Cushaw Pie

Ever since I can remember my grandparents have had a garden. They grow everything, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, corn, peppers, and a whole bunch of other things!

One of those 'many other things' is called a cushaw. It's kind of like a pumpkin, and kind of like a squash, and ALL southern. My whole family is from Tennessee.

 My grandpa has been subtly asking me to make a cushaw pie ever since they started coming in, and my dad's birthday was a few days ago, too (he loves pie), so I decided to make one!

First of all, you're going to need a cushaw.

This is what it looks like.

You'll also need;

1 unbaked pie shell

2 1/2 cups cooked cushaw (I'll get to that in a minute)

1/4 cup sour cream

2 beaten eggs

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp flour

1/4 tsps salt

1/4 tsps nutmeg

1/4 tsps pumpkin spice

2 tbsp butter

Okay, the first thing you need to do is cook this cushaw you have.

By the way, I have no idea how you're going to get one. I have never walked into the produce section in the store to find a cushaw section.

But anyway, when you get your cushaw you need to first wash it.

 Then, you will want to cut it into four quarters.

 A small piece of advice; cut off the top part near the stem first.

Then scoop out the seeds and cushaw innards.

  

And that thing poking it's head into the trashcan is my dog's snout :/

                                                                                

          Into quarters now.

                                                                                

Spray cooking spray on a oven safe tray (or two), preheat your oven 425 degrees and put the cushaws in there for 25 minutes, or until the outside of the cushaw is soft.

Mine was a little burnt, but that didn't seem to matter much in the final product.

 

Then, take a spoon and start scooping out the inside of the cushaw, but don't get the skin.

You'll need 2 1/2 cups of the stuff.

 

And then, you are supposed to mash it.

Not, really, possible.

I don't have a masher, or a squisher, or a flatener, or whatever they expected me to use.

The best I could come up with is an electric mixer.

 

But that didn't seem to do anything besides spray cushaw everywhere.

 

So then I decided to use a whisk and beat the cushaw.

They didn't do anything either.

 

And THEN I thought an ice cream scooper might do the trick.

 

It didn't.

At this point I had spent 10 minutes on trying to mash this cushaw and I could see that it just wasn't happening.

So I decided to just move on with this whole pie thing and hope for the best.

I added the sour cream. 

The sour cream was actually just supposed to be cream, but we didn't have any. Sour cream is kind of cream, right? Is has the word cream in it. It can't be that far from it. Maybe they're cousins or something.

There. See? Now it's cream.

All mixed up.

Put in the salt, flour, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and pumpkin spice.

The recipe called for something called 'allspice'.

What, in the world, is allspice.

 That doesn't even sound good. That sounds like I took all of the spices from the cabinet and poured them into the pie.

I decided to use pumpkin spice instead.

 

Mix that up nice and good.

 

Get your pie shell.

 

Pour mix into pie shell.

 

Put it into the oven for 10 minutes on 425 and then turn it down to 350 and cook for 50 minutes or more, until you can insert  a toothpick in and it comes out clean. I know mine took way more than an hour, and it was still a little mushy.

 

There it is, all finished up!

 

Like I said, a little mushy, but most of that was due to my inability to cut a pie right.

 

My little brother Connor loved it, though!

 

I also made a pumpkin pie for my dad, which turned out beautifully.

 

It was his 41st birthday.

 

My entire family loved it as well. Some relatives were in from Tennessee and loved it, too! You can't really make a pie ugly, so THIS PIE IS PERFECT!!

If you try this out, tell me how it went in the comments!

Baked Elephant Ears That Turned Into Fritters

My friends and I are total goofballs. We decided to throw a party for Elephant Appreciation Day.

And, yes, I DID make those myself.

We learned much about elephants during the party. Did you know elephants bury their dead herd mates? And they mourn them.

Basically, elephants are sweethearts.

Anyway, I was going to make baked elephant ears (funnel cakes) for the party, and I found a decent looking recipe online.

These are not going to be elephant ears. These will be what I decided to call imitation fritters. They will be delicious nonetheless, but not elephant ears.

I decided to do baked elephant ears because I don't own a deep fryer (who does!?!).

Here's what you'll need;

1 package yeast

1/4 cup warm water

4 cups flour

1 tsps salt

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1 cup sour cream

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 tsps vanilla

1 cups sugar

1 tsps cinnamon

First thing you want to do is get yourself a big ol' bowl. Get the yeast and water, and dissolve the yeast in water.

This weirded me out a little bit. The yeast kind of sticks to the bottom of the bowl, but you just have to keep stirring with a spoon until it's completely blended with the water.

This was my first time working with yeast, so I was learning as I went.

Once the yeast is dissolved, add in the flour, salt, butter, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla.

