As a project outside of class, I attempted a blueberry lattice top pie.
I ended up having to make the crust twice, both times I over-compensated for the potential danger of adding too much water by adding too little. The second crust was able to be salvaged however and turned into this lovely pie. Pictures below.
Considering that everyone says the difficult part of baking is that you have to be so precise, recipes use very imprecise wording. How much larger is a “large… crumb” than a “medium-fine crumb?” Because this was for my topping, it was not as problematic figuring out the “large” crumb, but I did have a difficult time figuring out when to stop pulsing my ingredients. The same was true for cutting up the cranberries. It said only to pulse five or six times until they were cut up well, but five or six times mostly just chopped them in half. Haven’t never baked with cranberries before, I wasn’t sure how small they should be in the pie filling.
Making the actual pastry wasn’t as hard as I expected. However, I think it’ll definitely be several more times before I can recognize the proper consistency on my own.
I was very excited to see it bubbling nicely at the end! (I can’t believe it cooked for 65 whole minutes.) I wasn’t sure how to tell if it was done, but I guess it’s just a lot easier when filling is sticking out a little than when it is completely covered with another pastry. In the notes, it said something about how cranberries can be bitter but balanced with the right amount of sugar. I have never had cranberry or pear pie, so I’m excited to taste it. I also discovered that I don’t like the smell of cardamon very much…
Heyo, two days late on the update, but better late than never, right?
First thought: Cleaning is a lot of work:
Before we could get started on the cooking, we all made sure to clean out our utensils and dishware before using them. We sure wouldn’t want to be eating dust. Haha.
Anyways, my partner for the week, Nikki, and I decided to go with the mixed berry pie. This was our result at the end of the day (literally, since it was dark when we left the kitchen)
This was the first time I’ve ever made pie from scratch. There were some parts when I think I went off the recipe and things became a little wonky.
Second thought: Read and be familiar with the recipe.
When we were forming the crust, I had not added water to the egg-lemon juice mixture, which I feel definitely affected how the crust came together because we had to add water later in the process than we were supposed to. We had added 3 tbls of water to the minimum before adding two more to get the dough to the consistency we needed it to be.
Third thought: Use more muscle!
Maybe I didn’t compress the dough enough… Nikki had compressed one half of the dough and it turned out okay. So I’ll keep this in mind next time.
Despite these blunderr, I hope our pie tastes good.
I let Nikki do the pinching this time. Ha! Got out of getting messy there, although I do look forward to making my own crusts.
We used a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries and raspberries. They look like jewels here thanks to the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice.
Well, I sure look forward to eating pie tomorrow!
Blackberries are my favorite fruit. They are sweet yet pack a tartness that can’t be beat. In turn, it is only natural that my favorite pie is blackberry. When Tala and I came across a recipe for Sour Cream Blackberry Pie, we knew we had to bake it. For we were guided by my older sister Julianne’s rationale: that if you have great ingredients and you put them together, the finished product, or in this case pie has to rock.
Unlike our apple cider infused pie, I am confident that the crust was in good working order, primarily since Tala was the one that made this crust, not me. We had to pre bake the crust, poking holes in the bottom, and then covering it with aluminum foil and chickpeas as a weight. Then, we had to bake it again with egg white wash to seal in the very same holes that we had made. While the pre baking was a little bit annoying, the remaining steps were pretty easy.
Afterwards, all we had to do was put the washed blackberries in the pie, cover it with the easy to make sour cream mixture, and then top it all off with a delicious streusel topping. With that said, you have to make sure the pie mixture is solid, easier said than done. It took us a little longer than expected (5-10 minutes of extra baking) for the pie to become firm. It looked great, smells awesome, and hopefully it will be a crowd pleaser tomorrow!
As Derek Zoolander once said, “water is the essence of moisture, moisture is the essence of life.” Indeed, one of my first lessons as a pie maker is that water is a very important part of the process. For when I took my dough out of the refrigerator and tried to roll it, I found it tough and flaky. Having difficulty rolling out the pie crust, it was recommended that I added a little bit of water. But alas, the right amount of water before and if needed after is key. For while I added too little water initially, I added too much water in trying to correct the problem the next day and my pastry took on the consistency of cookie dough. In turn, it stuck to my hands, a big no no. We still used the pie crust as the bottom crust and hopefully it will turn out well tomorrow.
I also foolishly tried to decorate the pie but my design looks more like something Jackson Pollock would do, since I have no artistic ability whatsoever.
Fortunately, the filling is beyond awesome! It is what apple sauce wants to be. We infused our apples for five minutes in a boiling bath of apple cider. The mixture on its own was the cat’s pajamas, but mixed with cinnamon, sugar, etc. how could it not be even better? Indeed, the filling rocks. This is in no small part to having Tala as a great partner.
Hopefully it will be the filling, not the crust that shines tomorrow.
Ali skillfully slicing apples peeled by Conor for our Apple, Cranberry, Crumb Pie
This pie was our first foray into making our own pastry, and honestly as I sit here waiting for my pie to come out of the oven I have no idea how well that went. The pie smells pretty good, which I think is a pretty good sign. Rather than doing a double crust we decided to use a crumb top rather than a second pastry crust on top. The recipe for our pie asked for this type of topping, but we decided to tweak the recipe by using brown sugar and oats along with loads of butter. The filling looks very good as the cranberries seem to have exploded and are bubbling red juices up through the crumb top.
I have now pulled the pie out of the oven and it has begun to cool. The cranberry juices are still bubbling and it looks delicious! The only problem I’m seeing is that since the recipe called for cooking the bottom crust with the filling before the crumb top was added. I decided to put the silicon crust edge protector things once I added the crumb and this led to the edges of the pastry becoming too dark. Next time I will put the protectors on the pie at the beginning. Anyway I think the pie is going to be delicious because the pie is a pie and pie is always good.
–Conor’
Ladles, however, we had in spades.