This week, we made sweet pies.

After settling ourselves into pairs, we set off to make pastry, filling, and a plan for the next three days.

I worked with Katie and we decided that, with pies, three is better than two. Our intention was to make a chocolate raspberry pie, a pear cranberry pie, and some apple hand pies. The two full-sized pies were to have all butter crust, and the hand pies were to have a butter-shortening mix.

We selected no specific recipes, and instead opted to work off of taste alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katie made the butter-shortening crust, and I made the all-butter crust, so I’m just going to be listing the ingredient list for that pastry.

 

All-Butter Pie Crust

2 ¼ cups flour

5 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 sticks butter, cold and cubed

ice water

 

I prefer an all-butter crust because a) I think it tastes better, and b) shortening freaks me out. It’s nothing more than that.

The pie baking took, in total, around 3 ½ hours (plus the time spent making pastry two days before), and I think that for the first week, everything turned out pretty well. My only qualms with our pies had to do with some slightly over-browned crust, and a lack of suitable ice cream.

The crust issue can be solved by adding silicone crust covers earlier in the baking process, and the ice cream issue was presumably just a fluke. I’ve never seen ice cream behave quite like that before, but as I prefer my ice cream to be neither icy, nor liquid, I think perhaps I will choose another brand in the future.

 

 

 

 

All of the recipes are listed at the bottom of this post, but for now, I’m going to take a short jump to talk about tasting.

I’ve never been asked to try 14 pies before.

I will be totally honest: going into this, I thought it would be a breeze. I now question my lack of foresight, as fourteen pies – even if all quite well-made and delicious, and totally, 100% overwhelming.

I left with a very full stomach, an ache in my head, and a new understanding of the weeks to come.

     

 

Chocolate-Raspberry Pie

Ingredients:

1 12-oz bag dark chocolate chips

2 12-oz bags of frozen raspberries, thawed

1 pear

¾ tsp almond extract

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

⅓ lemon, juiced

¼ cup cornstarch

5 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425°F

Strain excess liquid from raspberries, and prepare pear by peeling and finely chopping the fruit.

Mix fruits, chocolate, extracts, lemon juice, cornstarch and sugar in a large bowl. Stir and allow to marinate.

Roll out one pie crust, and place into a buttered pie plate. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Roll out the second crust into a rectangle and slice for a lattice.

Remove the bottom crust from the fridge, fill with filling, and form lattice on top of filling. Arrange crust as desired, and brush pie with egg wash.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes and then lower oven temperature to 350°F for around 50 minutes, or until pie is golden brown on all sides.

 

Pear-Cranberry Pie

Ingredients:

1 orange

1 8-oz bag of cranberries

4 pears

½ tsp ground ginger

3 tbsp bourbon

6 tbsp cornstarch

6 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425°F

Zest and juice the orange, setting aside all of the zest and ⅓ of the juice in a large bowl. The rest can be discarded.

Peel, thinly slice and then halve those slices for each of the pears.

Add fruits, spices, bourbon, cornstarch and sugar to the juice and zest. Stir and allow to marinate.

Roll out one pie crust, and place into a buttered pie plate. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Roll out the second crust into a rectangle and slice for a lattice.

Remove the bottom crust from the fridge, fill with filling, and form lattice on top of filling. Arrange crust as desired, and brush pie with egg wash.

Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes and then lower oven temperature to 350°F for around 50 minutes, or until pie is golden brown on all sides.

 

Apple Hand Pies

Ingredients:

4 apples

2 tsp ground cinnamon

¾ tsp ground ginger

¾ tsp allspice

½ lemon, juiced

3 tbsp cornstarch

5 tbsp white sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 double pie crust

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°F

Peel and thinly slice the apples, then cutting the slices into thirds.

Mix fruit, spices, juice, cornstarch, and sugar in a medium bowl and allow to marinate.

Roll out your pie crust into a large rectangle. Slice into desired number of smaller rectangles (10 works well).

Putting filling on half of each rectangle, leaving a 1 centimeter border around the entire edge (and leaving half of the rectangle empty).

Fold the empty half over the full half, and use water, or some of your beaten edge to hold the two edges together.

Crimp, fold, or fork your edges so that no juices will leak out during the cooking process.

Place hand pies on a parchment lined baking pan and brush with egg wash. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until golden brown.