Holiday Breakfast Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake

Mother’s Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake, photographed by Becky Lugart-Stayner

This classic cake makes an excellent centerpiece for Christmas morning breakfast, which is when my mother always served it to our family prior to the gift-fest around the Christmas tree. She made it ahead of time and warmed it up gently in the oven, covered with foil. I do the same thing, but we go right to the Christmas tree and turn to orange juice, coffee, and this simple and wonderful cake as a breather. Country-style sausage patties, scrambled eggs, cream gravy, and biscuits follow, once every present has been opened, and all that holds us until a Christmas dinner much later in the day. I love this time of year, and I love going to my local grocery store and seeing a major section of the green metal shelves lining the baking aisle completely empty, except for a snowy dusting of flour. Clearly, people who don’t bake constantly turn to it and hooray for that! I hope this time of year pleases you, whether you decorate, bake, and watch favorite movies, or whether you travel, hibernate, or pass the time in simple ways.

Mother’s Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake

Cinnamon-Raisin Filling

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cups raisins

1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted

Coffee Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspooon vanilla extract

1 cup milk

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

Heat the oven to 350 F, and grease and flour a 13-by-9-inch pan. To make the filling, combine the light brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl, and stir with a fork to mix everything well. Combine the raisins and pecans in another bowl and toss to mix them. Place the cinnamon mixture, the nut mixture, and the melted butter by the baking pan.

To make the coffeecake batter, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, and stir with a fork to mix them together well. Stir the vanilla into the milk. In a large bowl, combine the butter and the sugar, and beat with a mixer at high speed, stopping to scrape down the bowl, until they are pale yellow and evenly mixed, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat for another 2 minutes, scraping down the bowl now and then, until the mixture is smooth and light.

Using a large spoon or a spatula, add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and stir only until the flour disappears. Add about a third of the milk and mix it in. Repeat two more times with the remaining flour and milk, stirring just enough each time to keep the batter smooth.

Spread half the batter evenly over the bottom of the prepared pan. Sprinkle half the cinnamon mixture over the batter, followed by half the melted butter. Scatter half the raisins and nuts over the batter, and then carefully spread the remaining batter over the filling, using a spatula or a spoon to smooth the surface all the way to the edges of the pan. Repeat the process, using the remaining cinnamon mixture, butter, and nut mixture to cover the cake evenly.

Bake at 350 F for 45 to 50 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, fragrant, and beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool the cake in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes on wire racks or a folded kitchen towel, and then serve in squares right from the pan. The cake is delicious hot, warm, or at room temperature.

This recipe comes from Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations (Chronicle Books 2007), by Nancie McDermott. All rights reserved.

Black Walnut Pie for October 7th

 

 

Black walnuts are having their high season throughout the South, but unlike pecans, they don't lend themselves to contented fireside evenings of cracking nuts for cakes, candies, and pies. Look for shelled black walnuts in the produce section and then stir them into this old-time dessert.

 

Though they seldom appear on standard lists and menus, black walnuts are both growing on today trees and widely available for purchase in supermarket produce sections and by mail order. Even back when they were familiar as a Southern pantry ingredient for baking and sweets, buying them shelled was common practice and shelling them for sale a good little home-based business, given the ordeal of extracting the treasure from the proverbial tough nut to crack. I remember their distinctive flavor from my childhood. I loved them in fudge or in pound cakes, and most likely encountered them only at big gatherings at  Christmastime and June family reunions, when the old-school cooks presented their fine handiwork and watched it disappear. Until I began working on Southern Pies, I had never had black walnuts in a pie. For today’s pie, I picked up a bottle of Karo syrup at the grocery store and followed the pecan pie recipe on the label, using 1 1/2 cups of black walnuts in place of the pecans. The pie came out wonderfully, and the combination of earthy black walnuts and silken chess-pie filling made for a worthy autumn dessert. Fortunately for me, it was meeting night, and since we still have apple pie in the cupboard at home, I carried most of the black walnut pie out to church, where my fellow Racial Reconciliation Ministry members pronounced it worthy indeed. Few of these brand-new fans of black walnut pie had come across these nuts before, but judging from the condition of my pie plate (almost shiny-clean, with naught but a scattering of crumbs and a wavelet or two of syrup), they would like very much to hear of them again. I can do that. My supermarket here in central North Carolina carries black walnuts in the produce section throughout the cool weather months (baking season), but if you don’t find them easily, check the major national source, Hammons of Stockton, Missouri, for mail order information. <www.black-walnuts.com>. (888) 429-6887.

