Category Archives: piemakers

Chicken Pot Pie

This week I made a chicken pot pie.

The original recipe is found here – Epicurious’ Chicken Pot Pie Recipe. I modified the recipe a little however, and the below recipe and steps includes the changes I made.

Double-crust (same as the class recipe)

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) of cold unsalted butter (an all-butter crust, instead of using shortening)

1/2 cup of cold water + 1/4 cup of vodka

Handmade crust, following the usual procedure. I separated the dough into two balls–one large and one small, for the top and bottom crust. Refrigerated overnight. Flattened and fit to baking pan on the day of baking, with the bottom crust in first. The pastry crust for the top – I rolled this very thin, and it turned out well because it was puffier and more flaky when it came out.

Prep time: 10-15 minutes, at least 30-60 minutes in the fridge

Chicken

1 cornish hen (1-3 pound whole chicken)

2-3 cups peeled, coarsely chopped carrots

1 large yellow onion, coarsely chopped

4-6 celery stalks, coarsely chopped

6 sprigs thyme

1 cup dry white wine

1 tablespoon kosher (preferably) salt

1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1 tablespoon tomato paste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place carrots and onions on a baking sheet and roast until golden brown, or what I did, which is about 30 minutes.

Place the chicken inside a large pot, breast side down, and place carrots, onion, celery into pot. Add thyme, white wine, salt, peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon tomato paste. (The Epicurious recipe holds off on the tomato paste until later, but I accidentally put it in at this step – and added another teaspoon again later – and it worked well.)

Chicken in pot

Add 8 cups of water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Turn down heat to low, cover, and poach chicken until cooked through, about 40-50 minutes. Here I used a meat thermometer to check the inside temperature of the chicken to make sure it was cooked through at 45 minutes.

Cooked chicken

Remove chicken from pot and set aside until cool. Reserve broth. Shred meat; discard skin and bones. Set a large strainer over another smaller pot. Strain broth into clean pot. Stir in another 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. Return to medium heat and simmer, uncovered, until reduced to 5 cups, about 40 minutes.

Chicken broth and tomato paste

Can be made 1 day ahead. Chill uncovered until cool. Cover chicken and broth separately; keep chilled. Rewarm broth before continuing.

Filling

1 cup 1/2 slices peeled carrots

1 cup fresh (or frozen, thawed) peas

1 cup red (purple/white) pear onions

2 cups fresh shitake mushrooms, chopped or minced

2-3 stalks celery, coarsely chopped

1 cup 1/2 red small potatoes

1/2 (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 – 3/4 cup all purpose flour

6 fresh sage leaves

4 thyme sprigs

2 sprigs rosemary

1 egg, beaten to blend

Cook carrots in large saucepan of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a medium bowl. Add peas to saucepan, cook for about 2 minutes, transfer to bowl with carrots. Repeat with potatoes, celery, onions. Peel onions after cooked, and chop in half or 1/4. Set aside in the medium bowl.

In a large heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, stirring gently. Whisk in flour, a little at a time, and whisk constantly. Cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Whisk in herbs and warm broth from chicken. Simmer for about 15 minutes, until the liquid reaches a thick consistency.

Chicken broth, flour, butter, and herbs

Add the chicken, carrots, peas, onions, mushrooms, celery, potatoes. Bring to a simmer.

This can also be made 1 day ahead. Rewarm before continuing.

The filling

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spoon filling into the pie dish. Top with the pastry cover, pinching edges to seal. If not using a pie bird (which I didn’t), cut a 1″ slit in center of crust for steam to vent. Brush pastry with beaten egg.

Place pot pie on a rimmed baking sheet (I skipped this). Bake until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly, about 35-45 minutes.

After baking:

Whoohoo!

Total prep time: 220 – 330 minutes (3 hours 40 minutes – 5 hours 30 minutes). It took me about 6 hours.

Double crust – 45-90 minutes (including chill time)

Chicken and chicken/tomato stock – 95 – 120 minutes

Filling – 45-50 minutes

Pie baking – 35-50 minutes

Roasted Vegetable Galette

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What beats a hot, flaky, savory pie on a cold January day? A warm, savory pie stuffed full of healthy vegetables.

