Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

My official job title in Spain is a Language and Culture Assistant or auxiliar de conversación. I have the best job in the world; earning a living experiencing the Spanish languages and culture. It sounds almost too good to be true, but this is a real job that you can learn more about here. In return for this amazing opportunity, I am expected to share my language and culture with the students and teachers at my school, facilitating an international exchange of ideas. However, thanks to globalization, most aspects of the American culture have already made it overseas. There are few things I share about my home that most Spaniards I meet aren't vaguely familiar with already. This is not the case for food. I'm sad to report that the general opinion of American food is based on McDonald's and KFC menus. I'm not going to launch an anit-fast food campaign over here because it is a big part of American culture and I'd be committing an enormous act of hypocrisy. I think McDonald's french fries are one of the most addicting foods on the planet and Taco Bell Crunchwraps are a work of culinary genius.  

I mentioned in my homemade pumpkin puree post that I take classic American baked goods to school to share with my coworkers and students. This is my way of showing them that we have SO much more to offer than hamburgers and delivery pizzas. It should come as no surprise that my favorite way to experience a foreign culture is through its cuisine, but I get so much more pleasure from telling people about my home through the foods I grew up with and love. With these cookies, I was able to share the traditions of autumn in America, from the holidays, to the pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and hot apple cider! I'm well aware that fall has come and gone, but who doesn't want a cakey, moist reminder of falling leaves and crisp air during the months of dreary, cold winter weather?

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a sheet pan with a Silpat or parchment paper. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars. Add the egg, vanilla, and pumpkin and beat until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Slowly mix into the cookie batter until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Using a cookie scoop or teaspoon, drop the cookies onto the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until puffed up and lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!

 

 
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients: 
   
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Beat in the pumpkin puree and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon. With the stand mixer on low speed, slowly add the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Drop the batter onto a Silpat lined cookie sheet using a cookie scoop or a tablespoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes depending on the size of your cookies.

Feliz Thanksgiving: 8 kilograms, Mini Ovens, & Contraband Soup

This year, I am working as an English language assistant in a public school in northern Spain. In October I left my quiet, happy life in Utah to live in a country with a different currency, measuring system, and language, 5,000 miles away from everyone I know and love. The first few weeks were a little rough with the eight hour time difference, finding an apartment, and separation anxiety from my car, but now that I am two months into my stay, I'm having the time of my life! I'm improving my Spanish, meeting new people, traveling through Europe, working with the best kids and teachers, and trying the most amazing food!

While I'm willing and excited to dive head first into Spanish culture, I'm reluctant to let go of all my Americana, including putting my napkin in my lap, my favorite TV shows (Gossip Girl, New Girl, 30 Rock, Happy Endings), and my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving! I mentioned in my Mexican Hot Chocolate Pie post that Thanksgiving is my favorite because of the menu planning, grocery shopping, hours in the kitchen, and sharing food with my loved ones. This was not my first Thanksgiving away from home, but it was definitely the first spent on a different continent. Did that drive me to deny myself a day of feasting and food comas? Never. Together with my fabulous roommates and the other language assistants in Ourense, we created a traditional Thanksgiving spread, drawing on our creativity, resourcefulness, and breaking a few airport security rules to acquire the necessary ingredients!

I'm exaggerating on the airport security rules. The green bean casserole cook bought the hard-to-find Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup on a weekend trip to Madrid. She had to plead her case to get it past airport security! We thanked her dedication and bravery by eating the entire casserole.

Turkey is not a common meat in Spain. In this country, ham is king. We special ordered an 8 kilo turkey (17.5 lbs) a week before our Thanksgiving feast. It did not come frozen like the butterball turkeys stocked eye high in Walmarts back home. The man at the deli sold us a fresh turkey, so fresh we had to remove a few feathers ourselves, with no giblets already removed. That presented a major gravy-making problem, but I'll get to that later.

 

The turkey brined in our tiny fridge overnight. Everything in my European kitchen is one size too small, including the roasting pan for the turkey! In order to prevent the bag from ripping on the turkey's feet (yes they left those on!) while it soaked in the savory herbs and spices, we double bagged the turkey, set it in a stock pot, set that stock pot in the roasting pan, and propped the bird up with Diet Coke and beer cans. That is the epitome turkey brining ingenuity!

