Traditions

Cranberry Pear Pie

Specken dicken.

Ever heard of it?

Most likely, you have not. In all my life, I’ve only met one person outside my little hometown who ever has heard of it, and that’s all he could say about it. He had heard of it.

If you’re wondering, specken dicken is a pancake with meat in it. It was derived in Germany, where my family’s ancestry begins, and it was traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day for good luck. I thought I read once that long ago it was believed that if one could afford to put meat in the pancake, then they were set financially for the year to come. But I can’t find that reference in my quick online research, so I’m not positive that’s completely accurate.

Also in my quick online research, specken dicken is the only spelling I came across. But having come from the small Iowa town of Wellsburg with strong German roots, I checked through several hometown cookbooks, as well as my grandma’s recipe, and came across a few more spellings: speck and dicken, speck-n-dicken, spec an dicken. And just as many recipes for it.

Last weekend, we celebrated Christmas with my family at my sister’s house. Since it was only a few days until New Year’s Day, my sister whipped up a batch of specken dicken so we could celebrate the start of the new year with an old family tradition. This is one we grew up with every New Year’s Day at my grandparents’ house, with my grandma and aunt spending most of the afternoon into early evening preparing these pancakes over hot griddles. That’s actually what I meant when I said my sister whipped these up, and we both understood why Grandma seemed so worn out when the dinner was over!

In our family, we eat specken dicken with the meat cooked right into the pancake. We use cooked bacon pieces and cooked pieces of metwurst, then pour the pancake batter over the top of the meat on the griddle. Metwurst, pronounced “metvuss” where I grew up, is a strongly-flavored German sausage, and chances are pretty good that if you’ve never heard of specken dicken, you’ve probably never heard of this sausage either. Traditionally, we serve the pancakes with butter and dark Karo syrup, though most people prefer regular pancake syrup.

(If you want the recipe, you can get it by clicking here.)

Another tradition that has developed over the past several months in my home is pie on most Sundays. And in case you were wondering, we did have pie last Sunday, once we let our stomachs rest a little after filling them with specken dicken. I made the pie and brought it along to my sister’s house. I found this recipe for Cranberry Pear Pie at Taste of Home.

The recipe comes from Helen Toulantis of Wantagh, New York, and it was originally published in the November/December 2005 issue of Country Woman Magazine. I loved the fresh flavor of the pears, and the cranberries added just a little zip and gave the pie some festive splashes of color. And I don’t think you can ever go wrong with a crumb topping.

Well, I have another Sunday evening tradition to tend to. Tonight is the premiere of the third season of Downton Abbey on PBS. I’ve been watching since the first season, and I can hardly wait to see what Maggie Smith’s character, Violet Crawley (the Dowager Countess of Grantham), will do to clash with Shirley MacLaine’s new character, the American, Martha Levinson, as the mother of Cora (the Countess of Grantham). I also cannot wait to find out what is going to happen to John Bates, the former valet convicted of murder, and his devoted wife, Anna, the head housemaid. Will she be able to save him? And of course, there’s the wedding of Lady Mary Crawley to Matthew Crawley. (I think you’d better watch if you have questions about that.)

TTFN. I’m off to enjoy a cup of tea while devouring Downton Abbey. Now, if I only had a piece of pie…

Yours in pie,

Mindy

Cranberry Pear Pie

from Taste of Home

Pastry for single-crust 9-inch pie

2 T. all-purpose flour

½ c. maple syrup

2 T. butter, melted

5 c. sliced, peeled fresh pears

1 c. fresh or frozen cranberries

 

Topping:

½ c. all-purpose flour

¼ c. packed brown sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/3 c. cold butter, cubed

½ c. chopped walnuts

 

Line a 9-in. pie plate with pastry; trim and flute edges. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine the flour, syrup and butter until smooth. Add pears and cranberries; toss to coat. Spoon into crust.

 

For topping, combine the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon; cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in walnuts. Sprinkle over filling.

 

Cover edges of crust loosely with foil to prevent overbrowning. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°. Remove foil; bake about 45 minutes longer or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool on a wire rack.

I shared this recipe on:

Church Supper at Everyday Mom's Meals
Full-Plate Thursday at Miz Helen's Country Cottage

Check out all the great recipes at these Linky Parties!

Copycat Bauder's Peppermint Bar, in a Pie!

If you’ve ever enjoyed ice cream from the Bauder Pharmacy stand at the Iowa State Fair, chances are pretty good that you’re going to melt over my next two words:

Peppermint.

Bar.

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about…

You. Are. Missing. Out.

Big time.

(By the way, that’s “YAMO” for you acronym-texting, smart phone junkies. I made it up. Unless someone else already did…I don’t know. I don’t text!)

Like most fairgoers, I have my list of must-have foods to be eaten once-a-year at the fair. But unlike many fairgoers, other than a Campbell’s corndog, the rest of my list cannot be eaten on a stick. A BBQ pork sandwich dinner at the pork tent, deep-fried cheese curds, a cup of Barksdale’s cookies, the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at Cattleman’s Beef Quarters (where they serve pork sausage), honey lemonade in the Ag building, and at the top of my list…..a peppermint bar from Bauder’s.

Pink peppermint-stick ice cream is piled high between two layers of crushed Oreo cookies and a layer of hot fudge, neatly wrapped in red-and-white-checkered tissue paper, and served with a spoon. (Check out a few photos at My Homemade Iowa Life.) Except for the bite or two that my sister always manages to mooch off of me, I’m not too keen on sharing this once-a-year treat. Which is kind of funny, because every year we say that we should make them at home so we can enjoy them more often than once a year.

