Back in the Saddle

Ah! A new year and a new attempt to maintain a blog. Let's see if we get past May this time...

We're off to a good start, with two pies at once (and our first savory "pie"). Friends of ours at church recently had their first child and we volunteered to bring them dinner during the first week their daughter was home. This couple was the grateful recipient of a number of our pies last year (including the disastrous Grimace Pie), so I figured we'd take them a "pie" supper as a little wink-wink chuckle.

Pine Nut Pie

This will be a brief post. While this week's pie is amazingly good--and amazingly, not that bad for you, relatively speaking--I have a Mississippi River bargeful of other things to get done tonight. And to top it all off, I'm nodding off at the keyboard.

Pine nut pie. It's nuts on top of a sweet, slightly gooey filling, so kinda like pecan pie, but totally different. My wife strongly dislikes pecan pie. I had to sacrifice and eat the last piece of Pine Nut Pie because her self-control (and mine too, truthfully) was stretched to the limit.

The nuts come out soft and don't carry much flavor (not that pine nuts often do, in my experience), but the texture is appealing. The filling includes brown sugar, corn syrup, eggs, and flour so it comes off more solid than your standard pecan pie. "Nougat-y" was the wife's comment on the filling.

The recipe for Pine Nut Pie comes from Ken Haedrich's book Pie and I strongly suggest you go and look it up. Depending on your current household economy, you may want to hold off the baking, though, unless you find pine nuts for a decent price. A cup of pine nuts set me back about $11, but admittedly I didn't go hunting for a better price very diligently. I will, however, remember the recipe for the filling and I am looking forward to trying it with other nuts (walnuts, sunflower seeds?, pepitas?) in the future. Maybe even pecans.

Tar Heel Pie

I'm told that, this weekend, there's some type of equine event down in the Bluegrass State. And that said event has inspired a range of tasty concoctions and confections. While I'm all for mint juleps, this is a pie blog, after all.

When I started this journey, one of the things I wanted to do was to try out some of the pies I had heard of before, but which I had never seen or tasted - Chess Pie, Derby Pie, etc. Going through recipe books, though, I didn't come across any directions for Derby Pie. This week's Tar Heel Pie is apparently the North Carolina cousin of Derby Pie, however, so I'll count that as close enough.

The web abounds with recipes for this pie, which are all pretty much the same. I cribbed my recipe from Mrs. Rowe's Little Book of Southern Pies, but just search for "Tar Heel Pie" and you'll find the right thing. Make sure to include the pecans!

The pie is effectively a chewy brownie in a pie shell. Don't overcook it or you'll lose the delicious not-quite-cooked gooeyness that is the hallmark of an excellent brownie. This is a very rich pie - skinny slices are the order of the day. The pecans can screw up your neat slices if you're trying too hard, but just go with it - the taste doesn't change. I would recommend serving a small slice of pie, warm, with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream and a cup of coffee.


On a side note, I will try my best to get back on the blogging horse. The month of April threw me a bit - allergies moved in for about three and a half weeks and took over my life. I knew I was getting better when I started getting the piemaking itch back!

Like Virginia Diner's Peanut Pie

Yes, you read that right. Peanut pie. Not peanut butter pie. Peanut pie. As described in Ken Haedrich's account of the owner of Virginia Diner, "like a pecan pie, only better." I'm not entirely sure I agree with the 'better' part, but Peanut Pie is certainly like a pecan pie made with groundnuts instead.

The story behind the name for this pie derives from that age-old practice of never revealing the secret recipe. Haedrich wanted to get the recipe for Virginia Diner's peanut pie, but was stonewalled and instead referred to a peanut promoter's website, where he found this recipe. Hence, this pie being "like" the Diner's version.

When putting this all together, it looks like nothing so much as liquid peanut brittle - not a bad thing at all! Chopped peanuts float in a sea of dark corn syrup, eggs, and melted butter, which all gets upended into a pie shell. I had problems with my blind-baking foil sticking to the crust, and I ended up with the filling leaking through and cementing the pie to the plate. That's why the slices are so messy, but it all tastes the same!

