Dutch Letter Slab Pie

Another Recipe Mashup

The recipe for Apple Abstract is one of many in my recipe box that I attribute to my mom and enjoy reading in her handwriting but that has my Aunt Joyce’s name on. I love seeing my mom pay tribute to her older sister in the recipes that she has handed on to me.  I love that these same recipes – Apple Abstract, Peach Kuchen, baked beans and others are ones that my family loves and requests season after season. Mom and Joyce’s Apple Abstract is really what has become the trendy “Slab Pie” that is all over Pinterest and foodie blogs that have those beautiful pictures. Slab Pies are a take on pie that can be eaten with the hand more like a bar than a piece of pie and serves more people than your typical nine inch pie would.

I can’t look at this recipe and not remember sneaking down to the freezer as a kid just in from mowing the lawn one of the last times of the season or just off the dusty, fall school bus.  I can feel the chill of the basement and joy of grabbing a serving from one of several pans made and frozen by my mom with apples from our yard apple tree or a neighbor’s. I can also remember the irritating moment of opening the bag to discover that an empty cookie sheet had been put back in the freezer by someone who didn’t want to own eating the last piece. 

The treat was always made and encased in a large, plastic bag that carried the logo of the Pioneer, DeKalb and other seed corn companies that were given as a premium to farmer-customers alongside of the iconic paring knife that was used and abused in our knife collection. The plastic bag was big enough to fit two cookie sheets in and went to the freezer, potlucks and our fridge as the original and much reused and much older cousin to today’s two gallon Ziploc bag. It created the perfect micro-environment to raise rolls in 9x13 metal cake pans and folded over on the edge to keep other baked items from getting dried out on the counter.

As it is with every recipe in my collection, I love and cherish the recipe that has been shared with me.  I’m also not afraid to mess with it.  This past week at my job, I was asked to help around the edges of a major visit to our college.  Educators, elected officials and business owners from Saxony, Germany came to formalize an agreement with the community college I raise funds for.  The agreement allows our graduates to apply for enrollment in a baccalaureate college in Germany where they would also get international work experience and graduate from their institution with a German BA/BS. It is an amazing opportunity for our students. We were pleased to offer Iowa hospitality to the group which included several meals highlighting Iowa foods.  I was asked to make the desserts for one of the evening meals. They were estimating 80 guests could be present.

One of the requests was for cherry pies to go along with the Peach Kuchen I thought would be perfect use of the seasonal peaches at the grocery store. Working a regular day and then making 5 pies, even with canned filling wasn’t going to happen in my single oven… No matter how I managed my time – which was in short supply. I have not had the opportunity to travel outside of the United States, but everything I see on travel shows and international cooking shows highlight the quality and intricacies of European desserts and I felt the pressure to bring something over the top for them to enjoy. Then I thought of what could be done and I robbed the crust of Apple Abstract and added an adjusted Dutch Letter filling to cans of cherry pie filling. It worked!

Below are several ways to make this Slab Pie – the first is the original family recipe.  It is followed by the remixes that I made this week.  I hope that these options will allow you to enjoy serving a bunch and maybe think about how you could or have remixed a family recipe.  I love hearing about other people’s remixes and family treasured recipes. I hope that you will either share a family favorite with me or tell me how you’ve remixed a favorite in the comments.

Mom and Aunt Joyce’s Original Apple Abstract

Groceries

Dough:

                2 ½ Cups Flour

                1 Cup shortening, not quite room temperature

                ½ Teaspoon Salt

                Egg yolk with milk added to make 2/3 Cup (reserve white for glazing the crust)

Filling:

                3-4 Handfuls of Corn Flakes or Special K Cereal, lightly crushed

                8-10 Apples, cored, peeled and sliced ¼ inch or thinner

                1 Cup sugar

                Cinnamon

                ¼ Cup Butter sliced thin

Process:

Combine flour and salt.  Cut in shortening until well large crumb has developed. Whisk egg and milk together and add all at once to the flour, salt, shortening mixture. Lightly knead to pull together. This will be a moist dough.  Divide into two portions.  Roll out on a heavily floured surface until about 1 inch larger on all sides than a rolled edge cookie sheet.  Transfer the crust to the cookie sheet. Crumble cereal evenly across crust.  Layer apples across the sheet.  Reserve two tablespoons of sugar and sprinkle remaining sugar across the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon liberally. Dot with butter slices.  Roll out second crust and lay across the apples.  Beat the egg white to a froth and brush the crust.  Sprinkle with reserved sugar.  Bake in a 350 degree oven until golden brown (about 40 minutes).  Can drizzle with powdered sugar or amaretto powdered sugar glaze. Will serve 12 dessert or 24 snack sized servings.

Dutch Letter Slab Pie Remix

Groceries  

Dough:
2 ½ Cups Flour

1 Cup shortening, not quite room temperature
½ Teaspoon Salt
Egg yolk with milk added to make 2/3 Cup (reserve white for glazing the crust)

Dutch Letter Filling:

8 oz. Almond Paste
1 Can Almond Pastry Filling
2 eggs + 1 yolk
1 C sugar
½ teaspoon Vanilla

Fruit Layer:

2 cans of pie filling for snack like bars or 3 cans of pie filling for more luscious bars, this can be divided into more than one filling to offer multiple flavors for a dessert serving line.