I knew I wanted to make a gallette this week –I love how the exposed center of a galette shows off its yummy filling, framed by golden crust. For my filling, I decided to use the Roasted Vegetable Galette recipe from the New York Times Cooking website. This filling called for parsnips, beets, butternut squash, carrots, goat cheese, and rosemary, combined to create a beautifully-colored medley of goodness.

I chose to use a different type of crust for my galette, using flour, salt, butter and two eggs instead of water. This allowed me to stretch the crust into a larger disc and made the dough more plyable and easier to work with when folding around the contents of my galette.

After coating the veggies in olive oil and rosemary I roasted them in the oven, tossed them with the goat cheese, and filled my crust. I brushed an egg glaze over the crust and the galette was ready to be baked on a cookie sheet for 30 minutes.

Before serving I warmed the galette and sprinkled it with balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil.

So much chopping this week

I had no idea what a butternut squash looking like before making this galette –sort of resembles a giant peanut!

How beautiful is the color of the filling?!

Using eggs instead of water for the crust made it a lot more plyable and stretchy

The final product

The most difficult part of this recipe was spicing the filling appropriately –I can never tell when I’ve added the right amount of salt and pepper

Katie’s 2nd Pie Ever: Butterscotch Pecan Custard

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For the first week of David’s class, I decided to attempt a Butterscotch Pecan Custard Pie – Yum.

The ingredients:

1 cup pecan halves

3/4 cup butterscotch chips

1 cup heavy or whipping cream

3/4 cup light cream or half-and half

3 large eggs

2 large egg yolks

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Step 1:

The day before, Nico and I handmade the pastry crusts and had left them overnight in the fridge. On the morning of the pie-making, we took them out, rolled, and prebaked the pie crusts. They looked like this:

Looks pretty good!

Step 2:

I prepare the filling. First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. On a large baking sheet (aluminum foil), I spread out all the pecans and put them in the oven for about 10 minutes- which actually turned out to be a few minutes too long for this oven. Next time I would try it for 6-7 minutes first.

When they were “lightly” toasted, I took them out and set them on the table to cool on a cutting board. When they were cool, I chopped them into small bits using a kitchen knife and set them aside.

Step 3:

I put the butterscotch chips in a large heat-resistant mixing bowl. I pour the heavy and light cream into a small saucepan over medium and stir a little, until they near a boil. This took around 5-6 minutes. Then I poured the cream over the butterscotch chips, and left them to melt for around 5 minutes while I prepared the eggs.

In another large bowl, I beat the eggs, egg yolks, and sugars with a whisk until they were frothy.

*At this point the eggs still looked pretty watery, so I think part of it step I missed here was getting it to a thicker, consistent state. This might’ve been done with a hand mixer.

I added the melted butterscotch chips/cream mixture and the vanilla, and used a spatula to gentle mix it. Lastly I poured in the chopped pecan.

Step 4:

The filling was poured into the prebaked pie crust, using a small ladle to distribute the pecans evenly.

Step 5:

The oven was preheated to 350, and the pie was left in to bake for about 50-53 minutes. About halfway I checked on it and rotated it 180 degrees to even out the baking.

What happened was the crust began to look a little over-baked by the 30 minute mark, so I put crust-savers over them. In the end they still came out a little darker than they should’ve, but they still tasted okay.

Next time: Maybe put the crust savers on the pie crust during the prebake, and in the early stages of the final bake.

The end pie!

Apart from the slightly burnt crust, pecans, and top of the pie, the custard was decent!

Stay tuned for Katie’s 3rd Pie Ever next week when I attempt savory.

An abundance of sugar

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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.

Raspberry Chocolate Filling

Pear Cranberry Filling

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.

Full-sized pies, pre-bake

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.

Golden Apple Hand Pies

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.

Pear Cranberry

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.

