Mini Apple Pies

Our brother Jonathan is a picky eater. Like us when we were 13, he likes plain pasta, French bread pizza, and not much else. He’s also our biggest critic and he doesn’t sugarcoat his feelings – if something’s not sweet enough, he’s the first to pull out the chocolate ice cream. “It just needs a little something to accent the flavor,” he says as he piles spoonful after spoonful on top of our delicate creations. But there’s one thing he can’t resist, and that’s a delicious apple pie. Whenever we come home from college, that’s the first thing he asks me to make – no chocolate ice cream necessary.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and we’re drowning in desserts, but Jon had a craving for apples. I told him that if I was going to make him a fleet of baby pies, then he would have to help me. So we ran to the grocery store, picked out eight perfect Golden Deliciouses, and set to work peeling and coring and slicing.

In the end, he was a great sous-chef and our pies turned out great. I only had to bribe him with the promise that he could get any girl to date him if he knew his way around a kitchen. 

Maybe, like us, he’ll outgrow his picky habits and turn into a food lover. And if not, at least he now knows how to make a mean apple pie (or at least direct his future girlfriend to this blog post).

PIE CRUST

Makes dough for two single-crust pies, or 12 4-inch ramekins

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Check out her Rolling and Crimping Tutorial while you're at it!

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups white flour

1 tsp. sea salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, cubed and very cold

2 tbsp. ice water

Method:

In a food processor, combine flour, salt, and butter in a food processor and pulse for 5 seconds. Add the water one drop at a time until the mixture starts to combine. Place mixture in a big bowl and kneed until dough-like.

Divide the dough in half and place each half on large pieces of plastic wrap. Shape the dough into a flattened disk and allow to sit in the fridge for at least one to two hours. 

MINI APPLE PIES

Serves 12

Ingredients:

8 golden delicious apples; peeled, cored, and sliced

1 cup raisins

¼ cup shredded coconut, unsweetened

2 tbsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. ginger powder

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1 tbsp. almond extract

1 pie crust recipe

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375 F (200 C).

In a large bowl, combine cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger powder, vanilla and almond extracts. Add sliced apples, raisins, and coconut, stirring until the spice mixture fully coats all of the apples.

Remove the pie crust dough from the fridge and divide into 12 pieces. Roll each piece until ¼ inch thick, lay it on top of a ramekin and press the dough lightly into the bottom. Place 3-4 spoonfuls of the apple mixture on top of the dough, pressing down gently to fill the ramekin. Cut off the excess dough around the edges and re-roll the dough. Cut the dough into 6 thin strips and arrange in a lattice pattern.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until the crust turns golden brown. 

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Chocolate Beet Cake

First off, we’d like to apologize from our long hiatus from The Two Pears. Ever since Julia went back to school, it’s been hard for us to figure out a system to cook, photograph, edit, and write collaboratively while we’re 100 miles away from each other.

But this weekend, we took a trip back to New York to celebrate our Dad’s birthday. Since we were finally in the same kitchen, we took advantage of it and cooked and photographed for three days straight. So get ready for a ton of Two Pears posts in the coming weeks!

We made this cake for the first time after I came home from Copenhagen. We were celebrating Poppy’s 93^rd birthday and all of us were craving something rich and chocolaty. My mind immediately went to Green Kitchen Stories’ Chocolate Beet Cake, a recipe I had wanted to try since I first saw it back in April. When Mom suggested a chocolate mascarpone frosting to glaze the top, we needed no more convincing.

This cake is actually such a hit among people of all food preferences that we’ve made it many times since Poppy’s birthday. Last month, I made one for my housemates and even my pickiest friends were instantly obsessed with the moist, dense chocolate cake and its rich, creamy chocolate frosting. They didn’t even care when I revealed the cake’s secret: 2 full cups of shredded beets.

We’ve kept our recipe pretty similar to the original, but we’ve replaced the maple syrup with dates and added some ground oats. Making the cake vegan is easy too! Just replace the 3 eggs with ¾ cup of unsweetened applesauce and 1 ½ extra tsp. of baking powder.

