Today, I was gchatting my mom about tradition, and we both concluded that we are anti-tradition for the sake of tradition.  I believe she said something to the exact tune of: If it’s poop, it’s poop — tradition or not!

Still, there are some culinary traditions that I’m willing to honor for the sake of deliciousness, like caramel apples every fall.  This year, Alex and I bought two bags of Kraft caramels for the task.  We were all set to start dipping when we became distracted by the leftover pie crust in the refrigerator.  Abandon tradition to incorporate soon-to-spoil leftovers in an attempt to recreate my favorite fall flavors in a new and improved dessert?  Yes, plz.

These tartlets are inspired by pimped-out caramel apples: the ones with caramel, chocolate, nuts, the works.  They taste as delicious, and stick to your teeth with the same persistence (in case you were worried about that).  They were well worth the betrayal of tradition, but no guarantees that we won’t sneak in some old-fashioned caramel apples before the season’s over.

Ingredients:
1 recipe pie crust
2 apples, peeled and sliced into the thin, 1-inch pieces
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp bourbon
½ cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
20 caramels
½ cup chocolate chips

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350.  Roll out dough and press into mini tartlet pans.  Add weight to pans by lining them with tin foil, and filling each with rice.  Bake shells for 15 minutes with the weights, and an additional 5 minutes without them.  While shells are cooking, heat butter in a pan.  Add apples, cinnamon, sugar, and bourbon and cook for 5 minutes, until apples are soft.  Remove from heat and let cool.  Once shells are cooked and ready to fill, melt caramels in the microwave by heating for 30 seconds, then stirring.  Add a tsp of caramel to the bottom of each tart, then fill with apple.  Top apples with toasted walnuts, then drizzle additional melted caramel.  Melt chocolate chips by microwaving for 30 seconds then stirring, and drizzle chocolate on top.

We’re not giving excuses (though we have some, and they’re very legit).

Instead, to make up for not posting in nearly a month, we’re sharing one of our best recipes yet.

This apple pie recipe is actually from Alex’s grandmother.  His parents keep her old recipe box, which is more like a treasure chest than a recipe box.  Or a gold mine.  Or a closet full of free new clothes…

Alex has raved about the pie for years, so we were thrilled and surprised when the recipe surfaced.  We made about 5 photocopies just to be safe, and finally got around to baking it this weekend for friends who (finally!) made it to the city for a visit.

It would be typical of me to describe this pie as wonderful and delicious, but I need to do better than that.  For this pie, I’m going with lush and delectable, savory and comforting (thank you, thesaurus.com).  Contrary to what you might expect, the cheddar transforms this into something unexpectedly unique and unforgettably good.  It was enough to get us blogging again — we hope, with regularity.

Ingredients:
1 pie crust (you actually only need half of a recipe — we used Alice Water’s, but you can use anyone’s, or even a frozen version if you must).

(filling)
4 large granny smith apples, peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp lemon zest
1/8 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt

(topping)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/2 stick butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400.  In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, zest, cloves, cinnamon and salt.  Toss apples in mixture.  In a separate bowl, combine topping ingredients, mixing the butter into the rest of the ingredients with your fingers.  Roll out pie crust dough, and place in the bottom of the pan.  Arrange apples in the pan in overlapping circles.  Pour cheddar topping over apples.  Bake for 40 minutes, or until topping and crust are golden brown.  Let cool slightly, and serve warm.

We go through stages of obsession with frozen desserts.

Back during our days (actually, nights) working the DP, we’d make regular runs to Marathon Grill for Peanut Butter and Rasberry swirled frozen yogurt.  Last year, we became addicted to coconut and dark chocolate gelato at Philadelphia’s Capogiro.  Since moving to New York, I’ve been really getting into Pinkberry, and I think I’ve finally convinced Alex that it’s not just for legging-clad tweens.  (It’s not!)

It’s actually AMAZING — tart and creamy and, oh yeah, like $5 for a small.  So we made our own.  For way less, and an even better taste.  Even though the recipe on 101 Cookbooks ensured me that this would happen, I honestly didn’t believe it could happen.  If you have an ice cream machine, you must make this.  You won’t regret it, and could even prompt a frozen confection obsession of your own.

Ingredients:
4 cups no-fat Greek yogurt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Instructions:
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate for one hour.  Freeze according to ice cream machine instructions.

