Week 16- "Pies I Don't Like" or do I?

I'm usually pretty live and let live about people's food choices.  You like what you like and that's OK.  My one rule for my girls is that they have to at least try everything on their plate.  If they don't like it or don't want to eat more than one bite, that's fine.  And luckily, that's worked for us since I always get compliments on what good eaters the kids are.

But there is one thing that has always driven me crazy- and I have several family members that do this.  They will only eat one preparation of a food.  For example, they will eat tomato sauce, but not tomatoes or tomato juice or anything that has come into contact with a cut tomato.  And I can never remember which type of the food it is that they will eat.  It's all very confusing.

I, however, realized I am a hypocrite.  I do the same thing with one type of food.  Blueberries.  I like fresh blueberries.  They're not my favorite so I don't buy them much but when they're in season or in a fruit salad I enjoy them.

But cooked blueberries.   A totally different matter.  I don't mind blueberry muffins as long as the blueberries don't clump together.  But pies and cobblers are always too sweet and jammy for me.  So blueberry pie was added to the list of pies I don't like.

However, it seems ridiculous to exclude blueberry pie from a list of 52 pies.  And it's one of my taste tester's favorites.  And it just seems un-American to not make a blueberry pie.

I decided to go with a Martha Stewart recipe for blueberry pie since I wasn't feeling very adventurous.  It calls for 7 cups of blueberries.  Now blueberries aren't quite in season yet so they were on the pricy side. So not only was I making a pie I didn't like, I was making an expensive pie I didn't like.

I planned to save a piece for my husband and give the rest of the pie to my taste tester.  We were going away for Spring Break so we wouldn't be around to eat the pie anyway.   Well, I decided to try the pie.  And it was so delicious I ate two pieces. The berries were big and juicy, not jam like at all.  You could really taste the fruit in this pie.  The recipe also called for cinnamon which I thought was a bit odd, but the spice gave a nice warm tone to the pie,

That night, I received this email from my taste tester:

Subject: Dang
Freaking tasty pie- 4 of us agree.

Apparently blueberry has been added to the list of pies to make again!


Lattice-Top Blueberry Pie
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts
Link to Blueberry Pie Recipe

Pie crust (we had frozen some pie dough a while back so I used this for the crust)
2 lbs (about 7 cups) fresh blueberries
1/2 cup granulated sugar ( I used a scant cup so the pie wouldn't be too sweet)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 large egg yolk, for egg wash
1 tablespoon heavy cream, for egg wash
Sanding sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Prepare dough for pie crust.

In a large bowl, toss together berries, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and lemon juice. Pour mixture into uncooked crust.

Roll out the lattice top.  Now Martha expects you to make 10 strips with a fluted pasty wheel.  HA!  I got 6 thick strips with a pizza cutter.  But seriously people, pizza cutters are your best friend when making a lattice.

Carefully arrange dough strips, weaving to make a lattice.  (Anyone who has seen my child's braided hair knows that I'm not exactly a master of attention to detail with braiding.  But a "lattice" like structure was made.)  In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolk and cream for egg wash.  Brush on top of dough.  Sprinkle with sugar.  Now Martha tells you to refrigerate the pie for 30 minutes, but I had vacation packing to do and I skipped this step.

Bake pie on a foil or parchment covered baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees  until the crust begins to brown, about 20 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake about 55 minutes long (I put on a pie shield at this step.) Remove pie and let cool on a wire rack.

Yes it's ugly and Martha would never let that out of the kitchen, but it sure was good!
 

Week 15- 1st in the series of "Pies I Don't Like"

Monday night I sat down to post my weekly pie  and I just couldn't do it.  My heart was filled with so much sadness after learning of the senseless attack on innocent people at the Boston Marathon.

 I had called my mother when I found out because years ago we had watched the Marathon together just a few blocks from my house in Boston.  That day will always be special to me because it was an incredibly fun day with my Mom; there was so much joy, so many people who were just glad to be a part of the race whether they were running or cheering.

Yesterday there was no joy.  There was a lot of me sneaking off to check Facebook and email to make sure friends and fellow runners were OK.  There was me making up a "hide your eyes" game for my girls when I turned on the TV (since I wasn't sure what channel we had left it on or what would be shown.) 

Luckily, there were also wonderful stories.  Doctors who ran the race and then stepped up to help the injured.  Spectators who helped people get out of the area.  Bostonians who opened their homes to people who had no place to go in the mayhem.

 My thoughts are with the people of Boston and all the runners who trained so hard and didn't get to finish or may never run again. 

