The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2016: Miso Caramel-Apple Pie

Cooking Light (November 2017)

Sometimes, a recipe can really break your heart. 

That's what happened with us and this Miso Caramel-Apple Pie. 

We were so looking forward to eating this pie. It was the first dessert we decided on for our Fakesgiving dinner. It was, we thought, an easy home run. We're miso obsessed, so throwing some miso in with apple pie? A no-brainer. 

We did as the recipe suggests and made the Miso Caramel first, days in advance. And it was incredible. It was the Miso Caramel of our dreams. Sweet and savory and the kind of sauce you want to dive face-first into. 

But then we made the pie. 

Thanksgiving 2016: Deep-Dish Pumpkin Icebox Pie

Martha Stewart Living (November 2016)

You may have noticed a conspicuous absence in our Fantasy Thanksgiving Menu that we posted last week: There was no pumpkin pie. There was no pumpkin anything.

That's not because we don't like pumpkin desserts. We do! A lot. It's just that we find it hard to get all that excited about them. With so many great dessert options -- chocolate! pecan! maple! -- it can be hard for a pumpkin pie to measure up.  

Is this Deep-Dish Pumpkin Icebox Pie up to the challenge?

Thanksgiving 2016: Chestnut Meringue Pie

Food Network Magazine (November 2016)

If there was a sleeper hit at this year's Fakesgiving dinner, it may have been this pie. 

We'd chosen it because we really liked the idea of a chestnut dessert. We've made chestnut soup a couple times, but we couldn't ever remember seeing a chestnut pie before.

We were intrigued! But once we made it, we were kind of the opposite.

We were untrigued.

Thanksgiving 2016: German Chocolate-Pecan Pie

Southern Living (November 2016)

If you're already thinking about your own Thanksgiving menu and you're starting to sweat at the thought of cooking all that food, we have some good news for you:

You can start cooking today. And you can start with pie. 

There's lots of advice about this online, but here's a shorthand guide for you when you're asking, "Can I make this pie in advance?"

• Nut pies: Make/bake the entire pie. Let it cool. Wrap it up tight. Freeze it. Move it to the fridge the night before the big meal -- revive it in the oven before serving. 

• Fruit pies: Make the crust and compile the pie. Wrap it up tight and freeze it. To bake it, you can either thaw the pie in the fridge OR put it directly from the freezer into the oven (it will take more time to bake, of course, if it's fully frozen). 

• Pie crusts: Make them and store them in the freezer, either in discs or rolled out into pie tins. 

We made 4 different pie recipes for our Fakesgiving (8 total pies). Six of them we made nearly a week ahead. Two were today's German Chocolate-Pecan Pie. Two were apple pies that we compiled and froze. The other four pies had components we could make ahead and freeze. 

The freezer is your friend when it comes to Thanksgiving planning. Know it. Embrace it. Start cooking ahead of time. 

Also your friend: This recipe for German Chocolate-Pecan Pie, which was our favorite dessert we made this Fakesgiving. 

Blueberry and Corn Crisp

Bon Appétit (July 2016)

 

A few weeks ago, we spent a long weekend on Fire Island with a big group of friends.

Fire Island is unlike anywhere else we've ever been. It's dotted with little towns packed tight with beach houses, but it's remarkably underdeveloped. There are no roads and only a handful of cars -- it's just a raised wooden boardwalk cutting through the trees. We were in the town called the Pines, but "town" is a bit of a misnomer. There's a coffee shop and a deli, and a couple places to get a drink, all clustered around the dock where the ferry gets in. But other than that, it's just houses and woods and an endless stretch of broad, sandy beach.

From a food perspective: Fire Island presents two unique challenges. First, you're likely cooking for a big group. (Our house slept 20!) And second, there's no grocery store.

How do you cook for a house full of people with no grocery store? With a lot of careful planning.