Topping:

¼ -1/3 cup sliced Almonds

2 Tablespoons sanding sugar

Process: Make crust as described in Apple Abstract Recipe above.  Set to the side with a towel over the crust in the cookie sheet and crust waiting to be rolled out to keep them from drying out.  Beat the Almond paste on high to smooth out.  Add the almond pastry filling and beat together well.  Add sugar, eggs and vanilla, beating until fully incorporated and smooth.  Using a cookie scoop evenly spread mounds of filling across the crust laid out in the cookie sheet.  Use an offset spatula to smooth the almond filling across the bottom of the crust. Layer prepared pie filling across the Dutch letter filling.  Roll out the remaining crust at least as large as the cookie sheet. Cut ¾-1 inch strips of dough.  Lay diagonally across the fillings and weave like a lattice top pie.  There will be 1 ½ -2 inch gaps between strips.  Brush with whisked egg white.  Sprinkle with sliced almonds and sanding sugar.  Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes.  If the top is getting over browned you can lay a sheet of parchment or tinfoil across the top of the cookie sheet.

Amaretto Fruit filling:

2 Cups, packed, peeled and chopped apples or peaches

1/3 C Amaretto

1/2 C sugar

1 1/2 Tablespoons Cornstarch

Combine sugar, cornstarch and amaretto over medium high heat until dissolved. Add fruit and simmer until sauce is thickened.  Use as a replacement for a can of pie filling

County Fair Legacy

It’s county fair season.  

I’ve loved the county fair since I went to my first one in Alta, Iowa as the tag-along little sister in the mid 1980’s. 

I’m developing a different appreciation for the fair as I use it as the deadline to teach my kids the skills on my punch list of life skills I think they need to know before they leave our home. I only have four more fairs with our oldest.  She still has to do a refinishing and citizenship project.  Our son’s fair 4-H career starts next year, but he’s in his second fair exhibiting bucket calves. I love watching them care for and learn through their livestock projects.

As a recovering 4-Her I realize the real wins for me were the lifelong friends and fabulous adventures I was able to have on a 10 acre parcel of ground in a town far enough away that I needed to stay from chores to chores every day.  I participated in competitions that weren’t a part of my rest-of-the-year life and were also the culmination of month’s long chores and training of animals. I got to exhibit refinishing projects that made me a discerning buyer of furniture. I dabbled in enough creative art projects (that my art teacher mom encouraged) to develop an appreciation for hand crafted items and the process of creating art. I tried my hand at sewing and baking projects. I got to choose my own market hogs and breeding and market sheep. I gained knowledge about agriculture, food production and consumerism from my projects. I also gained the confidence to try about anything once, because I learned that if I failed it wasn’t the end of the world.

Aside from my love of showing hogs at the fair, I lived for the educational presentation competitions.  It didn’t matter if it was a working or educational presentation, I loved participating and working with people to share knowledge about something. I did presentations on everything from cream cheese mints with a club mate and how to make homemade root beer with a friend from another club in my county to one on the beef industry in Iowa and projects like marbleizing paper and other crafts.  I should have figured out from how much I enjoyed working presentations that vocational education was a passion of mine, but there weren’t many female ag educators in the late 80’s and early 90’s to look to and I didn’t see how my love for my hog and sheep projects and agriculture were tied to what we called home economics at the time.

Of all the presentations that I did, my first one was the one that lives on in our family.  I was a nervous first year 4-Her, wanting to keep up with my older sibling’s success. Thankfully mom was willing and able to help get me organized early in the summer.  I thought long and hard about what I wanted to make in front of a crowd.  I was sure I wanted to do something cooking, because I would catch Julia Child and Chen Can Cook on our IPTV station and cooking seemed like the perfect thing to do.  I didn’t have a very deep set of recipes that I could make unassisted with consistent success, but I did have a good banana bread recipe that our family liked. 

I made that recipe two times a week in the month leading up to fair.  I still could eat banana bread by the time I exhibited that bread as a static exhibit and did my presentation.  I did very well the day of the presentation, and since I couldn’t exhibit as a first year Junior 4-her at the State Fair in August, the judge elected to send me to present at the Clay County Fair. 

My fair was the third week in July.  The Clay County Fair was the second week in September.  I continued to make banana bread at least weekly to keep my presentation up to practice.  The recipe made two loaves of bread.  As we got closer to the fair, I’m pretty sure the neighbors were getting as sick of banana bread as I was.  By the time I presented at Clay County I could barely stand the smell of banana bread and couldn’t get a bite past my mouth. 

I still remember presenting at the Clay County Fair.  It was the one event that I participated in that both of my grandmothers were able to be at.  I lost one of those grandmas not long after that presentation and I treasure the picture I have of both of them with me in an auditorium that smelled like autumn. Just behind us was my Godfather holding a loaf of banana bread that was baked in the toaster oven. He held it so you couldn't see it had a burned top from hitting the roof of the oven as it baked. 

I’m in my 40’s now and I usually pass when offered banana bread, but my husband and kids enjoy it so I make it from time to time.  It works well with frozen bananas or fresh ripe ones.  

Note: If you are going to freeze the bananas I would recommend mashing them before freezing and then freeze the baggie flat so it is easier to defrost in the microwave to use in the recipe.

The groceries... 

1 Cup Sugar 
2 Cup Flour 
1/2 teaspoon Salt 
1 teaspoon Baking Soda 
2 eggs 
3 Tablespoon Milk 
3 Mashed, very ripe bananas 
1/2 Cup Margarine, melty 
1/2 Cup chopped nuts, optional 

The Process... 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a large loaf pan.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and barely blend them together.

Bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Butter the crust when done and let sit for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge of the pan to help loosen it before turning it out.