Muffin Tops: An Ode to US States With Official State Muffins

Now, it's true that CakeSpy has gone on the record as saying that muffins are just ugly cupcakes. But the fact is, when it comes to official state treats, more states (3) have declared an official state muffin than have declared an official state cupcake (0, to the best of my research, although some have official state cookies and/or cakes).

And with that in mind, why don't we take a moment to celebrate this trinity of muffin royalty in the US? Here they are:

Massachusetts: Corn Muffin. Though Rhode Island is famous for its corn cakes (Jonnycakes), it's Massachusetts that has made much ado about the muffin. Per FoodTimeline.org, "The schoolchildren of Massachusetts petitioned for the CORN MUFFIN, a staple of New England cooking, and the Legislature made it official in 1986."

Minnesota: Blueberry Muffin. That two-timing blueberry makes an appearance in official state goodies in both Minnesota and in Maine, where they call Blueberry Pie their official state dessert (although some argue it should be the Whoopie Pie). As I learned here, "Minnesota designated the blueberry muffin as the official state muffin in 1988. Wild blueberries are native to northeastern Minnesota, growing in bogs, on hillsides, and in cut-over forested areas."

New York: Apple Muffin. That's right! One might think the apple muffin would be the official state muffin of Washington, but one would be incorrect. While the apple is the official state fruit of both Washington and New York, it was the latter that claimed the muffin as well, made official in 1987: "The apple muffin was adopted as the official State muffin of New York in 1987 through efforts of students throughout New York State." That is to say, get on the ball, schoolchildren of Washington! But make it apple cake, OK? Ok. Cool.

For more official state foods, visit foodtimeline.org.

Pie Slam Profiles: Pake Recipe and Story by Alexander

CakeSpy Note: This is part of a series of Pie Slam Profiles, featuring the recipes and stories of each of the 9 entrants in last week's Pi(e) Day Pie Slam! This entry came from Alexander, who made the ultimate dessert: a Pake (a pie baked into a cake!). Here's his story:

 Though we all know of Thomas Cake, know the holiday and have seen the statues of him, most do not know his humble beginnings.

As a young cupcake Thomas attended a mostly pie school. The tartlets would all surround him, throw pits at him, mock his egg content, pull at his ruffled cupcake clothes and call him nothing without frosting.

Thomas hoped to find a friend in the also maligned Concord grape tartlet but Concord’s cruelty ran deepest of them all. He’d shove Thomas into the wet dirt, calling him a mud pie.

The adult pies would look the other way, saying things like “Tartlets will be tartlets,” and “that little cupcake just needs a thicker crust.”

As Thomas grew older, almost a full sized cake, he began stuffing himself with cherries to try and fit in with the pies. But his cake brethren despised those of their kind who filled themselves with fruit, for nothing was more reviled than a fruit cake. Once, his father caught him hiding cherries and shouted, “You are not my son! I didn’t raise a black forest cake! I raised a good, simple chocolate cake!”

 But the political winds were changing: At a national level, the cakes formed an alliance with the also oppressed crumbles, a sizable minority that usually sided with the pies, but were sick of playing second fiddle to them. In a violent coup, cakes and crumbles overthrew the ruling pie majority and secured power through brute force. The now ruling Cake Party banned pies from appearing at Thanksgiving and the pumpkin pies wept.

At first, Thomas reveled in the power of his new social status. He need only threaten to report his pie classmates to the ruling party and he would get whatever he wanted.

But one day, Thomas saw Concord pie by a big mud puddle. As Thomas lifted Concord by the scruff of his tin, intending to make Concord eat humble pie, the Apple pies guffawed in anticipation, their cruel laughter reminding Thomas of his position only weeks before. Instead he gently lowered Concord to dry land and asked, “Can’t we all just get along?”

From then on, Thomas became an advocate for downtrodden desserts. Pie, cake, brownies, cookies clafouti and even donuts soon marched to his rallying cry of dessert equality. Even the soufflés rose to the occasion.

 The King Cake feared Thomas’ 350 degree rhetoric. One day, Thomas simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Rumor had it, the King Cake had personally stabbed Thomas in the back with a cake server, but most believe he was simply dumped in a compost pile and left to rot.

But, Thomas’s ideas live on! The next time you think of ordering a cake for a birthday or consider entering a pie into a fair, remember Thomas’s teachings! Consider instead, a panna cotta or maybe even a Pavlova. Don’t be slave to your sweet preconceptions! Remember, our enemies are not the pies or the cakes but the soups, the salads, the main course, the Atkin’s Diet! Sweet solidarity!