Black Walnut Pie

I adapted this recipe from a pecan pie recipe currently on the label on bottles of Karo Dark Corn Syrup.

1 unbaked deep-dish 9-inch piecrust

 

1 cup dark corn syrup

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups black walnuts (about 6 ounces)

 

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Stir together the syrup, eggs, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla in a medium bowl, using a fork or a whisk to combine everything smoothly, evenly and well. Mix in the black walnuts and stir well. Pour this filling into the piecrust and bake in the center of the 350 degree F oven, until the filling is puffed up and fairly firm, with a little softeness remaining in the very center, 45 to 60 minutes. Place on a cooling rack or a folded kitchen towel and let cool for two hours.

 

Butternut Squash Pie for October 5th

Butternut Squash Pie, a worthy variation on pumpkin pie, which shouldn't be limited to Thanksgiving menus. Nor trapped on dessert menus --- we made short work of it as a latenight snack and a tasty breakfast.

Pumpkin pie has been on my A-list forever, and I’ve never understood why we relegate it to the holiday menus between November and January 1st. Delicious? Check — Simply and swiftly made? Check — Made from accessible inexpensive ingredients? Check — Popular? Check! Perhaps its automatic inclusion on menus that require turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce gets in the way of our ability to think outside the holiday box. Grocery stores, farms stands and farmers’ markets around here have been stacking up  gourds all week, and placing this year’s pumpkin supply out in full view of the Halloween crowd. The jack-o-lantern pumpkins decorating the marketplace telegraph the arrival of autumn nicely, and they serve carvers well as a canvas for scary faces. But if you’ve tried using the standard pumpkins for cooking, you know that their texture and flavor leave much to be desired, piewise. Farmers’ markets often carry old-time pumpkins, varying in color and shape from the bright orange standard, and tending to have thick, sweet flesh which is ideal from a pie-making point of view. Butternut squash makes a grand alternative to pumpkin in most any recipe calling for cooked mashed pumpkin or pumpkin puree. I love it peeled and cut into large chunks as an ingredient in Thai-style curries, and for roasting along with parsnips, carrots garlic, and onions. These days I’m finding it peeled and chunked up in the produce section, making it a quick fix for curries, for roasting, and for simmering just until tender enough to mash to a puree. From there I season it with salt and either butter or Asian sesame oil as a fall sidedish, or stir it into this fine, spiced fall pie.

Nancie’s Butternut Squash Pie

1 unbaked 9-inch piecrust

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups cooked, mashed butternut squash

3/4 cup evaporated milk or half-and-half

2 beaten eggs

1/3 cup honey, dark corn syrup, maple syrup, or molasses

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Combine the sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt in a small bowl, and stir with a fork to combine them well. Combine the butternut squash, milk or half-and-half, eggs and honey or syrup in a medium bowl. Stir all this up with a whisk, an eggbeater, or a large spoon, until everything is evenly combined. Stir in the sugar-and-spices mixture and mix it all together evenly and well. Pour this mixture into the unbaked piecrust and place it in the oven 450 degree oven on a lower rack. Bake 10 minutes, and then lower the heat to 325 degrees F. Continue baking until the filling is firm and the outer edges of the pie puff up nicely, 35 to 45 minutes. (The very center can still be a bit jiggly but overall the pie should be firm and set.) Set the pie on a cooling rack or on a folded kitchen towel to cool to room temperature.

Magic Coconut Pie for October 4th

Yes, folks, this sweet and luscious little pie makes its very own crust, right there in the pan, like magic! And it's, like, so so good...

