Hi, and welcome to the QED kitchen.

There's an old saying that people enjoy dinner, but they remember dessert.

It may be the last thing on the menu, but there's something about those sweet and tasty little bites that stays on the mind.

Today we've got two very different dessert recipes.

The first is as simple and homespun as you get.

An apple skillet cobbler.

You got to get yourself one of these great old iron skillets.

Now, this one.

You had to go down to Appalachia.

No no, no.

I mean, they're available everywhere, and but this happens to be a really old one, that I got from our friend Mary Irwin Scott, who was our, you know, a chief of cooks and bottle watchers.

Our friend We wouldn't be here without her.

That's right.

So, she is right over there, but she, let me have this pan, which was her grandmother's cast iron pan.

So it's really well seasoned.

And I'm just going to, I'm going to put a cup of sugar in.

Now, I hate to tell you that my friend, who made this Susie Tryon put in three cups of sugar.

So I've.

I've cut back on the on the recipe.

What happens when you put sugar directly onto a hot pan?

It's going to form caramel.

So now I'm going to put in, about four tablespoons.

It doesn't need a little bit of butter or something.

Four tablespoons of butter.

And I'm just goin to spread them out a little bit.

Doesn't matter.

Not to worry about this.

No.

Okay.

Do I look worried?

No no no no.

The other thing that we're going to do is we're going to peel.

And, I suppose we don't necessarily have to do this.

But you want to use golden delicious apples and the reason for that is, you know, my daughter Marion just called me the other day, and she just got married, and she said, dad, I made Andrew an apple pie.

But when we cut into it, it was applesauce pie.

What happened?

What did I do wrong?

And I said you didn't pay attention to what kind of apple did you use?

And she said, oh, a McIntosh.

And I said, well, there's the problem.

McIntosh apples are great for apple sauce, and they're terrible for apple pie because they don't hold up to the heat.

They totally disintegrate.

Oh, and but a Golden Delicious is a soft apple.

It's a soft apple, but it doesn't break down under heat.

It holds its shape.

I didn't know that.

And it has a great flavor.

I think, you know, as apples go.

People have said to me, can you use a a Granny Smith?

You can.

I don't think that they're as they're not as sweet an apple.

So when you go to the store and the little markers under each apple bin say, great for baking, right?

Or, you know, you actually should pay attention to that because, oh, yeah, they tell you there's a world of difference between one kind of apple and the other.

Now, what I'm going to do is to put all of these apples, oh yum.

Apple sugar butter.

What could be better?

And I'll tell you, there is no other flavoring in this.

Oh, that's what I'm saying.

What could be better?

And what I'm going to do is just I press this down.

I probably should use this and that.

My hand.

Right.

Would be safer.

Well, I, you know, Ill eat out of your hands.

Dont worry about it.

You don't need to mix it up so everythings coated?

No no no no no no no no no no.

Don't mix anything.

And as a matter of fact, you don't.

After you've pressed down the apples like this.

Yes.

Don't touch it.

Just literally don't touch it.

Because this the caramel is going to form in the bottom of this pan, and it won't reach its temperature unless you let it sit by itself without stirring it and moving it a little.

Okay, Im trusting you.

So that's what you want.

Okay.

Now, while that's cooking, the crust, the topping we're going to make the topping.

And the topping is, you know, that that that buttermilk, biscuit mix.

Yes.

That's that's what we have here.

We have a cup and a half of that.

And then we have a little bit of sugar because this is like a cobbler topping.

Yes.

So yes, I'm going to put in a quarter of a cup of sugar.

And then here's what makes the difference, folks.

This is grated sharp white cheddar cheese.

I wouldn't use Velveeta or you know, or processed American cheese.

It just won't have the same, flavor against the apples.

You want to have something that's nice and sharp?

Tangy cheese is so smart because you're.

You're right.

So many people do like a piece of cheese melted on top or served with it.

And you're just saying put it in there.

Yes.

And here's the thing.

You.

You smell that now?

I do.