A la fin du jour, sign me up for a piece of pecan pie over peanut pie. I am certainly a fan of a good Virginia peanut, but in a pie, the peanutty flavor is a bit too bold for me. If you really <3 peanuts, I encourage you to try this pie. Haedrich suggests serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and Warm Mocha Sauce (scroll to the end for recipe), which might just tip the scales in favor of the Peanut Pie, but then again, the mocha sauce would make file folders taste good.

Blackberry Silk Pie

For every mountaintop, there has to be a valley, right? We've been hiking along the ridge for a few weeks now with some great pies. This week, however, I think we're off the trail.

Blackberry Silk Pie sounded so promising. I was thinking French Silk - yummy, creamy chocolateness - breeded with blackberries - sweet, tart, berryness - and expecting greatness. Instead, I got a purply wobbly mass in a pie shell - essentially, blackberry custard.

This is the pre-baking color

Custard, yum. Blackberries, yum. Blackberry custard, not so much.

Are we back in January?

The pie started out ominously like the sugar and cream pies I made for two months: eggs, sugar, heavy cream. The only spot of color was a blackberry purée, of which there is extra to enjoy over ice cream later.

The resultant mixture is an odd purple color. It would be pretty on fabric, perhaps, or an iris, but food? Not so much. The custard is poured into a par-baked crust and baked low and slow (300° for 60-75 minutes). Baking doesn't improve the color at all - the light purple inside is covered by a darkened purple puddingskin-like top layer.

Post-bake. It's only slightly prettier in real life.

I couldn't help but think "Barney pie" (or Grimace, I suppose)

Flavor-wise, this pie is okay. You can definitely taste blackberries, but the egg custard matrix is somewhat odd. The texture is like a soft baked custard - I thought it was fine but Tiffany couldn't take it. After my sample slice, we hurriedly distributed the pie to friends. I'll let you know what they think of it.

To sum up, we won't be keeping Blackberry Silk Pie as part of our baking repertoire. Save the blackberries to garnish the top of your plain custard, and I think you'll be happier with the results.

Welcoming Committee

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a brief PSA on hospitality and neighborliness:

This is what you get when you move into my neighborhood.

Apple Crumb Pie - still warm!

We recently had a single mom and her son move in across the way from us, so I thought, "What better way to introduce ourselves than to take her a pie?" I had two bags of apple pie filling (homemade, of course!) in the freezer from the fall and a spare refrigerated crust to be used - why not?

This bag of filling was part-Spy, part-Macintosh, with the sugar and spice according to Pillsbury's Perfect Apple Pie recipe. Seeing as I only had one crust, I looked through Ken Haedrich's Pie to find a crumb topping. The oatmeal crumb (page 200) looked good: 1 cup flour, ¹⁄₂ cup rolled oats, ²⁄₃ cup brown sugar, a bit of salt, and cinnamon. I think the recipe calls for ¹⁄₂ teaspoon of cinnamon; I just shook some in and added ground cloves. Combine with pastry cutter until crumb-y.

The crust and apples cooked for 30 minutes at 400°, then I turned the oven down to 350° and spread the topping over the parbaked filling. As warned in the recipe, this makes a lot of crumb topping; I saved about a cup in the freezer for a future apple crisp. Back in the oven for 25 minutes, et voila!

I hope it tastes as good as it smells. That's the rough part about giving pies away - I don't get to taste them! At least I've still got another bag of filling in the freezer, right?

P.S. - I tagged this as a pantry pie, not because I always have apples around (I've gotten to where I can't stand apples out of season), but because I had frozen pie filling that I made up in the fall sitting in my freezer. I didn't have to make any special plans or shopping trips to throw this together. Just something to think about - if you like a particular pie for which the season is brief, prepare your own filling for long-term storage. Fresh apple pie in March!

Next time - Let's Go Blue(berries)!

Breitbach's Raspberry Pie

I remember one summer, my sister and I wanted to make a strawberry pie. We had always seen whole-berry strawberry pies - you know, the ones with upside down raw berries covered with an ectoplasmic red fakey gel-sludge that sticks to your fork - but we wanted to make a strawberry pie more like an apple pie, with cooked fruit. If I remember correctly, the adults around us tried to dissuade us, but still assisted in the endeavor. I also seem to recall that it turned out okay.

I share that reminiscence with you simply because of the fact that today's pie includes cooked berries of even more fragility than a ripe strawberry. Breitbach's Raspberry Pie, named for a popular café in Iowa, includes both raspberries and blackberries, but it's definitely the raspberries that come through most strongly in the flavor.