Brown Sugar Thyme Turkey Brine

recipe adapted from epicurious.com

Ingredients:

8 quarts water
2 cups kosher salt
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp black pepper
2 tsp dried thyme OR 2 bunches fresh thyme
8 garlic cloves, smashed
rind from 1 orange, peeled in large strips
rind from 1 lemon, peeled in large strips 

Directions:

In a large stockpot, combine water, salt, brown sugar, and pepper and stir until salt is dissolved. Add thyme, garlic, orange rind, and lemon rind and stir. Line a large roasting pan or stock pot with a plastic garbage bag. Rinse the thawed turkey and place in the plastic bag. Pour the brine over the turkey and tie off the plastic bag so the turkey is completely submerged in the brine. Refrigerate in the stock pot or roasting pan for 12-18 hours.

The next day, we prepared our brined turkey for roasting. At home, our turkey is set on a rack in a roasting pan to allow the drippings to collect in the bottom of the pan during roasting. Those drippings are later transformed into creamy, rich gravy. To compensate for the lack of roasting pan with a rack, the turkey roasted atop a bed of aromatics (chopped onions, carrots, celery, and apples) and was stuffed with onion, garlic, and the flesh from the lemons and oranges used in the brine. Before the bird went into the oven, I rubbed the skin with a compound butter made from room temperature butter, salt, pepper, and thyme.

As you can see, the bird took up the entire oven! I tented it with foil to prevent burning on the top and to facilitate auto-basting, similar to using a roasting bag which were nowhere to be found in the supermercado. We left the bird alone for 2 hours and 45 minutes. During this time, our power turned off twice because of the oven induced overexertion!

Nearly three hours into the turkeys roasting, I removed the tin foil and prepared a glaze. I glazed the bird three times in 15 minute intervals, rotating the pan after each coat to facilitate even browning. Finally, with the help of my stronger male roommate, the turkey was removed from the oven (it weighed a ton!), tented with foil, and left to rest for 30 minutes. It's very important to let meat rest after roasting or grilling. The resting time allows the meat the soak in the juices released during cooking. If you cut into hot steak or poultry right after it's cooked, all the juices will escape from the meat, leaving it dry and flavorless.

Brown Sugar Mustard Glaze

recipe by Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup dijon mustard

Directions:

In a small bowl, whisk together brown sugar and mustard. Beginning 45 minutes-1 hour before the turkey is finished roasting, glaze the turkey with the brown sugar mustard mixture every 15 minutes, tenting with foil if browning too quickly.

Once the turkey had rested, we started the gravy. It took 2 people to tilt the roasting pan while 1 person held a saucepan underneath the collect the drippings! (Everything about this Thanksgiving was unorthodox!) I made a quick gravy by blending together some onion and apple slices from the roasting pan and the turkey drippings. I transferred that mixture to a saucepan, added a few tablespoons of flour, and whisked while the mixture came to a boil. Finally I added salt and pepper to taste. The gravy was slightly sweet and every one loved it!  

This was our spread! We had all the classics, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, two kinds of stuffing, creamed corn, green bean casserole, macaroni & cheese, and our friend from Argentina brought ham and cheese empanadas!

I loaded my plate with comfort food and joined my new friends in celebrating a tradition from our home. It was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember! We brought Thanksgiving to Spain with a fabulous dinner and decadent desserts....

Mexican Hot Chocolate Pie

Silky Smooth Pumpkin Pie

 

and Walnut Crumble Apple Pie!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Pie

Comfort food has the unique ability to give you a sense of being at home. I love living in Spain, but when the occasional bout of homesickness strikes, nothing makes me feel better faster than a quick skype session with my family, a Diet Coke, and a Reese's peanut butter cup! This week was Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and the fact that I was not celebrating it with a marathon cooking session with the Macy's Day Parade in the background was a little depressing. I was not alone in missing America on the most gluttonous of holidays. There are many other language assistants in my town that were also faced with the prospect of no Thanksgiving 2012! Since we couldn't sit idly by while our friends and families gorged themselves 4,000 miles away, we decided to have a celebration of our own. This year, the Americans in Orense brought Thanksgiving to Galicia! We crammed 17 people from America, as well as England, Argentina, and Spain, a 17.5 lb turkey, all the comfort food staple side dishes, and four pies into our little European piso and feasted until 1 am! Despite the lack of traditional Thanksgiving ingredients in the supermercado, we were able to successfully recreate green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, and the most important, pumpkin pie! Everything was delicious and everything tasted like home. 

