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Vernon's Desserts

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This variation of a strawberry pie is something I first concocted two or three decades ago, and I don't recall seeing anything quite like it served in restaurants, sooo... --but it is still a recipe, and so cannot survive for very long on the HalfBakery. Perhaps till after Christmas?

Things to buy, or use that you already have on hand:
1 ready-made graham cracker pie crust/shell, about 9 inches diameter
1 small package of flavored gelatin dessert (e.g. cherry or raspberry)
1 16-oz bag of frozen strawberries
1 can of ready-made whipped cream
1 egg

Start with the pie shell and the egg. The pie crust is ready to eat as-is, but can be improved slightly. Pre-heat an oven to 375 degrees (F not C), in "bake" mode. Break the egg into an appropriate bowl and stir it until you think it qualifies as "ready to cook as a scrambled egg".

Get a sauce-brush and brush the interior of the pie shell thoroughly with the egg. Put the pie crust into the oven for about 6 minutes. Remove and let cool, and turn the oven off. (For the leftover egg, add some shredded cheese, mix well, and microwave for about a minute and a half, then eat.)

Now for the gelatin dessert. Get a medium-sized pot that can hold about 1/2 gallon, and add a little more than 1 cup of water. Boil. The SMALL package of gelatin dessert probably specifies starting with 1 cup of boiling water (that's how you know you got the right size package --but, duh, I just looked at the box and it says "3 ounces/85 grams").

While the water is boiling, add the gelatin dessert and stir until completely dissolved. During this time the boiling water will be steaming away, losing some of its original volume (which is why I specify starting with a little more than 1 cup of water). When the gelatin dessert is completely dissolved, remove the pot from the heating element (and turn that off). IGNORE the rest of whatever recipe was written on the gelatin dessert package.

Open the 16-ounce bag of frozen strawberries, and add all of them to the still-very-hot water-plus-dissolved-gelatin-dessert, in the pot (which is why you want to start with a pot that can hold about 1/2 gallon). Stir thoroughly, using the stirrer to break apart any clumps of frozen-together strawberries. The strawberries will unfreeze and the liquid in the pot will cool fairly quickly. The first signs of gelling should be visible in 5 minutes of stirring, or less.

When you do see that the liquid in the pot is starting to gel, pour all of it into the pie shell. Preparing it with the egg has "sealed" the graham cracker crust from absorbing the liquid (but waiting for the gelling to start helps prevent absorption, too). Spread the mixture of strawberries and gelling liquid about, to roughly level the surface in the pie shell (it should be a near-perfect fit). Put it in the refrigerator to finish gelling. Total time to reach this point, plus time for clean-up of the tools used, should be less than 1 hour.

After the gelling process has finished, cut slices of the pie and serve with whipped cream. The crust should be nicely crunchy; the gelatin should have a fairly intense flavor (although less than you might expect, because the un-freezing strawberries will have added reasonable water content to dilute the initial 1 cup of liquid) --and the strawberries and whipped cream are almost always delicious. You could of course have used strawberry-flavored gelatin dessert, but that's just overkill on one flavor, so I recommend a different flavor of gelatin dessert, but one that is compatible with strawberries (banana, anyone?).

Happy Holiday Cooking Season! I'm sorry if any Bakers out there in Metric Land have trouble converting this recipe to other measurement units, but I've simply described things/quantities that are commonly available here in the USA, and have been, in those units, ever since I first concocted this recipe.

==============
Nov 26, 2015
Here's another dessert, a peach pie that is somewhat simpler and easier than the above strawberry pie.

You need 1 premade pie crust*
2 cans of sliced peaches
1 package of cream cheese

In American/English measurement units, the pie crust is for a 9- inch pie; the cans of peaches each weigh 29 ounces, and the package of cream cheese weighs 8 ounces. Converting those to metric means the pie crust is about 23cm in diameter, the cans are 822 grams each (I have the labels right here as I write this), and the cream-cheese package is 226 grams. You will probably find some sizes available that are not too different from those values.

The pie crust will probably come with instructions for making a 1-crust pie; follow them. Mine (pre-made and refrigerated, not pre-made and frozen) said to put it in a pie pan, poke a lot of small holes into it, and bake it for 12 minutes at 450F (about 230C).