Then we realize that we need peppermint stick ice cream, and in August, when it’s 326° outside and the humidity in Iowa makes it feel like 800°, you can’t find a winter-themed ice cream flavor in any grocery store north of the equator. I’ve checked.

So, we soon forget all about our novel idea to extend a favorite summer treat. But this year, when the first carton hit the freezer shelves at my local grocery store, I again thought of those Bauder’s peppermint bars. Since I’ve been making pie every week, I wondered about turning that peppermint bar into a pie. So I did!

For this first go-round, I went all out. Knowing that peppermint stick ice cream is a limited-time flavor, I decided making my own would allow for somewhat impromptu indulgence of this treat any time of year…dangerous I’ll admit, but for now I’ll take my chances. And for all the scratch cooking and baking I do, I realized that I had never made my own hot fudge sauce. So this seemed like the perfect opportunity to start.

I had no idea how many ways there are to make hot fudge sauce, and my first attempt (that already sounds like it ends badly) wasn’t exactly what I was looking for in hot fudge. The first sauce I made with corn syrup and cocoa was a little hard and chewy when served on ice cream, likely because I overcooked it. (I had to test it, what do you expect?)

I needed a sauce to withstand the freezer without becoming too hard. I came across a recipe using sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips. I wanted a more-chocolaty flavor than I got with the cocoa, so I thought I’d try it. This hot fudge was just what I wanted. So good! The real test was in the fact that I kept going back to the fridge with a spoon. (And it wasn’t for the good-for-you sautéed kale and mushroom dish on the middle shelf. Which I happen to like a lot.)

Start to finish, it took a little while to make this pie, mostly in waiting time. Waiting for the ice cream mixture to chill. Waiting for the hot fudge sauce to cool and chill. Waiting for my daughter to crush the candy canes (after waiting for her to unwrap them first – I didn’t want to eat plastic). Waiting for the ice cream to firm up in the Oreo cookie crust-lined pie plate in the freezer.

Waiting for this pie to be finished is also why you have waited to read about it. But trust me. It’s worth it!

If you don’t want to wait as long as I did, you can go the convenience route and use a premade Oreo cookie crust, store-bought peppermint-stick ice cream, and a jar of commercial hot fudge sauce (my recommendation would be Mrs. Richardson’s). Either way, you won’t have to wait until August for the Iowa State Fair to roll around again. You can enjoy this copycat version of Bauder’s famous peppermint bar – in a pie – whenever you want.

You’ll even have enough to share with your sister.

Yours in pie,

Mindy

This recipe looks lengthy, but you can easily prepare each part ahead of time and assemble it all at once when you’re ready. If you decide to forego homemade and settle on convenience, you will need: a prepared Oreo cookie crust, 1 quart peppermint-stick ice cream, 8 oz. hot fudge sauce, 18 Oreo cookies (for the topping), 2 candy canes, and a partridge in a pear tree. (Just kidding on the last one. That wouldn’t be very tasty.)

Peppermint Bar Ice Cream Pie

For the crust:

18 Oreo cookies

3 T. melted butter

Pulse cookies in a food processor or place inside a re-sealable bag and crush with a rolling pin. Gradually add melted butter and combine well. Press mixture into pie plate (I used a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate) and refrigerate until ready to use.

For the ice cream:

from Itsy Bitsy Foodies, with slight changes

(This made a full 1 ½ quarts of ice cream in my machine. You'll need about 1 quart for the pie.)

3 eggs, well beaten

2 c. whole milk

1 c. sugar

2 c. heavy cream

1½ tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. peppermint extract

3-5 drops red food coloring

1 c. crushed candy canes

In a large saucepan, beat the eggs, milk and sugar until well blended. Cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until thickened. It should smoothly coat the back of a wooden spoon. Cool completely. Add the heavy cream, vanilla, peppermint extract and food coloring. Stir until blended and refrigerate until completely chilled, for several hours or overnight.

Use a meat tenderizer or rolling pin to crush the candy canes (some will be finely crushed, others in small pieces). Following the instructions for your ice cream maker, pour the chilled mixture into your machine and process, adding crushed candy canes according to machine instructions (usually five minutes before ice cream is finished). Transfer the ice cream to a sealed container and let it ripen for several hours. Or…

At this point in making the pie, you can carefully spoon ice cream into chilled prepared cookie crust, then place in the freezer to firm up. You will need approximately one quart (4 cups) of the ice cream. Don’t overfill the pie plate! Be sure to save some room at the top of the pie plate for adding the hot fudge layer and the cookie/candy cane topping.

For the hot fudge sauce:

from Eagle Brand®

(This makes 2 cups, but you'll only need 1 cup for the pie.)

1 c. (6 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 T. butter

2 T. water

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Melt chocolate chips with sweetened condensed milk, butter and water in medium-sized heavy saucepan over medium heat. Beat smooth with wire whisk if necessary. Stir in vanilla. Cool and store in refrigerator.

For the cookie topping:

18 Oreo cookies

2 large candy canes

Place cookies in a re-sealable bag and gently crush with a rolling pin, leaving slightly large chunks, so the cookies look more like crumbles rather than finely crushed. Set aside. Use a meat tenderizer or rolling pin to crush the candy canes, leaving mostly large chunks. Set aside.

Once the ice cream has set firm in the prepared cookie crust, slightly warm the fudge sauce in the microwave just enough to make it pourable. You don’t want it warm enough to melt the ice cream. You’ll need about 1 cup of the sauce. Carefully pour it onto the ice cream and spread evenly with an offset spatula. Carefully sprinkle on the crumbled Oreo cookies and press gently into the fudge sauce. Sprinkle on the candy cane chunks. Return pie to freezer to firm up until ready to eat.

When serving, remove pie from freezer and let it set at room temperature for 5 minutes or so, to make slicing easier.

Enjoy!