Sweet Potato Pie

I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas. This year I made cookies and pies. I’m posting a sweet potato pie recipe I found on AllRecipes.com. It turned out to be really good!

I had way more potatoes that I needed so I ended up with six pies. I gave four away and placed one in the freezer. I ran out of vanilla extract so I decided to use a 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. The addition of cinnamon turned out to be great for a first time sweet potatoe pie maker! Here is the recipe below.

Sweet Potato Pie INGREDIENTS:

* 3 sweet potatoes
* 1/2 cup butter, softened
* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
(I added 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon)
* 2 1/2 cups white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 4 eggs, beaten
* 3/4 cup evaporated milk
* 2 (9 in.) unbaked pie crusts

DIRECTIONS:

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add sweet potatoes and cook until tender but still firm, about 30 minutes. Drain, cool, peel and mash. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. In a large bowl, combine sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, vanilla and nutmeg. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk and blend into the sweet potato mixture.

3. Pour into pie shells and bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until done.

Gingerbread People

I normally do cutout sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. Since I did the pies this year, I decided to only do a few drop sugar cookies and use the gingerbread dough for the cutouts. Gingerbread cookies are my favorites and I found this great recipe about two years ago on Kraftfoods.com. I normally pack individual bags, but this year I found some pretty tins at Walmart.

Christmas Cookie Tins INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 pk Butterscotch Flavor Instant Pudding Filling
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS

BEAT butter, sugar, dry pudding mix and egg in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Combine remaining ingredients. Gradually add to the pudding mixture, beating until well blended. Refrigerate 1 hour or until dough is firm.

ROLL out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 1/4 inch thickness. Use a 4 inch gingerbread man cookie cutter (or any cookie cutters – I have a Christmas tree and star) to cut out the dough. Place cutouts on a greased baking sheet.

BAKE at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove from the sheets. Cool on wire racks. Decorate as desired.

I have a NOTE about the baking time. My oven tends to cook faster, so I only cooked my cookies from 8-10 minutes. When baking I have learned you have to know your oven. Also, when you are baking batch after batch, at timer helps a lot!!!

Dutch Apple Pie

I normally just bake cookies, but I decided to try cooking pies this year as well. I dug up a recipe I found a few years ago for Dutch Apple Pie. It was the first pie I ever tried to make. I made two one Thanksgiving and everyone loved it. I buy the ready made crust from the store so this recipe involves the pie filling and topping.

Dutch Apple Pie INGREDIENTS FOR PIE FILLING:

1/2 cup sugar
Apples, to fill crust (I used red delicious, but I heard Granny Smith are the best)
Cinnamon and nutmeg, to taste

INGREDIENTS FOR TOPPING:

1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter

DIRECTIONS:
Fill unbaked crust with peeled, sliced apples. Add 1/2 cup of sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. Bake at 450 degrees F for 15 minutes. Take out of the oven.

(NOTE: Depending on your oven, mine seems to cook fast, I used 425 degrees on my second set of pies so the pie crust edging would not brown too fast.)

For the topping, cut the butter into the flour and sugar. Spoon the topping over the partially baked pie. Bake at 350 degrees F for an additional 45 minutes or until bubbly.

Enjoy… I’m enjoying this baking!

How Do Alligators Praise the Lord

How Do Alligators Praise the Lord Tomorrow I’m going to head out to the stores to complete my Christmas shopping. I’m mainly doing shopping for children, but I’m not looking forward to the toy sections. I do love looking at toys. They seem to get more sophisticated each year. There is always one or two that I run across that make me think, "Wow, I wish that was around when I was little." Instead of admiring the toys, I think I’m going to the book store. One thing my mom and aunts instilled in me was a love for books. I want to pass that appreciation on to the little ones on my list.

Silly Seasonal Synonym Songs

My cousin sent this to me. See if you can guess these common Christmas songs & carols from silly synonym sentences. I like puzzles, but I’m not very good with riddles.

Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.
Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.
Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.
Nocturnal time-span of unbroken quietness.
An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestrial sphere.
Embellish the interior passageways.
Diminutive masculine master of skin covered percussion cylinders.
Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals.
Expectation of arrival to populated area by mythical masculine perennial gift-giver.
The first-person nominative plural of a triumvirate of Far Eastern heads of State.
Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted metallic, resonant cups.
In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children’s slumber furniture.