Marshmallows! You can make them in your very own kitchen! Who knew? Certainly not most of the co-workers to whom I gave said homemade marshmallows as holiday gifts this year. Whip up a batch (or several) of these babies in various flavors and then proceed to impress your friends. They will think you can do magic. No joke.

Marshmallows don’t always have the best reputation–but hear me out. Homemade marshmallows are nothing like those sickeningly sweet, cylindrical confections you pick up at the grocery store. No, homemade marshmallows are unbelievably fluffy, their taste is somehow much lighter, and they’re much more aesthetically pleasing.

To be honest, the process of making marshmallows really does feel magical — one minute, you have boiled sugar and corn syrup, and the next, you have this whipped up, fluffy white cloud of deliciousness. Magic. But best of all, marshmallow-making is really easy, really quick to prepare, and really easy to clean up.

…but because this is Food Shenanigans, and I have never crafted anything perfectly or without a few mishaps, let me recount my first-time marshmallow-making efforts in all their victories and grotesque defeats.

I set out (with good friend, helper, and once-upon-a-time contributor to this very same blog, Julia) to make a few different flavors of marshmallows using Not Without Salt‘s primary vanilla bean marshmallow recipe (as well as her hibiscus one) and slightly adapted it to create chocolate swirl and peppermint.

Vanilla Bean Marshmallows
(recipe from Not Without Salt)

1.5 cups granulated sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup of cold water, divided
2 packets or 1.4 tbs of non-flavored gelatin
1 tsp of kosher salt
nonstick spray or oil

1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out (or 1.5 tsp vanilla extract)

1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar

Equipment:
A standing or electric mixer with a whisk attachment
1 medium-sized saucepan
A candy thermometer
A 13×9″ pan

In your standing mixer, add 1/2 cup of cold water to your gelatin and let it sit.

In a saucepan set over medium-high heat, mix granulated sugar, corn syrup, salt, and the rest of the water. Cover and let the mixture simmer for 3-4 minutes. Uncover and clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. You want to boil your syrup mixture until it reaches 240 degrees F. This is the “softball” stage of candy-making.

Look at that sugar boil.

You’ll find that your mixture will heat up in leaps and bounds until it reaches 235 degrees…and then it seems to take for-ev-er to make the last 10. Do not be disheartnened. It will get there. Do not get impatient and remove your mixture from the heat before it reaches the right temperature. You’ll know your syrup is ready when you can dip a fork into it and then blow a bubble out of the mixture.

That's some soft ballin'.

When the syrup mixture finally hits 240 degrees, immediately remove it from the heat. Turn on your mixer to its lowest setting and sloooooowly add the hot syrup mixture to the bloomed gelatin by pouring it down the sides of the bowl. It’s totally going to steam like crazy and smell like…well, boiled sugar and corn syrup. You may even think something plastic is melting, but it’s not. Everything is fine. Unless you’ve left a spatula on the burner.

Now, boiled sugar, you say, that’s going to be terrible to clean, won’t it? Not so, if you’re quick about it: after you pour the syrup mixture into your mixer, immediate fill your saucepan with very hot water from your kitchen sink, maybe add a few drops of dish detergent. Let the the sit and soak up nice and good while you attend to more important matters. Alternatively, you can boil hot water in the saucepan later to re-melt any hardened sugar and it will come off, easy-peasy.

Add your vanilla (bean or extract) to the mixture and gradually bring the mixer up to a higher speed. You might want to keep it at medium for a bit until the mixture thickens and cools slightly, and then you can bring the speed up to high.

Let the mixer run on high for 12-15 minutes. Your mixture will go from opaque, syrupy goop into fluffy white goodness in just a matter of minutes. Magic.

You may have some time on your hands while the mixer is doing its thing, but fear not! There are more things to do.

First you’ll want to sift your cornstarch and confectioner’s sugar together in a separate bowl. Then you’ll want to line your 13×9-inch pan with parchment paper and lightly grease its bottom and sides. And finally, you’ll want to dust your pan with said cornstarch and sugar mixture, making sure the bottom and sides of the pan are completely coated. You can be generous here. It’s better to have too much than too little, trust me.