One of two recipes in Southern Pies with no crust to keep it all together, this makes a homemade dessert within reach even when time is short and attention to detail isn’t an option. Not that every pie in the book is quick and simple; that’s just where we’re starting off Pie-a-Day Month, like the warm-up before that 5-K run I haven’t been doing the last few years. Meringue, cooked fillings, and layered grandeur will be in the mix by the time we’re in the double-digits of October, so stay with me and you’ll find Butterscotch Pie, Coconut Custard Pie, and Black Bottom Pie taking center stage, each one well worth the investment of time they need. But this here pie, named in the book as “Amazing Coconut Pie” and widely known as “Impossible Pie”, takes the cake (sorry, irresistible pun there) in terms of do-it-now cooking. If you keep a supply of shredded coconut on your pantry shelf, and stay stocked up with eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla, you will always be under an hour away from a lovely little sweet finale, one which travels well if a covered dish/potluck is in your plans. If you have an ovenproof pie pan, such as a Pyrex pie plate, that is the ideal vessel for this pie, as it allows for browning all around the pie, and makes it easy for you to see how things are coming along even on the bottom and sides. If you don’t have one, and you love baking pies (or think you might — having the tools you need can help pie-baking-love blossom), consider adding one to your kitchenware supply. I have a sturdy and beautiful blue ceramic pie plate, an ovenproof glass pie plate, several sturdy dark-metal pie pans, and a teetering stack of aluminum pie pans, all of which you will see as Pie Month unfolds in this October of 2010. Expect this pie to puff up as it nears baked-status, from the outer edges into the middle, and then fret not when that handsome grandness disappears with nary a sigh of farewell. It’s the nature of custard pies, and it’s one of your clues that things are progressing as they should and that doneness is near and to be monitored more closely from then on. But the state of almost every pie (every one I can think of, but I could be missing some so I shall qualify) is to be flat and sensible and plain, excepting of course those lovelies whose lot it is to carry crowns of meringue or whipped cream, and as I said, we’ll get to that. But for today, it’s sweet and crunchy coconut in plush custard, easily and speedily made; and as for those of us here in Pie Month Headquarters, what with the milk and eggs taking center stage, those last 2 slices on the kitchen counter could make a special occasion cereal-free breakfast, just for today.

Nancie’s Magic Coconut Pie

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

1/2 cup butter, melted

3 eggs, beaten well

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups shredded and sweetened coconut

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch pie pan (a deep-dish pie pan is ideal), with butter, vegetable oil, or shortening. Combine the sugar and flour in a medium bowl, and stir them together well, using a fork or a whisk. Add the milk, melted butter, beaten eggs, and vanilla, and stir to mix everything together well. Add the sweetened coconut, and stir until all the ingredients are evenly combined. Pour the coconut pie filling into the prepared pie pan and set it on the bottom rack of your 350 degree oven. Bake until the pie is golden brown, puffed up, and firm throughout, (the center may jiggle just a bit); this should take between 35 and 45 minutes. Set the pie on a cooling rack, or on a folded kitchen towel, and let it cool to room temperature.

Egg Custard Pie for October 3rd

A whisper of nutmeg delivers visual and edible pleasure to this quintessentially homespun Southern pie

