09 October 2011

What to do with all that jam

I made a lot of jam this year. Jelly, too, and applesauce – both plain and with other fruits mixed in.

There are only so many pieces of toast, waffles, and sandwiches in one’s life … what to do with all this jam and sauce?

The Reluctant Farmer and I were camping last week, enjoying the last fishing trip of the year. Sitting around the campfire, we decided to pull out the Pie Iron and make some post-supper snacks: biscuit dough wrapped around some leftover pie filling (store-bought stuff, used to decorate a birthday cake awhile back) and the chocolate apple mousse made lovely delicious baked treats. I thought hmm … is there a way to do this in the oven?

Sure enough, there is.

Make biscuit dough the way you usually do (when camping, I cheated and used Bisquick, but at home I just toss a cup or so of flour into a bowl, add a splash each of baking soda, baking powder and salt, maybe some sugar, then cut in about a quarter cup of lard and add enough of the kefir that I keep fermenting in the fridge to make it into dough – of course any form of soured milk would work in place of the kefir, but hey, this is one of the reasons I keep the stuff). Roll out on a floured board and cut circles with a big cup – I used a beer mug, but a large drinking glass would work. One of those itty bitty juice cups like you find in a hotel room will be too small.

Place one dough circle on the silicone mat you’ve laid onto a cookie sheet, and in the centre of the dough place a dollop of jam, chocolate apple mousse, apple sauce, mixed fruit sauce, pie filling, or whatever sweet yummy fairly thick substance you have at hand. Cover with another dough circle and smush the edges together with a fork dipped in flour so that you have a sealed round dough pocket. You can sprinkle something interesting on the top (cinnamon and sugar if that’ll go with your filling, plain icing sugar, coloured sugar crystals) or just bake at 350 until the biscuit part looks golden and baked (probably around 15 minutes).

Voila – you have created round sweet lovely treats that can safely go into a school lunch (no peanut butter, easy to fit into a little Tupperware in the lunch bag) or be devoured by the nearest teenager for a snack (yep, The Boy loves these things).

And since I put up new shelves tonight and transferred jam from boxes to shelves … I think I will be making a lot of these. The boys who live here said that was no problem.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds yummy. I'm pretty terrible at making pie dough, so maybe I'll try biscuit dough. Sounds yummy!

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  2. flannelberry9:23 pm

    You've just invented the Canadian variant on pasties, I think.

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  3. I also discovered that if I roll the dough out and the cut it into squares with a knife, I can make dumplings by drawing the four corners up to the centre and pinching the edges together. Less rolling and cutting and fussing, but they aren't as neat and tidy.

    I had to go look up pasties - the only definition I knew was umm ... not food-related. ;) I think that any kind of filling inside a biscuit is probably good - I may try the meat/veggie sort with leftovers!

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