When you peer into your mixer and see that you have a wonderfully fluffy marshmallow mixture with stiff peaks, pour the marshmallow mixture into the dusted pan, smoothing its surface with a lightly greased spatula.

(After you’ve licked various bits of marshmallow fluff off the whisk attachment and mixing bowl, throw these suckers in some sudsy hot water and let them soak. They’ll emerge all shiny and clean with nary a scrub.)

Coat the top of your marshmallow mixture with even more cornstarch and sugar. You want to completely and evenly coat the top of these babies to keep the marshmallows from drying out. Again, be generous. Tis the season, after all.

The marshmallows will need to sit at room temperature, uncovered, for at least 4 hours, and up to overnight. Yeah, the wait is a total bitch, but it’s important and you can totally do other things in the mean time, like sleep or have a mini Firefly marathon. Or you can be me and watch Contagion and forever be afraid of touching anything in public ever.

I can’t lie: the first time I made marshmallows, I wanted to make a double batch, yet had totally messed up my math, as I am wont to do, and did not use nearly enough gelatin for one batch, nevermind two. As a result, after 12+ hours of supposedly letting my marshmallows set over night, all I had to show for it was, essentially, sticky, gooey fluff. I wouldn’t have complained, really, except the non-stick spray I used had also apparently been three years past its expiration date, giving the whole thing a nasty, funky taste. Into the trash that one went.

When the marshmallows are set, run a wet or lightly greased knife along the sides of the pan to dislodge any marshmallow that may have stuck to it, then upend the pan onto a powdered sheet of parchment. The marshmallow should fall out easily (and if you’re rather graceless like me, in a plume of sugar and cornstarch) but if not, you may need to do some gentle coaxing.

Carefully peel the parchment paper from the marshmallow and add more of the cornstarch and confectioner’s sugar  mixture to the uncoated surface. By now, you are probably also going to be coated in this mixture. It’s inevitable.

So now you have a block of powdered marshmallow, which you’ll then want to cut into smaller pieces. Me, I prefer little 1″ squares. I used a pair of lightly greased and powdered kitch shears, but you can also use a sharp pizza cutter or knife. Lightly coat roll each smaller piece in the remaining cornstarch and sugar mixture, making sure there are no tacky surfaces exposed.

Cutting marshmallow into 1" strips.

And then cutting out squares.

Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

And there you have it, folks. Beautiful, sort-of-natural homemade marshmallows, ready to use for a number of purposes. Add them to hot chocolate (oh god, do), make s’mores, melt them over your sweet potato dish this Christmas, or just eat them plain on their own. They’re that good. Really.

And here are some variations:

Chocolate Swirl Marshmallows

Go about using the above recipe but do this too: Mix 3 tbs of quality cocoa with an equal amount of boiling water and gently stir it into your marshmallow mixture after you’ve whipped it up in the mixer.

Add the cocoa mixture to your marshmallow mixture after whipping.

You’ll want to create a nice chocolate swirl pattern, so don’t overmix! The fat in the cocoa will make your marshmallow mixture a bit less tacky and more liquid-y. That’s alright. Pour this mixture into a greased and dusted pan and follow the rest of the recipe as usual.

A nice marbled effect here.

Peppermint Marshmallows

Substitute the vanilla with 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of peppermint extract. But really, this amount depends on the strength of your extract. My peppermint extract had an 89% alcohol content, and 11% peppermint, which is a little more diluted than other kinds of peppermint extracts. I added 1/2 tsp to my marshmallow mixture and the resultant flavor was subtly pepperminty, like eating one of those fluffy, meringue-like, pastel-colored mints that restaurants liked to offer in big glass bowls to departing customers. Nothing too overwhelming. Your mileage may vary. Just…be careful. It’s easy to go full-on intense with peppermint. Err on the side of caution at first, sample your marshmallow mixture often, and then add more as needed.

To distinguish the peppermint marshmallows from the vanilla ones, we swirled red drops of food coloring into the surface of the marshmallows with toothpicks after it had been poured out into the pan and then dusted the top.

The gel food coloring was super thick and kind of hard to work with. It looked so disconcertingly like blood that Julia wondered if we weren’t making Halloween-themed marshmallows instead. I still had faith though (and in the end, after being powdered, they turned out great, so there).

