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.

Blueberry-Yogurt Cheese Pie

Do you like cheesecake? Do you like cheesecake with blueberry topping? Do you like the caloric bomb that (really good) cheesecake drops on your diet?



If you answered, like me, 'yes', 'yes', and 'not really' to the above, you simply must try this pie. The recipe has a lot of steps, and you need to be sure to start this at least the day before you serve, but it's not really as complicated as it seems.

Crust: Prebake a graham cracker crust in a 9-inch pie plate.

Cheese Layer: Drain 32 ounces of the best plain yogurt you can find (full-fat is recommended - I used Stonyfield Farm's Whole Milk Yogurt) for at least 12 hours. Line a colander with cheesecloth, dump in the yogurt, set it over a bowl, and stick it in the back of your fridge.

Berry Layer: Combine 3¹⁄₂ cups IQF blueberries, ¹⁄₈ cup orange juice, and ¹⁄₃ cup white sugar and cook over medium heat about 5 minutes, until the berries have released a good bit of juice.

In a small bowl, stir together another ¹⁄₈ cup orange juice, 2 tablespoons of white sugar, and 1¹⁄₂ tablespoons of cornstarch until dissolved; stir into berries and bring to a boil until thickened (about 90 seconds). Remove from  heat and stir in 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice.

Turn out berry mixture into a wide container (a spare pie plate worked well for me), cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Assembly: Transfer drained yogurt to a medium bowl and stir in ¹⁄₃ cup powdered sugar and ¹⁄₄ teaspoon vanilla extract until smooth. Spoon sweetened yogurt cheese into the chilled pie shell, smoothing it over the bottom and up the sides. Spoon the chilled blueberry mixture over the yogurt and smooth out the top of the pie. Garnish with a dollop of the extra yogurt and long threads of lemon zest (if you're into that sort of thing). Refrigerate at least one hour before serving.

-adapted from Pie by Ken Haedrich

Let me just say that after two months of pies that ranged from white to cream to light yellow, working with blueberries was refreshing visually.They stained my wooden spoon, but to tell the truth, I wouldn't mind dyeing the rest of the spoon that color!

As I started out suggesting, this pie is reminiscent of cheesecake, only lighter. The tang of the yogurt stands in well for cream cheese, and the sweetness of the berries is sufficient to carry the entire show.

This is how your yogurt cheese should look

I will caution you that this pie does not keep - and I'm not just being euphemistic here. I brought the pie together for a Sunday morning potluck, so it was assembled and ready to go Saturday night and stored in the fridge. The graham crust tends to get soggy and weepy after just hours, and the whole thing slumps into a glorious mess. I might try it again with a short stint in the freezer before serving to see if it holds up better and slices more cleanly.

That said, don't be afraid to scoop out a portion with a spoon - it still tastes wonderful even if it's not the prettiest thing on the plate. And the taste is what counts in the end, right?

Some of the last bits. This is how it's supposed to look.

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!

Vanilla Cream Pie

They don't come much simpler or more basic than this. Vanilla cream/thickpudding, graham cracker crust, and sweetened whipped cream on top.

Ken Haedrich describes Vanilla Cream Pie thusly:

"A monument to solid, uncomplicated, middle-American cuisine, this pie should be in every cook's repertoire."

Really, the hardest part of this pie (aside from the hours of waiting for things to cool down) was assembling the crust. This was my first press-in crumb crust - crushed graham crackers, cinnamon(!), and melted butter. It came out fine, but it was frustrating to attempt an even coverage. The crust ended up being a bit thick in the corners. No matter, because the taste and texture were great.

I might think about using a store-bought graham cracker crust next time, although Tiffany commented that the uneven coarseness of my crushed crackers (no food processor here) was a positive, and I love the the cinnamon flavor in the crust.

The filling is very simple to make - everything gets combined on top of the stove until thick. Keep a close eye on it, though; the cream goes from milky to appropriately stiff in a wink.

Be sure to chill this pie thoroughly - cold shell, cold filling, cold whipped cream - before serving. Skip this and chance a soupy slice.

The taste of this pie is very light, dare I say, ethereal. The calories, however, are not. I will try this pie again without the whipped cream - maybe a honey-cinnamon meringue instead? - to lighten up the caloric impact some. This is definitely a pie I want to play around with, substituting more healthy (although it's still pie - perhaps "less unhealthy" is more appropriate) ingredients and see what I get.

As a side note, the first slice I had was about ¹⁄₁₂ of the pie and was almost enough. I had an eighth of the pie the next day, and it was almost too much (and left a greasy feel on my lips, probably from the whipped cream topping). I'd try tenths next time, though good luck getting even slices.

Two other notes, both of which result from my failure to read the recipe closely enough. First, the original recipe calls for the use of a 9¹⁄₂-inch pan; I plunged ahead with my standard 9-inch and everything worked out just fine. Second, I forgot to dust nutmeg over the top of the finished pie! I love nutmeg and regret not adding it. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make it again!