By the way, here are some, in my opinion, slightly beaten eggs. I wondered if you really needed to slightly beat them or if this website was just messing with me.

And there is the hodge-podge of ingredients thus far.

Beat that until smooth. It'll probably take a while.

Cover that up with a damp paper towel and leave it in the fridge for two hours.

EXCITEMENT!

I was so bored. Thankfully my friends showed up and we did dumb teenager things while we waited.

*2 hours later*

Okay. Get out that dough. Now mix the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar, but currently I have a Ziploc bag of sugar and cinnamon in my cabinet that may very well never find a use. You will not need 2 cups of sugar. I advise you use one.

Once that is mixed up, start sprinkling it all over your dough. Don't even bother with a whisk or electric mixer or anything along the lines of that.

                                                                         Yep.

So do that until you think you have enough in there. I would use about half of it.

The recipe then called for me to use a rolling pin to smooth out the dough on a board. 

Well I may have somehow messed something up in the process of making the dough, because after about two seconds it was obvious that that wasn't going to happen.

I've learned that sometimes in cooking you just have to throw your hands up and say, "Whatevs."

This was one of those times.

So this is what I did instead.

I sprayed cooking spray in a pan and just started ripping the dough into junks and placing it on there.

Then I sprinkled a bunch of the cinnamon-sugar on the dough.

I popped it in the oven at 350 for roughly 20 minutes (you can tell if it's done by if it's mushy or not).

It was delicious. It tasted like a sweet bread. I loved it, personally. It was a little time consuming, but well worth it the waiting.

If you try this out or any of the other recipes I have done, let me know in the comments how it worked out :)

Oh, and thanks for checking out my blog. You should see the faces I make when I see how many page views I have :D! (And the number isn't big at all either.)

"Healthy" Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal cookies are my favorite type of cookie. They are by far the easiest cookie to make. They almost always stay the same shape while baking, except for a little spreading. And if you do them correctly, they are fluffy and gooey and just amazing.

Unfortunately, to acheive that fluffiness, you often need an entire cup of butter. This is equal to two sticks.

I am not a wasteful person. Whenever I cook, I make sure I have enough just for the meal, so there aren't any leftovers. I hate using a bunch of one thing in a recipe. Also, butter isn't very good for you (obvious statement of the year). So, I decided to try using a substitute for butter this time.

I have not had a ton of luck with substitutes before. I made key lime bars once, and used a combination of salt and I think vegetable oil to substitute for butter. When I combined the salt and vegetable oil with the batter, it started bubbling like a science experiment. The key lime bars didn't turn out too well.

But I really did not want to use two entire sticks of butter for some cookies, so substitutes it is.

Right here and now, I'm telling you to just use the butter. It's gonna' save you a whole lotta' heartbreak.

Here's what you need;

2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups old  fashioned oats

1 tsps baking soda

1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsps pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsps salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 tsps vanilla extract

First thing you want to do is preheat your oven to 350 and line a cookie sheet with wax aper.

Mix the flour, oats, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon. In a bowl, just so we're clear.

Yummy :)

In a seperate bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. 

I used vegetable oil as a substitute for the butter, so mine looks different.

Mix in the pumpkin and egg with the butter, brown sugar, and sugar, then mix.

Appetizing.

Mix in the flour mixture.

I was reading through the recipe, and suddenly, I saw two words that got me more excited than I am on Christmas morning.

"Get creative."

OOOHHHH YEEEAAAHHHH!!!!!!!

My family loves almonds, so, pumpkin oatmeal ALMOND cookies!!!!!

I got a couple bags of almonds and crushed them up.

I would get salted almonds for cookies, because non-seasoned almonds actually taste sweet.

Little tip, I put them in little baggies and use a rolling pin to crush them up.

Use the tip of the rolling pin to crush them up even more.

Then put whatever you decided to put in the mix into it.

Mix it up, then put the mixture on the cookie sheet in rounded table spoons.

I find it  troublesome when a recipe calls for a rounded tablespoon. Your definition of rounded and my definintion of rounded could be on two opposite ends of the rounded spectrum. Also, I find that when I get a "rounded tablespoon" it is equivalent to two tablespoons :/

But anyway, rounded tablespoon.

Again, I HIGHLY suggest just using the butter. Yours will look different (perhaps more delicious).

Put them in the oven for 13 minutes, pull them out, and bam-shazzam, yummy cookies :)

These, sadly, are what mine looked like.

Not very pretty, but they sure do look "healthy".

Oh, and here's a little laugh for you. I figured the wax paper wasn't really doing anything, so I decided to just do a batch without it.

The wax paper was important.
 

But the boys thought they were still delicious.

All in all, I call this a half success. Maybe I didn't get high scores in the pretty category, but they tasted good. In the end, that's better than nothing!