Bloody marshmallows?

Upon hindsight, it probably would have been easier to gently stir in the drops of food coloring into the marshmallows while it was still in the mixer, much like you would if you were making the chocolate swirl marshmallows (see above).

Hibiscus Marshmallows

Oh boy. Hibiscus. The flavor of these ones were my favorite. The beautiful pink color? Divine.

But.

But the process of actually making these was the most worrying and in the end, these ones caused the most trouble. I’m not going to recount what we did when Not Without Salt has provided the recipe here, but I will talk about Everything That Went Wrong.

We used all the ingredients that were listed, including lemon juice and lemon zest. Boiled the hibiscus juice and used it in place of the cold water in the original vanilla bean recipe. So the hibiscus juice is boiled along with the sugar and corn syrup, as well as with the lemon. The thermometer was climbing, but the mixture was as a placid lake on a breeze-less summer day when it should have been bubbling.

I turned my back to fetch a few note cards — just a few seconds, literally! — and came back to find this:

Boil, boil, toil and trouble!

My cup runneth over.

Which, in the end, results in you later having to do this:

Let me recommend using a bigger saucepan with deep sides when making hibiscus marshmallows.

Aside from the murder of my stove top (cause of death: saccharine smothering), things were going swimmingly. We poured the hibiscus syrup into the gelatin mixture and whipped it up. The mixture starts out a deep beet-like maroon and is whipped up into a beautiful light, airy pink color.

And then we went to pour the marshmallow mixture into the pan. I noticed how the texture of this batch seemed awfully taffy-like, as opposed to marshmallow-like (trust me, there’s a difference). Unlike previous patches, this batch did not want to be spread out into the pan and smoothed over. It liked to stick together. It was a little rubbery. Hmmm.

After letting the hibiscus marshmallows set, we went to turn them out, cut them up, and powder them. No problems. The batch didn’t turn out as pretty or as consistent as the others — the surface had set highly unevenly because I just couldn’t get the mixture to spread out very well in the pan. We had a few rejects in this batch (and, much like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory, we were madly stuffing them into our mouths) but the yield was still plenty enough.

As we were bagging and tagging marshmallow gifts, we noticed something curious. The hibiscus marshmallows were tacky, even after we had coated them all in the powder mixture. Had the hibiscus marshmallows simply absorbed their coating? Odd, but we coated them all again just to be safe.

Cue: The next day. After stealthily dropping off little baggies on co-workers’ desks like little marshmallow elves, I happened to, perhaps, you know, sample a leftover bag for myself. For quality assurance. You know.

Quite simply, the hibiscus marshmallows had shed their powdery coat again and turned into Gak-like squares, sticking to their marshmallow compatriots in the bag, even liquidating into pink ooze at the edges.

What horror hath I wrought?

I’m not sure what happened. The recipe came from a blogger I trust. She didn’t make any mention about having possibly created an alien life form. Perhaps in the boiling over fiasco, we had boiled the sugar to too high of a heat (the thermometer did read about 250 by the time we got around to removing it from the burner, ye gods it happened quick). Perhaps the lemon juice I had used was off.

(And only in hindsight do I realize that I could have used the actual juice from the lemon I zested, which I did not. I used a bottle brand, which probably has all sorts of other chemical additives. Sometimes I am just so full of fail.)

As it was, I profusely apologized to all my marshmallow recipients whenever I had the chance.

“You’re welcome, I’m glad you liked them. Yes, you really can make marshmallows. Sorry about the hibiscus!”

No one seemed to mind too much, though. The other marshmallow flavors were still pretty great. I’ll probably attempt the hibiscus ones again at some point, because they really did have a wonderful flavor–a kind of tartness that worked beautifully against the sweetness of the marshmallow. Yeah, they are definitely worth trying for again. Use lemon juice from an actual lemon, guys.

And that is my account for 8 hours of marshmallow making. A marshmallow-making marathon, if you will. By the end of it, my kitchen was appeared to be ground zero for a confectioner’s sugar bomb, and somehow we had gotten caught up in the explosion if the state of our clothes were anything to go by. My microwave had powdered fingerprints on it, though I don’t recall either Julia or I ever going near it. Marshmallow-making is easy and fun, but it’s not a very neat process. Sorry about that. And the hibiscus.