First pie I ever made, and it still delights me in every way. Scalding the milk is a technique seldom used in today’s recipe instructions; it’s gone the way of sifting flour and testing cake layers for doneness with a toothpick or a spear of broomstraw. It was part of basic cooking and baking when I took up the art and craft as a 10-year-old child, and I simply read what to do and did it. Years later, fresh out of an excellent food-writing course at UCLA’s extension division in the late 1980′s, I got to wondering about why recipes like egg custard pie traditionally called for scalding the milk before stirring it up with the eggs and sugar. As a new member of IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals), I had access to a massive directory listing contact information for food writers, cooking teachers, and many others whose daily work centered around the kitchen and the table, and I spent at least a day wondering and fretting about whether I really could do what the organization said we could do — call up a fellow member, even a well-known highly accomplished one, and ask a question out of the blue. A longtime fan of Marion Cunningham’s writing, both in the San Francisco Chronicle and in her books, including the Fannie Farmer Cookbooks and the recently published “The Breakfast Book”, I decided that she was person who could best address my question. To my astonishment, delight, and shock, she picked up the phone and took my call with graciousness and warmth. To my further astonishment, she entertained my question with respect and honesty, sharing my interest and then conveying the amazing fact that she didn’t know the answer either. That’s all I remember from the conversation, and to this day, I still don’t know the answer. What I learned from her was something much more important to me as a writer, cook, and teacher than the why and wherefores of scalding milk: I learned that she was who she was and where she was, not because she knew everything there was to know about food, but because she knew a lot, and was deeply curious and forever on the road to learning more and sharing the explorations and discoveries she made with students and colleagues all along the way.

Egg Custard Pie

1 nine-inch unbaked piecrust

1 1/4 cups milk

4 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Heat the oven to 425 degrees F. Heat the milk in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until it steams. (Look for tiny bubbles forming on the edge of the pan, and steam rising from the ceter.) Remove from heat before it comes to a boil. Set aside. In a mediium bowl, beat the eggs well Stir in the sugar, vanilla, and salt, and stir well to dissolve the sugar and combine everything well.

Slowly pour in the milk, stirring with a whisk or a big wooden spoon. Pour the custard filling into the piecrust and sprinkle the nutmeg over the surface of the pie.

Place on the bottom rack of the degree oven and bake at 425 degrees F for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F, and continue baking until the custard filling is puffed up a bit and mostly firm, but still wiggly in the center, 20 to 30 minutes. Place pie on a cooling rack or on a folded kitchen towel, and let cool to room temperature.

From Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan by Nancie McDermott (Chronicle Books, October 2010)

Brown Sugar Pie for October 2nd

This pie looks like it could be chocolate or molasses, but the flavor is pure caramel-heaven

Simplicity itself, this pie is an old-timer. I suspect it’s the great-aunt of the modern darling, pecan pie, though I thus far I have no documentation to support this guess of mine. You start this particular pie off in a 450 degree oven for a five-minute heat-blas; then ease it down to 350 and let it bake slowly to plush perfection. Located in Southern Pies‘ old-school chapter, “A Chess Pie Compendium”, Brown Sugar Pie follows the chess-pie theme of basic but luscious desserts, made from everyday home-kitchen ingredients. While the recipes in Southern Pies range in difficulty levels from simple to elaborate, this particular pie is just about as straightforward and speedy as any in the book. Brown sugar, eggs, softened butter, and vanilla, are stirred into a thick, silky brown mixture, and baked off in the time it takes to clean up the dishes, put away the brown sugar and vanilla, and read today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac — this may be the very dessert that called forth the term, “Easy as pie!”

Nancie’s Daily Pie for October 2, 2010

Brown Sugar Pie

Unbaked piecrust for one 9-inch pie

1/2 cup butter, softened (one stick/4 ounces)

2 cups packed brown sugar, light or dark or a combination

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. In a medium bowl, beat the butter with a whisk or a big wooden spoon, until it is soft and creamy. (I used my hand-held mixer, since the butter was very recently sprung from the fridge, and I wanted maximum help in combining all ingredients into a smooth filling).

Add the brown sugar and beat well, scraping the bowl often, until soft and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating very well after each addition. Add the vanilla, beat to mix everything well, and then pour all the filling into the ubaked piecrust, and smooth out the top.

Place the pie on the bottom shelf of the 450 degree oven and bake for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and continue baking until the edges puff up, and the center is fairly firm when you gently shake the pan, 20 to 25 minutes. (The puffing-up is a phase — enjoy it, but don’t expect it to endure through eating time — chess pie’s job is to expand and then settle back down into a satisfying un-puffed up pie.) If the crust and pie are nicely browned and the pie needs a little more time for the filling to set, cover it loosely with a generous piece of aluminum foil to prevent further browning.

Set the pie on a cooling rack, or on a folded kitchen towel and let it cool to room temperature.

From Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan by Nancie McDermott (Chronicle Books, October 2010)

Buttermilk Pie for October 1st

Buttermilk Pie is just an egg custard pie with attitude...

The calendar may say 10/3, but for me it’s catch-up day. I’m running a tad behind on my make-a-pie-a-day plan for October, so I’m taking this Sunday to get the first three pies baked and posted. Starting tomorrow 10/4, I’ll continue in proper daily-made fashion. First up is Buttermilk Pie, an old-timer which was surely edged over to the sidelines by the move away from d.i.y.-dairying during the second half of the twentieth century. My maternal grandparents’ dairy farm in Piedmont North Carolina supplied them with raw milk and magnificently rich sweet cream, which they turned into pastuerized milk, butter, and its byproduct, buttermilk. My grandfather’s routine afternoon snack was a tall glass filled with chunks of crumbled-up cornbread left over from Grandmother’s enormous farmhouse lunch (known then as ‘dinner’ but that’s another story), and filled to the brim with cold buttermilk. He used a long-handled spoon to mix the treat to his liking, and then savored it standing at the kitchen window, gazing out past the pecan tree into the farmyard. Grandaddy didn’t have much use for sweets, and I never have come far beyond my childhood sense of awe and alarm that someone I loved could devour something I found so sour and strange with such contentment and pleasure. Buttermilk Pie puts it together for me — the dense, refreshing quality that I imagine Grandaddy found in his glass of cornbread baptized in buttermilk, and the sweet-sour creamy goodness of a classic pie that is earning back its place on the favorite-pies table.

Recipe for Nancie’s Buttermilk Pie

October 1, 2010

This pie is so simply stirred into being that the hardest part may be finding buttermilk. It’s widely available in supermarkets, and makes a delicious alternative to milk in all kinds of baking, particularly cornbread, biscuits, and pancakes.

1 unbaked 9-inch piecrust

2/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 425 degrees F. Combine sugar and flour in a medium bowl, and mix them well using a fork or a whisk.

In another medium bowl, beat the eggs well with a fork or a whisk. Add the buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla, and stir to mix everything together well. Add the sugar-flour mixture and stir well until everything is combined into a smooth mixture. Pour this filling into the piecrust, and bake in the 425 degree F oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 degrees F, and then baked until the pie’s edges puff up, and until the pie is almost firm, with just a little wiggling at the center when you shake the pan gently; about 25 to 30 minutes. Set the pie on a cooling rack, or onto a folded kitchen towel and let it cool to room temperature.

Makes  1 9-inch pie

(Adapted from Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan, Chronicle Books October 2010)

“Southern Pies”, now out of the oven and onto the bookshelves and countertops!

"Southern Pies" cover --- an invitation to feast your eyes and head for the kitchen

Though I’ve had my author copy for a month, and the Chronicle Books warehouse has been shipping out advance orders for a couple of weeks, today is the official start of publicity month for my latest book, “Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes, from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan”. I haven’t gotten over it yet, not even close — still picking it up, flipping through, stopping to read something here, or gaze at a photograph there, happily and proudly distracted. The words and recipes come from my hands and brain, but the images and design come from artists who make magic, who take my creation and render it into something visual, tangible, and inviting, something that catches the eye of bookstore patrons and bookclub members and online browers and says “Hey! Notice me!” in a most delicious way. My gratitude to master photographer Leigh Beisch and her team and to designer Anne Donnard of Chronicle Books is bountiful and rich, like meringue piled high on a lemon meringue pie. To celebrate the publication of “Southern Pies”, I’m planning to make a pie everyday this month, and put it out on the virtual windowsill right here in my blog for you to share, visually at least. Some pies will be from this book, and some will be from friends, from vintage cookbooks, maybe even from vendors at the farmers’ market who have some autumn fruit to share. From today, October 1 until October 31, it’s pie season here in Piedmont North Carolina, so let me know what pies you love, and what pies you’d like to see. They don’t even have to be Southern — they just have to be pies that please and delight you in some way. Here we go…!