This is really a simple pie: berries, sugar, and tapioca in a double crust. The filling is very firm before it is baked, and it is a refreshing shade of deep red-pink. Never mind the little white flecks - that's just the tapioca, waiting to absorb all those lovely berry juices.

And, now it's apparent that I need work on my double crust skills. I failed to seal the edges properly and the filling exploded all over the pan, my drip tray in the oven, and the oven itself (not to mention the top of the stove after I pulled it out AND my oven mitts!).

This is not what your pie should look like.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, and nobody complained about this pie. Trust me, it tastes the same regardless of whether it leaks or not. The raspberry flavor is deliciously intense, although some of my testers found it a bit too sweet and jam-like. I will be trying this one again in the summer with fresh berries, and I may play around with reducing (or eliminating!) the sugar to see how the flavor goes.

I heartily recommend this pie to you - just take your time and close up your crust properly!

Next time: The pie too good to eat.

Homestead Chess Pie

I've heard of chess pie for years, but have never seen one nor had the opportunity to try a slice. I don't recall ever even having seen a recipe for chess pie.

The most intriguing ingredient is a tablespoon of vinegar (Ken Haedrich says that either cider or white vinegar would work; I had cider vinegar on hand). I've had vinegar pie before in Tennessee -- keep an eye out in May for this treat -- but other than that I've never heard of vinegar in a dessert.

Assembly of this pie was simple: the shell is unbaked before filling, and the filling is just whisked together cold and poured in to the shell. I would recommend fully softening the butter before adding. I tried to rush things, resulting in big chunks of butter (although I'm not sure if this made any difference in the result).

The recipe from Pie calls for baking 30-35 minutes until a knife inserted at the center comes out clean. After 35 minutes, the pie had browned slightly, but was still very 'jiggly' and my tester came out wet. I thought the pie might set up as it cooled (and it was getting late), so I pulled it out and set it on the rack.

After the first baking

The next morning, I went to check on the pie. While the top 'crust' (a result of the tablespoon of cornmeal in the filling) had firmed up slightly, the filling still wobbled around underneath. I was almost ready to declare this a failure, but having nothing to lose, I stuck it back in the oven for 25 minutes. The pie browned a little more, but was still very loose. Once again, I pulled it out and let it cool.

After the second baking - still wobbly!

The second time around, the pie definitely firmed up after cooling. Cutting into it, the filling was very yellow, almost like a lemon pie. The flavor of vinegar is definitely present, but it's not off-putting. This pie is thin and sweet - almost sweet for sweet's sake.

Chess pie - at least this recipe - isn't my favorite, but it has the definite advantage of being a quick pie to pull together from the pantry. If I try this again sometime, I think I'll swap lemon juice for the vinegar, and I'm interested to see how this compares to my collected lemon pie recipes in a couple months.

UPDATE: I baked this pie on a Wednesday night and Thursday morning. After having multiple samples between myself and Tiffany, and sharing with some visitors, I decided on Sunday (after a breakfast pie-binge - more on that later) to toss the remaining third of the pie.* As noted above, this is a sweet pie, and we didn't really need it hanging around. 

I couldn't resist taking one last bite as I was throwing it out. It was surprisingly better than I recalled. After the second bake and cool, I stored it in the fridge, more out of habit than anything. Saturday morning, I moved the pie onto the counter to make room for other things. I'm not sure whether it was the three days since being baked or the full day at (cool) room temperature, but the vinegar flavor had mellowed significantly. Still sweet, no doubt, but more rounded (if that makes sense).

If you're going to tackle this pie, I would recommend NOT refrigerating it and perhaps even waiting a day or two before serving. One possible etymology of 'chess' pie is a corruption of 'chest' pie, as in pie chest (or pie safe), as in "keeps well in a pie chest" - I can certainly see why.

*Yes, we threw away pie. We are trying to lose weight, after all! I'm serious about the standing invitation - if you're in the area and know how to get a hold of me, stop by for some pie! Odds are we've got something lying around to sample.

Next time: Fruit pies at long last!

Coconut Cream & Coconut Custard

...or "A Tough Nut To Crack."

