Pillbury Mansion To Be Auctioned

The former Pillsbury estate on Lake Minnetonka is being offered for sale in a sealed bid auction to take place on December 9. George and Eleanor Pillsbury built the mansion in 1918 as a summer cottage. The last asking price two years ago for the estate was $53.5 million dollars. A buyer could not be found at that time.

Let's hope this wonderful piece of Americana winds up in the right hands. Some fear that the land could be parceled and offered to developers.

Over it's 91 year history, the estate named Southways, has hosted foreign dignitaries, heads of state, and even presidents.

BTW, the 2009 property taxes for the estate were $178,000. That's a lotta dough ;-)

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Today's Special - Coconut Cream Pie

L1010390coccrepie by libbystack on Zooomr

The family has been hounding me for Coconut Cream Pie. This version is a blind baked crust and cooked Coconut Cream Filling. It was a busy day yesterday, and was trying to get this pie done in between other projects. The first batch of toasted coconut for the garnish had to get tossed because I forgot it was in the toaster oven and it almost started on fire. It was just one of those days ;-)

In order to ensure cream pie success, the rules are pretty simple. Start with a baked properly crust and a luscious filling. Cool your filling, and cool your crust thoroughly. You don't want a temperature clash here, such as what would occur if you poured a boiling hot filling into a baked shell that just came out of the refrigerator. You'll destroy the integrity of the crust. Pouring a lukewarm, or just barely warm filling seems to work fine for me. I like to keep both filling and crust temperatures in balance. Avoid extremes and you'll be fine.

Recipes for Coconut Cream Pie abound, but I'll give you my version anyway. We tend to like desserts that are not oversugared. My apologies to the culinary elite if my custard procedures are lacking in skill, but this is the way I've been doing it since I was a kid. And I'll give you the work methods I use, useful for the Baking Challenged ;-) All you need here for a great filling is a little patience and understanding of the method.

Libby's Coconut Cream Pie

4 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 - 3 Tbsp flour
1 cup Shredded Coconut plus a little milk
2 Tbsp Butter
A little extra Coconut for Toasted Garnish

Take the cup of coconut and put into a cereal bowl. Add some milk to cover. You don't need a lot. Let it stand about a half hour or so.

Beat 4 eggs in a bowl or large measuring cup. A good hand beat with a fork will do. You want a nice smooth yellow.

Put sugar and milk into a saucepan. Whisk the sugar and milk to combine. Get it going on medium heat whisking as you work. In just a few minutes you'll start to see bubbles and maybe some foaming. You'll also see some steam rising from the surface. You want to get the milk to maybe about 200 F, just before it starts boiling. Keep your heat at that point, a nice low to medium. Whisk all the time, just stopping every once in a while to check your milk. When you are at that nice gentle foaming bubbling point, just keep whisking for another minute or two.

Take a small ladle of milk (maybe about 1/4 cup) and gently pour into your container of beaten eggs. As you pour the milk into the eggs, stir quickly with a fork or spoon. When things are nicely combined, do it again. And then do it again. What you're doing here is Tempering the eggs. By adding successive amounts of the very warm milk into the eggs, you're raising the temperature of the eggs so they won't be shocked when they are introduced into the hot liquid in the pot. If you just dump the cold eggs into the hot milk pot, they would scramble.

I usually do 3 or 4 passes of putting liquid into the eggs. How do you know if you've done it right? Stick your finger in the egg mixture. Nice and cozy? If yes, you've done well.

Whisk in hand, you're now ready to introduce your Tempered Egg Mixture into your Hot Milk. Add the eggs slowly in a stream, and just keep whisking all the time. You don't have to be so deliberate that this takes you a lifetime, but you don't want to dump the whole thing all at once either. Just keep whisking.

In just a minute or two, your mixture will start to thicken. Sprinkle in the flour. And yes, keep whisking. In another minute or so, you should start to see some big bubbles start to pop the the surface. This is good.