My favorite part of Thanksgiving, or any meal for that matter, is dessert. Out of the pies I baked this year, the one that was the least traditional was this Mexican Hot Chocolate Pie. I have expressed my love of all dishes Tex Mex, so it goes without saying that I am a HUGE fan of chocolate with a kick. I love the sensation of tasting the bitterness of dark chocolate followed by a slowly building burn of chili powder. If you have never experienced what I just described, you have got to make this pie!

This pie has a cookie crust. The original recipe calls for gingersnaps, but there were none in the supermercado. Time to improvise! I used these cinnamon cookies instead and the crust was fabulous! So, this cookie crust can be made with either gingersnaps or cinnamon graham crackers. It's up to you!

 

In a food processor, process the cookies until fine crumbs. Alternatively, crush cookies by placing them in a Ziploc bag and smashing them with a rolling pin. Add ginger, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and salt and process to combine. 

Add the melted butter and stir until the crumbs are moistened.  

Press the crumb mixture firmly in an even layer on the bottom and sides of the pan. Freeze for at least 30 minutes while you prepare the chocolate filling.

 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a small saucepan on medium heat, heat the heavy cream until just bubbling around the edges. Chop the chocolate and place in a large bowl. 

Pour the heated cream over the chopped chocolate and let sit for a minute or two. The finer you chop the chocolate, the faster it will melt! Whisk until smooth.

Whisk in the egg. Add the ginger, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and a pinch of salt and whisk until smooth. A pinch of salt is more than you would think. For the purposes of the recipes I post on this blog, a pinch of salt is made from pinching your thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger together to grab a decent amount of salt. Remember, salt brings out sweetness so it's very necessary in dessert recipes!

Pour chocolate mixture into the chilled cookie crust. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the filling is set on the sides, but wobbles slightly in the center. Let cool to room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight. 

Just before serving, remove the pie from the refrigerator while you prepare the cinnamon whipped cream. This is the best part! With an electric mixer or wire whisk, whip the cream, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and salt until soft peaks form.

Spread the whipped cream on top of the pie in an even layer. Cut into the pie, take a bite, agree that spicy dark chocolate is the best flavor in the world, and devour the rest of your slice!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Pie

Recipe adapted from Allison Kave's First Prize Pies 

Ingredients:  

Cookie Crust:

1 3/4 - 2 cups gingersnap or cinnamon graham cracker crumbs

1/8 tsp grated fresh ginger

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

pinch of salt

8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Dark Chocolate Filling:

7 oz dark chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup heavy cream

1 egg, room temperature

1/8 tsp grated fresh ginger

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

pinch of salt

Cinnamon Whipped Cream:

1 1/2 cups heavy cream, cold

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

pinch of salt

Directions:

In a food processor, process cookies until fine crumbs. Add ginger, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and salt and pulse to combine. With the processor running, add the melted butter in a steady stream until all the crumbs are moistened. Press crumb mixture firmly onto the bottom and sides of a pie tin and freeze for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Finely chop the chocolate and set in a large bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream until just bubbling on the edges. Pour the heated cream over the chopped chocolate and let sit 1-2 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Whisk in the egg. Add the ginger, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and salt and whisk until smooth. Pour the chocolate mixture into the chilled cookie crust.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the edges are set and the center is still slightly wobbly. Let cool to room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight.

Just before serving, remove pie from refrigerator. Using an electric mixer or wire whisk, beat heavy cream, sugar, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and salt until soft peaks form. Spread in an even layer on top of the pie. Serve immediately.

Flaky Pie Crust

Happy Thanksgiving! Tomorrow may be just another Thursday in Spain, but that will not stop me from celebrating my favorite holiday. Would you believe me if I said I love Thanksgiving more than Christmas? It's true! Each year I look forward to the menu planning, grocery shopping, baking pies late into the night on Wednesday, waking up early on Thursday to roast the turkey and watch the Macy's Day Parade, and finally, timing the many side dishes perfectly so they are steaming hot when the glorious turkey is removed from the oven! My family is full of cooks and we LOVE slaving away all day in the kitchen before sharing an oversized meal with our friends and family.

