Work-day-five creation: Mini apple pies

As many of you know, a couple of months ago I started baking for BK's group at work. Specifically, they have their long day of the month on workday four, so on the fifth day I take them some kind of sweet treat to enjoy in the afternoon.

Sometimes there are requests, but most of the time I pick a random recipe that I've seen and want to try. This may be wrong of me, but I typically try to make a really "American" dessert. I figure they can get all the Swiss sweets they want here, I like to try and take something that they may not have had before, or on a regular basis.

This month I took Mini Apple Pies in honor of Thanksgiving. I figure pie is a pretty standard Thanksgiving dessert. As a disclaimer, this recipe was much more labor intensive than I anticipated. I'm not really sure why, but it seemed like I had to stand in the kitchen much longer than normal. For once, I also remembered to take pictures along the way.

The kitchen before I destroyed it; yes, this is all the workspace I have.

One thing that made this one take a little longer than normal was that I chose to make pie crust, as opposed to buy one at the store. Pie is not something that I make a lot of, but pie crust is surprisingly easy to make. I also didn't go the store-bought route because I wasn't exactly sure what I would be buying, meaning I wasn't sure if it would turn out like the pie crust I'm used to. As an FYI, most pie crust calls for shortening. You can just use butter in it's place and it works great. I couldn't find shortening in the store.

Chilled pie crusts, before being rolled out

When I initially decided I wanted to make this recipe, I thought I would go really big and make a few pies in various flavors such as apple, cherry, pecan, etc. But then reality hit and I realized apples were pretty much the only thing in season here, and therefore the only thing I could find in the store. No blueberries, strawberries, or other fruits and I don't even think we have pecans here. I bought canned cherries, but it wasn't the same as pie filling in the US and I had no clue what to do with them, so apple it was.

Granny Smith apples pre-peeling and cutting

The apple mixture is easy to mix after you get through the peeling and cutting of however many apples it takes. One piece of advice on this though, don't mix your apple mixture up and then go do other stuff (walk dogs) and come back to assemble. When I came back to mine lots of liquid had come out of the apples and I had a soupy mixture at the bottom of the bowl. No real harm done, I just poured it off and used the apples anyway, but not sure how it would have turned out differently otherwise.

Apples, flour, cinnamon, sugar, salt and nutmeg

You roll your pie crust out, then cut them into circles that fit into a muffin tin. This wasn't hard, I just needed more dough than I anticipated. My dough recipe said that I eventually used enough dough for four pies (I made 24 mini pies). Maybe I didn't roll it thin enough or something.

Then you fill your cups up with apple mixture, make whatever dough design you want on the top of your mini pie, bake for 20ish minutes and you're done. And yes, it took me a while to lace those pie crusts on the top, but I like the way it looked.

The finished product

I had a little bit of extra dough leftover, and since I made it myself I couldn't bring myself to just throw it away. I decided I would make myself a little sweet treat, so I cut up the dough, brushed it with melted butter then topped it with cinnamon sugar and baked. They turned out well, and I figure they'll be a tasty compliment to pretty much anything.

I took the pies up to BK's office at lunch, and I'm sure they're pretty much gone by now. They went over well and hopefully people enjoyed some dessert after their lunch break.

I told BK I would make something next month for his birthday, to which he immediately said, "I get to choose." Fine with me, but his selection was a hot fudge sundae. Not quite sure how that's going to work, but hopefully I can convince him to do a cake or cupcakes or something resembles a hot fudge sundae.

We'll see, but just know that whatever happens next month, he picked it.

Halfway there!

Today I had a couple of different blogs rolling around in my head, but then I got caught up in walking the dogs, the grocery store, baking a new creation for work-day-five tomorrow (more on that tomorrow) and other random stuff that I needed to do today. This seems to have left me a little tired at the end of the day, and in an effort to always try and bring you something witty, funny, possibly a little informative and entertaining, I feel that I need more brainpower than I have right this second. I'll save those other posts for a later date.

Really, the big thing that happened today was that we reached our halfway point with the Lentil! Obviously we still have a long way to go, but it's kind of exciting that we'll officially be in the second half of pregnancy after today!

For those of you wondering, yes we are going to find out the gender. Last time we went to the doctor the baby was turned in toward me so that all we could see was the spine in the ultrasound. I have nothing to compare it to in the US, but here in Switzerland we have an ultrasound every time we see the doctor, so we will try again when we see her right before we come back to the US for Thanksgiving.

One of Brian's sisters thinks its a boy, my sisters think its a girl, other friends have various thoughts on the gender. People often ask if I have a "gut feeling" about what it is. I don't have a clue. I just want the kid to move a little so I can feel something. I'm sure it will happen soon enough!

A frustrating journey

Tonight was a night that tested my patience and was extremely frustrating. I was supposed to go on my first hospital tour, but it was pretty much a complete fail thanks to delayed trams and buses.

One of the many downsides of not speaking great German yet is that I don't watch or read much news regarding what's happening here in Basel. Tonight I missed the fact that there was an FC Basel football game. Combined with that, I also didn't realize that the hospital I was going to is really close to the stadium, meaning that it would be a madhouse tonight.

I knew that it would take me 35 to 40 minutes to get from our apartment to the hospital, which included all walk time and changes I needed to make. I also planned my route so that I should have arrived with 10 minutes to spare, just in case I got lost or something. Little did I know, the trams would be late and the bus would not be running from the stop that I needed to take it from. I finally got to the bus stop about 15 minutes late, only to find out that the bus wasn't running and my other option was to walk another 15 minutes in the dark to a neighborhood I am not familiar with. Grrr…

I will say, I'm kind of just using this hospital as a comparison to the one that I actually think we're going to use. The one tonight is a private hospital and is supposed to be really nice; I'm thinking maybe more one-on-one attention, more continuity of staff, more comfortable for BK to stay. I say this is a comparison because it's more than 30 minutes from our apartment, with numerous changes on public transportation. On the other hand, the University hospital is a 10 minute walk from our apartment, or two bus stops. I guess my comparison will have to wait until next month.

When things like this happen to me, I do recognize that there are far worse things to be dealing with. I think it's frustrating for me because it just makes me feel like a moron that I can't figure out how to get somewhere on time. I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that this was the ONE appointment I had today, and really, I can't get there? Seriously?

Obviously this is not the end of the world. It just means that next month I'll have two hospital tours, and will hopefully be able to let my doctor know what our plans are at my December appointment. I'll report in on it- hopefully with more success next time.