60 bags!

Watermelon Basil Granita

5 cups watermelon, pureed
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup loosely packed basil

In a small pot, combine water and sugar and bring to a boil. Once boiling, lower the heat, add in the basil leaves and let simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes until the mixture has thickened to a syrupy consistency. Allow to cool to room temperature, discarding basil leaves. Mix watermelon puree and simple syrup and pour into a 9×13 pan.

Place pan in the freezer take out every 45 minutes or so, to scrape at the top layer of icy slush with a fork. This is how the granita achieves that light, fluffy texture. My granita took about 6 hours to freeze all the through, but that is because my refrigerator is old and doesn’t work that well. It should probably be closer to 4 hours in a newer freezer.

When I made my granita, I only used 1/3 cup of basil and it wasn’t enough, so I’ve doubled it in the above recipe. This should be enough to bring out the really herbal notes of the basil and cut the sweetness of the watermelon a bit. This granita is basically watermelon candy, it’s so sweet and fun to eat.

This is a conclusion I reached while eating the plantains I made on Monday night. They were just so good: slightly sweet, slightly spicy, with a bit of salt to balance it out. As you can, I’m still obsessed with cumin and cinnamon. Either way, this dish is great, it’s quick and easy, perfect for a weeknight dinner. We had this with jerk shrimp and broccoli.

Baked Plantains

2 yellow plantains, with a large amount of black spots and just starting to soften
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
scant 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon butter, melted
salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Slice plantains about 1/3″ thick. Combine the butter with the spices, and then toss with the sliced plantains. Spray a 9 x 13 baking pan and bake the plantains for 30 – 35 minutes, slipping once. The plantains should be caramelized on both sides. Serve immediately.

It was a genius idea.

No, seriously, it was: the balsamic/strawberry combo is one that’s a perfect harmony of sweet and tangy, while the sweetness of the basil has a peppery bite that pairs so well with it. And please, for the love of all that you call holy, use a good balsamic. While yes, store brand balsamic will work in a pinch, a good aged vinegar is what will work best here. The aged stuff has a deeper, mellower flavor that is just so decadent tasting when paired with fruit. The mass produced commercial stuff is far too acidic and has too much of a bite.

Balsamic Strawberries with Basil

2 cups strawberries, hulled and quartered
2 – 3 tablespoons of aged balsamic vinegar
10 large basil leaves, chiffonade

Toss the strawberries and balsamic vinegar together. Let sit in a covered bowl for about 20 – 30 minutes. Uncover, add in the basil and mix well. Cover again and chill for at least an hour prior to serving.

That’s it! Three easy ingredients, minimal prep, and you have a tasty dessert. You could serve this with a barely sweetened homemade whipped cream, or you could take it in a different direction and add some feta cheese to it for a salad. The salty feta would go incredibly well with this. If you happen to have any strawberries left, this will keep in the fridge for a few days.

We went with a lot of simple recipes that each had a small number of ingredients. It seemed like it was the best way to cook that much food at once and not have to end up serving dinner at midnight. I also started well in advance to make sure that I wasn’t rushing around last minute (like I am wont to do).

While I made about 10 different recipes, I’m only featuring one on here for now. I would put up more, but I can’t guarantee that I followed the rest of the recipes to the letter, and Katie mentioned to me that she kept adding honey to things, so I don’t want to put up inaccurate recipes. To give a better idea of what I did though, I’ll list out some of the stuff I made. I mixed a batch of sangria with red wine, spiced rum, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and oranges. To make things easier, I had a lot of food that was good served room temperature: sliced chorizo, roasted asparagus, mushrooms sauteed with garlic and rosemary, manchego cheese with browned honey butter sauce, melon wrapped in speck and/or prosciutto, and spiced almonds. I also made a platter of meatballs and chorizo braised in red wine (omg so good!).

The recipe I’m going to share is best served room temperature or cold, so it’s perfect to make ahead for this type of party. It’s incredibly versatile as well and can easily be adapted to any type of cuisine to fit into any menu.