Peppermint White Chocolate Meringues

A Bitten Word recipe, adapted from Everyday Food (May/June 2003)

As we mentioned, for our Admiral Peary Party, we handmade a couple food items to mix in with the snacks we picked up at the store.

One thing we knew from the get-go was that we wanted to make some meringue cookies. They're so easy, and we knew they'd go great with our all-white spread of Polar-inspired treats.

We found a good meringue recipe from an old issue of Everyday Food (R.I.P.!), which we adapted a bit, swapping in white chocolate chips to keep with our fête en blanc theme, and adding a little peppermint to give the cookies a minty twist.

We actually doubled the recipe below, which was very easy, although we had to bake them in two separate batches because we didn't have enough oven space. We ended up making about about 60 cookies, which our guests gobbled up.

These meringues are so easy to make and incredibly tasty: chocolaty and minty and light as air, with that perfect crunchy-chewy texture you get from a classic meringue. They were a hit!

The Chocolate Cake That Cures Everything

We're sharing this chocolate cake with you today not to cure something, but to celebrate something.

This week marks the beginning of the ninth (ninth!) year of The Bitten Word.

It's our blogiversary, y'all! 

We're celebrating eight full years of The Bitten Word in two ways this week, beginning with chocolate cake. Later in the week, we'll share some reflections on the past eight years. Last year's reflections are a doozy, and this year's are shaping up to be something you won't want to miss. 

But first: cake.

When we heard a historic snowfall was on its way a couple weeks ago, we rushed to the supermarket, not for bread and milk, but for cake ingredients. If we were going to be trapped inside, we were going to be trapped inside with a massive chocolate cake. 

This "Chocolate Cake That Cures Everything" was among the recipes we most wanted to make from Ruth Reichl's My Kitchen Year. She promised that it made a massive cake.

And she wasn't kidding. 

The 11 Best Food Magazine Recipes We Ate in 2015

   

   

   

 

 

Hello, Bittens! Happy new year!

We are so excited to start cooking for 2016. But before we do, we want to take a look back at last year, and the best food magazine dishes we ate all year. Here are 11 of our favorites in chronological order. (We couldn't settle on 10, so 11 it is!)

Did you have a favorite dish of the past year? Share it in the comments!

 

1. Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts
Bon Appétit

"Even the most ardent Brussels sprouts hater will find it hard not to like this dish. [...] The Brussels sprouts are crisp and plump, with a nice crunch from the peanuts. The sweet-spicy sauce is actually borderline too sweet for us (next time we'll use less sugar), but the heat of the chili paste keeps it in balance." 

 

Holiday Cookie Challenge Day 1: Gingered Sugar Cookies

Martha Stewart Living (December 2015)

It's 10 days 'til Christmas, and everything seems a little off-kilter this year.

Instead of St. Nick, we've got Krampus. Instead of a white Christmas, we've been sweating it out here in D.C. (It hit 71 degrees on Sunday!) 

Our Christmas tree fell down. Our Christmas cards got lost on their way from the printer. Zach has a head cold. 

Nothing is working as it should!

Including, by all accounts, all three of this year's Cookie Challenge recipes...

 

Thanksgiving 2015: Butter Pecan-Toffee Pie

Food Network Magazine (November 2015)

In the final stages of Fakesgiving planning, as we were charting out our cooking that would stretch over the course of nearly a week, we started to freak out a little.

We had 24 guests coming. Would 20 dishes be enough? Would everyone be able to have a solid sample of all the dishes? Should we double a few dishes?  

And that's when we lost our minds a bit and decided to double the servings of six of the recipes. See, it's not all smooth sailing over here at Bitten Word HQ. We are constantly checking and rechecking, questioning and requestioning. 

And let's be real: Even if we hadn't doubled any of the recipes, there would have been plenty of food (the Cherry Spice Cake Trifle alone includes 20 full servings!). But still, we doubled. And doubled. And doubled.  

One of the dishes we decided to double was this Butter Pecan-Toffee Pie. And it's the one case where we're really glad that we did.