Chocolate and Cherry Pake

Crust:

• Make a "sturdy" pie crust. I usually follow Ken Haedrich's food processor recipe from his book "Pie."
• 2 3/4 cups all purpose, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 sticks cold butter, 1/2 cup cold water. Follow standard crust directions, but mix two egg yolks into the cold water to make the crust sturdier.

Pie Filling:

• 1-1/2 lb. Bing cherries, pitted (4-1/2 cups)
• 1 cup  sugar
• 1/4 cup MINUTE Tapioca
• 1 Tbsp.  lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract

1. Mix fillings and let sit for 15 minutes, Fill crusts and bake at 400 for 45-50 minutes.

Cake Batter:

1. Make a basic chocolate cake batter. I usually use something similar to this (a decently sturdy cake, not the total fall apart cake on the back of Hershey's Cocoa Powder box (a surprisingly good recipe):
2. Prepare two cake pans. Pour just enough batter to cover the bottom of one pan, then place the cherry pie into it. Drop the pan on the counter to remove air bubbles and to settle the pie in the batter. Just barely cover the exposed top of the pie with batter. Pour the remaining batter into the other pan.
3. Bake. The cake pan with the pie will take much longer as the pie is absorbing most of the heat (especially if the pie has already cooled.) Remove the normal pan when it's done, remove the pie/cake pan when it's slightly underdone. Let both cool, then cut the normal cake layer into two or three layers (depending on the thickness.)

Frosting:

• Make a buttercream  (1/2 cup butter, 3 1/2 confectioner's, 1 pinch salt, 1 teaspoon coffee or espresso.)

To assemble:

1. Place the cake enclosed pie as the bottom layer. Frost with butter cream. Place a normal cake layer on top of it. Frost and sprinkle with cherries and cherry kirschwasser. Do the same for the remaining layers, but do not frost and cherry the final layer.
2. Cover the entire pake with stabilized whipped cream and decorate with chocolate shavings. Refrigerate so the whipped cream doesn't go bad.

Pie Slam Profiles: Blueberry Pie by Wendy Johnson

CakeSpy Note: This is part of a series of Pie Slam Profiles, featuring the recipes and stories of each of the 9 entrants in last week's Pi(e) Day Pie Slam! This entry is for Blueberry pie, by Wendy Johnson. Here's her story, followed by her recipe.

Pie : a (true) love story

Did Grandma Radi make pies?  I asked.

No, that’s the one thing she couldn’t cook.  They came out tough.

And Grandma Johnson?

No, she couldn’t really cook anything.

Well, how did you start making pie?

I just taught myself, the first pie I made was when we were first married, maybe just a week. That was the best pie I ever made, I could never get them to turn out as good.

What kind was it?

Lemon meringue.

Mom was red-eyed, staring out the passenger window as we drove through the stultifying Texas landscape of oil wells, pawn shops and used car dealerships.

She would silently work a crossword for awhile, or concentrate on her knitting, and then suddenly start in about how they met, about the awful yellow sweater he was wearing when his friends came up to her friends after a Sweet Home High School Basketball game.

Or about how he courted her in his father’s 1960 dark blue Buick LeSabre convertible with the white ragtop. Ray Charles would’ve been singing “I can’t stop loving you.” They’d put the top down, blast the heat and cruise around Buffalo, New York in the chilly spring of 1962.

As we neared Birmingham Alabama, she told me without malice of how dad’s parents had offered him money to prevent the marriage of their son to the daughter of Italian immigrants. Of how my Grandmother, on her death bed, had said to my mom, “I was pretty hard on you wasn’t I? I’m sorry for that.”

The Lemon Meringue was the first tradition that they alone owned. Not from his family or hers. My mother created pie for my father. Over the years they shared, almost 50, she honed her skill, her deft first generation hands turning flour and butter and fruit and sugar into expertly sculpted deliciousness, perfectly balanced between sweet and tart, between lightness and substance.

And what about the last pie, do you remember what it was?

It must’ve been blueberry. Your father loved blueberry.

Here's the recipe:

Blueberry Pie

For the Butter Pastry:

• 2 cups all purpose unbleached white flour
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cups unsalted butter (or 2/3 cup butter and 1/3 cup leaf lard.) 
• 1/3 cup cold water (may add 1-2 tsp cider or white vinegar.) 

