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Introducing the Icon One-Fourth Amish Half-and-Half Milk Pie (almonds, optional)

Some pie lovers call this Amish milk pie. Since the Icon never follows a pie recipe properly, we’ll call this the Icon One-Fourth Amish Half-and-Half Milk Pie.

That’s primarily because we cut out lots of the sugar. You’ll notice one-fourth in lots of places in the list of ingredients – thus the renamed pie. We'll get to the half-and-half shortly.

In fact, we cut out one complete cup of sugar and this pie was devoured in the same amount of time as any previous pie from the Icon’s oven. So, who needs all that sugar?

The perfect pie for a cold winter day: Icon Almond-Cherry Pie

Icon Almond-Cherry Pie

2 cups frozen sour cherries
1 cup slivered almonds
1/3 cup white flour
½ cup white sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup half-and-half
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
1 pie shell

On a recent Sunday afternoon we took a “Dense Cherry-Almond Coffeecake Pie” recipe from one of our favorite pie cookbooks and modified it to the Icon’s taste. That means we used lots less sugar, substituted half-and-half in place of full-fat sour cream and used only two eggs.

Icon scones are so simple you think part of the recipe is missing

Last night I watched a Miss Marple BBC movie. As the various murder plots unraveled some where in a small English tea joint scones were served. Several times.

Scones. Man, did those sound good. So, I started roaming through some bread recipe books on the shelf. The most difficult part of the process was figuring out how to spell S-C-O-N-E-S.

Once that mystery was resolved the basic scone recipe appeared on page 369. Creating scones is so simple one wonders if there’s a mistake in the recipe. Maybe a page is missing.

Not so. It’s really pretty simple. The difficult part is deciding what special ingredients to add. (more later)

Icon Coffee-dunking Oatmeal Cookies

Icon Coffee-dunking Oatmeal Cookies

These aren’t your grandmother’s oatmeal cookies.

When I bake cookies I usually try to use something that I’m just about out of, so I can get rid of the container. Tonight I noticed that I have what appears to be three cups of oatmeal left in the oatmeal cylinder, so, why not try some oatmeal cookies – I thought.

It’s 15 degrees out; I’m hungry and need something to dunk into milk or coffee. Not one to follow the recipe, I’ve used poetic license, thus inventing Icon Coffee-dunking Oatmeal Cookies.

Here goes.

Ever hear of an Icon muffin? You have now - it goes well with a cup of coffee

Here’s an easy muffin that goes with the holidays and coffee, too.

It’s the Icon’s variation of Spice Chocolate Muffins from a cookbook called “Muffins.” We toned down the sugar and chocolate chips from the original recipe and it still creates pretty sweet muffins.

This recipe made 14 large muffins.

Joyce Cook's buttermilk pie, a great after-Thankgiving pie

Buttermilk Pie
From Joyce Cook, Ada - Liberty National Bank Cookcook

1/2 cup soft butter
3 Tbsp. flour
1 cup buttermilk*
2 cups sugar
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and sugar. Add flour and eggs. Beat well. Add buttermilk and vanilla. Pour into 9-inch uncooked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes.
*Icon suggested substitute: If you don't have buttermilk, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to 1 cup of milk.

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