I know the joy will be back some day but it will take a while.  :(

*********************************************************************
So this was the entry I had planned to post. 

This week begins a short series of "Pies I Don't Like."  When I told my taste tester, Squishy, about the series he asked quizzically "Why would you do something like that???"

Well because I have 52 pies to make and there are some pies I feel like I should make even though I don't like them.  And because perhaps someone else might like them even if I don't.  And that someone could be Squishy.

This one was a request by my sister to make a mocha pie.  And that request came with a recipe attached.  So I figured why not?

Now I don't like coffee AT ALL.  I don't drink it and can't stand the smell of it. But it's my sister and I knew she would like it.  And my husband had some instant coffee in the house after last fall's hurricane when the only way he could get coffee was to have instant made with water boiled on a hot plate.  And I'll do anything to get that coffee out of my house.

The pie is a bit of a cheat.  It's made with pudding and Cool Whip so it's not a real homemade pie.  But I did make the crust from scratch, so I'm counting it.

For the record, I could not bring myself to try this pie.  I really do hate coffee.  But my sister and Squishy enjoyed it and apparently the pie disappeared in a couple days.

Mocha Cappuccino Pie

1 baked graham cracker crust
1 3.5 ounce package of chocolate pudding
3 tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 cup cold milk
1 container frozen whipped topping, thawed

Combine pudding mix and coffee granules. Add the milk and then whisk.  Fold in 1/3 of the tub of whipped topping.

Chill for at least 30 minutes.  Top with additional whipped topping.

Week 14-Seriously yummy...

Yes, I'm still chomping at the bit to make a fresh fruit pie.  I promised myself I would wait for fruit to be in season, but it's been a long winter.

I found this recipe for White Chocolate Strawberry pie on Tasty Kitchen.  Even though strawberries aren't in season yet, I decided to give it a go.  It also amused me because the recipe uses Cool Whip- something I don't think I've ever bought before.  I'm totally confounding the people who try to find patterns off my Stop & Shop loyalty card, cause this project is making me buy some weird stuff.

The pie was super easy to make, except for one step.  Melting white chocolate.  I usually melt regular chocolate chips in the microwave and the recipe recommends the same.  But white chocolate doesn't melt the same way and both times I tried to melt the chips they got sort of pasty.  I ended up using the melted chips anyway so I had a few "pieces" in the pie, but that was OK.

In fact, both my husband and my older daughter thought the pie was "awesome".  Definitely one to make again- and probably a good one for Valentines' Day with the bright red strawberries on top. (I forgot to take a picture of the pie before it was eaten!)

White Chocolate Strawberry Pie
Adapted from a recipe by Caprice at The Home Heart
Link to the recipe

1/2 cup white chocolate chips
12 oz cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
2 cups Cool Whip
1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
Dash of salt
1 prebaked graham cracker crust
1 lb strawberries, sliced (I used less, but enough to completely cover the pie)


Melt 1/2 cup white chocolate chips in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir and then keep microwaving in 30 second increments until completely melted.

Mix cream cheese until smooth.  Then add the powdered sugar until well combined.

Add the Cool Whip, orange juice, salt and melted white chocolate.  Mix until everything is smooth (except for a few white chocolate lumps :)

Spoon the mixture into the prebaked graham cracker crust.

Top with the sliced strawberries.

Note, the recipe calls for an additional 3 tablespoons of white chocolate chips to be melted and poured as a glaze on top.  I skipped this step because I had trouble with the chips and the pie was still delicious!

Chill for one hour and then enjoy!

Week 13- Ricotta Pie

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Italian-American.  I grew up in a town where you were pretty much one of the following: Italian, Irish, Polish or African American (or some combination.)  It always puzzled me when I was a kid reading my history books because everybody seemed to come over to the US from England; by the time they got around to when my folks came on over to the US it was usually about 3 weeks from the end of the school year.

As I moved around, I realized a few things.  Not everyone eats pasta at Thanksgiving dinner.  Not everyone has an Uncle Tony or grew up knowing someone named Fabrizio.  Not everyone had seen the movie "The Godfather" by the time they were 8. 

So, imagine my surprise when I was researching pies for Easter and there is an Italian Easter pie made with ricotta cheese. 

Now when there is something "Italian" that I don't know about, I tend to say "That must be Northern Italian" so as not to sound totally ignorant.  In this case, it might be because my family doesn't bake.  So I called a fellow paisan who is well versed in Italian stuff and asked her if she knew of this pie.  To which she responded, "You mean it's a pizza pie with ricotta?"  OK, so I'm not the only one who doesn't know about this.