My Thanksgiving in Spain will take place on Friday this year. We have invited all the Americans we know to have a Thanksgiving feast at our apartment. We had plans to recreate the traditional menu we all grew up with, until we ventured into the supermercado! There are no pecans, no pumpkin puree, no cranberries, no cream of mushroom soup or fried onions (there goes the green bean casserole!), and no sweet potatoes. So, it seems we will have to be a little more creative and resourceful with our side dishes. Fortunately, we were able to get our hands on a 17 lb turkey through a special order at a carnicería.

"Turkey, raised in Galicia. The flavor of tradition." At least we will have a golden, roasted bird at the center of our Thanksgiving table!

True to my sweet-tooth form, I have appointed myself "Chief Pie Maker." I originally planned to stick to the basics: pumpkin, pecan, and something sinful and chocolatey. However, the aforementioned lack of pumpkins and pecans in the Spanish supermarkets presented a major obstacle. I was able to track down a sugar pumpkin from which I made my own pumpkin puree, and the pecan pie will likely become a walnut pie. (Stay tuned to see how that turns out!) Combing the grocery store for my ingredients was exhausting, frustrating, and depressing. I was worried about finding any ingredient other than sugar and flour for my pies until I made my way to the refrigerated section where I found stacks upon stacks of butter-the key to a flaky pie crust. Thank goodness butter is well-loved around the world!

Back home in Utah, I am constantly switching between making pie crust with butter or Crisco.  I like the flavor butter lends to pie crust, but sometimes I find Crisco produces a flakier final product. This has led me to experiment with all butter, all Crisco, and half butter half Crisco. In the end, it comes down to personal preference. If you are a butter person, this recipe can be made with all butter. If you love Crisco, use all Crisco. If you are on the fence, try half and half. I found butter at the Spanish grocery store before I found Crisco, so I stuck with butter this time!

**This recipe can be made by hand or in a food processor. I like to make mine by hand because the dough is more likely to be overworked in the food processor. That's my opinion! If using a food processor, pulse flour, salt, and sugar until combined. Add cold butter cubes and pulse until the mixture resembles gravel (not sand). Add the ice water 1 Tbsp at a time until the dough comes together in a ball. Remove from the food processor, separate into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling out.**

The key to flaky pie crust is keep the butter cold. The colder the butter (or Crisco) the better. When cold butter meets the heat in the hot oven, the butter will melt quickly creating steam. The steam is what forms the flaky pockets of pastry in the pie dough. Cut your butter into small cubes and place in the freezer. Fill a liquid measuring cup with 1/2 cup water and a few ice cubes. Set aside. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar together with a wire whisk.

Remove the butter from the freezer and scatter over the flour mixture. Using a pastry blender, fork, or your hands, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it reaches the consistency of gravel, not sand. You want to leave larger chunks of butter in the dough. The larger pieces of butter help to form the flaky layers in the dough while it bakes, so don't pulverize them all to achieve the sandy texture.

Remove the ice cubes from the water. Sprinkle the cold water over the pie dough 1 Tbsp at a time, while mixing gently, until the dough comes together to form a ball. Separate the dough into two balls.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour before rolling. The dough will stay fresh in the fridge for one week or up to three months in the freezer. Make sure the dough is wrapped very tightly if refrigerating for more than 1 hour or if freezing.

Flaky Pie Crust

Recipe by Sweet & Savory

Ingredients:

2 cups flour, spooned into measuring cups, NOT packed   
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes
      OR 1 scant cup Crisco, cold, broken into small pieces
      "scant" cup=unpacked cup. Realistically, it equals a level 3/4 cup
1/2 cup ice water

Directions:

Cut the butter into small cubes and place in the freezer. (Alternatively, place the measured Crisco in the freezer and break into small pieces just before mixing with the dry ingredients) Place a few ice cubes in the 1/2 cup water and set aside. 

With a wire whisk, mix flour, sugar, and salt. Scatter the butter (or Crisco) over the flour mixture. Using a fork, pastry cutter, or your fingers, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles gravel.

Remove the ice cubes from the water. Sprinkle the water over the pie dough 1 Tbsp at a time while mixing gently. Stop adding water when the dough will hold a ball shape. Do not overwork the dough!

Separate the dough into two pieces and wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour before rolling. Makes enough dough for a double pie crust.