So Many Pies, So Little Time

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This first week I feel like we were all overwhelmed with the sheer number of possibilities when it comes to pie; I know I definitely was. It’s a big question, what pie to make, and with sweet pies there are so many options. Am I doing a fruit pie, a custard, ice cream? And that is just the filling. What kind of crust is a whole other question. In class on Monday we prepared a butter and shorting crust, but I learned that there are so many more options! It was a real dilemma. What did I want to say with my first pie? What did I want it to say about me?

In an attempt to deal with these problems I figured it would be best to make two pies, my great grandmother’s raspberry pie and a pie I only just discovered, buttermilk pie. My great grandmother’s raspberry pie is my favorite pie and I definitely wanted to take a stab at it at some point during this course, just didn’t expect to make it so early on. The buttermilk pie was something I encountered while thumbing through some cookbooks. I was initially interested because I had never heard of it before, but in doing some research I found out that it is actually quite popular in the south. It is similar to chess pie, another pie I had never heard of.

I began with the buttermilk pie which I made using this recipe and the butter-shortening crust we made in class. The crust had chilled in the fridge all night and was a little hard, but ended up rolling out quite nicely.

I even had the chance to get a little fancy with the edges.

The filling was super easy to make too. I just whisked it all together and poured it in. the popped it into the oven and low and behold my first pie was made.

The buttermilk pie was super easy to make. The only stressful thing about it was not having any clue what it would taste like. In the end it was pretty good. Like a slightly lemony pudding with crust.

The raspberry pie on the other hand was not as easy to make. The first challenge was getting the recipe out of my great grandmother, who was more than happy to share it with me, but I’m pretty sure she was not wearing her hearing aids, and her caption phone was not working that day. Once I got the recipe making it, specifically the crust was just as hard.

My great grandmothers pie crust is an all oil crust, canola oil to be specific. This means that the gluten fibers are very short and prone to cracking and just generally being unpleasant. It mixed easily and looked like pie crust should.

However rolling it out proved to be quite challenging. She said to roll it out between two sheets of wax paper, but we only had parchment paper when I was making the pie and I thought that it would suffice, but when I attempted to put the crust into the pie plate I learned otherwise. It was bad, cracking, crumbling, and sticking to the parchment. So I made the filling and put it in the fridge and decided to try the crust again the next day this time with wax paper. And it worked kind of.

Getting the top crust on was a whole other issue, and in the end I just ended up tossing it on and doing some repair with water.

In the end I think it turned out alright. The crust definitely tasted like my great grandmothers crust, perhaps a bit too thick. The filling was a little disappointing. It had the right texture and firmness, but was not as tart as it could be. This, however, could be because I used frozen raspberries and my great grandmother hand-picks berries from a local farm at the peak of raspberry season. There is probably a slight difference in quality.

All in all I think it was a good first attempt, and I look forward to what next week has in store.

Sweet Pies!!

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There was nothing more exciting, relaxing, and perhaps a bit mystifying than the idea of spending an entire three week course dedicated to the idea of baking pies. I wanted this to be a time to explore flavor combinations and build on the classics. With this in mind, Grace and I chose a green chili chocolate pie, a pear ginger pie, and a grapefruit meringue.

FullSizeRender (6) This green chili chocolate pie was taken from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds pie cookbook. For the pie, the jalapeño and ginger were simmered in milk and cream in order to give a spicy kick to the chocolate. This cream mixture was later strained and poured into the chocolate in order to melt it. We found this idea intriguing, but in reality the spice was too overpowering. The jalapeño pepper outside of the actual spicy taste was a bit too prominent and the chocolate was too dark to be sweet. This made the pie savory and spicy If I were to try this recipe again, I would have added more sugar and perhaps a whipped cream topping as well. There was also cardamom in the recipe, but I couldn’t taste it in the final pie. We partially baked the crust beforehand using beans in order to weigh the crust down and keep the pastry from puffing up with air bubbles. This was the first time I had partially baked the crust using this technique.