For the Filling:

• 3 cups Blueberries and 3 cups Wild Blueberries 
• ½-1 cup light brown sugar (or to taste)
• 1-2 tablespoons cornstarch
• The juice of one fresh-squeezed lemon
• Nutmeg (1/4 tsp), Cinnamon (2 tsp), Cardamom (1/4 tsp), Ground cloves (1/4 tsp) and ground ginger (1 tsp.) (add spices to taste)

 Procedure 

1. Put everything in the refrigerator for an hour or so before making the pastry (the mixing bowl, the water, the lard, the butter).  Preheat the oven to 350.  Combine the flour, salt, and butter in a large mixing bowl and work with a pastry cutter until the butter chunks are the size of peas. You should still be able to see small pieces of butter. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl and use your hands to flatten some of the bits of fat into flakey pieces. Add the water all at once and gather the jumble together without really stirring or kneading, just until the mixture comes together to form a shaggy mass. Without handling the dough any more than necessary, divide in half and press each half into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate it while preparing the berries.
2. Wash fresh berries, or use frozen.  Put all berries in bowl and toss with sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and spices.  Add more sugar or spices to taste, but be careful not to over sweeten.
3. On a well-floured surface, roll out one disk of the pastry into a 12-inch circle onto floured parchment paper.  Lift the parchment paper and place dough-side down into a buttered 10-inch pie pan. Press the pastry into place and pour in the berry mix. Roll the second disk of dough into a 12-inch circle and plant it squarely on top of the filling. Crimp the edges together to create a seal, then trim off an excess dough. Pierce the top crust with a fork or knife to vent juices. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the filling is boiling out of the crust a bit, about 1 hour. Cool thoroughly on a rack before slicing.

(Pastry recipe adapted from: Greg Atkinson, Copyright 2007)

Pie Slam Profiles: A Post-Pie Slam Story from Sarah Spiller

CakeSpy Note: This is part of a series of Pie Slam Profiles, featuring the recipes and stories of each of the 9 entrants in last week's Pi(e) Day Pie Slam! This follow-up entry comes from Sarah Spiller, a Seattle University Student and dorm baking expert, who writes about the humbling experience of her first pie-baking experiment and how she brought it all back home with a second pie.

A Piece of Humble Pie (a follow-up to Sarah's official Pie Slam entry)

Like my gnocchi dinner party disaster of December ’10, my entry to the Pie Slam last week can only be described as an epic fail. While I thoroughly enjoyed the company and stories of the other entrants, I could not help but be haunted the entire night by my personal pie fail. What started as a pumpkin cream pie somehow melted into what can only be called pumpkin soup during the journey from my dorm room to the judging table. I could blame it on my weak dorm fridge or the hot lights of the CakeSpy gallery, but ultimately the pumpkin soup can only be blamed on myself.

Not one to wallow in my baking failures (since mistakes – both massive and minor – are inevitable in a baker’s career), I set my sights on redeeming myself. Not for anyone else, not even for the pie gods, but to prove to myself that I could again master the pie – that I would not fall victim to its pastry challenges.

Spring break has been the perfect opportunity to get my pie redemption. Living in a house of hungry college friends on Whidbey Island, and finally blessed with a beautiful, fully equipped kitchen, baking was my first priority. I whipped out the lime green Kitchenaid mixer within hours of arriving and got to work on a classic apple pie recipe from Martha Stewart.

Just my luck, the pie that was not for judging or consumption by well known bakers of Seattle, turned out beautifully. Warm, aromatic, and simply stunning in the late afternoon light, it was the pie of my dreams. However, like all my pies, it was not picture perfect. My lattice crust had some gaps, and rolling out the dough was certainly a challenge. But after slicing and serving with vanilla ice cream, I didn’t hear a single complaint from my friends. No one minded that my crust wasn’t as perfect as Martha’s, or that I didn’t have any lemon juice to add to the apples. All they cared about was the taste and the effort that went into the pie.  

Many people consider pie to be an unattainable holy grail of baking – too many challenges and chances for failure. But really, any pie that tastes delicious and makes people happy is no failure at all.

To find the recipe for the pie featured in this post, visit Martha Stewart's site!