This is a recipe that we did not invent.  We found it in Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food, which we purchased over the weekend.

The cookbook is amazing — I feel inspired and excited by every recipe it contains.  I want to cook something on every page.  This biscotti recipe is actually one of the first that I happened upon when thumbing through the book.  As soon as I saw it, we beelined to the nearest grocery store to find the ingredients that we needed to bake them that afternoon.

Because we’ve been so consciously trying to cook and post mostly original recipes, it was surprisingly relaxing to just step back and follow precise instructions.  No worrying that that the ratios were off, or that the ingredients would clash, and of course they turned out better than any biscotti I’ve purchased.  Not that I want to revert back to the old days, but you’re looking for a biscotti recipe that’s guaranteed to have that perfect crunch, crumbly texture, and subtly sweet flavor, here it is.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole almonds
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp lemon zest

Ingredients:
Toast almonds in oven at 350 for five minutes, then cool and coarsely chop.  In a bowl, combine flour and baking soda.  In a separate bowl, beat together eggs and sugar until the mixture forms a ribbon (you will be able to lift it out of the bowl a few inches with the beater). Gently stir in flour mixture until just incorporated and then gently fold in almonds.  On a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, form the dough into two 3-inch wide loaves.  Smooth with wet hands, then cook at 350 for 25 minutes.  Lower oven to 300, let loaves cool for 10 minutes, then cut them into 1/2-inch thick cookies.  Bake cookies on each side for 10-12 minutes until beginning to brown.

I find that when we’re cooking for friends, which is all of the time, we always make what we want.

We’ll usually inquire about dietary restrictions, but other than that, we create the meal around recipes that we feel like testing, ingredients that we love, etc. It’s not because we don’t want to take requests, because we do. It’s just that people are always like, “oh, you guys know better than I do.” Or, “you’re the ones with the food blog.” Yeah, so? Just say what you like!

It gave us great pleasure yesterday to cook for Alex’s wonderful friend from home, and not because he requested anything in particular, but because Alex knew he loved chocolate and peanut butter. It was amazing — instead of flipping through dessert recipes trying to decide between dishes as different as flan and strawberry mousse, we knew right where to go. We turned to the ultimate chocolate peanut butter combo: the peanut butter cup, via a recipe from Baking Bites.

The only problem was we didn’t have mini cupcake cups, so we had to make giant ones. This is the type of “problem” we love to encounter in the kitchen. So yes, these were huge and rich, but they were so delicious that we each managed to eat a entire cup (plus the “test” one that we all split earlier). We’d make these again in an instant, as they’re super easy to do, but look like they’ve been handcrafted by a professional confectioner. You can do mini versions if you like, but we say they’re amazing enough that the bigger, the better.

Ingredients:
3 cups dark chocolate chips
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
generous pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
14 muffin cups

Instructions:
Melt half of the dark chocolate by microwaving for 30 seconds then stirring until chocolate has melted. Use a spoon to pour a little chocolate into each muffin wrapper, and spread the chocolate up the sides of the wrapper. Freeze candy shells immediately until set. In a small bowl, whisk together peanut butter. confectioners’ sugar, salt and vanilla. If it is not soft, you can microwave it a bit. Add a generous amount of the filling into each prepared candy cup, and chill again until set. Melt all remaining chocolate and then cover peanut butter filling with chocolate, and chill a final time until set. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Oh my goodness, has it not been forever since we’ve posted?

School started — and it’s hard! We’ve been trying to keep up with cooking, but haven’t been quite organized enough to photograph and post everything that we’ve made. It’s an adjustment period, but we’re not giving up. With a little bit of practice in time management, we’ll be posting regularly again in no time.

In the meantime, here’s a variation on a delicious fruit salad that we first posted a while ago. My friend Em came up with it, reminding us of the gloriously unbeatable fruit/sugar/mint combo. It’s been a perfect dessert for us these past two weeks, since it can be done in about 5 minutes. Do this while peaches are still in season, and you’ll hardly need the sugar.

Ingredients:
12 oz Strawberries
3 peaches
1/3 cup mint
1 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
Clean and chop strawberries and peaches. Coarsely chop mint. Combine fruit, sugar and mint in a medium bowl and toss to coat. Serve chilled.