Starting this is what what happens is you start to smell that, caramel forming in the bottom of the pan.

As I'm going to mix this, you keep an eye on that.

Oh, do I have to sit here and watch baking apples with caramel?

And I'm going to add about about a cup of milk.

This was a little bit more.

Okay.

So here is this rather loose kind of mixture.

Yeah.

It's a loose batter.

A little bit thicker than pancake and a little bit thinner than waffles.

Okay.

So just to be in there, precise about what it should look like.

Because it's just going to flow all over the top of this, so it doesn't really make much difference.

I'm going to press these off.

Made this up.

These apples are actually going to get candied the between the time that you cook it here on the stove and the time that it spends in the oven.

Because yes, you should preheat your oven to about 350 degrees before you start this recipe, because it's going to have to go into the oven.

Now, I don't kno if you can see it on the camera, but look at that brown color.

Actual caramel caramel has formed.

We have caramel.

Then you turn off the heat so you don't burn yourself, and you just put this stuff on Just spoon it on.

I mean, you don't have to be careful about it because it's all going to join together.

But you, But you want to make sure it's somewhat evenly distributed.

Yes.

If it if your batter was a little bit thicker.

Don't worry about it.

If it's a little bit thinner, don't worry about it.

It's very forgiving.

But the measurements that we have in the cookbook are right.

So just try those.

All right.

So it seems to work.

Now you put that over there and we're going to put this into a 350 degree oven.

Oh by the way if you noticed no cinnamon and nutmeg.

No, no.

It's going to be butter flavor and apple flavor and sugar flavor.

That's what it's going to be.

Okay.

So you put that into a 350 degree oven until the top gets nice and brown.

And I have one right over here.

I've just been heating it up and I suggest that you make this the day you're going to serve it.

Oh, look at that.

Yeah.

And you know why you have to make it just before you serve it.

Chris made this yesterday, and I was here in the studio yesterday, and I spent three hours fending people off of it.

So you have to make it just before you service it.

People don't eat it before you serve it.

Well, the other thing I think it tastes best the consistency of everything is best.

If you if you have it on the day that you made it.

But if you made it beforehand, this is what you can do.

Put it back in the oven for a few minutes to rejuvenate that caramel sauce.

Or just put it o top of the stove as we just did.

And now here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to put this on here.

Gosh, I thought the bottom would burn by you putting it back on the stove.

But if you could see those apples they're completely candied.

Yep.

And the only problem with this right now is that it is molten hot.

So we're going to just wait a second so that you can have a taste.

And I know that we won't have any troubl getting rid of the rest of this.

With the crew here.

My kingdom for a quart of French vanilla ice cream.

Well, yes.

Well, yes, ice cream would be fine.

But then, if you were going to do that, I probably would not put the cheddar cheese.

Oh.

In the, in the topping.

Because this is almost a savory apple pie.

It's sweet.

It's very sweet.

Okay.

But what I mean is the topping I'm waiting here.

Yeah.

The.

I don't want you to put that in your mouth.

Yeah.

This is, you know, hot sugar is hotter than anything.

But I would, you know, yo could serve this with ice cream.

I would just make a slightly different topping, for it and, you know, go crazy.

Make the same topping.

But don't put, cheddar cheese in it.

Put a little bit of cinnamon.

But what youll what the the the real thing about it for me is how those apples have just become candied.

They are like pieces of candy and butter and sugar, and it's it's all good.

I'm.

I'm really proud of this one.

Ha, ha ha ha.

Chris you have.

You have outdone yourself.

Well, I hope that you all.

This doesn't need ice cream.

This is fabulous.

Yeah.

I thought you would like this.

You.

This is my cup of tea right here.

Yeah.

What I love about that recipe is that I almost always have all those ingredients in the house.

I also have several trusty iron skillets in different sizes.

If you don't have one in your kitchen arsenal, I encourage you to go out and get one, even if it's just for this recipe.

Next is a more sophisticated preparation that we did for our healthy cooking show.

