Candied Ginger Apple Pie

In September, I made a candied ginger cheesecake and I kind of became obsessed with candied ginger after that. It was sooo good in the cheesecake and I had more candied ginger left from the cheesecake so my mind started racing with the possibilities of what else I could use the ginger in. With my husband's birthday in October and his love of apple pie, I thought I'd try adding the candied ginger to my normal apple pie recipe that comes from my mom's apple crisp recipe. It turned out so well that I made the same pie for Thanksgiving too.

Ingredients:
Pastry for double crust pie
6 cooking apples (I usually use straight Granny Smith, or 4 Granny Smith and 2 McIntosh)
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 T finely chopped candied ginger
1 tsp lemon juice
2 T flour
1 T cream
Turbinado sugar

Lower oven rack to the lower middle position in the oven and preheat to 425. Put a baking rack to warm up in the oven.
Meanwhile, peel, core and thinly slice apples. Add to a large bowl and add sugar, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, lemon juice and flour. Toss everything together to mix well. Either roll out your homemade pie crust and put in pie plate or place store bought crust in pie plate and leave about an inch of overhang. Carefully pour the apples and all their juices into the pie plate. Cover with top pastry crust. Crimp edges and cut vents in the top of the pie. Brush all over with cream and sprinkle Turbinado sugar over top.
Pull out the preheated baking sheet and carefully place the pie plate on the baking sheet. Put the pie on the sheet into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 350 and bake for about 1 hour, until crust is browned nicely. Let cool completely before serving.

Pie from Greg's birthday

Pie from Thanksgiving

Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast

I love turkey breasts! They're not difficult to make, it's delicious, you can do so much with it, and the leftovers make awesome turkey sandwiches. For Thanksgiving this year I was really excited to have a dinner with just me and Greg. Since it was just the two of us a turkey breast would be plenty for us and after making a few different ones, I decided it was time to try my own. I picked up a package of fresh poultry herbs at the grocery store that had rosemary, thyme and sage in it and wanted to do a really traditional Thanksgiving turkey this year so those herbs gave me my jumping off point. Plenty of salt and pepper, herb butter, and some veggies made my turkey.

Ingredients:
6-7 pound bone-in turkey breast
10 T soft butter
1 T chopped fresh sage
1 T chopped fresh rosemary
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 tsp pepper
3 white onions, peeled and quartered
2 carrots, chopped into 2 inch pieces
2 celery stalks, chopped into 2 inch pices
1 head garlic sliced in half through the middle
2 c chicken broth
Plenty of salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 325. Combine butter, herbs and teaspoon of pepper. In the bottom of a large roasting rack, put 2 quartered onions, the carrots and celery. Add  the chicken broth and put the rack in place over the veggies and broth. Gently pull the skin from the turkey meat and carefully put your hand underneath to loosen the skin all over the breast. Start rubbing the butter all under the skin. Add some salt and pepper under the skin as well. Rub the remaining butter all over the skin and season very well with salt and pepper. Season the cavity of the breast with salt and pepper, add the last quartered onion (you may only be able to fit two pieces of the onion, you can add the other two pieces to the roasting rack) and the garlic halves. Put the breast on the rack and roast for about 2-2 1/2 hours or until the temperature reaches 160, you'll want to check the temp around the 90 minute mark to see where it's at. Let rest for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Cinnamon Sugar Toast Pumpkin Seeds

I never got cinnamon sugar toast for breakfast growing up! It was a dessert until I was a teenager and woke up before everyone else and could sneak a little cinnamon and sugar on my toast in the mornings. It's still one of my favourite treats. The melted butter, crunchy sugar and warm cinnamon is the perfect combo. This last weekend I got a lot of pumpkin seeds from a friend and I was going to roast them up. But since we decided to take it easy on the baked goods before the holidays and I was really wanting something sweet, I decided to try one of my favourite treats as the base for these pumpkin seeds and they were so good! Sweet and warm and crunchy... Yum!

Ingredients:
2-2 1/2 c cleaned and dried pumpkin seeds
3 1/2 T melted butter
1/4 tsp salt
3 1/2 T sugar
1-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Put the pumpkin seeds in a bowl. Combine all other ingredients and pour over pumpkin seeds. Toss to combine and coat the seeds evenly. Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Put in the oven for about 45 minutes. Stir on the tray about every 10 minutes or so to help them cook evenly. Let them cool slightly before diving in.

Honey Rosemary Grilled Drumsticks

Given the amount of work that went into this recipe, which was very little, I couldn't believe how tasty these drumsticks were! We somehow ended up with 3 jars of dried rosemary so we've been trying to add it to everything recently, and when drumsticks went on sale for 89 cents a pound, I figured why not?

Ingredients:
5 drumsticks
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Sauce:
 2 T vegetable oil
2 T honey
1 clove garlic, grated

In a small bowl mix together the rosemary, salt and pepper. Sprinkle liberally all over the chicken. Heat a grill pan over medium low heat and brush with oil. Add the chicken and cook for about 3-4 minutes a side. Turn every 3-4 minutes until cooked through. While the chicken is cooking, mix together all the ingredients for the sauce. When the drumsticks reach about 155 degrees, brush the sauce all over and let cook, turning frequently, until the chicken is cooked through.