I figured I would try it.  And the description said it was like a cheesecake pie, so how bad could it be?

Let's just say, this is not a pie that will be a family tradition.  It was OK, very dense and it had a sort of curdy texture due to the ricotta.  For some reason I thought it would be smoother, more like a cannoli filling.  I used a nip of Amaretto in it (you see, I really am Italian, I like Amaretto) which gave it a nice flavor.  The "crust" wasn't a true crust, it was more like the crumb-like bottom of a cheesecake.

Even the Easter bunny would pass on this one :)

Ricotta Pie
Adapted from the King Arthur Flour website
Ricotta Pie Recipe

 

1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 2-3 graham crackers)

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 cup almonds

pinch of salt

3 cups ricotta cheese (I used whole milk, but the recipe says you can also use part skim)

6 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup Amaretto liqueur, optional (it's not optional for me!)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

 

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter the pie pan.
-To make crust, process graham crackers, sugar, almonds and salt together.  Pour crumbs into pan to make a "crust".
-Mix the rest of the ingredients together.  Pour into the "crust".  At this step, my mixture looked really liquidy, but it set up well in the oven. I also had a good amount left over.
-Bake the pie for about 45 minutes.  Use a thermometer to make sure the inside of the pie has reached 160 degrees.  The pie will look unset at this point, but that's OK.
-Let the pie cool for an hour and then put it in the fridge.

Buona Pasqua all! :)

Week 12- Key Lime Pie

This week, I received a request for a pie and since I didn't have anything planned, I decided to make it.  The request comes from a person I will call ""Squishy" (and no, I was not the person who made up that alias, nor is this person my husband.)  Squishy loves all things citrus and so he asked me to make a key lime pie.

I looked online at Martha Stewart's website and made my shopping list.  Off I go to the supermarket to buy a bag of key limes.  I looked at the bag and thought, "God, what else am I going to make with all these limes?" Little did I know then that each key lime only has about 5 drops of liquid in it.  I used up all 24 limes to get the amount needed for the recipe.  My composter is now filled with little lime carcasses.

As I settled down to make the pie, I decided to use my hard copy volume of "Martha Stewart's Pies & Tarts".  But I quickly realized that the recipe online and the recipe in the book are not the same.  I didn't have the right ingredients.  So I decided to go with the online version.  That Martha, she's tricky.  You've got to stay on your toes to keep up with her.

I did add one thing to the recipe.  After last week's green pie, I decided my key lime looked anemic and added the rest of the tube of green food coloring.  Don't hate me.

All in all, the pie was easy and tasty.  Sadly, Squishy thought the pie was too tart (perhaps I should have only used 20 limes), but everyone else who tasted it thought it was yummy.

Key Lime Pie
Adapted from Martha Stewart Living Television
Key Lime Pie Recipe

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 tablespoons sugar
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
4 large egg yolks
1/2 cup key lime juice
1 tablespoon key lime zest (I forgot to zest the limes, so I did not include this in my recipe)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

-Heat oven to 375.  Combine graham cracker crumbs, butter and 3 tablespoons sugar.  Mix well.  Press into pie plate and bake about 12 minutes.  Cool
-Lower oven to 325.  Whisk together condensed milk, egg yolks, lime juice, and zest.  Pour into cooled crust.
-Return pie to oven and bake about 15 minutes.
- Before serving whip cream and 2 tablespoons of sugar.  Spoon over cooled pie.

Week 11- Grasshopper Pie

Happy St. Patrick's Day! And happy belated Pi Day! 

In honor of both holidays, I decided to go retro for another week and make Grasshopper Pie.  Now I'll be honest with you- I've never had a piece of Grasshopper pie so as I read through recipes, I wasn't sure which one to pick. 

But then I remembered watching an episode of Nigella Lawson's show where she made the pie.  God, how she makes everything look so effortless.  Boil marshmallows, no problem.  Whisk cream by hand, sure.  Oh Nigella.  You even make eating leftovers from the refrigerator in your bathrobe look good.  I, however, have a window in my kitchen that lets me know that when I (clothed in my pajamas) decide to snack straight out of the pie plate late at night, well, I just look sad and desperate.

Oh well, back to the pie.  Here's the thing about Grasshopper pie.  It's basically a drink in a crust.  Which meant I had to go to the package store with 2 kids in tow and fork over $15 for liquor I will never use again. Sigh....