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FullSizeRender (14) The pear ginger pie was an adaptation from a fresh pear pie in our course packet. It called for crystallized ginger and apricot jam which were twists from the typical pear pie. It was interesting to try and overall quite good. The pears themselves ended up a little undercooked, probably as a product of being under ripe. Additionally, the filling was a little on the runny side. The recipe called for cornstarch or tapioca to thicken the filling and we tried cornstarch, but it would have been interesting to see if there was any substantial difference with using tapioca. The crystallized ginger was a good idea, but I would have liked a little more to make the flavor a bit more prominent. In order to combat the under ripe pears, it might have been good to cook them in a saucepan with the ginger and all the spices before putting the filling in the pie. I’ve done this with apple pie, and it has worked pretty well.

FullSizeRender (13) FullSizeRender (10) FullSizeRender (12) FullSizeRender (23)

FullSizeRender (7) We found the recipe for the grapefruit meringue on a cooking blog called Sweet and Savory. I was intrigued by this because lemon meringue is one of my favorite pies and this was an interesting substitution. I was a little hesitant because grapefruit has the tendency to be quite bitter, but this recipe was surprisingly successful. The filling was boiled on the oven and it thickened surprisingly well and quickly, so it was important to have beaten the meringue topping earlier rather than later. One small tweak I would have made is to add some lemon or lime juice to the recipe. I found it to be a little too sweet especially with the addition of the sweet meringue topping. When the pie came out of the oven, it was gorgeous, but as it cooled, the meringue shrunk from the topping. This could have been because we put it in the refrigerator before it completely cooled and there was a large drop in temperature.

Overall, I had an amazing week, loved working with Grace, and was excited to try some interesting and weird pies, even with some mixed results. There’s definitely a lot to learn, and it is almost sad to move on so quickly. However, I’m still looking forward to another week of baking and enjoying the savory side to pies!

🙂 Steph

Better Late Than Never

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My first blog post for this class is overdue by far, but as the title suggests, at least I’m getting to it before the second week begins. The first week was a little hectic, seeing as I got to Williams slightly after midnight on Wednesday. But even so, I got to work right away the next day making crusts with my fantastic partner Katie Shao (who you would never know hadn’t made more than one pie before this class–she is seriously talented). We decided to make Sour Cream-Blackberry and Pecan-Butterscotch-Custard Pies. That day marked my first time making a pie crust by hand (previously I have always used a food processor), but it turned out to be much easier than expected. Not only that, there is something very satisfying about working the dough with your hands and getting to feel the butter and shortening congeal around the flour. Here is the dough when actually put into the pie dish the next day (apologies for the sideways orientation):

Making the filling was pretty simple, it just involved whisking together all the ingredients except for the blackberries. The slightly more challenging part was making the streusel, but this was only because I needed more than double the amount of butter than the recipe called for. Other than that, this recipe was fairly simple. Here is the pie immediately prior to baking:

Baking went off without a hitch, despite the temperature fluctuating fairly significantly in the oven that was used. Here is the finished pie immediately after being taken out of the oven:

The edges of the crust got a little darker than I would have wanted but I imagine that could have been rectified with some edge protectors. I will make a note to try that out next time.

Well that’s all for this week. Next week: savory pies!

Sweet Week

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After a productive first day of pastry-making with my partner, Moiz, it took me a while to decide which pie to make. When I looked back at my experience with pies, I realized that I am more of a crust person and tend to neglect the pie fillings. Regardless, I narrowed it down to a peach vanilla cardamom pie and a German chocolate pecan pie. It wasn’t until I took a trip to the grocery store that I finally decided to go with the latter (mainly because peaches aren’t in season).

I chose this recipe, but I also stumbled upon this highly-rated one so I decided to do a mash up!I followed the Gimme Some Oven’s instructions on the filling:

And followed Melanie Makes’s instructions regarding the German chocolate and coconut. I used the all-butter pie pastry that I made with Moiz.

As is the case with everything I make, I wanted to make it look appealing. I realized that pastry dough has a similar consistency to gum paste and fondant, both of which I occasionally use when I decorate cakes. I used my gum paste equipment to decorate my pie:

I didn’t have enough time to finish decorating my pie at the First Congo kitchen, so I had to pack everything up and I relocated to the Zilkha Center’s kitchen. Lugging everything around was a serious workout, but I was having a wonderful time decorating my baby!

