I really enjoyed making both of these pies because they were so different! A bacon lattice top and a marshmallow top are pretty dissimilar, but somehow I managed to make both of them work out. I think the breakfast pie was the biggest success mostly because I think there is something inherently appetizing about a bacon lattice!
The challenge with the breakfast pie was figuring out how to cook the bacon lattice entirely without overcooking the pie filling (essentially a quiche). I decided to prebake the crust then add the filling and cook it for 15-20 minutes before adding the bacon. The bacon was added early enough that the egg was still a little runny so the bacon drippings could contribute to the flavor of the filling, but not so early that it overcooked in the oven. As it turns out the middle of the bacon strips cooked more slowly I assume because the filling was thickest there.
Overall, though, I think the pie went pretty well! At least I enjoyed eating it. Forgive me for not including the final picture of the pie. The wordpress site refuses to upload it!
The sweet potato pie went pretty well too. I was working off of two recipes. One for sweet potato pie and one for marshmallow toped sweet potatoes, so I had to be a little inventive. This was the first time I’d done a pie with a runny liquid filling rather than chunks of fruit and meat. The main issue I had to tackle here was also with the top. I had to figure out how to prevent the marshmallows from sinking into the liquid of the filling, so I cooked the filling in the pie crust until it began to set a bit then I pilled the marshmallows on top. The other thing I didn’t foresee was the the marshmallows expanding in the oven and then contracting upon cooling so that the top of the pie actually pulled away from the edges of the crust. It looked a little strange and made it hard to cut well, but I think the flavor wasn’t effected.
Here is the completed pie complete with marshmallow-y bubbles:
And here is the sweet potato filling while being cooked on the stove:
