[2] Raspberry Pecan Crumble Slab Pie (here’s the recipe) from Driscoll’s.

[3] An Apple Slab Pie. Here’s the recipe (photo © Vermont Creamery).

[4] How about a Blueberry Slab Pie? Here’s the recipe (photo © Pillsbury).

In the 15 years that we’ve been publishing THE NIBBLE, slab pies have been under the radar. They didn’t even make it into the different types of pies collection in the early editions of our Pie Glossary.

Slab pies have been getting a bit of play lately, but when did they originate? We found a recipe in our Mom’s recipe box that dated back to the 1950s.

Surely, they’re older than that. But try as we might, we could find no history of slab pie online. If you have a reference, please let us know.

National Pie Day is January 23rd. February is Great American Pie Month. National Apple Pie Day is May 13th.

> The recipe for Candy Apple Slab Pie is below.

> So is a recipe for Cranberry Meringue Slab Pie.

> Plus, links to even more delicious slab pie recipes.

> The history of pie.

> The different types of pie and pastry.
 
 
WHAT IS A SLAB PIE?

A slab pie is a shallow pie that’s baked in a jelly roll pan or a rimmed baking sheet. It has a much higher crust-to-filling ratio than a standard pie, so it’s definitely for the crust-loving crowd (or the hand pie-loving crowd).

But there’s another reason to make a slab pie: It stretches pricey ingredients like fresh fruit and feeds quite a few more people than a standard 9-inch pie.

In fact, it’s almost as much as two pies!

Nor do you need to roll out two sets of crusts for two pies. Just roll out one crust and make a streusel top if you don’t want to roll out a top crust—although two crusts enable people to eat their slices like a hand pie.

Of course, you can plate it like a conventional slice of pie and top it with ice cream or whipped cream.

You can use any filling in a slab pie; but anticipating the holidays, we have two cranberry recipes below (plus links to other recipes).
 
 
RECIPE #1: CANDY APPLE SLAB PIE

In this recipe from McCormick, prep time is 25 minutes, cook time is 40 minutes. The recipe is faster to make using purchased crusts. To make crusts from scratch, see the recipes below.

This recipe is called “candy apple” because of the red food coloring. Leave it out for a conventional apple slab pie.

You can serve the pie plain, à la mode, with whipped cream, crème fraîche, or mascarpone.

Another favorite of ours: sour cream with a bit of cinnamon and a pinch of sugar. The tartness is a nice contrast to the sweetness of the pie.

Ingredients For 16 Servings

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 400°F. Bring the pie crusts to room temperature according to the package directions.

Unroll the pie crusts and press two of them onto the bottom and sides of a 13×9-inch glass baking dish. Press together the seams of the overlapping crusts in the middle of the baking dish to seal.

2. MIX the sugar, cornstarch, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add the apples; toss to coat well. Add the food color; toss to coat well.

Spoon into the pie crust and top with the remaining 2 crusts. Pinch the edges of the top and bottom crusts together to seal.

Cut small slits in top crust (you can make them artistic; see this photo and this one).

3. BAKE for 35 to 40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbly. Cool on a wire rack.

Another easy McCormick recipe, this pie uses cranberry sauce in the filling instead of having to prepare whole cranberries.

A meringue top replaces the top crust.

Prep time is 25 minutes, cook time is 40 minutes.

Ingredients For 16 Servings

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Bring the crusts to room temperature according to package directions. Unroll the pie crusts and press onto the bottom of a 13″ x 9″ glass baking dish. Fold the edges of the crusts under and press them together to form a thick crust edge. Press the seams of the overlapping crusts in the middle of the baking dish together to seal. Pierce the crusts with a fork. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.

Meanwhile…

2. MIX 1 cup of sugar and the cornstarch in a large saucepan. Gradually whisk in the cranberry juice until well blended. Whisk in the egg yolks and the cranberry sauce until well blended (some lumps may remain). Whisking occasionally, bring to a boil over medium heat and boil for 1 minute.

3. REMOVE from the heat and stir in the orange extract. Pour the hot filling into the baked pie crust. Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight until chilled and set. Then…

4. MAKE the meringue. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until foamy. Mix the remaining 2/3 cup sugar and the cream of tartar in a small bowl. Gradually add the sugar mixture to the egg whites, beating until stiff peaks form.

5. SPREAD the meringue evenly over the cranberry-topped pie, sealing the edges of the crust. Bake 4 to 6 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned. For the best results, top and bake with the meringue just before serving.

[1] Candy Apple Slab Pie (photo © McCormick).

TOP PHOTO: BOTTOM PHOTO: Cranberry Meringue Slab Pie (recipe below). Photos courtesy Julie Gransee | Lovely Little Kitchen.

MORE SLAB PIE RECIPES

It turns out that Martha Stewart has been publishing slab pie recipes since 2006. Here are some of them, each with a different crust treatment:

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

For seasonal brunching, we like this Pumpkin-Apple French Toast by Serena Wolf of the blog Domesticate-Me, sent to us by grocery delivery service Peapod.com.

Prep time is 10 minutes, cook time is 15 minutes.

This recipe works best with slightly stale (day-old) bread.For a richer French toast, replace half of the milk with half-and-half. If you don’t want to use butter, substitute coconut milk.

RECIPE: PUMPKIN-APPLE FRENCH TOAST

Ingredients For 4 Servings

For The French Toast

Pumpkin French toast topped with sautéed cinnamon apples. Photo courtesy Domesticate Me | Peapod.

For The Apple Topping

Preparation

1. COOK the apples. Heat the butter in a medium sauté pan over medium heat. When hot, add the apples, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Cook for 5-6 minutes until tender, and then stir in the maple syrup. Cook for 1 minute. Cover and keep warm until ready to serve. (If you prefer very soft apples, cook them for 10-12 minutes before adding the maple syrup.)

2. WHISK together the eggs, pumpkin purée, milk, brown sugar, vanilla extract and spices in a large baking dish (at least 9”x13”).

3. PLACE the slices of bread in the custard mixture and let soak for 5 minutes, turning over the slices halfway through, until most of the liquid has been absorbed into the bread. Gently press on the bread a few times during the soaking process to help it absorb the custard. Meanwhile…

4. HEAT a griddle or large skillet over medium heat. Add a butter to the griddle/skillet. When melted, carefully remove the bread from the custard and place on the griddle/skillet. You’ll probably need to do this in two batches. Cook for about 3 minutes until golden brown. Add another bit of butter, flip the French toast, and cook for another 3 minutes or until golden brown.

5. TRANSFER the French toast to plates and top with the warm apples. Serve with a pitcher of maple syrup on the side.
  

When silicone potholders and oven mitts appeared on the market, we traded in all of our cloth versions for the superior heat protection when baking, cooking and grilling. But lots of the mitts are very clunky, and also sized to fit men’s hands.

Finally, here are women’s silicone oven mitts that are sized right, flexible, and available in 10 colors: Coral Red, Fall Orange, Fuchsia, Lime Green, Mustard Yellow, Navy Blue, Pink, Steel Gray and Teal.

Made in Italy, they appear to be discontinued by their U.S. retailer, because they’re marked down from the original $47.00 to $19.99 with free shipping on orders over $35. Bargain time!

We’re loading up on holiday gifts. We can’t think of too many other $20 items that are as universally needed and long-lasting.

Get yours on Amazon.com.

Teal, one of the 10 colors of these nifty heatproof silicone kitchen gloves.Photo courtesy Love This Kitchen.

How can you dis them? Retro-style Jell-O
molds from JelloMoldMistress.com. See the
photos below for shaping without molds.

Yet, these gelatin works of art, that became de rigeur party fare in the 1950s, get a bad rap. Seriously, what’s wrong with different flavors of Jell-O and fruit layered in an attractive mold?

They are very tasty, thank you, and enable the cook to exercise creativity. If the media mentioned, say, that they were a favorite at the Kardashian or Brangelina household, molds and Jell-O would be flying off the shelves.

Sugar-free Diet Jell-O provides a low-calorie dessert option. And a holiday offers the opportunity to use theme colors.

Maybe ditch the brand name, Jell-O, and the generic term, gelatin, when presenting the dish. Call it something that sounds like a sophisticated dessert. We prefer the French name for a gelatin dish, gelée (zhel-LAY) or gélatine (zhay-la-TEEN), which identifies the product, gelatin.

Trivia: The name comes from the Latin gelare, to freeze.
 
RECIPE: GINGER GELÉE

Make this harvest-colored Ginger Gelée with the taste of fall. The recipe was adapted from TheSugarMonkey.com.

As you can see in the photo below, you don’t need to make the dish in a mold. Make the gelée in a baking pan and cut it into elegant rectangles. Or make a layered gelée in glasses, as Martha Stewart did in the second photo below.

Ingredients

1. FILL a small bowl halfway with ice cubes and water. Put the ginger in a small pot of water and bring to a boil. Drain and transfer the ginger to the ice-water bath; let cool. Repeat this process two more times, starting with cold water in the pot each time.

2. SOFTEN the gelatin sheets in a small bowl of cold water. Lift the gelatin out of the water and squeeze it gently to remove the excess moisture.

3. BRING the blanched ginger, water, sugar and vanilla bean pod and seeds to a boil in a medium pot over medium heat. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, add the softened gelatin and stir until the gelatin has melted. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve in a large bowl; discard the ginger and vanilla bean pod.

4. COOL the liquid to room temperature, then whisk in the lime juice. Adjust the color as you like with food color (1 drop red + 2 drops yellow = orange, or see this chart). Pour the liquid into a 1-quart mold or an 8- by 8-inch baking pan and refrigerate until set.
 
THE HISTORY OF JELL-O

Gelatin (also spelled gelatine) has been made since ancient times by boiling animal and fish bones. Aspic, a savory*, gelatin-like dish made from meat or fish stock, was a French specialty centuries before the invention of commercial gelatin. It was very difficult to prepare and thus a dish for the wealthy, requiring days to boil down and clarify natural gelatin to make the aspic set. The aspic was shaped in an elaborate mold, to be admired by the guests.

TOP PHOTO: Gelée cut into elegant rectangles. Photo courtesy Elegant Affairs. BOTTOM PHOTO: Gelée in glasses. Photo courtesy MarthaStewart.com.

In 1897, Pearle Wait, a carpenter in Le Roy, New York (in Genesee County), experimented with gelatin and developed a fruit flavored dessert which his wife, May, named Jell-O. The first four flavors were orange, lemon, strawberry and raspberry.

He tried to market his product but lacked the capital and experience. In 1899 he sold his formula to a fellow townsman and manufacturer of proprietary medicines, Orator Frank Woodward, for $450. The Jell-O was manufactured by Andrew Samuel Nico of Lyons, New York. Alas, sales were slow and one day, Woodward sold Sam Nico the business for $35.
 
Finally, Success

In 1900, the Genesee Pure Food Company promoted Jell-O in a successful advertising campaign, and by 1902 sales were $250,000—more than $6 billion in today’s dollars. In 1923 management created the Jell-O Company, Inc., replacing the Genesee Pure Foods Company, the purpose of which was to protect the Jell-O trade name and to keep it from becoming a generic term.

That same year, the Jell-O Company was sold to the Postum Cereal Company, the first subsidiary of a large merger that would eventually become General Foods Corporation. The next flavor, Lime Jell-O was introduced in 1930. Recipes printed on the boxes—including molds—brought more users into the fold.

