50 Women Game Changers in Food: #21, Ree Drummond

Do I really need to say anything about The Pioneer Woman? After all, her blog has more than 23 million page views per month and 4.4 million visitors! But if you'd like some extra skinny on Ree, check out this lovely article about her in The New Yorker.

Briefly, Ree grew up in Oklahoma and after college in California, planned on moving to Chicago to study law. Her plans got interupted when she met and married a cattleman and found herself right back in Oklahoma, this time on a cattle ranch in Pawhuska.
A familiar refrain, Ree started her blog for fun, not expecting it to lead to anything. She's a writer, photographer and home-school teacher to her four children; telling us all about her experiences on the ranch has led to a cookbook: The Pioneer Woman  Cooks and to top it all off, Ree is about to star in her own Food Network show.



I confess, I am not among the 23 million who regularly visit her blog. But someone gave me her cookbook a while back so I had already perused it. I completely agreed with a comment about it in a New York Times article: "Vegetarians and gourmands won’t find much to cook here, but as a portrait of a real American family kitchen, it works." 
And I think that's exactly what Ree wanted to do with her highly popular blog AND her cookbook: she wanted it to be the story of a real American family kitchen.

I chose a basic fruit crisp recipe from her cookbook to highlight our blogger game changer Ree. It's a nice recipe using lovely fresh peaches but what drew me in was the maple cream topping. I had some left over and used it over some baked apples (yum!), but what I'm going to pour it over next are Hannah's Whole Grain Pumpkin Pancakes! 

Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce
From The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond

Ingredients:

5 to 6  whole fresh peaches 

1 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick butter (1/2 Cup)

1/2 whole lemon

7 tablespoons real maple syrup, divided

1-1/2 cup whipping cream

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

Method:

In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, light brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt using a 

fork or pastry cutter. Cut butter into small pieces and gradually add to flour mixture until evenly mixed. 

Peel peaches into a bowl. Add the zest from half a lemon. Squeeze juice from lemon half and stir in with peaches and zest. Add 2 tablespoons real maple syrup to peaches, stir well. 

Pour peach mixture into a small pan (8” or 9” square) and cover evenly with crumb topping. 

Cover with foil and bake at 350ºF for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 20 to 30 minutes or until crisp and brown on top.

Maple Cream Sauce: 

Pour whipping cream into a saucepan. Add 5 tablespoons real maple syrup, 3 tablespoons corn syrup and stir over moderate heat until thickened and reduced by about one-third, approximately 15 minutes. Refrigerate mixture until it is cold and thick, or set the saucepan into a small bowl of ice (the ice will melt and turn into ice water). Stirring your mixture, it will cool and thicken in about 15 minutes. Drizzle sauce over peach crisp.

Serve warm.


Join Mary from One Perfect Bite and all the other participants in this fun series.

Val - More Than Burnt Toast
Joanne - Eats Well With Others
Taryn - Have Kitchen Will Feed
Susan - The Spice Garden
Claudia - A Seasonal Cook in Turkey
Heather - girlichef
Miranda - Mangoes and Chutney
Jeanette - Healthy Living
April - Abby Sweets 
Katie - Making Michael Pollan Proud
Mary - One Perfect Bite
Viola - The Life is Good Kitchen
Sue - The View from Great Island
Kathleen Van Bruinisse - Bake Away with Me 
Kathleen - Gonna Want Seconds
Martha - Lines from Linderhof
Amy - Beloved Green
Linda - Ciao Chow Linda
Nancy - Picadillo
Mireya - My Healthy Eating Habits
Veronica - My Catholic Kitchen