Add your cup of milk soaked coconut and cook a minute or two more, whisking all the time.

Take your filling off the heat and add 2 Tbsp butter. Stir to totally incorporate the butter.

Cool your filling before pouring into a cooled pie shell. This pie must be refrigerated.

Whew, we're done!

Production Notes:

I always use whole milk. I find Skim milk simply does not cut it at all here. What about 2% or 1% milk. I think 2% would work ok. But milk is 4% milkfat from what I recall, so why kvetch about it?

Where's the rest of the stuff - vanilla, salt, etc? We like this filling so much just plain naked I don't even add any. It's one of the few things I cook where I don't add any salt. I do use salt in all of my pie crusts though, so the salt flavor component is there, just in a different place.

Starting off with room temperature eggs will help your tempering go a little easier.

Why butter? It will enrich your filling and help the filling set up properly when it refrigerated.

But you say, "Hey, this is just like Pudding!" Indeed it is. And now you have a nice homemade vanilla pudding in your cooking repertoire as well. And you'll find it's oh so much better than the stuff in the box.

Deep dish pie pan users - I don't think cream fillings like this lend themselves well to deep dish pans. I suggest standard size.

What about a double boiler? For this rustic filling I find it's not needed, but of course you can use it if you want. I use a nice old favorite saucepan (it's got a great heavy bottom) and as long as you keep an eye on your temperature things should be fine. No high flames here. Take it easy and slow and enjoy the experience. For some egg custards, I do use the double boiler, but not for this pie filling. It all depends on what end result I need.

Toasting your coconut - 400 F on a small pan or piece of foil for a few minutes will do it. Keep an eye on it.

The volume here will make enough to fill a standard pie shell with just a little bit left over for the cook to taste. And that's always a good thing!

What It Boils Down To

Ha! I love those puns ;-) Your goal when making a custard is to create a hospitable environment for the introduction of the eggs. As far as work time, it probably took me loner to write this post than it did to make the actual custard.

Hot Dog!

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile 1936

Since we were just on the subject of Hot Dogs, here's a great site where you can have a little fun. At the HotDogger Blog, you can find the locations of the traveling Wienermobiles, read about their travels, and even become a Hotdogger yourself.

The 1936 Wienermoble above was 13 feet long and was built at a cost of $5,000.

Winter Indoor Picnic

When that weather outside is frightful, why not try an Indoor Picnic? I was actually inspired by the Great Jackie over at Toxo Bread. Jackie did some cute little Sausage Buns, and I decided to take things a step further by doing some Mini Cheeseburgers. Our baked picnic items were nicely complemented by a fine ground fresh cole slaw.



I cooked up the mini burgers the night before, and just before wrapping them into a simple dough casing I cut up some plain old American cheese slices into quarters. I included the pic here so you can get an idea of the size of the burgers.



Here are the hot dogs just before going into the oven. Very easy here, just a rope of dough coiled around a hot dog.



Here are the dogs after baking.



And here are the mini burgers after baking. Using the same Basic Sweet Yeast Dough, I just varied the end use of that dough. I did cut back the sugar in the recipe a bit. To form the burgers, pinch off dough and form into a round. Place a couple of the cheese squares on the dough, then place your burger. Wrap and pull the dough so that the seams come together on the burger side. That way your cheese winds up on top. If you have any weak spots or tears in the dough, they can be repaired easily by ripping a small piece out of your dough stash and just patching the weak spot.

Notes:

Out hot dogs were plain old Oscar Mayer, and the ground beef was used "as is", just plain beef with no eggs or other fillers. From 1 1/2 lbs of ground beef I wound up with about 18 or so mini burgers. You could easily substitute your own favorite Italian Sausage or Brat here. Just ensure that any non cured (raw) sausages are thoroughly cooked before baking them in the dough. Because these bake up quickly, there won't be enough time for a raw sausage to become properly cooked throughout.