Finally, I put it in the oven! Unfortunately, I got distracted while it was baking and it…browned quite a bit. Regardless, I was satisfied with the final appearance and taste!

These too are Pies.

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The readings for this week said that a filling needs to be surrounded by pastry to become a pie. I disagreed with this declaration and hence decided that both my pies would not use pastry dough, instead they would use biscuit crumbs. Upon my foray into the world of pie recipes, I discovered that many kindred spirits agreed with me, and fell upon multiple examples of pies with crusts that deigned pastry crusts unnecessary.

The first pie I decided to make was a Strawberry Frappe Pie with a kick of orange. This pie looked very visually appealing when I first fell upon it my taste buds, in the vein of surely many before, screamed,”NOW.” The crust was made out of 21 graham cracker squares, which in retrospect should have been 25. The crust was a fiasco to make and could have turned out better if the butter was more cooperative. It turns out for some microwaves the melt button means coat the top of the microwave. With a calmer mind the crust making went well. I wish I had used more crackers so the crust could have been better spread. The filling was easy to make, it was fun to work with gelatin and ice cream. I was sad that I had to use frozen strawberries, I am sure the pie would have been even better if I’d gotten fresh strawberries somehow.

Butter is evil.

Ice cream, and strawberries (The only time I wished a spatula had taste buds I was connected too).

The pie came out well. I should have taken it out of the freezer earlier. The candied orange peels used to make the decorative aspect and accent the orange flavor were easy and fun to make, nothing like working with hot sugar. They came out well, and thanks to Neftaly formed a very nice message for the eater.

The second pie was a Ricotta Nut Crunch Pie. I loved the texture of this pie, and love ricotta cheese so this seemed very appealing. The crust asked for Amaretti almond cookies, I decided to use almond thins instead because Stop n Shop was not well stocked. I used almond nuts, dried apricots, and chocolate folded into ricotta cheese and heavy cream for the filling. The texture of the filling turned out to be lovely.

Julia Cancio, my pie muse and great human biscuit crumbler.

“I may look plain but I taste great.”

One regret with this pie was that I should have spread the apricot preserve on the base at a better time, or used a hotter spoon to do it. It turned out well nonetheless.

Overall, I think I had a good first week. Things to do for the coming weeks are to be more mindful about the quantities when experimenting with non-traditional crusts and being more careful when it comes to storing pies. Also, I should learn how to cut pies better as demonstrated by photos below.

-Hussain

“I sure wish he knew what he was doing with a knife…”

A Sweet Start to Winter Study

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After much deliberating and drooling over cook books, Stephanie and I finally decided on three sweet pies to tackle this week: chili chocolate pie, grapefruit meringue pie, and ginger-pear pie.

I was particularly excited to bake the chili chocolate pie, because not only am I a chocolate addict, I love spicy foods and the combination of the sweet and spicy sounded heavenly. Making the filling was relatively easy –it involved steeping the milk and cream with green jalapeno pieces to achieve the chili flavor and then using the hot cream mixture to melt the chocolate pieces. I’m glad Steph is as big of a chocolate snob as myself, because she had the great idea of using delicious 70% Lindt chocolate bars. Although the recipe called for a chocolate curst, we used a single butter and shortening crust which was, in my opinion, a smart tweak to the recipe because otherwise the already very rich, dense pie would have been absurdly decadent.

The grapefruit meringue pie was a bit more complicated to prepare, because it involved prebaking the crust, cooking the grapefruit filling, and I didn’t do a very good job rolling out the dough and as a result the crust edges were thin, crispy, and not all that attractive. Also, the morning of the taste test we discovered the meringue had shrunk, separating from the crust and creating a weird gap. We think this might be from transferring the pie from the oven to the fridge too quickly, but we can’t be sure. I loved the texture of this pie because it was light and airy, but if I were to bake it again I would add less sugar to the grapefruit base to create a more tart flavor, complimented by the sweet meringue topping.