Ginger Cheesecake with Pear Topping

I got my first spring form pan a few months ago and have been dying to test it out! But since there's only two of us here, I figured I probably shouldn't make a whole cheesecake just for us to eat. So when we had a church activity coming up and they were looking for people to bring desserts, I knew exactly what I wanted to make! Cheesecake! It probably was a little risky to do this in retrospect since I've never made a cheesecake before and since I ended up making my own recipe on top of that. If it hadn't turned out well we would have just picked something up to bring instead. It ended up being really good though! Not exactly where I want it to be, I'll be testing out some tweaks to make to this recipe later, but in the meantime I wanted to get this written down so I know what to go off of.

Crust:
36 crisp gingersnap cookies
2 T sugar
7 T melted butter

Filling:
3 8 oz packages Neufchatel, softened
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c honey
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
2 T candied ginger, chopped very finely

Topping:
1 T butter
2 Bartlett pears, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
1 T candied ginger, chopped very finely
1/4 c honey or more to taste
1/2 c salted almonds, chopped

Grease a 10-inch spring form pan and wrap the outside of it securely with 2 layers of foil. Heat oven to 325.
For the crust, put cookies in food processor and pulse 7-8 times to break cookies up. Add sugar and mix until cookies are broken into fine crumbs. Drizzle the butter with the food processor running on low. Stop mixing as soon as the mixture resembles wet sand. Press the crumbs into a greased spring form pan in an even layer, and gently press up the sides as well. Set aside.
Beat the Neufchatel until fluffy. Slowly add the honey with the mixer running. Add the sugar and mix until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. Mix well. Add eggs, one at a time. Mix well. Add candied ginger and stir by hand to combine. Pour into the spring form pan. Place pan into a larger pan and carefully add hot water to the larger pan until it goes about 1 inch up the spring form pan. Bake for 1 1/2-1 3/4 hours. Remove from oven and from water bath. Let cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack and then remove the foil. Cool for 1 hour and then refrigerate over night.
Make the topping while the cheesecake is baking. In a large skillet, melt the butter. Add the pears and cook for just about 1 minute over medium heat, stirring well to coat the pears in the butter. Add the honey and stir well. Add the almonds and the ginger and remove from heat. Let cool over night in the fridge. Serve on the side or top the cheesecake with it.

Roasted Fennel and Sausage Pasta

I have really come to love fennel, or anise as they call it here. It's sweet and fresh and crisp. It's delicious raw and roasted. We're big fans of it now. I also have become a big fan of sausage. I never was a huge fan of pork sausage because it felt so fatty, it always made me feel a little sick. But turkey sausage is another matter. You get the wonderful flavour of sausage, but it's so much leaner! Since sausage has fennel in it, I thought it had to be the perfect thing to pair with roasted fennel. This is one of our favourite pasta dishes now and it's so easy and cheap!

Ingredients:
1 large fennel bulb, tops removed (save the frilly green part, called the fennel fronds) and outside, tough layer of bulb removed
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
12 oz turkey sausage, casings removed
1/4 c chopped sun dried tomatoes packed in oil
1/3 c chicken stock
8 oz Penne pasta
Parmesan cheese to top

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. After the top of the fennel and the outside layer has been removed, cut it through the middle and cut the core out of the bulb on both sides. Chop the remaining fennel and put on a baking sheet. Toss with just enough olive oil to coat the fennel pieces and season to taste with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, or until the fennel starts to look golden.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and add 2 tsp of olive oil. Add the turkey sausage and break up into small pieces. Once sausage is mostly browned and cooked through, add the chopped sun dried tomatoes. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken stock and scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the yummy brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat to medium high and cook until all the liquid is evaporated. Add the cooked fennel to the pan and add the cooked, drained pasta. Top with Parmesan cheese and some of the fennel fronds that have been chopped

Sugar Free Peach Crostata

Ingredients:
1 sugar free pie crust, unbaked (I just used my favourite pie dough recipe and left out the sugar)
2 large ripe peaches
1-2 T honey
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Thinly slice your peaches and put the slices in a medium bowl. Taste one of the slices and add honey based on how sweet your peaches are. If your peaches are tart you'll want 2 T of honey, maybe even more. My peaches were pretty sweet so I only used about 1 T. Add the cinnamon and lemon juice and toss to coat the peaches in everything and set aside. Roll out your pie crust to about 10-11 inches in diameter and move to a baking sheet. Arrange the peach slices in the middle of the pie dough, leaving about an inch border around the edges. Gently fold the pie dough border over the peaches and gently press on to the peaches. It's a rustic dessert so don't worry about it looking perfect. Carefully spoon some of the juices in the bottom of the peach bowl over the peaches in the center. I used all of the juice in mine, it was about 1/4 c of liquid. Bake for 45 minutes or until crust is starting to brown and peaches are cooked through.