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"

So Sweet

My four-year-old son likes this project, because he gets to eat the results. And he can have pie pretty much whenever he wants because, unlike yours truly, he doesn't need to watch his weight right now.

This morning, as he's eating a piece of Brown Sugar Pie (it's really good - post coming tomorrow!), he looks up at me and says:

"Dad, you're a good piemaker."

He's actually eating a latke here, but you get the idea.

As my sister would say, "Awwww!"

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.

Indiana Buttermilk and Ivy House Indiana Sugar Cream Pies

Our Sugar and Cream theme continues this week with two entries from the Hoosier State. I guess they must like their pies down there in Indiana. Maybe it's the Amish influence? Maybe it's just good old-fashioned Midwest hospitality?

Both of these pies, Indiana Buttermilk Pie and Ivy House Indiana Sugar Cream Pie, come from Haedrich's Pie, and I would classify both of these as pantry pies (all ingredients typically on hand), presuming that you live in a household that keeps buttermilk around on a fairly regular basis.

Buttermilk Pie: Given the questionable results of the Amish Milk Pie last week, I was concerned about buttermilk pie, as the ingredients list is nearly similar. The buttermilk pie swaps out buttermilk (natch) for the evaporated milk and adds a generous helping of eggs. Chief among the differences, though, is that all of the ingredients are blended together before pouring into the parbaked pie shell - no oozy separation of layers here.

Buttermilk & butter; sugars, flour, & salt; eggs & vanilla

I did find it critical to have the buttermilk not refrigerator cold. When I added the melted butter to the cold buttermilk, the butter set up into chunks - not the nice smooth liquid that it should be! A quick zap in the microwave took care of that and assembly continued unhindered.

The crust for this pie shrank quite a bit in the process of par-baking - so much so that I was nervous that the filling wouldn't all fit. But it ended up nearly perfect. The filling doesn't expand much at the edges, and although the center puffs up quite a bit, it settles back flat when cooled.

That's one puffy pie! Soufflé, anyone?

The recipe calls for cooking "until golden brown and set, about 40 minutes." I kept my pie in the oven almost 15 minutes past the recommended 40, waiting for golden brown. My patience was rewarded with a gorgeous looking pie. The color is strongly reminiscent of perfectly done yellow cornbread.

To my tongue, the flavor of this pie was difficult to nail down. There is a definite tang from the buttermilk, but besides that, it's rather unique. Tiffany mentioned that it tastes like Danish butter cookies (I didn't make the connection, but that's just me). Overall verdict - if offered a piece when in Shipshewana or Terre Haute, I'd probably give it a whirl, but I don't think I'll keep this one in my personal repertoire.

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Ivy House Indiana Sugar Cream Pie: The mouthful of a name for this pie comes from a bed-and-breakfast just outside Indianapolis, from which Ken Haedrich collected this recipe as representative of a regional favorite dessert. I'll start out by saying this is a fabulous pie, well-received by all that sampled it, and if it weren't so darned caloric, I'd almost keep this around every week.

In reviewing the recipe, I was struck by its similarity to a vanilla pudding I had made just the night before. I'd never made pudding from scratch and the recipe came across by blog reader - I had everything on hand, so why not? It only dawned on me later that it makes perfect sense - all those boxes of Jell-O chocolate pudding I grew up on always said (in small print) "pudding and pie filling" - we just never made it far enough to put it in a crust!

Back to the pie. I enjoyed the pie filling much more than the pudding. It came out smoother; my hunch is that mixing the sugar, cornstarch, butter, and milk together before heating (pie) left less room for grainy error than adding hot milk to the dry ingredients (pudding). In truth, the pie filling was closer to pastry cream than pudding, but give me a bowl of pastry cream any day and I'll be happy. (I may even re-purpose the cream as a cake layer filling - but that's another story).

As one might imagine, sugar is a critical ingredient.

Who needs crust?

Once filled, this pie does not go back into the oven. The pastry cream filling goes into a fully baked crust, then the whole assembly goes into the chill chest to firm up (if you can wait that long!). I made the filling while the crust was baking, but as the crust cooled, the filling set up quite a bit. Next time, I think I would hold off on cooking the filling until the crust was out of the oven and on the cooling rack.

As one might imagine, the flavor of the Sugar Cream Pie is amazing. Creamy and rich, you taste every calorie, but you don't care. I recommend serving slim slices with fresh berries (we had strawberries and blueberries in the house) and perhaps a dollop of whipped cream on top. I even had some for breakfast one morning and didn't think it all inappropriate.

Next time: Sugar and spice, but is it nice?

My Guidebook

When I first had the idea for this year-long pie project, my plan was to come up with a list of general types of pies, then go out and find recipes for them. I had planned to use sources such as The Joy of Cooking, America's Test Kitchen, Good Eats, and others.

Just before Christmas, I was at our local library and figured I'd see what books they had in the cooking section. That's where I came across this:

Ken Haedrich, previously the author of Apple Pie Perfect (a collection of one-hundred versions of the American classic), has compiled "300 tried-and-true recipes" for pies (hence the apt title). Here in one (thick!) volume was the first part of my work done for me!

Or so I thought. Do you have any idea how time-consuming it is to pick 52 pies out of a possible 300? Ask my family - that's what I did during most of Christmas vacation! And I couldn't narrow it down to just one pie a week, so we'll have some double weeks (and one very special four-pie week) coming to a blog near you.

Throughout the year, I'll have a smattering of pies from other sources (including a skinny little book I borrowed from my chainsaw-carver uncle), but for the most part, the pies you will see here are from Haedrich's Pie.

I say this primarily so that, if you want to try your hand at some of the pies I'm featuring here, you know where to go find the recipes. I don't want to get into copyright issues by posting the full recipes online, but I still want you to be able to try out a pie you see that looks too delicious to just read about.

Do you have a go-to source for good pie recipes? Did your grandmother make a special pie that's been handed down through the generations? Let us know in the comments below!