The pear-ginger pie was probably the easiest to make, because it only involved filling a double crust with a pear, sugar, ginger mixture. The ginger flavor was not a strong as I would have liked, and if I make this pie in the future I will definitely add more, or perhaps let the filling soak in the ginger pieces for a while before adding them to the crust. The crust of the pear pie was definitely the most successful of all three pies –it was nicely latticed, the edges were firm and golden, and the bottom tasted great with the apricot preserve layer. However, the inside was quite runny and the pears were still a bit crunchy.

Overall, I think Steph and I picked three contrasting pies that gave us great experience in the sweet-pie making field, and I can’t wait to delve into savory pies next week!

A little (or a LOT of) pie for your day…

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After completing our initial two servings of dough (half butter and half crisco in my case and all butter in Lia’s) with extra time, Lia and I decided to make another dough. After we put the dough in the fridge for the night, we chose to bake apple handpies, a raspberry chocolate pie, and a cranberry orange pear bourbon pie. Instead of using a previously conceived recipe, we (but mostly Lia) came up with our own recipe, reproduced below.

On Wednesday, Lia and I began the day by making the fillings for both pies. We peeled pears (and rescued some we dropped in the trash on accident..whoops!), zested an orange, and drained our frozen raspberries. We combined the pears, zest, and a bag of frozen cranberries while mixing in the rest of our filling ingredients

In a different bowl, we combined chocolate chips and our thawed raspberries. image (1)

After rolling out our bottom crusts, we added the filling and a lattice crust on top.

While these pies were in the oven, cut up apples and rolled a square piece of dough out into a giant rectangle. After adding the filling ingredients (including too much corn starch which we had to scoop back out) to our apples, we cut our dough into 10 equal rectangles. We added the apple filling to each and folded the dough. We placed them on a baking sheet and into the oven! Though we did not over cook the apple hand pies, the top ridges of our other pies were slightly burnt. We should have covered the crust to slow the browning 10 minutes before we did. However, small mishaps aside, the pies were absolutely delicious!!

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Chocolate-Raspberry Pie

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

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

Pear-Cranberry Pie

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

Preheat oven to 425F
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 425F for 20 minutes and then lower oven temperature to 350F for around 50 minutes, or until pie is golden brown on all sides.
Apple Hand Pies

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

Preheat oven to 400
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.

My First Pie Ever: Rustic Pear and Raspberry Pie

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As I entered the kitchen of the First Congregational Church on the first day of this year’s Life of Pie winter study, I knew I was in for a treat. For the record, I had never made a pie before prior to this week but I have been cooking and baking other things for a very long time. That said, the world of pie-making just lured me in – making pies is an intricate an art as painting or sculpting and I could not have been more excited to make my first ever pie this week.

Earlier this week, we learned how to make a basic flaky pastry crust for our pies. My team mate, Neftaly, and I made both an all-butter and a half butter, half shortening pastry crust just to the difference we would get. Making the pastry was actually much easier than I thought it would be but having a tutorial from DGM was certainly the only reason it was so. Getting a feel for the texture of the pastry dough at different stages and understanding the chemistry behind keeping the fat cold and solid was fascinating.

The next step, obviously, was deciding what pie I wanted to make. I had SO many choices. But I knew I wanted to make a double-crusted pie with fruit in it and I also wanted to use fruits that were in season. I looked up a few different recipes including a Pear and Raspberry pie, Peach and Blueberry, and Apple and Raspberry in hopes of finding the answer regarding which pie I should make once I went shopping. A trip to Stop & Shop (thanks to Steph for the ride!) helped me solved the dilemma as I walked through the fruit aisle and saw some gorgeous pears. The recipe I had called for only 6 Bartlett pears but for the sake of having a variety of textures, flavors, and aromas, I picked 3 Bartlett pears, 1 Red pear, 1 Anjou pear, and 1 Bosc pear. I also found some fresh organic raspberries and I knew making this pie was going to be interesting experience.

Overnight, I binge-watched a few pie-related episodes of The Great British Bake-Off and educated myself on how to avoid a soggy pie bottom due to a liquidy filling especially in fruit pies. Some research allowed me to learn that an egg-white wash, a chocolate wash, blind-baking, and adding cornstarch to the fruit, all seemed like viable options to avoid the disaster of a soggy bottom.

