Category Archives: Ali Bunis

Roasted Butternut Squash Pie

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I kind of made this pie up, so here’s hoping it isn’t awful. Basically, I like roasted butternut squash, so I decided to use that, and just went from there. I looked up a bunch of pumpkin and/or squash recipes online (pie fillings, but also pasta sauces, soups, etc.) to get some ideas for ingredients, and I landed on using onions (which seemed to be in almost every recipe), gorgonzola (most recipes used gruyere, swiss, or cheddar, but gorgonzola has a stronger flavor. Plus, I like it a lot), spinach, & chives (my personal favorite herb. When I was a kid I would munch on raw chives all the time. They’re delicious).

As for the crust, I tried whole wheat, and I’m not sure it worked out too well. I didn’t use a recipe specifically for whole wheat flour – instead, I used a recipe that called for all-purpose flour, and replaced part of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. The dough was really difficult to work with. Anyway, I’m not terribly pleased with the crust, and I probably won’t be doing whole wheat again without a recipe specifically designed for that kind of flour.

-Ali Bunis

(pictures below)

 

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Week 1: Sweet pies — complete!

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6 sweet pies for sampling on Thursday noon.

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That would be, from bottom to top: Apple-Pear in Cheddar Crust Pastry (served with melted sharp cheddar on top); Mixed Berry; Very Cranberry Pear; Cider-Infused Apple; Sour Cream Blackberry; and Cranberry Apple Crumb-top pie.

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We seriously questioned whether we would be able to make it through sampling 6 pies—and that was even with half-size slices (1/16 of the whole pie, rather than 1/8). We need to strategize about this for upcoming weeks, when we’ll have 10 pies to sample (or more if people make more than one!)

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Next week: savory pies!

Preparing the Cranberry Apple Crumb Pie

Ali skillfully slicing apples peeled by Conor for our Apple, Cranberry, Crumb Pie

Ali skillfully slicing apples peeled by Conor for our Apple, Cranberry, Crumb Pie

 

IMG_1361 IMG_1362 IMG_1364This 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’