So next time you have to make a cake for any reason, remember this recipe. Your guests will thank you as they come back for seconds.

GKS’S CHOCOLATE BEET CAKE

2/3 cup safflower oil/olive oil/coconut oil

10 dates

3 oz. baking chocolate (unsweetened)

2 cups raw beets

3 eggs

1 cup whole wheat flour

½ rolled oats

2 tsp. baking powder

5 tbsp. cacao powder

zest and juice of ½ orange

CHOCOLATE MASCARPONE FROSTING

8 oz. mascarpone cheese

6 dates

2 oz. baking chocolate

2 tbsp. cacao powder

2 tbsp. coconut oil

orange zest

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the safflower oil and baking chocolate and allow to melt slowly. In a food processor, blend the dates, raw beets, and rolled oats and blend to combine. In a large bowl, combine the melted chocolate, contents of the food processor, eggs, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, cacao powder, and orange zest and juice

Grease a 9-inch circular pan with coconut oil and sprinkle with shredded coconut to prevent sticking.

Bake in the oven at 350F for 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

FROSTING:

Melt baking chocolate in a saucepan with the coconut oil. In a food processor, combine the cheese, melted chocolate, cacao powder, and the remnants of the orange zest. Frost and enjoy.

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Chocolate Raspberry Cake

It’s no secret that we're food blog fanatics.

We both discovered the food blogging world two years ago, around the same time we got interested in cooking. I was working a full-time desk job and living on my own, so I started using the Internet as a resource for different, inventive recipes to spice up my boring dinners. Julia became really interested in nutrition and used food bloggers as a way to study up on nutrients and for tips on how to overhaul her junk food vegetarian diet. We were exposed to a whole new world where people were passionate about healthy living and healthy eating, just like we were. 

When we were growing up, our parents were very in tune with our health and healthy eating. I, for the most part, embraced the new foods and health lessons, but Julia (always the rebellious one) preferred to stick with Cicero’s penne pizza, creamy Parmesan salad dressing, and Easy Mac. But she came around once she realized the importance of having a balanced diet, especially for a vegetarian. A lot of people we grew up with didn’t understand the appeal of health food either, so it became something that Julia and I shared with each other rather than our friends. 

But then we found this whole group of people on the Internet who were just as excited about healthy living as we were. It was cool to learn that we weren’t alone in our world. People actually cared about what they were eating and wanted to share their passion with others.

Over the past two years, we’ve added to our list of essential food bloggers who shape the way we think and feel about food. Kath Younger taught us that celebrating food is just important as celebrating life. Sarah Britton is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner (CNP) and uses her nutritional background to offer health tips for her creative recipes. 

For this post, we took inspiration from Scandinavian food blogging duo David and Luise (and Elsa) at GreenKitchen Stories. David and Lusie live in Sweden and take stunning pictures of their inventive vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free concoctions.

The following recipe is adapted from GKS’s Chocolate and Blackberry Cake. It's vegan, gluten-free, and free of refined and processed sugar. We substituted dates for agave syrup in the frosting and raspberries for blackberries.

CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY CAKE

Cook time: 1 hour

Servings: 8

CAKE

1 ½ cup almonds

15 fresh dates

5 tbsp cacao powder (unsweetened)

1 tsp cinnamon

3 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp applesauce (unsweetened)

2 cups raspberries (1 cup in the cake and the rest on top)

FROSTING

5 oz baking chocolate (unsweetened)

½ avocado

5 fresh dates

Heat the oven to 325 F (175 C). Line an 8-inch circular pan with aluminum foil and lightly coat with olive oil. Set aside.

Place the almonds in the food processor and mix them until they get the consistency of a crunchy flour. Add the dates and blend until combined with the almonds. Add cacao, cinnamon, oil and applesauce and pulse until everything is combined. Add the raspberries and pulse 2-3 times (you want them in pieces, but not completely dissolved).

Pour the mixture in the pan and bake for 40-50 minutes.

Melt the chocolate in a double broiler. Pour melted chocolate into the food processor and blend with dates and avocado. Spread the frosting on top of the cooled chocolate cake. Decorate with the remaining raspberries before serving.

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