And then it was finally bake day! One thing I would say is that I really underestimated how much time it takes to make pies because it took almost four hours in total just to make one pie! Most of the time was probably spent because I was being as careful as possible and trying not to mess up and also because the baking time of the pie was almost 2 hours.

So I decided to follow the Pear and Raspberry pie recipe by Martha Stewart because it seemed like it would work. I started off by taking my pastry out of the fridge which had been in there for two days. Then I washed my raspberries and pears and dried them out.

I set up a bowl with water and some lemon juice before I started peeling the pears in order to avoid browning. Once all the pears were peeled, I removed them from the acidified-water one-by-one and cut them in somewhat big slices. I was not entirely sure about the size of the slices but some advice from DGM helped me realize that it did not really matter as long as all the slices were similarly sized. I put the pear slices and the raspberries in a bowl and put in 1/2 cup of sugar. The recipe doesn’t call for this step but I wanted to remove as much juice as possible from the fruit so I just let the fruits and sugar sit for almost 30 minutes.

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In the meantime, I rolled out my first pastry crust. Following a tip I found on the internet, I rolled only in one direction in order to avoid “confusing” the dough and to avoid forming gluten that would toughen up my crust. I placed the rolled out pastry in my pie plate, trimmed off the edges leaving some overhang and put it in the fridge to chill for a few minutes.

Meanwhile I rolled out my second pastry dough and even the recipe called for heart-shaped pastry cut-outs, I did not have a heart-shaped cookie cutter but did have a leaf-shaped cutter and even a leaf pattern-maker (thanks to Neftaly!) so I decide to use that and cut out around 50 leaves. Jordan helped me put patterns on the leaves (thanks!).

I took the pie plate out from the fridge and made an egg-white wash with a little bit of water and brushed a very thin layer of this on to the bottom of the pie. The egg wash contains proteins which do not interact with water and hence form a protective layer against the fruit juices while cooking. I put this pie plate back in the fridge to harden the egg wash. I also put the leaf cut outs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and put them in the fridge to harden.

Now, I whisked together some corn starch, cinnamon and salt in a bowl and added the fruits which I had just drained over a colander. I reserved the fruit juice in hopes of making a sauce later. I tossed the fruits and corn starch mixture together. I took out the pie plate from the fridge and put in the pie filling. I forgot to put in dots of butter at this point but I remedied that later. I arranged the leaves in sort of a circular pattern until the whole pie was covered. The overlapping of the leaves created natural vents so there was no need to score the crust on top. I mixed together an egg yolk and some milk and brushed this wash on top of the pie.

At this point I had to go to the Zilkha center kitchen because we ran out of time in the church’s kitchen. I wrapped my pie with plastic wrap and took it to the Zilkha center kitchen. As I peeled off the plastic wrap, a few leaves came off naturally so I just put in some butter into those gaps and then sealed the leaves back on. I also sprinkled some granulated sugar on top of the pie and then it was time for baking. 25 minutes on 400F and then around 1 hour 15 minutes on 360F till the pie looked golden brown and beautiful juices were oozing out and bubbling.

I took out the pie, let it come to room temperature before wrapping in plastic wrap and now it has been sitting on my window sill overnight ready to be eaten! Let’s hope it gets the seal of approval from my class mates.

Link to Martha Stewart’s recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/335569/pear-raspberry-heart-pie

Bacon Egg and Cheese Bacon Lattice Breakfast Pie and Sweet Potato Pie

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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:

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

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Chocolate. Peanut butter. Banana cream. Love. What else do you need?! Nothing! This was one of my favorite pies, and, according to the meager bit I had left at the end of the banquet, an overwhelming success. Best of all, it was super easy to make. You can follow any recipe for homemade graham cracker crust. The graham cracker crust has definitely become my new go-to. Graham cracker crumbs, sugar, melted butter, and a tad bit of baking and you’re all set! No worries about the crust woes that befall your typical pastry. The one thing I would recommend is buttering your pan thoroughly before pre baking/pressing in your crust. I had many crusts of the graham cracker variety, and too often they stuck to the pan, and I couldn’t get enough!

