into graham cracker crust, refrigerate at least one hour before serving, serve cold. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Salssssa

I took the remainder of the veggies from Apples Annies...



grilled the heck out of them...

took the grilled veggies and put them all in the food processor...

et voila....

Homemade Salsa
3 tomatoes
1 large onion
4 bell peppers
3 green or red chiles
3 jalapenos
15-20 cloves of garlic (to taste)
1 1/2 tsp salt (to taste)

Grill all of the above, peel off the blackened skins, pull the peppers and tomatoes into largish pieces (after grilling the veggies are so soft you don't even really need a knife, just a nearby garbage can to catch all the skins and seeds). Scrape the seeds out of the peppers, and squeeze the extra seeds and liquid out of the tomatoes. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their papers, put all of the tomatoes, peppers, onion, and garlic into a food processor and pulse until you reach your desired consistency. Add salt, pulse in, and add more salt and garlic if desired.

I saved one of the grilled red chile peppers, peeled off the skin, and then sliced it into thin strips. I combined those strips with freshly grated cheddar cheese to make some awesome quesadillas for dinner--topped with some delicious garlicky salsa of course.

Ooh la la, apple pie

That's right, there are four apple pies in that picture. Let's just say that I was a little busy last Sunday afternoon! Thankfully Noel peeled all the apples for me, so I just had to slice them, and make the crusts, and make the caramel/glaze. It also makes me happy that I was able to use up most of the apples (and in the nick of time too). Sadly I let the pears wait too long...they started making some sort of fermented pear liquid on the floor of the pantry, so I had to throw them away. (And then two days later at Fry's I overheard two women talking about how fantastically sweet and juicy the Asian pears they got at Apple Annie's were! Argh!) But enough about that failure, back to the deliciousness of the apple pies!

I used a recipe I found on allrecipes.com last year called "Grandma Ople's Apple Pie" (variation of Opal? but I think Opie is funnier) which I adapted to suit my purposes. You make the pie crust, slice the apples, mound the the apples in the crust, and then pour a rich, buttery, sugary caramel over the apples, top with another crust, and brush that crust with a little of the caramel as a glaze. The original recipe called for doing a lattice-crust over the apples, and then just pouring the glaze over the whole thing, but the crust is usually my favorite part of the pie, so I did a whole top crust.

The end result is crazily sweet and deliciously appley. The crust is soft and flaky just under the surface, and then crispy and sugary right on the top where the glaze has baked on. The Apple Annie's apples were perfect, they held up to the heat, and became tender but not mushy.

My one caveat is that I actually wouldn't recommend trying to make four pies at once using this method. The caramel thickens really fast, which means that you need an extra person to keep stirring it while you're putting on the top crusts, and in the rush to get everything done at the same time I ended up burning Noel with the caramel. (Sad face) So I'd only use this to make one or two pies at a time in the future.

But we took the hot apple pies and delivered one to our neighbors, one to our pastor, and one to the elementary director from church, and still had one warm apple pie left for us at home. With a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream this is a la mode gloriousness!

Jessica's version of Grandma 'Opie's' Pie

2 nine-inch prepared pie crusts

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 tbsp flour

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla

5-6 granny smith, or other tart apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/4 inch segments

Roll out the pie crusts, press one crust in a nine inch pie tin, chill for about fifteen minutes. Then chill the other one while preparing the apples and caramel. Once the apples are all peeled, cored, and sliced, pile the apples fairly evenly in the prepared pie crust.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. In a medium saucepan melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in the flour to form a paste, stir in the water to thin it back out, and then stir in the sugars, spices, and vanilla. Keep stirring constantly, this thickens up quickly. Pour almost all of the caramel over the apples in the pie pan, reserving a few tablespoons to brush over the top. At this point it's helpful to have someone else stir the caramel, unless you're super-coordinated, which I am most definitely not.

Place the second crust over the apples and caramel, crimp the edges of the two crusts together, and cut slits in the top, in a decorative pattern if you're so inclined. Then brush the remaining caramel over the main part of the pie, don't worry about the crimped edges, it makes a nice contrast actually if they're not coated with the glaze.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until the non-glazed crust is golden brown, and the apples seem soft. (I poked a toothpick in through the slits in the crust to check this, and mine were perfect at just about 32 minutes).

Eggplant Parmesan, le deuxieme

So the tomato sauce was a success, but now came the actual eggplant parmesan. I was pretty worried about it since I've never cooked with eggplant before, and we were having people over for dinner, but I since the eggplants were also creepily watching me, I decided to take the plunge.

First I peeled and cut the eggplant into 1/4 inch slices. I salted the eggplant and laid it out on paper towels to dry. After fifteen minutes or so I flipped them, salted the other side, and let them dry out for another fifteen minutes. Then I rinsed the salt off and patted them dry. After they were dry I dredged them in egg substitute and then Italian bread crumbs. I baked them at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes, flipped them and baked another fifteen minutes til they were crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.

Then I layered the eggplant with the tomato sauce from my last post, ricotta cheese, extra breadcrumbs, and shredded mozzarella cheese. I baked it all together for about 25 minutes until the cheese got all melty. The end result was creamy, crunchy, garlicky, cheesy and kinda messy, but served over home-made egg noodles (yes I did go all Martha Stewart this weekend!) it was fantastic.

Eggplant Parmesan

(from Chef to the Rescue by Cat Cora)

2 large eggplants

1 cup egg substitute (or 3 beaten eggs)

2 cups italian bread crumbs

1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

3-4 cups tomato sauce

2 cups shredded cheese, mozzarella or provolone

1 cup ricotta cheese

Slice, salt, and dry the eggplants according to the directions above. Place the egg substitute in one shallow dish, and the bread crumbs in another. Dredge the eggplant slices in the egg and then in the bread crumbs, coating both sides. (Save any remaining breadcrumbs). Bake the eggplant slices for fifteen minutes on each side at 350 degrees.

In a medium-sized casserole dish ladle 1/3 of the tomato sauce. Top with half of the eggplant slices, overlapping slices slightly if necessary, then top with half the ricotta cheese, half the remaining bread crumbs, and half the shredded cheese. Repeat layers, ending with the shredded cheese again.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the cheese is all melty and golden and perfect. Serve with pasta.