This weekend, I tackled the coconut pies again. You may remember that my last outing with Coconut Cream Pie ended in miserable failure. You, dear reader, deserve better, and I do have a project to complete. I figured I would give it one more shot, with some modifications.

It is interesting to note that the ingredients for both the Coconut Cream and Coconut Custard Pies are nearly identical. A bit less sugar in the custard, half the vanilla (though I only put one teaspoon of vanilla in the cream pie 'cause I ran out!), and less water (which was significant), but largely the same.

Ignore the crusts on both these pies. I used store-bought refrigerated crusts and rushed/shortcut them, so they turned out weird, but the pies still tasted fine! I trust that you will take more care with your flaky pastries.

Coconut Cream Pie

The last time, I prepared the pie according to recipe (or so I thought), cooking the filling in a double boiler. It was only supposed to take 4 minutes to thicken; after 20 minutes or so, I just dumped it in the shell, floated the meringue on top, and hoped it would set up in the oven.

Or not:

The rest of the filling was pretending to be soup in the pie plate.

This time, I cooked the filling over direct heat, just like all of the other cream pies I've done. It took about seven or eight minutes to set up, and it was still on the thin side, but the filling was definitely firm enough to appear correct. I rushed the meringue a bit, so it was thin too, although it spread nicely over the pie. A sprinkle of coconut and this very white pie was ready to bake (30 minutes @ 325°).

Success! The finished pie was a gorgeous golden brown, with a light texture that belies its caloric load (seems to be a pattern). My primary caution would be to chill this pie before serving; the refrigerated slice the next day was all-around better than the counter-cooled slice.

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Coconut Custard

The first difference between the cream and custard pies arose when I was supposed to "combine the eggs, sugar, cornstarch, and water to form a smooth paste." With only one teaspoon of water (and three yolks) to moisten a combined cup of sugar and cornstarch, the result was more like wet sand than smooth paste.

No matter. I figured I would just ladle some of the hot milk into my sand so it would incorporate better.


Right...

I've tempered eggs before and have never had a problem, but hot milk into this mixture resulted in little pebbles of something (probably cornstarch) in my filling! A quick trip through the sieve sorted that out, but I was now concerned that too much of the thickening agents had been lost to clumpage. Would the custard still come together?

It did, and five minutes early, to boot. The consistency was more like a normal pudding than the thick creams we've been making lately. Interestingly, there is no coconut in the filling itself - it's really just a plain custard base. The coconut goes in the parbaked pie shell and on top of the filling once in the shell.

After the better part of an hour, the pie should be done. My hunch is that the longer cook time and the lack of a protective meringue topping helps the filling to set up more solidly - that's probably the major difference between the two coconut pies.

The flavor is good on the custard pie, but I could stand more coconut presence. This is another thin pie - if you're looking for impressive height, look elsewhere.

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The verdict? I liked the Coconut Cream Pie better - more flavor, more volume, but more calories. Overall, I enjoy a good slice of coconut pie, but these were bit more trouble than they're worth. I think I'll save my coconut pie consumption for the restaurant scene.

Next time: Checkmate!

Brown Sugar Pie from the Attic

Our second pie from the venerable Mrs. Rowe: Brown Sugar Pie from the Attic. The name apparently refers to the location of the trove in which the recipe was found. Whose attic it was I do not know, but he or she will not see me stopping here to sample this amazingly delicious pie. (Sorry Mr. Frost!)

We just call it Brown Sugar Pie around here - a rose by any other name, and all that, you know. As I mentioned yesterday I could call it Shoe Leather Pie and Isaac would still scarf it down.

Cream together 1c brown sugar and 1 stick butter. Stir in 3T AP flour, a pinch of salt, ¼c sweetened condensed milk, 2 eggs, and 1t vanilla extract. Blend by hand until smooth, pour into a parbaked pie shell, then bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Cool ½ hour on a wire rack; serve immediately.

-from Mrs. Rowe's Little Book of Southern Pies by Mollie Cox Bryan

Upon reading this recipe, I was surprised at the first instruction. Cream butter and sugar? That's cookies, right?

In a word, yes. And the result of this step does look like cookie dough.

Add chocolate chips and stop here, if desired.

As a side note, I was out of unsalted butter. I used salted instead, left out the pinch of salt called for, and the results seemed fine.

