Posts Tagged ‘pie’

I may have missed baking a pumpkin pie for Canadian Thanksgiving, but at least I’m in time for the American one.

This is from King Arthur Flour. Apparently Canadians prefer their pumpkin pies spicier compared to their American counterparts. I’m a fan of the spicier ones myself. Do you have a preference?

The flavours meld much better the next day. If I had to serve this, I’d make the pie one day in advance.

Recipe here.

I always get suckered when I see things claiming to be the “best”. I then feel obligated to try it and to see if the claim is true. Most of the time I’m pretty disappointed with the outcome.

So when I saw the cook book Beat This saying that it had the best recipes, I had to test it out.

With strawberry season at full peak, the strawberry pie recipe was meant to be. Instead of rolling out the crust, you just press it in making the whole process less time consuming. I had doubts that the crust would turn out, but it actually does. The downside? If you haven’t given your pie pan a good greasing, it’ll stick and crumble when you try and slice it out. The dough turned out to be much more powdery looking than I had hoped for. I think you can add a bit of water, but I left mine as is to see if it would turn out (and it did).

After the crust is cooled, the you beat heavy whipping cream and cream cheese that then turns into a light and fluffy filling. The strawberries aren’t baked, so make sure you’re using the best you can find.

Strawberry Pie from Beat This

Pastry
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
Salt

Filling
3 ounces cream cheese (room temperature)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Topping
1 quart strawberries, hulled
1/2 cup currant or seedless raspberry jelly

Directions:
1. Have a rack in the bottom third of the oven. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Generously butter a 9 inch pie pan.
3. Mix the pastry ingredients together until the dough starts coming together. It will still be a bit powdery looking, but once baked it’ll be fine.
4. Press in the crust and prick it with a fork in a few places.
5. Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool.
6. Whip the cream until soft peaks form and add the other ingredients until combined.
7. Pour into crust, smooth it out and chill for an hour.
8. Put the berries on the filling, points up. Melt the jelly on low heat and use a pastry brush to put the glaze on.
9. Refrigerate for 3 hours.

The Pie and Pastry Bible is book #2 for week 2 of my reviews. I’m a huge fan of Rose Levy Beranbaum and I practically have her entire book collection. As with her other “bibles”, this is a huge book with over 300 recipes. There is an entire chapter just on crusts. What I like most about Beranbaum’s books is that weights are listed along with the volume measurement. Weights are much more accurate as 1 cup of flour can be anywhere from 4-6 ounces — a difference that can make something dry instead of moist.

Instructions in this book are very explicit and the tone is very methodical. It seems people either love or hate this tone. The instructions can get wordy and this is sometimes confusing. I have to admit I don’t like her method for making pie crusts. She has you put all the ingredients in a big ziplock bag and use that to knead everything. I’d rather much feel the dough under my hands. The bag is there to prevent stickiness and you can use food safe gloves instead. The resulting dough is really easy to roll out and shape. Her favourite crust is the cream cheese crust, but my favourite crust in her book is the deluxe flaky one. Very flaky and tender.

I’ve made several items from the book and they have all been tasty. Noteworthy ones are the pumpkin pie, peach pie, and the cheddar cheese crust is amazing. One possible drawback is that a lot of these recipes are lengthy and usually complicated. The results are worth the labour in my opinion, but if you’re looking for a quick and easy book, this is not for you.

Overall, if you’re looking to perfect your pastry and pie making skills, this is the book that should be on your shelf. While my pies won’t win any beauty pageants any time soon, they are pretty darn tasty.

I finally made my way to Fiesta Farms and spotted Meyer lemons. I’ve only heard about these guys from food blogs. Meyer lemons are supposed to be sweeter, it’s a cross between an orange and a lemon.

Lemon meringue pie was destined to be.

Lemon meringue is probably one of my most favourite kind of pie. I may even like it better than pumpkin. It’s the meringue piled high and when it’s toasted, the crunch and lightness that you get in your mouth that I love. I even like the slight tartness of a lemon, it balances the sweetness of the meringue.

I’m terrible at making pies look pretty. I roll out the pie dough that’s never quite circular in shape and my fluting is pitiful. It’s all about practice I guess, but maybe I should give up and make tarts instead?

I rolled out the pie dough too thin so to get a piece you grab a spoon and scoop it out onto a plate. To make matters worse, I left my Italian meringue unattended while I was whipping it and didn’t turn out quite right. Despite appearances, it’s a very smooth filling and isn’t too tart. I’d prefer it to be more tart, so I’ll use less sugar if I make it with Meyer lemons. The meringue is very light and it isn’t the usual overly sweet meringue.

I’d like to try this recipe again — it’d be nice to have a pie you could cut and serve instead of scooping it out.

I had R’s family over for dinner. This time I decided to not try all new recipes to save me a little stress but to make one new thing — a peach pie. I knew it would be a lengthy process. I started before 10am and the pie came out of the oven before 7pm. It was supposed to sit at room temperature for 3 hours prior to cutting, but dessert obviously couldn’t wait that long so everyone was served a very messy slice.

Here’s how the day went:

- Start pie dough. I was going to do it the night before, but I was already tired from making the soup that was to be served for dinner so I didn’t do it.
- Read instructions that pie dough is best when refrigerated overnight. Oops.
- Freeze ingredients for pie dough. I’ve never done this before and I probably would have skipped this if it wasn’t scorching hot in my place.
- Make dough and let dough chill. I may have made the dough wrong because it says it’s done when dough is slightly stretchy. It stretched the teeniest amount before it broke but I didn’t want to overwork the dough so I left it as is. I wish there was a YouTube clip for this.
- Roll out bottom crust, place in pan and chill. Curse my terrible pie rolling skills.
- Make filling and place in crust, then roll out top crust. Have top crust tear and do a sloppy job of patching it together.
- Chill pie. Again.
- Bake.
- Pie is done when juices bubble thickly out of the slashes of the pie. An extra 10 minutes and it still wasn’t happening. I didn’t want the peaches to be mushy so I just took it out.

Despite all the mishaps, this was an amazing pie. I would do it all over again. I’d also like to practice my pastry skills so I can be half decent at it. I sometimes forget that it takes practice before you get good at something.

I remember when I tried to make my ex-boyfriend pancakes for the first time. I beat the batter until it had no lumps (the best way to turn pancakes into frisbees).

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this”, he told me and took his plate of pancakes and dumped them in the garbage.

Thankfully with practice I’ve gotten better at making pancakes.

Recipe here (the recipe if for a galette, but in the Pie and Pastry Bible it’s put in a 9″ pan).

Excuse the floppiness of this pie. I lack a cake/pie server which makes it difficult to have a pretty presentation.

This is out of character for me. The citrus element and not actually making the pie. I’m one of those die hard “from scratch” people, but this recipe was too easy to refuse. I simply threw in a few ingredients in my KitchenAid and let it whir until I had this fluffy mass ready to pour into the graham crust.

This is tasty and not too tart. It has also brought me closer to the neighbours in this newly built condo. Who can refuse a slice of pie? The pie also helped smooth things over when my dog decided to escape our place and rushed into a unit where the door was propped open and scared the wits out of them…

I only needed one lime for this recipe, however Movie Man thought 10 limes were a better deal. What to do with those limes? Maybe some real homemade key lime pie?

Recipe is from Real Simple and is located here.