Tortilla Espanola (Spanish Tortilla)

1.5 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, par-boiled and diced.
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium red pepper, diced
1 medium green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 eggs, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
2 cups freshly grated Manchego cheese
1 teaspoon Spanish paprika
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons good quality olive oil

Heat oven to 400 F. Heat olive oil in a large pan until shimmering. Add in the onions, peppers and potatoes and cook for 5 – 6 minutes, stirring frequently. Add in the garlic and continue to cook for another 3 – 4 minutes until fragrant and everything else is soft and golden. Take off the heat and set aside. Beat together the eggs, sour cream, cheese and salt and pepper. Add in the vegetable mixture. Grease 9 x 13 pan and then add in the egg mixture. Sprinkle paprika evenly over the top and bake for 18 – 20 minutes until top is golden brown and the eggs are set. Let cool completely and then cut into squares. Serve the tortilla espanola room temperature or cold.

We served ours with a chipotle aioli that Katie made, for the sake of presentation and for an extra pop of flavor. The aoili is absolutely not necessary and I enjoyed the tortilla with and without it. Next time I want to play around with the ingredients and add something else in there, maybe some chorizo or some other meat. Thanks to Tapena for all the fun party favors and the inspiration for this party!

Of course, the recipe I’m about to share with you in this week’s very special blog post is not at all branching out. It’s more damn root vegetables. I cannot wait until summer when the vegetables ninjas deliver things like…lettuce. And tomatoes. And peppers. And… not carrots. Anyway, this is what I made for Easter dinner today.

Honey Rosemary Carrots and Parsnips
My name for it is shorter than what epicurious has, which is where I got it.

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound carrots, peeled, cut into 3×1/4×1/4-inch sticks
1 pound parsnips, peeled, halved lengthwise, cored, cut into 3×1/4×1/4-inch sticks
Coarse kosher salt
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 1/2 tablespoons honey (such as heather, chestnut, or wildflower)
pepper to taste

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add in the carrots and saute for 2 – 3 minutes, until just beginning to turn barely golden brown on the edges. Add in parsnips and add in salt and pepper. Continue to saute for another 10 – 12 minutes until both the carrots and parsnips are cooked to your liking and are starting to brown around the edges [if you prefer them more caramelized, this is your chance to do it].

Add in the honey, rosemary and butter. Evenly coat the vegetables and cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, until you have a nice glaze. Taste and adjust salt and pepper if needed.

I really enjoyed this dish. The honey accentuates the sweetness of the parsnips, but it’s saved from being cloying by the rosemary. This went really with the ham that we had and would be great alongside any pork dish because of how well rosemary complements it. If you want to dial back the sweetness a bit, I bet turnips would work well in this as well.

Ha, and speaking of being a less than awesome blogger: I was too busy hanging out with my friend Sarah while making this soup to take any pictures of the process. This means that not only will you be getting a shorter than normal post [I'm not sure why; let's call it laziness?] but only one picture of the end product. What a cruel, cruel world it is. But it’s not really, because this soup is tasty and pretty easy to make on a work night.

Italian Wedding Soup

For the meatballs:

1 pound ground turkey
3/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1 egg, scrambled
1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano
1/8 cup milk
1 or 2 cloves of garlic (to taste), minced
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together all of the ingredients until thoroughly combined. Form into golf ball size [I use a cookie dough scooper] and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for about 25 minutes until browned and cooked all the way through.

For the soup:

10 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry white wine
3 carrots, diced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 Parmesan rind
3/4 – 1 cup orzo, to preference
1/2 bunch kale, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a large pot, heat the olive oil. Add the carrots and cook for 3 – 4 minutes, until softened, then add in the oregano and basil and heat until fragrant. Next add in the liquids and rind, and let come up to a simmer. Allow the soup to simmer for about 30 minutes. At this point, you’re ready to add the pasta into the soup dry or already cooked; if you add it dry, be prepared to add in more liquids upon reheating leftovers as the orzo will soak up most of it. Add in the meatballs and kale, then let everything come back up to a simmer again for another 10 minutes. Serve immediately, with Parmesan cheese grated on top.