The baking time did vary a bit because of the density difference between the two. The burgers were baked about 26 minutes while the dogs were baked for about 18 minutes. The nice golden brown color comes from the egg wash made by using one whole egg and a teaspoon of water.

On this particular day, the burgers and dogs were the ideal treat as family members were coming and going throughout the day. The leftovers did very well wrapped in the refrigerator overnight and they microwaved up beautifully the next day.

So break out the mustard and ketchup and have your own Indoor Picnic. It's great fun any time of year!

Update 11/7/2009:

In the email box today, I got a question about those Hot Dogs Rolled Up In Crescent Rolls. Yes, I've had them. If you buy the Pillsbury brand of refrigerates rolls, they're sort of "ok". With some of the store brand versions though, the dough can be downright vile. In my opinion, with the homemade sweet dough, there's just no contest. The homemade sweet dough wins hands down.

Virtual Journey from Farm to Plate Opens Eyes to How Wheat Works

Wheat Foods Council launches online education initiative to encourage nutrition knowledge while supporting U.S. troops and families

PARKER, Colo. (October 19, 2009) - The Wheat Foods Council launches How Wheat Works, an interactive, online multimedia program that delivers a farm-to-fork education on wheat, enabling a better understanding of its nutritional value. At www.howwheatworks.com, participants of all ages can virtually grow, harvest and mill their own kernels to create their desired wheat food. For each participant, the Council will donate two pounds of flour, up to 90,000 pounds, to Operation Homefront, a non-profit that provides assistance to needy U.S. troops and their families.

"How Wheat Works is an exciting educational opportunity to take wheat kernels from farm to fork in a virtual world, while providing wheat flour, which holds endless meal possibilities, for needy U.S. troops and their families," said Carol Pratt, M.S., R.D., Wheat Foods Council nutrition expert. "This unique mixture of subjects like agriculture, milling, baking and nutrition allows people to better understand wheat's role in a healthy diet."

How Wheat Works combines 3-D animation, still photography, video and factual information to chronicle wheat's path from field to table. Each of the program's four phases - growth, harvest, milling/baking and the grocer's aisle - takes just a few minutes to complete, while the program spans the course of four days. Interactive opportunities include the selection of the type of wheat to be grown and wheat flour to be milled, based on the participant's preferred wheat food creation.

Following the completion of each phase, activity suggestions allow participants to extend their learning experience through preparing wheat-based recipes, exploring wheat grown in their area and viewing harvest videos from "America's Heartland," a magazine-style television series focused on American agriculture. A quiz tests the participant's wheat knowledge at program end, at which time the Council donates two pounds of flour to Operation Homefront with help from their members at ADM and ConAgra, two of the world's largest millers.

To extend the program to youth organizations and classrooms, the Council developed educational guides, located at www.wheatfoods.org, that allow group leaders and educators to activate How Wheat Works with their audiences. Activity ideas utilize program content and resources from the Council's extensive library as well as member and partner materials.

"Teaching people how a whole or enriched grain food comes to be can shed new light on nutritional implications and result in informed food choices," said Pratt. "This is a fun learning experience that everyone can enjoy, whether it's a mom teaching her child proper nutrition, a student researching for a school project or a baking enthusiast learning more about one of their most utilized ingredients."

About the Wheat Foods Council

The Wheat Foods Council is a nonprofit organization formed in 1972 to help increase public awareness of grains, complex carbohydrates, and fiber as essential components of a healthful diet. The Council is supported voluntarily by wheat producers, millers, bakers and related industries.

About Operation Homefront

Operation Homefront provides emergency and morale assistance for our troops, the families they leave behind and for wounded warriors when they return home. A nonprofit 501(c)(3), Operation Homefront leads more than 4,500 volunteers in 30 chapters nationwide, and has met more than 105,000 needs of military families. Operation Homefront also hosts the Web community Operation Homefront Online. For more information, please visit www.operationhomefront.net and www.homefrontonline.com .