Believe it or not, this decadent chocolate cake fell into the low carb category because it has no flour.

Well, back in the kitchen.

We're making noise here.

It's, it's our, heavy duty, mixer here.

Because I'm going to make a flourless chocolate cake.

Some people call this chocolate decadence.

But, you know, it's really.

It's one of those things that is designed not to have flour in it.

So for those people who are on carbohydrate, low carb diets, this is a terrific recipe.

Now you would say, well, what about all the sugar?

Yeah.

Well, this is one of those opportunities for us to use judicious substitutions.

Oh, I can't wait.

And that is that there isn't that much sugar in this.

There's, there's sugar, in two amounts, but a total of about a half of a cup.

And you say, well, I'll just go with the sugar, or you can use the sugar.

Substitute the granulated sugar.

Substitute, which is, you know, for all intents and purposes you know, just have a taste here Its sugar.

Yeah.

You know, it's sugar, but, it it's just not quite as sweet.

And it doesn't brown.

Well, in a chocolate cake.

That doesn't make any difference.

All right, so what I've started here is I have eight oh, some sorry, six eggs.

And I need to beat them at medium to medium high until they form a thick ribbon.

They call it.

You'll see what I mean.

It gets really foamy.

And, so, you know, that's you really need, to be able to do that.

And in the top of a double boiler or in your microwave, frankly, what you want to put is, you can open these, and put them, there you go.

Okay.

That'll be my job.

Four ounces of unsweetened chocolate.

Yeah.

This is something that that confuses everybody.

Don't want to bite into this.

No, I know that, they they every child has gone through trying to take a bite out of the chocolate in the closet.

It turns out to be unsweetened baking chocolate.

But you don't want to use, bittersweet or sweet chocolate.

It won't really work in this recipe.

Okay.

And you also, you want to use a stick of butter.

So this is not a low fat recipe.

It's just a low carb recipe.

I understand it's also, if I may interject a little bit of my, religious background here.

I'm Jewish, an this is a great Passover recipe.

Is it?

Oh, because no flour.

No flour.

There's no leavening agent in it.

So we actually eat a lot of these flour.

Less chocolate cake for Passover.

Okay.

All right.

Wow.

That's melting.

Well, this is I'm going to, prepare a baking pan.

And I'm going to do that with some parchment paper that I have, folded and, and I'm going to fold it again.

Okay.

I can't wait to see why you're folding it.

Well, I'm folding it because have to put it into a round pan, and I. And rather than draw a circle around the bottom, what I'm going to do is to measure from the center of this and then cut and then market right here.

Arent you smart.

Look at that.

Okay.

And then just cut it in something of an arc.

Close enough.

And what I'll end up with, I hope.

There you have it.

Is a pretty nice liner for this.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, what I should really do is grease this.

Can you get a hold grease.

Got it, I just.

Oh, this is melted nicely here.

Yeah.

Give me a spoon.

I'll start with it.

Stir this until it's, We may no need to heat that much more.

No.

And I think that this qualifies as thick ribbons.

And I'll show you what I mean.

Here.

I was going to lift this up.

All right.

Thick ribbons.

Yeah.

You'll see what I mean.

I'm waiting with bated breath to see what you mean.

What I mean is that when you lift this up and move back and forth, it forms ribbons that are thick, that are thick.

Okay.

So it's it's nice, it's light.

It's lemony looking.

And and it forms ribbons when you go back and forth so that, you know, you've whipped enough air into this.

That's exactly.

That's all you need to do.

Okay.

Now I have to put some.

The final ingredient for that is two tablespoons of water, which I'll put in here into the chocolate or yes, into the chocolate.

I know that sounds weird.

It does sound weird.

I'm going to cool it off with this.

You can take that off now.

Well, it's not done.

There's still some chunks.

Thats all right.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Big chunks.

Doesn't matter.

Okay.

Because it'll it'll melt.

There's lots of residual heat in that pan and you really don't want to overcook it.

That's the big, thing that you can do to ruin chocolate.