Also, look at this picture of my bottle of crème de menthe.  Notice anything?

It's not that unholy green that it's supposed to be.  Thank goodness I had a full tube of green food coloring.

The pie was actually really easy to make. Except for the crust which I found confusing.  Every recipe called for some equivalent of Oreos (actually Nigella's original recipe calls for bourbon biscuits which I have no clue about.)  But even after reading people's comments, it's still unclear to me whether you leave the cream center in the cookies when you make that crust.

So I defaulted  to the  chocolate graham cracker crust I used for the red velvet pie a few weeks back (actually I should say that my daughter and I made the crust.  She's getting quite handy at pies).  And seriously, that crust is so good, I want to be buried in it.

The end result- the pie was OK.  It really is just like a minty whipped crème in a crust.

But I do believe in leprechauns now; because even though my husband and I claimed we didn't really  like the pie, it disappeared in the middle of the night. :)


Grasshopper Pie
Adapted from Nigella Lawson
Link to Nigella's Grasshopper Pie

Filling:
3 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 cup whole milk
1/4 cup crème de menthe
1/4 cup crème de cacao blanc
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Green food coloring

Melt the marshmallows and milk over low heat.  Once the milk foams, take off the heat and stir until the marshmallows are smooth.

Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl, then whisk in the cream de menthe and the cream de cacao.  Leave it to cool (I would suggest putting it in the fridge while you do the next step.)

In a medium bowl, whisk the cream until it has soft peaks then add in the cooled marshmallow mixture.  Whisk in some green food coloring.

Put the filling into your prepared crust and let chill for at least 4 hours.  I would recommend letting it sit overnight since the flavors were much better the next day.

Week 10- Mystery Pecan Pie

I'm not much of a cookbook reader; but I do have a soft spot for flipping through old, vintage cookbooks. I get a kick out of reading how to prepare the perfect relish tray or making deviled "insert a random protein".  My sisters have fueled my habit by buying me books like "Better Homes and Gardens Snacks and Refreshments" circa 1963.  All I have to say is with the amount of space devoted to "Treats to pick you up after 10pm", I realize the 60's were so much more awesome than 2013.  By 10 pm, I'm usually asleep on the couch.

So my sister also directed me to a completely awesome website called "The Mid-Century Menu".
Link to Mid-Century Menu

I love this site. They take all those retro recipes and they actually try them out. Jello molds, chocolate cakes made with tomato soup, frankfurter loaf- stuff that I think must taste like poop, but I'm totally intrigued by them.  And my God, they have a whole section on making cute, white-frosted lamb cakes.  Do you know how badly I want to make one of those?

Well I decided to use one of their recipes for this week's pie.  I have to admit, I am not as brave as they.  I searched all their "best" recipes for pie and came up with mystery pecan pie.  What's the hook?  It's pecan pie with a cheesecake layer.

The other news this week- my husband decided that he could make a better pie crust than I can.  So this week, he was my guest crust maker.  When I asked him what recipe he was using, he had no idea.  I was hoping it would be a miserable flop, but dang if he didn't find the Pioneer Woman's recipe for pie crust and it was yummy. (Although I did have to stop him from using all of the dough from the recipe that makes 3 pie crusts.)

As for the pie, it was delicious.  Except for one thing, it oozed a bit (which gave me flashbacks to the Fudge Pie from Week 3.)  I'm not sure if there is some trick to working with corn syrup or if the corn syrup I'm using has some issues.  It just seems like every time I make something with corn syrup, it's a bit of a weepy mess.

I have to say that one thing I dislike about pecan pie is that it is usually cloying sweet.  The creamy cheesecake layer in this recipe gives a nice balance to the sweet stickiness of the pecan/sugar layer.  Definitely one to try again!

One funny note: my younger daughter is 2 so she's learning how to talk.  Today was the first day that she said "Pie".  I gave her a piece and she ate half of it!

Mystery Pecan Pie- aka Pecan Pie with a Layer of Cheesecake
Link to Pecan Pie recipe
Adapted from the blog "The Mid-Century Menu"
Originally from the 1964 Pillsbury Bake-Off

Ingredients
1 8 oz package cream cheese
1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans
1 cup light corn syrup
1 deep dish 9 inch pie shell

Combine cream cheese, 1/3 cup sugar, salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 egg. Spread into bottom of pie shell.

Sprinkle pecans over the cheese layer.

Combine remaining eggs, sugar, vanilla, and corn syrup.  Pour over pecans.

Bake at 375 for 40 minutes.

The man crust

 

Pecan pie