Next, add in everything else and combine until smooth. Have patience, and add things one at a time - they incorporate better that way.

...although mixing the milk and vanilla doesn't hurt anything

Here's a quandary: the recipe calls for only a quarter-cup of condensed milk, but condensed milk comes in 14-ounce cans. I offer two options - either Vietnamese coffee (or a reasonable facsimile thereof- I wish I had a proper filter but my Keurig and a strong K-cup are passable) or make more Brown Sugar Pies to share!

Even with the relatively small amount of milk, the completed filling has a pronounced condensed milk flavor. The filling seemed scant for my 9" pie plate, and my crust was certainly taller than it needed to be. Next time, I'll build up the crust even with the walls of the plate and let it go at that.

While we're on the subject of crust, I'll confess that I used a boxed crust again this week. For last week, it didn't seem to matter much, but this time, the flavor was a bit flat. Next time I make Brown Sugar Pie (because there will be a next time), I'll also make the crust from scratch - perhaps with a nutty pastry crust.

This pie cooks up dark, but don't worry - it tastes wonderful! Test for doneness with a pick at the center: if it's clean, pull the pie out. The flavor is very like a nutless pecan pie; Tiffany even mentioned that a handful of crushed pecans added on top just before baking would be good. She's not a pecan pie fan, but the texture of this filling is firmer than your typical pecan pie.

It's hard to wait to serve this, but a half-hour on a wire rack will firm up the center and keep your palate from being scalded by molten sugar. I think the flavor is best while it's still a little warm. Refrigeration compressed the pie and muted the richness; 30 seconds in the microwave mostly revived a slice, but it still wasn't quite there.

This is post-fridge. Denser, but still worth eating.

I also recommend serving this in slightly smaller pieces - probably 10 or so from a 9" pie. Smaller pieces tend to lose structural integrity; larger pieces will completely wreck your diet.

Next time: "A monument to middle-American cuisine"

Cinnamon Sugar Pie

Sunday is National Pie Day (as proclaimed by the American Pie Council, "the only organization committed to preserving America's pie heritage and promoting American's love affair with pies"). In honor of this heritage-rich, tradition-laden holiday, I'll be making next week's pie and perhaps experimenting with crust recipes. It's my civic duty, after all.

This week's pie is a bit different from the others I've made so far. Cinnamon Sugar Pie comes from a cookbook that I stumbled across whilst on Christmas holiday in Virginia. Mrs. Rowe's Little Book of Southern Pies catalogs some of the traditional pie recipes from a little restaurant in western Virginia. My uncle Butch, who owns the cookbook and recommends the Margarita Pie (or was it the Strawberry Daiquiri Pie?), suggested stopping by the place on our way through, but alas, schedules did not permit an in-person research session.

The recipe looks similar to the Sugar Cream Pie from last week, which is the current reigning champ in our household. The major differences are the addition of eggs and a boatload of spices - our first impression of the filling was 'pumpkin pie without the pumpkin'. It set up rather firm and custard-like, as one would expect from the eggs.

My first meringue! I decided to tackle it by hand rather than break out the KitchenAid. I don't have a copper bowl, but it seemed to go pretty easily anyhow. My arm only ached slightly upon achieving 'stiff peaks'. Further research/experimentation is needed though - the meringue pulled away slightly from the crust upon baking (maybe spread too thin at the edge?) and was very sticky to slice through (too much sugar?).

Anyone else thinking of Ghostbusters right about now?

Twenty minutes later, and I have suntanned Peeps on my pie.

My sous chefs approved of the meringue. And to all those grandparents following along at home, the children suffered no ill effects from consuming raw egg whites.

Animal prints + flowers + polka dots = chic

As noted above, the meringue made for messy slicing - as did the unexpectedly light texture of the filling. It firmed up somewhat upon refrigeration, but the whole thing was more chiffon-y than I expected. It will be interesting to compare this pie to the chiffon pies that I have planned for the summer. The taste was good - nice and spicey from the cinnamon, allspice, and cloves - but the texture was off-putting (I'm not a big fan of chiffon pies). We only got through half the pie, then I ate the meringue off the top and pitched the rest.

Happy National Pie Day! Go make a pie, eat a pie, or stop by my place and have a piece of pie - I need to get rid of it!

Next up: Cookie confusion.