Also normally if you say, you know, if you put water in chocolate, water hates chocolate and chocolate hates water like water chocolate.

Yes, but this is necessary for the texture of this.

Okay.

All right.

Or is it water for chocolate?

Like water for chocolate?

Means it doesn't work.

Yes.

Right.

Either way.

It doesn't work.

Into this, I'm going to add the, a little bit of this sugar substitute.

And how much do I add?

Three quarters of a cup of one divided oh oh, I have to.

Yeah, we have to put in half a cup of sugar into this.

I'm sorry.

Into this mix.

Into this mix.

I forgot that here's this.

That's important.

You put that in.

I'm going to put a quarter of a cup into this hand, mix this or put the thing back on.

Oh, we'r going to put this thing back on.

There you go.

Got it.

And I'm going to, mix the sugar in and I'm going to put in three tablespoons, two tablespoons of unsweetene chopped of this is cocoa powder.

And I'm going to flavor it with some vanilla just about a teaspoon of vanilla.

So that's that.

And then.

We don't have to have any cooking spray do we.

We used to have some up in the, up in the top part of the closet.

That's it.

Oh, there it is.

Over here.

What I'm going to d is, rather than grease this pan, I'm just going to spray it with nonstick spray.

Then I'm going to put in the paper and I'm going to put this in.

Oh you have to do both sides.

Yes.

And you'll see why.

I don't think I realize that.

All right.

And now I need a really big bowl.

Okay.

My poor step here is going crazy ramble hurriedly for a big bowl.

Great.

Oh, this is perfect.

Voila.

And the reason, the reason why you want a big bowl is that what we have to do now is to fold this, the eggs into this without losing all of the consistency.

Quality that we got of the you know, the whipped up egg and so on.

So what we do is we do it in three installments.

We put one third of it in The instructions make this clear?

Yeah, they do that.

You have to do it in three installments.

The first one is just to lighten the chocolate so you can you can be a little bit firmer and more aggressive with the stirring.

Right.

And you'll see how, you know, the chocolate was very dense right now.

It's like a moose.

Like a moose.

Exactly.

It's very light.

And then now.

And smell good in two more installments, we will add this.

And just you want to fold it in to unfolding is turning down underneath.

Using these rubber spatulas really helps.

Just turn it turn it over and just keep doing this.

Turning the bowl and incorporating the egg without deflating it too much.

Yeah, it's a fine line.

Yeah, you want it to be thoroughly mixed, but you know, now I'm going to put the last bit in but but not at the risk of, of just making it soup.

Right.

You can take this back.

Okay.

Get it out of the way and.

Okay.

This really takes a while.

You got to be patient with it.

Because as I said, you want it to be, thoroughly mixed through, but you don't want to deflate the eggs too much.

Now, this is going to come out as a dense cake anyway.

There is no other leavening other than the beating of the eggs.

So there's so there's no getting around that it's going to be dense.

But this is to give you that proper texture, that it ends up with.

Okay.

Now you can keep it slightly marbleized like that.

I suppose so.

You might all the way.

My tendency is to go all the way.

Okay.

Anyway, what you do now, and that is all mixed, is to pour it into this pan, the prepared pan you bake it in at 325.

And don't worry about the fact that the sides of the crooked, it's all come to one side.

Well, it's probably on a thin layer, so.

Okay, so you just level it out.

Now do the instructions say level it out.

No.

They say that even at the top okay.

Put this in the oven at 350 for 325 for about an hour.

And what you end up with is this.

Tada, how about this?

You see, it's just like that, right?

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Now, of course it can look great.

Oh, I see now I you've greased in on both sides.

Im ahead of you, the cake as it cools, comes away from the side of the pan, so you have to worry about it.

Now, the bottom of the pan.

That wouldn't have peeled off if you hadn't done exactly.

Sides.

So now you have a nice base to, make a serving of this.

We can fix up the cak a little bit by just doing this.

We can sprinkle a little strawberry on top, a little bit of powdered sugar.

That's pretty, that's pretty.

Okay.