While the crust is baking, put the cream cheese into a large-ish microwave-safe bowl, and heat it in the microwave for about a minute (softens the cheese more).

The particular canned peaches I use are packed in 100% juice; no "heavy syrup" or "light syrup". Whatever you use, open the cans enough to drain the liquid without letting the sliced peaches escape.

When the cans are drained, open them more, and put all the sliced peaches into the bowl with the warmed cream cheese. Mix them with a spoon, well enough to ensure some of the cheese is coating all the peach slices.

Pour all of that mixture into the cooled pie crust, spread it to make it roughly level, and then put the pie into the refrigerator for an hour to make the cream cheese LESS soft. It is always soft, but when chilled it is hard enough to do the one thing that is most essential for a sliced-peaches pie.

When you cut the pie, the peaches will stick together enough so that each pie-slice maintains its shape. Loose peach slices will not flow out of the sides of the cut pie slices.

*A second/upper pie crust is optional. If you do that, you probably will want to not-fully-bake the lower crust, before adding the cheese-peaches mix and putting the upper crust on top. The lower crust will finish baking as the upper crust bakes. The cheese and the peaches can handle that cooking just fine. But it should still be refrigerated before cutting/serving.

Vernon, Nov 26 2014

Another [Vernon] food Idea V-9
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Nov 26 2014]

Halfmakery Halfmakery
[rcarty, Nov 27 2014]

[link]






       Our local bakery makes this.
pocmloc, Nov 26 2014
  

       I invented garlic rice pudding. Does that count?
not_morrison_rm, Nov 26 2014
  

       But I understand this idea...so you can't be the real Vernon. No way. No way in hell. What'd you do with him...(Mrs. Vernon...I'm thinking...)
blissmiss, Nov 26 2014
  

       yum.
FlyingToaster, Nov 26 2014
  

       [blissmiss], my Ideas range all over. Some are indeed quite complex and technical; others are fairly simple, and are about things that are easily understood. I'll link one of those (see the date on it!).
Vernon, Nov 26 2014
  

       Well slap my face, Vernon. I was wrong. I love V-9. Ha.
blissmiss, Nov 26 2014
  

       [rcarty], then you were/are basically "trolling" (especially when a comment is both critical and irrelevant), and there is only one appropriate response for that.
Vernon, Nov 28 2014
  

       What happened to the ' as abbreviation mark.   

       If you press down ctrl + shift + ' then you get a capital single quote mark, WHICH WOULD HAVE FITTED IN THERE NICELY.
not_morrison_rm, Nov 28 2014
  

       There's a passage in Adorno's Minima Moralia which speaks to that point, [rcarty].
pertinax, Nov 28 2014
  

       After looking for [rcarty]'s annos, I say "huh"?
blissmiss, Nov 28 2014
  

       What is [Vernon] saying with this idea? Is the dessert the ability to delete annos, some sort of suggestion about different kinds of desserts even in the lower* analogy of homonyms? And even some sort of interpretation of the word just?   

       *lower meaning in the arbitrariness of sound such as the sound of voice, higher meaning in the content, or the object content.
rcarty, Nov 28 2014
  

       I eat candy as food for 10 years.
rcarty, Nov 28 2014
  

       Well, another holiday season is upon us, and since this Idea was not deleted, I decided to add another dessert to it. Enjoy!
Vernon, Nov 26 2015
  

       Happy T-day to all. Even if you are not in the US, take a day to be grateful. It will all come back to you in the end, you know.
blissmiss, Nov 26 2015
  

       "This is something I first concocted two or three decades ago, and I don't recall seeing anything quite like it served in restaurants, sooo... --but it is still a recipe, and so cannot survive for very long on the HalfBakery. Perhaps till after Christmas?"   

       Please insert or mention the name of the dessert here, something like "It's a recipe for strawberry pie." (The name doesn't have to be strawberry pie, of course; it can be whatever you want. I'm not a cook.)   

       Same thing further down. After "Here's another dessert, somewhat simpler and easier," please add something like "It's a [name of dessert]."
bnip, Nov 26 2015
  

       And Happy Thanksgiving, and the desserts sound great :)
bnip, Nov 26 2015
  

       My favourite dessert is one that has become a tradition in our family. It's called "Whisky Surprise", the surprise being that it's actually a bottle of brandy.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 26 2015
  
      
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