Hello all! I apologize for my complete and total abandonment of this blog. But, you should be happy to know, that I am no longer bored! As of the beginning of this calendar year, I have moved to the wonderful, magical, beautiful, amazing land of Boulder, Colorado. As my way of apologizing, I will now inundate you with the highlights of my cooking adventures of the past few months, beginning with Thanksgiving pies...
These recipes, like many of mine, come with a back story. For as long as I can remember, my family has never cooked our own pies on Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday for that matter. I mean, why would we, when we had "The Pie Lady" in our neighborhood who would cook the most amazing homemade pies and sell them for less than $10 a pie right out of her home?! Alas, as we knew would happen eventually, "The Pie Lady" (okay, her name was Sarah Crook but she will always be "The Pie Lady" to me) retired from commercial pie making at the ripe old age of... man... I have no idea, but at least 85. My mother even took a class with her once, years ago, attempting to learn the "The Pie Lady" ways. For Mom, the result of this class was twofold: (1) a list of recipes with many notes in the margins and (2) a further acknowledgement that "The Pie Lady's" pies were both easier and much more delicious when purchased.
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| The "before" shot. |
Now, since I had recently taken it upon myself to bake my little patootie off at any given opportunity, I decided that this was just the challenge I was looking for. What follows is the result of my first attempt at truly homemade apple and pumpkin pies, with the recipes from Mom and "The Pie Lady."
First, we start with the
Pie Crusts (by far, the most difficult part of this entire endeavor.) Note: don't make the mistake that I did. The apple and pumpkin pie recipes I will go through here require an
uncooked pie crust. Therefore, if you're going to make my pies, don't pre-bake the crust, just prep it.
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| The many fantastic ingredients which went into this adventure. The butter is cut up because it was previously in the fridge and I wanted to speed up its warming to room temperature. |
Ingredients (For one pie with a bottom and top crust, for an 8" circular pie pan. Feel free to scale per your baking needs. With pie crust, you'd always rather have a little extra than be a little short.):
**Note: As with most baking, all ingredients should be at room temperature, especially the butter.**
2 cups unsifted all purpose flour
1/3 cup shortening (i.e. Crisco)
1/3 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water
Special Tools:
8" glass (or metal) pie pan
Large mixing bowl
1 (or more) cup graduated glass measuring cup
Cellophane/Saran wrap
Rolling pin (preferably marble)
Directions:
- Measure flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Mix thoroughly and then remove1/3 cup of this mixture and reserve in a medium bowl.
- Measure out shortening via the displacement method. Do this by taking the 1+ cup graduated measuring cup and filling it with 2/3 cup of water. Then add shortening (preferably in larger scoops) until the total volume reaches 1 cup. Then you'll know you have 1/3 cup of shortening! Remove this shortening combine it with the butter, mixing to homogenize.
- Add the butter-shortening mixture to the large bowl and, using your hands, rub the flour-salt mixture into the butter-shortening mixture until texture is that of cornmeal.
- In the medium bowl, mix the water with the flour to make a paste and immediately add it to the ingredients in the large bowl.
- Divide the dough into two parts and roll each out between Saran wrap. Be sure to do this as evenly as possible, and do not attempt to re-roll dough, it will toughen it. (If you're doing a pre-baked crust, preheat the oven to 375 F now.)
- Lay the crust loosely over the pie pan. (This sounds simple, but really it takes coordination and, preferably, larger and/or multiple sets of hands. If it tears, no biggie, it'll still be delicious.)
- Lift edges of the crust to fit it into the pan.
- Trim off excess crust, being sure to leave about 1/2 overhang all around, as crust will shrink a bit when baked.
- If the crust is to be used as a pre-baked single crust, fold over the overhang to the edge of the pan and flute. (Note: fluting is taking the back of your fork and making lots of pretty lined imprints in the edge, like so..
- Prick the crust around the sides and over the bottom, bake for 10 to 12 minutes until light brown, at 375 F.
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| Huzzah! Fluting! |
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| Baked crust (should have had more dough) |
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Now, on to filling #1, pumpkin! It's okay to drool, I usually do.
Ingredients (again, at room temperature):
**Note: for all of the spices here, if you can find the whole spice and grind it freshly for the pie, it is truly fantastic.
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
15 oz can of pumpkin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk
Directions:
- Beat the eggs.
- Add the pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices and blend well.
- Pour into an unbaked 9" pie shell (yes it's for a different size than the dough recipe was for, just make extra dough)
- Bake at 400 F for 45 - 50 minutes, pie is done when knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
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| Yup, I burnt my crust because I didn't realize the recipe called for an unbaked pie shell. Oh well, it was still delicious. :) |
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Last but, most certainly not least, the apple pie filling! This recipe's not-so-secret ingredient is most certainly the lemon. It makes all the difference in the world.
Ingredients:
4 cups of sliced apples (You can use any kind you like. I did half Golden Delicious and half Granny Smith. You can also use Stamen, Jonathan, or really any pie apple that's in season.)
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon margarine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 cup milk (optional)
1 large or jumbo egg yolk (optional)
Directions:
- Peel and slice the apples.
- Add lemon juice, sugar, salt, flour and cinnamon. Mix slightly and let set until sugar and spices become moist.
- Arrange in a 9" deep (yes, again, make extra dough/crust) pie shell.
- Dot with margarine.
- Cover with top crust. Seal (by folding back extra dough left on bottom half) flute and, if you wish, pat with mixture of egg yolk and milk to facilitate browning.
- Bake in a 400 F oven for 45 minutes. If the top is becoming too brown after 25 minutes, temperature may be reduced to 350 to finish baking.
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| Voila! |
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| Fact: a la mode is always best. :) |
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| The "after" shot. |