And a little bit, it's just very elegant looking.

Of that.

And there you have it.

This very chic.

And this is what a slice of it looks like on your plate.

Oh.

Oh, Chris.

That's beautiful.

Chocolate decadence.

Flourless chocolate cake, for you and your friend.

Well, let's not applaud till we know how it tastes.

Better have a quick bite here.

Okay, you can clap.

It has no flour.

But what a lot of chocolate flavor in that cake.

I know that these are recipes that your guests will remember.

And if you don't remember the recipe, remember that you can go to the cooking section of the WQED websit for copies of all of the recipes we do on the show.

It's www.wqed.org/cooks.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

Hi I'm Chris Fennimore.

Welcome back to Kitchen Basics here at QED Cooks.

We've been talking about the sort of basic things that everybody should know how to make.

It's a starting point.

And these are recipes that you can embellish and change and make your own.

But these are the sort of kitchen basics that would be great to be able to do.

And one of the things that I remember is that my mom could make a batch of brownies in about ten minutes, and they were just delicious.

And she didn't have a box.

We didn't run up to the A&P.

We didn't do any of that stuff.

All she did was she took one stick of butter and she melted it.

And to that one stick of butter, she added one cup of sugar.

And then she added.

A little bit less than a half a cup of cocoa.

Give it that nice rich dark chocolate flavor because that's unsweetened cocoa.

And then what you want to do is just mix that up.

And make sure that the.

Chocolate is all oh boy.

The chocolate aroma of that is just amazing.

All right then you want to beat in two eggs.

And.

Just.

Put them in there and make sure that they get.

Beaten up real well.

Now you could do this in a mixer, but I'm telling you that the fun of this is to just get a bowl and put this together so you don't have to take out any heavy equipment.

You don't have to dirty up, the utensils.

And it's also a great recipe to make with kids.

Okay, now to this, we're going to add a little vanilla flavor, about a teaspoon full.

Make sure that that's in there.

And as always you add the dry ingredients.

Last.

And believe it or not, all you put into this is one half of a cup of flour and about a quarter of a teaspoon.

We get my measuring things about a quarter of a teaspoon of baking powder.

One of the reasons that mom would make this is so that we have little treats and and we really look forward to these things.

They're the part of your childhood that sort of stick with you.

You know, those things that.

You enjoyed as a youth.

And you don't want to overwork this another good reason to be making it by hand rather than in some giant machine.

And I always loved it when mom would put, nuts in here.

Now, do you want to put nuts?

You could put, walnuts, pecans.

You can put, you could put chocolate bits in here.

You could put toffee bits.

Anything that you'd like.

These happen to be some chopped up pecans, toasted, chopped up pecans that I'm going to put in.

And believe it or not, that's it.

And all I'm going to do is pour this.

I've, greased this pan with a little bit of spray and just.

I just sprayed it on the bottom a little bit.

There's so much shortening i this that it really won't stick.

I certainly hope it won't.

And this is just a nine inch pie pan.

You could double this recipe and put it into a 9 by 13 pan and bake it.

Set your oven at 350 degrees.

And this is going to take about 15 to 20 minutes.

Keep an eye on it.

You like nice and chewy brownies.

You're going to want to take it out a little bit early.

If you like them drier.

You're going to, let them sit in there until you can stick a toothpick in the middle and it comes up dry.

I have some that we put in the oven.

I haven't cut it open in.

The crew has been staring at it all day.

I'm going to see if I can get this, and cut some piece of this so we have a little taste of homemade brownies.

I think it's also important for kids to know that not all baked goods come from stores, that you can actually turn these things out at home.

I'm going to make them int nice little pieces, little bites for everybody.

These would probably make 12 nice big brownie portions, but you can see that they I put, walnuts in this one.

You can see that they're nice and chewy.

And moist on the inside.

I got to have a little taste and see if they match mom's.

Well, nothing as good as mom's, but these are a simple scratc brownie recipe that you can make from ingredients that you already have around the house, and it's one of the kitchen basics that you can master.