Luckily, this recipe is pretty easy and since I had a giant mutant squash, I was able to make both the pasta and an unfortunately dense butternut squash bread as well. Note to self: there actually is a reason to use baking powder. But we’re talking about a success here, not fail bread. The first step to this is to roast a butternut squash until tender, to build the right base for the sauce.

Butternut Squash Puree

1 butternut squash, halved
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix together spices and set aside. Spread softened butter on both halves of the squash and then sprinkle with the spice mixture. Pour water into a 9 x 13 pan and then add the squash, cut side up. Roast for 50 – 60 minutes, or until fork tender. Remove from oven and let cool.

Once the squash is cool enough to be handled, scoop out the insides and add it to your food processor in batches. Puree until smooth. Set aside until ready to make pasta. [Please note awesome cat measuring cups that my friend gave me for Christmas!]

Butternut Squash Pasta

8 oz spaghetti
1.5 cups butternut squash puree
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup reserved pasta water
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon minced rosemary
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a pot of salted water to boiling. Add in pasta and let cook until al dente. Drain pasta, reserving 1/4 pasta water. In a medium sized pot, heat the butter until just starting to turn foamy. Add in the minced rosemary and cook until fragrant. Add in the milk and let that come up to temperature, stirring frequently to avoid a skin forming on top. Then add in the butternut squash and the cheese. Let that come up to a simmer and cook for a few minutes until combined well; slowly add in some of the reserved pasta water until the sauce is the right consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Combine sauce with the drained pasta and serve immediately.

This is a great way to get more vegetables into your diet. The sauce is silky thanks to the milk and coats the pasta perfectly. The spices in the squash worked really well in flavoring the dish overall. This would also be great with some shrimp or grilled chicken served alongside it.

While I was still up to my eyeballs in root vegetables, I made this great ragout that I served alongside a tasty rosemary crusted beef tenderloin. The recipe came from epicurious and was originally from Gourmet magazine. While this is not vegetarian in its current state, it could very well be made so by subbing the meat stock called for in the recipe with vegetable stock. While I think you could probably make it vegan by dumping the butter for another fat, I do think butter really adds something to the overall dish.

Root Vegetable Ragout
Adapted from Gourmet magazine, January 1999

1 medium turnip, peeled and diced
4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
4 medium parsnips, peeled and diced
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup beef stock (4 fluid ounces)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425. In a shallow roasting pan, toss vegetables with oil and roast for about 25 minutes or until the vegetables and tender and just starting to caramelize. Take out of the oven.

In a large pan, heat the butter until it foams and then reduce heat to medium. Add in the roasted vegetables, stock and salt and pepper. Bring this up to a simmer and continue to cook until the stock becomes a glaze over the vegetables. Serve immediately.

I was really happy with how this came out. The sweetness of the parsnips and carrots evened out the turnip, and there was just enough glaze over everything. This is something I’ll definitely be making again, it was so easy! It also works out well in larger quantities, as a friend of mine made three roasting pans of vegetables for a pot luck not too long ago.

Since I had all these apples, obviously pie had to be made. I figured I’d make it with the local honey I got, which is apparently made pretty close to my house [which is kind of alarming - have you seen my neighborhood?!]. I had wanted to make a pie that was a little less sweet than my normal one, so I figured using honey (and less of it) would be a good way to achieve that. Well, honey and a good dose of ginger and cinnamon.

Honey Apple Pie

7 medium sized apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2 tablespoons butter, chilled and diced
1 pie crust, homemade or store bought

1 1/2 cup quick oats
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425. In a large bowl, toss apples with honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. Place in the pie crust and then sprinkle diced butter pieces over the apples. For the topping, mix together the oats, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until crumbly. Sprinkle over the top of the pie and bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until the pie is bubbling and the top is brown. Let cool and serve at room temperature.

This is really good; I should have let mine cook longer, but the flavor was just what I wanted. It was slightly spicy from the ginger and had a nice warmth to it from the other spices. While the honey lent some sweetness, it wasn’t cloying which I was slightly apprehensive about. And to give you a better idea about its taste: it was mostly gone within 3 days. There are only two of us that live here.