Pie Slam Profiles: Pumpkin Pie in a Gingersnap Crust by Sarah Spiller

Note: This is not Sarah's pie, but it gives you an idea.CakeSpy Note: This is part of a series of Pie Slam Profiles, featuring the recipes and stories of each of the 9 entrants in last week's Pi(e) Day Pie Slam! This entry came from Sarah Spiller, a Seattle University Student and dorm baking expert. Sarah was disappointed with the end result as the pie was soft when served-- but when put into cups for individual servings, it was very delicious, and nobody complained one bit.

Here's her story:

My Grandma Brennan was a no frills baker. An amazing baker, but a no frills baker. Snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin, molasses, and gingersnap cookies were right up her alley. Classic birthday cakes and summer fruit pies were always top notch. She was a master at canning, piecrusts, and putting hot, wholesome meals on the table. Dessert was always present, even when it was just a dish of Tillamook ice cream (Brown Cow was her favorite, and mine too). I picked up a lot of things from my grandma, namely my love for green beans that have been cooked into soft submission, probably a result of many days spent with my grandma as an infant.

I also seemed to inherit her love for baking and even greater love for pumpkin pie. Never ever a picky kid, I picked up on the greatness of pumpkin pie at a very early age. Around kindergarten, when the buildup before Thanksgiving was big – full of hand turkey crafts and talking about being thankful – all I could think about was pumpkin pie. I WAS OBSESSED. When the day finally came, all I could do was wait – wait those torturous hours before I would receive my beautiful, luscious, perfectly spiced piece of creamy pie.

When it FINALLY came time to slice the pie, my grandma sliced and handed to me what may have been the BIGGEST piece of pie I had ever seen in my six years of life. My eyes lit up with excitement, thrill, and disbelief that this huge amazing piece could possibly be for me! But I didn’t dare say a word and quietly started back to my seat at the kids’ table. Suddenly, my grandma looked up and realized what a large piece she had given me by accident and said, “Oh that’s far too big for Sarah,” and took it back. My eager grin turned to sheer disappointment in the blink of an eye. My parents were watching the whole thing and trying very hard not to burst out laughing. Grandma cut my piece in half and gave it back, still a fairly large portion for a little girl. It was delicious in all ways possible, of course, but I was still hankering for more.

That other half slice haunted me the rest of the evening. Being a very observant mother, my mom picked up on this and offered me a solution = pie for breakfast, possibly some of the greatest words to come out of her mouth. I was unsure if my mom would follow through, but the next morning when I asked for pie for breakfast, I was greeted with a beautiful piece of pie, even better the next day. This blossomed into a family tradition that I am always happy to participate in each year.  

Things haven’t really changed at all. I’m still obsessed with pumpkin pie and Thanksgiving, waiting for weeks in anticipation for the big meal. This being my first year away from home, I made several phone calls to my mom before my trip home, making sure EVERYTHING would be exactly the same. I told her all menu changes must go through me – the president of the Thanksgiving Board of Trustees. While my grandma now has Alzheimer’s and no longer bakes the pies, she can still remember this story and chuckles at it every year – jokingly reaching for my plate. Now the baking responsibilities are in my hands – but so is the serving knife, guaranteeing a very big slice for me, both after dinner and for breakfast.

Here's the recipe:

Recipe for Pumpkin Pie (Adapted from Joy the Baker)

For the Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups finely crushed graham crackers or crisp ginger snap cookies
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

Procedure

1. In a medium bowl, combine crushed graham crackers or ginger snaps with sugar, salt and melted butter.  Toss together to coat the entire mixture in butter.  Press into a 9-inch baking dish, a tart pan with a removable bottom or 8 individual ramekins.  I like making these no bake desserts in a tart pan or in individual ramekins so I don’t have to fuss with fighting to remove the sliced pie from the pie pan.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cool completely before adding the filling.

For the Filling:

• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon molasses
• 2 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree

Procedure

1. Beat cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric stand mixer until smooth and creamy.  Both fats should be well softened to ensure the filling is lump free.  Add the powdered sugar to the mixture and beat until smooth and fluffy.  Add the vanilla extract, molasses, pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin puree and beat until thoroughly combined.  If you find that your filling is lumpy, pass it through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl.  I did that.  No shame in that game.
2. Spoon the filling into the cooled pie or tart shell, or divide into individual ramekins.  Let pie chill in the fridge overnight.  This is actually important… the pie won’t be settled enough in 2 hours.  Overnight is best.

For Topping:

• Cool Whip
• 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

Procedure

1. Beat together cool whip and maple syrup until cream is in soft peaks.  Spread over the chilled pie. Slice and serve.