Today Jell-O is manufactured by Kraft Foods, a subsidiary of Phillip Morris, which also acquired both Kraft and General Foods in the 1980s and ultimately merged the two companies. Today there are 21 flavors of regular Jell-O and eight sugar-free flavors, plus puddings and snacks in both categories.

There is a Jell-O Museum in Le Roy, New York.

 
*Molded sweet gelatin mixes were called gelatin salads.
  

[1] Make a Halloween cheese ball with the jack o’lantern’s face in red tortilla chips… (photo © Snackworks.

[2] …or blue tortilla chips(photo © The Cooking Channel).

[3] When it isn’t Halloween, cover the cheese ball with chopped scallions (photo © Beekman 1802).

[4] The inspiration: a jack o’ lantern (photo © PlayBuzz).

It’s easy to make a cheese ball: combine room temperature cream cheese with other ingredients in a bowl or mixer and blend; then form into a ball and coat with shredded cheese or seasonings.

This recipe has nacho seasonings, but you can make any cheese ball recipe you like.

The history of the Jack O’Lantern is below. But this recipe isn’t limited to Halloween. Just omit Jack’s face decorations and you have a cheese ball for any day of the year.

TIP: It is better to shred your own Cheddar, as tempting as it might be to buy pre-shredded cheese. The pre-shredded has a different texture, from the additives used to keep the shreds from sticking together in the bag.

Prep time is 15 minutes, chilling time is 2 hours.
 
 
RECIPE: JACK O’ LANTERN CHEESE BALL

Ingredients

_________________

*If you want a really orange cheese ball, use Ritz crackers. You still have tortilla chips for serving.
_________________
 
Preparation

1. CRUSH the corn chips in a plastic bag, using a rolling pin. Set aside.

2. PLACE the cream cheese, Cheddar, onions, salsa, cumin, and jalapeño into the bowl of a mixer and blend thoroughly. Form into a pumpkin-like shape and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours. You may find it neater to put the mixture on a piece of plastic wrap, and form the ball from the outside of the plastic.

3. BEFORE serving, roll the cheese ball in the crushed corn chips. Arrange the cheese ball on a plate, and press the bell pepper stem or celery stalk into the top.

4. MAKE a jack o’ lantern face, if desired, with break-off pieces of blue corn chips/black bean chips to form a jack o’ lantern face. The chip pieces should adhere to the pumpkin cheese ball if you gently press them onto it, but you can also glue them on using a small dab of plain yogurt or sour cream.

5. SERVE the cheese ball with black bean chips, crackers and spreading knives.
 
 
WHERE DID THE JACK O’ LANTERN ORIGINATE?

Jack o’ lanterns carved from pumpkins are an Irish-American tradition. But for centuries before any Irish immigration to the U.S., jack o’ lanterns were carved from beets, potatoes, and turnips and placed in windows of homes in what is now Great Britain, to ward off evil spirits on Halloween.

The jack o’ lantern is named after Stingy Jack, a fellow of Irish myth. He invited the Devil to have a drink with him, but was too cheap to pay even for his own drink.

Jack was not only stingy; he was a cheat. Once the Devil had turned himself into a coin, Jack simply pocketed it. No drinks were had that evening, but Jack was one coin richer. Clever Jack had placed the coin next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form.

Jack eventually freed the Devil, under conditions including that, after Jack died, the Devil would not claim his soul.

When Jack died, however, God would not allow his disreputable soul into heaven. Jack then tried to get into hell. The Devil, who had previously committed not to claim Jack’s soul, would not let him in.

But the Devil was kind enough to send Jack off into the dark with a lump of burning coal to light his way. To carry it, Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip. The spirit of “Jack of the Lantern,” subsequently shortened to “Jack O’ Lantern” (and evolving to the lower case jack o’lantern) has been roaming the Earth ever since.

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lantern by carving scary faces into potatoes and turnips, and placing them in windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets were used.

Immigrants brought the jack o’ lantern tradition to the U.S., where they discovered that the native pumpkin made the biggest, scariest and best jack-o’-lanterns.