Celebrate with pie!

Or why baking two pies after a full day of work may not have been my best idea to-date...

In honor of September birthdays, we had a rather informally planned (read "oh hey, we should do a birthday thing tomorrow") pitch-in at the office this past week.  I volunteered to bring pie because pie is yummy. 

Also, I had been commissioned to make a pie for a charity event by one of my coworkers, and I like to do test runs on new recipes before they can be served to the general public.  People at the office don't count; they'll eat anything.  My colleagues are always kind enough to volunteer as taste-testers.

I made the Key lime pie first, as it was a 3 step process: graham cracker crust, lime custard, and meringue.  Between graham cracker crushing, egg white beating, and the wholesale slaughter of nearly 2 dozen limes, this pie would be good stress relief for the violence-inclined.

Oh, the horror!  Many limes were sacrificed in the making of this pie.

I hate
greatly dislike
am not a huge fan of meringue, so while this wasn't my first foray into Key lime pie, it was my first meringue pie.  Which may explain why it collapsed...  Next time, I'll stick to whipped cream.

Doesn't have to be pretty to taste good.

By the time the Key lime pie was finished, it was a bit later than I anticipated.  Time and pie wait for no man, so I persevered. 

Unfortunately, I rushed through preparing the red tart cherry filling, so I didn't cook it quite long enough to thicken.

Cherries and sugar- what's not to like?

The pie turned out pretty, but there was definitely a bit of a Soup Factor.

Runaway filling!

Fortunately, this was not a disaster on par with Peach Pie #1.  Cherry Pie #1 was quite edible.  Having learned my lesson in patience, I gave the cherry filling for the commissioned pie a bit more of a boil, and it pulled together quite nicely.

My first sale!  Everybody say "Hi" to Carol.

I don't think I'll quit my day job quite yet.





...

When one berry won't do...

Try three!

While visiting my grandparents this weekend, I was press-ganged into baking a pie.  Alright, to be fair, Mom said, "I think you should make a pie," and I said, "OK!"  None of the fresh berries looked that great, so I picked up a pound each of frozen raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries.  It made for a very full pie, which dripped juice until the inside stopped boiling.

Still hot!

The filling wasn't too soupy, even warm, and the frozen berries had a surprising amount of flavor.  We certainly had no problem eating it!

Mixed berry carnage

This was definitely one that I would make again.  Maybe in a deeper pie pan...

Let them eat cake!

In celebration of some very good news at work, I decided to bake a cake.  Everything should be celebrated with cake!

Between the six ounces of melted chocolate and the full cup of cocoa powder, this recipe was definitely created by a chocolate lover.  With the sweet vanilla glaze soaked into the cake making it shine, this cake looks more like a big piece of chocolate candy.

Dark chocolate, of course!

And unlike Peach Pie: Round 1, this one tasted good on the first try!

Yum

Thank you, Indiana University!

A brief interlude

Wherein I make something other than pie.

Using the beautiful new ceramic shortbread pan from my mother...

For cookies with a floral motif

I present to you: shortbread!

Yummy

Try, try again...

Peach Pie Round 2!

In preparation for my second attempt at peach pie, I actually purchased the peaches in advance.  They (the peaches) spent half the week cuddled up in a bag with a friendly banana.  By Saturday morning, they were ripe, sweet-smelling, and just this side of soft.

Already off to a better start.

Ripe and rosy

After a quick blanch, they peeled like a dream, and I learned just how slippery a skinned peach can be.  If I did this professionally, could I get hazard pay for having to use a knife on a peeled peach?  On the upside, I got to snack on all the pieces that slipped into the sink.  Tasty.

Naked peaches

The peaches put out a lot of juice when mixed with the rest of the filling ingredients.  Unfortunately, I may have been overeager with the quantity of peaches because when I poured the filling into the bottom crust, the juice runneth over.
Possible solutions?  Remove some of the filling, or use a solid rather than a lattice crust to seal in the juice.  Removing filling from a pie just feels criminal, so I went with a solid top crust.  And voila!

Peach Pie, the second

This pie was delivered yesterday afternoon in exchange for a lovely boat ride and a nice glass of wine.  I'm pretty sure I got the better deal.  ;-)

Taste report to come tomorrow...

Update 8/9/10: The pie got good reviews on taste, and it wasn't too soupy!  We'll tally that in the success column.

If at first you don't succeed...

or a short treatise on why peaches and apples are not the same.

Yesterday, I subjected two of my friends to taste-testing my first try (and therefore experimental) peach pie.

It turns out that unripe peaches, though similar in texture to apples, are not as structurally similar to apples as one (read I) might think.  Bake an apple, and it becomes starchy mush.  Bake an unripe peach, and it becomes... unripe peach, just a bit rubbery.

The pie sliced well, enough juice without being soup.  The crust held together and had good flake.  So far, so good.

Deceptively pretty

Ah, but then comes the taste test.  Crust?  Fine.  Seasoning?  Mmm, tasty.

Peaches?  Bleurgh.  Not only are they fairly flavorless, they resemble nothing so much as undercooked squash.

Peach pellets

A peach pie with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, un-peach-like peach filling?  On a scale of delicious to disgusting, this was definitely close to my mother's meatless* meatloaf.  Sorry Mom.



In preparation for Peach Pie: Round Two, I have purchased more peaches and introduced them to a nice banana, in the hope that they'll be sweet mushy friends by this weekend.

Stay tuned.





*Meatless meatloaf- think loaf of whole-grain bread, warm, soggy, and topped with ketchup

First attempt at peach pie!

Who would have thought it would be so difficult to find ripe peaches at the height of summer!  I'm afraid they won't have much flavor- hopefully, a little lemon and ginger will perk them up a bit.  At least there's little worry that they'll turn to mush in the pie.

Peach pie

Can you find the spot where I forgot to weave the lattice?  Oh well.  First tries are never the best.  ;-)