My Baking Adventures

Yeah, yeah, I know - it’s corny. But I made the cutest little pies for this weeks TWD, chosen by Amy of South in Your Mouth. The recipe is actually Double Crusted Blueberry Pie, but since mine were more like turnovers, I’ve decided to call them “pie-ettes”. The dough was a snap, the filling was easy, and the execution? Flawless.

Ha! Look at them - a little herd!

To give you a size reference, that’s a salad fork the pie is sitting on:

Just look at that crust! I haven’t seen such flakiness since my last visit to L.A.!

I even filled one of the rounds with chocolate chips, and gave it to the kids. Before I could ask how it was, it was gone!

The only change I made was to use all butter for the crust, since shortening gives me the heebee-jeebees. And, I made the pie dough by hand, using the old fashioned pastry cutter. Wow, what a revelation that’s been!

A winner all around! For the recipe, you’ll have to buy the book, which is on sale at amazon.com, with free super saver shipping!

As promised, here is the recipe for the outstanding pie crust that I used to make:

1. A quiche

2. The banana cream pie that became a slurpee.

Basic Pie Crust - adapted from Williams Sonoma Pies & Tarts

Makes enough dough for a 9” pie shell

1 ½ cups all purpose flour
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter (originally called for shortening but I use butter)
3-4 tbs. ice water

Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse once or twice to blend. Cut the butter into chunks and add to the bowl. Pulse 10 times and check the consistency. It should be light and airy with irregular sized pieces of butter. If not, pulse 5 more times and check again.

Add 3 tbs. water and pulse 5 times. Stop and feel the dough, it should be damp enough to come together. If not, add another tablespoon of water and pulse another 2-3 times. The dough should not form a ball - if it does, you have over-processed it.

Dump the mass onto a floured board and gather together into a ball. At this point, you can roll it out right away or wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.

To fully bake the crust, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line the pastry-lined pie pan with a sheet of foil that has been pierced several times to allow steam to escape. Add pie weights, and bake for 8 minutes. Remove the foil and weights and continue baking until the pastry is crisp, dry and lightly browned, about another 10 minutes. Remove to a wire rack and cool completely.

Before you fall off your seat laughing, let me explain.

I had made all of the ingredients for a banana cream pie - which is one of my father’s favorite desserts. He hasn’t been feeling well, and after many, many tests from his specialist, they presented him with a clean bill of health and sent him on his way. He’ll probably get ill when the doctor’s bill comes…………

So we prepared a “celebratory dinner” for him. You know, nothing too much: rib eye steaks, crab legs, spinach zucchini quiche, rosemary potatoes. Just a regular night for dinner at our house.

Until……………..the banana cream pie. I made a PERFECT pie crust. I mean, really. Crisp, golden brown perfection. I can’t remember the last time it came out like this. Oh, wait, that’s because it never has!

And I tried a new pastry cream recipe, from The Perfect Pie by Susan G. Purdy. Her method of cooking the cream is exactly how Judy made it for the filling in her Cream Puffs.

So let’s see - perfect crust? Check. Super smooth delicious pastry cream? Check. Whipped cream? Check. Perfectly ripe banana? Check. Put it all together and what do you get?

For cryin’ out loud! I’m not sure if it was an amoeba, a train wreck, or a natural disaster. Call FEMA! Call the pie police! Call somebody - because you needed a straw to eat it!

In my defense, it tasted great - the flavors were just so harmonious together. But it’s a good thing we weren’t entering any beauty contests - my dad said you could eat it as long as you didn’t look at it. But you had to look otherwise it was liable to land in your lap before it made it to your mouth!

I’m not going to give up, though - the crust was a winner, and I’ll post that recipe tomorrow.

The pastry cream? I think I’ll go back to my gold standard recipe. Or try Dorie’s recipe from her book.

Tomorrow I have an order for cupcake pops to fill, and Alexander has a basketball game - so it’s off to bed for me.

Welcome, baking fans! Today’s lovely baking spectacular is brought to us by Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes. She chose the Florida Pie, which is a key lime type pie with coconut cream and meringue, guaranteed to make you feel as though you are somewhere far away, lying on a beautiful white sandy beach, snapping your fingers for another fruity concoction to be delivered to you…………………… oh, sorry, I was temporarily transported back to the days of b.c. - Before Children.

Now, 2 out of 4 members of this house recommend coconut to their family and friends - the other two, well, they don’t. So I cut the recipe into about a third and rummaged through my baking pans and found the cutest little tart pans. Conveniently, I had enough graham cracker crumbs to fill the little tarts with the perfect amount of crust.

Nest step: the filling.

I couldn’t find key limes so I substituted regular lime juice. I skipped the coconut filling in 2 of the tarts, and added it to the other two. Here’s one of the coconut tarts - do not adjust your screen - picture is a little blurry.

And one without any coconut:

And, all together now:

The conclusion? They were amazing both ways. David and my mom liked the plain lime, and my dad and I liked the coconut. Well, we’re both a little nuts anyways - yuck, yuck, yuck.

Make sure to check out what the other members did, especially since they hooked us up with the RSS reader feature. It’s made visiting other blogs wonderfully simple!

I make-a big pizza pie!!! Continuing with my quest to conquer my fear of yeast, I have been relentless in my pursuit of homemade pizza dough. Every Friday night is Pizza and Movie night at our house. Tonights feature is the high quality - yet banned in Venezuela (!) - full length “Simpsons” movie.

We previously bought our dough from a local pizzeria but I knew there had to be a better way than spending $5.50 on nothing more than flour and yeast. So armed with my trusty RAO’s cookbook, I have been able to master the dough. The kids dig it because I always give them a little and they can pretend they’re on a Food Network challenge to see who can toss it the highest. And it’s always fun until someone gets their dough stuck to the ceiling fan. Try getting that to come off!!

And besides, I bought David a pizza oven for Christmas and it’s great. The only downside to it is you can’t put more than one pizza in at a time. I have also discovered that for the most successful crust you need to pre-bake it. And here’s tonight’s lovely crust, ready for dressing:

Don’t you just love the irregular shape? It proves that it is really homemade. Well, that and I couldn’t get it perfectly round if my life depended on it. And here’s the second shot, after being properly attired:

Delizioso! Molto bene, grazie!

What a day. I finally resolved my software issues, got through 3rd grade grammar homework and made dinner after all. Well, dinner was a white lasagna that I had made 2 weeks ago and had the foresight to freeze for days like this.

But on to the important things - dessert. I had a recipe for a delicious lemon-lime pie that I was dying to make. So I did!! I had leftover lime juice from David’s last round of homemade margaritas, and fresh lemons from my last trip to Whole Paycheck- I mean Whole Foods. The crust was a simple graham cracker crumb that I prebaked to keep it crisp. While the crust was cooking I made the filling of eggs, cream, juices and sugar. I think the heat may have been too high because this is what it turned out to be:

Uggh, what a disaster. I could easily overlook the appearance - that’s what whipped cream topping is for - but the taste was horrible! It really goes against my better judgement to post a picture like this, but hey, it happens to all of us. Sorry, no recipe for this imperfect pie. If someone has a lemon lime pie recipe that they would like to share, I’d like to have it!