Anyway, after my crust was prepared and chilling, I started with the peanut butter pudding:

It was phenomenal. I had never had homemade peanut butter pudding (I’m accustomed to the Jell-O variety), and it was terrific! I had no idea puddings were so simple; corn starch, sugar (of course), and some heavy whipping cream/whole milk, and I was all set! I figured I’d follow the same strategy for the chocolate pudding and I got ahead of myself…turns out chocolate pudding only calls for 2 tbsp of cornstarch, as opposed to the 5 tbsp in the peanut butter pudding…whoops! I could definitely tell that it was a little less liquid than typical pudding, but it still tasted great! I filled a layer of banana in over the peanut butter and then covered that with a layer of chocolate pudding. Then, I put my leftovers in a mason jar to give some friends a taste-test before the big next day.

After the puddings were in the crust, it was time to chill them both. I wrapped up my little treat, and popped it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I came in about an hour early to prepare our space and whip up some homemade whipped cream…After making my own, I have to say, it will be pretty darn hard to go back to the store-bought stuff.

It was wonderfully light and sweet. To finish, I sliced up one more banana to complete the presentation. As I’ve said, it was super sweet and delicious, and not too heavy! In retrospect, I think I’d like a little more banana cream, rather than the chocolate/peanut butter/whipped cream with bananas thrown in. Nikki also made a coconut whipped cream that was spectacular, and would be great with the flavors in this pie.

And so comes the end of my month of pies. It was quite the journey in our industrial kitchen–Lord knows I learned how to manage a 10-lb skillet. Let’s see, what else have I learned…not to be such a wimp in the face of pastry adversity, how to not connect a pastry braid to a bottom crust, you can never chill your dough enough…Yep, I’ve definitely learned some life lessons…how could I not while watching Sweeney Todd and Pushing Daisies? But honestly, I had such a lovely month with great new friends making great food. It’s going to be hard to compare this course to my other classes come spring semester!

Savory Tomato and Zucchini Hummus Tart

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Another week, another pie. This week I decided to switch things up for my savory pie and delve into the vegan world for my inspiration. I had tried my hand at being a vegan about a year ago and because of a jam-packed schedule and limited resources, had given up on the venture after approx. 3 months–not to mention, vegan cheese didn’t really cut it for me. Ideally, I loved the idea of veganism–if you stick to local and seasonal ingredients, it’s a super eco-friendly and healthy lifestyle. So, I decided why not pie? Well, friends, I have to admit, this pie wasn’t my proudest venture. It was bursting with flavor from the strong garlic and sun-dried tomatoes, but I think the flavors were overwhelming and stood out too much, rather than creating the deep layers of satisfying flavor I was hoping for. Additionally, I think cold nature of the dish and the lack of flakiness rubbed me the wrong way in comparison to all of the other pies I was consuming on banquet day. Still, though, it was pretty cool to make an entire pie with veggies, nuts, and seeds, and if you’re into that kind of thing, by all means here’s how to do it!

The first thing I did coat the tomatoes with some salt and olive oil and throw them in the oven. The recipe said to dehydrate them at the lowest temperature for 4-5 hours…Well, that amount of time seemed like forever, so I just cranked up the heat to a whopping 375 and decided that would knock off a couple hours…little did I know…

Yes. This is what happens when you forget about the tomatoes…Luckily, I ended up having just enough to make a pretty topping!

Making the tart “crust” was super simple. All there really was to it was processing and pressing. No big shakes. The filling was ridiculously easy, as well. Process and spread. I found that the sesame seeds didn’t particularly turn into sesame “butter”, but that didn’t seem to make a difference! The final picture of this tart on banquet day is picture below…I had about half of it left at the end, sadly, but I don’t blame anyone…I’d say it would be much better suited to a hot summer day.

Life of Pie | THEA 10

Documenting a January of pie-making at Williams College

Category Archives: piemakers

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A little (or a LOT of) pie for your day…

My First Pie Ever: Rustic Pear and Raspberry Pie

Bacon Egg and Cheese Bacon Lattice Breakfast Pie and Sweet Potato Pie

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Savory Tomato and Zucchini Hummus Tart