Sweet and Savory: The Cheddar-Crusted Apple-Pear Pie

A sweet fruit pie with cheese? Classic with a twist! A little bit unconventional for my first foray into the pie-making game, but I figured, go big or go home, right? Plus, my favorite pie was apple, my partner’s was pear…it just seemed like the right call :).

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[The Recipes along with some Tools of the Trade]

First, we began with a basic, flaky double-crust pastry for 9″ pies, BUT we included half a cup of shredded cheddar in there. BAM! The cheese was baked INTO the pie! 20140108_142653

[Pastry for Crust with Cheese before Rolling]

While that was chilling out, we worked on the filling. Apples and pears (oh my!) that were peeled and cut into medium-small chunks, mixed with the dry ingredients and lemon juice, then left out to juice.

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[The Fruit with Sugar]

Finally, we created the bottom crust, poured the filling in, folded in the top crust, and cut into it a tear drop design with a hole in the center. Classic!

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[Raw Pie with Cling Wrap]

We then stored the pie overnight, baked it the next day, and served it with few slices of fresh-cut Sharp White Cheddar ontop. Mmm-mmm!

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[The Finished Product]

Reflections: The crust became very brittle and hard to work with at a point, fracturing very often. This may have been attributed to the fact that we did not consider the extra dry mass of the cheese in the recipe, calling for more liquid than normal. Oh well, a lesson for next time. Other than that, I would say everything else worked out splendidly – the browning was good, proper bubbling was achieved, the two crusts formed well, our design stayed intact, and, most importantly, it tasted FANTASTIC!

I look forward to trying this recipe again, perhaps with a more spiced kick during the filling preparation process so that the natural sweetness of the fruits as well as the savory flavor of the cheese can be better complimented.

Bake on, readers!

 

Maple-Bacon-Apple-Experiment Pie :)

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Nikki here!So…after watching most of New Girl season 1 I decided to finally leave my room friday to bake a pie for a friend…the end result was maplebaconapplethingpie! The original plan was just to make it normal and fruity, but then i started thinking about bacon…and maple syrup…and breakfast…and so The Pie came into creation.

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I sorta improvised a lot on this one (and once again had issues with the water ratio): also i accidentally burned half of the bacon while I was trying to fix my very dry and crumbly dough, so had to make more. I followed an online recipe that involved apples and bacon (I clicked the first post under the heading “pie recipe with bacon” that looked promising), but added oats to the crumble (brown sugar, crumbled bacon, flour, cinnamon) and maple syrup (replacing the sugar) and bacon bits to the apple filling. Also, I was worried that a) the bacon would burn in the oven if I didnt cover it and b) the apples would overflow (it was a lot of apples), so I covered the whole thing with tin foil, and it ended up being fine, if a little undercooked.

Notes:

WATCH that bacon. WATCH it.

Does that pie crust reeeallly stick together? But careful, not TOO sticky. (mehhhhhhh I don’t get it)

Stew the apples in the bacon bits and maple before baking; consider prebaking the crust to avoid soakage….this would solve the problem of the apples being a little to undercooked and hopefully absorb the maple more (I think)

That crumble topping was dang good. MMM bacon. Definitely double what that recipe called for/go to taste.

I definitely gained a few pounds from this pie (large amounts of bacon, butter, maple syrup, sugar….)

 

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^The aftermath (look closely and you can see bacon grease and flour everywhere)

 

All in all, I had a fun friday night with my ski team captain John Sanderson, who immensely enjoyed the pie (he was the recipient), as we were both missing our teammates at the UVM Winter carnival due to knee injuries.

Success! Over and out.

Week 1: Sweet pies — complete!

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!

Wooo mixed berry pie!!

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Nikki here! I, personally, was very excited to make an ENTIRE PIE from scratch. Also, I’ve never blogged before so that’s pretty exciting as well. And now Sara Wu and I can genuinely say we can make pie-who wouldn’t want such skills? Sara and I had a few issues with the crust (there is apparently a very fine line between too little and too much water to be added…we didn’t find that line) in any case, our mixed berry pie turned out rather well I thought. I wasn’t feeling very creative so I let Sara make a nice design on the crust. I also had a lot if fun using my hands to get the job done. To celebrate our crust finally becoming crust-like, Sara and I finished off David’s mince pie  (sooooo freeeeakin goooood). Can’t wait to try everyone else’s! There was also a brief issue with the lemon zest that was going into the filling…there was a lack of zesting utensils as well as a lack of knives suitable for mincing lemon peel (thanks to Dave for his problem solving skills, we may not have made it otherwise), but we finally came through (don’t worry, unusually large chunks of lemon peel are indeed edible). The final step, the actual baking of the pie, was easy; our outer rim browned a bit more than the rest of the pie but it still looks pretty (which is all that matters anyway). If anyone is obsessed with berries and pie, this one’s for you! Hurray for week one! Over and out.

Cider-Infused Apple Pie and Sour-Cream Blackberry Pie

Be forewarned: I have no idea why these pictures are coming in upside-down/sideways. I need to figure that one out and will edit when I do haha.

When Robbie and I were choosing our recipes for this week, the sour cream-blackberry pie sounded fantastic. I’ve never had a blackberry pie before, but anything with sour cream in it is sure to be good. As lovers of apple cider, the cider-infused apple pie sounded too good to NOT bake, so we went for it.

I’ll break down our pie-baking experience into three parts:

1)   THE PASTRY

The great thing about making two pies this week is that Robbie and I each got to attempt making a pie crust from start to finish. I was extremely intimidated by crust, but the process was actually pretty painless, save one little issue: determining how much water to add! I was paranoid about adding too much water and thereby loosing the pastry’s flakiness, but too little water turned out to be a bad thing.

When it came to rolling out my pastry, some huge cracks formed along the edges. It was pretty difficult to handle and almost fell apart while trying to transfer it from the counter to the pan. In the end, the pie crust wasn’t terrible, but I gained the following knowledge:

Crust Learning Point #1: One must not be too stingy with water while making the pastry.

Crust Learning Point #2: One must not be too stingy with flour. Too little flour on the counter before rolling out the pastry makes it nearly impossible to lift it off the counter without creating huge rips.

A photo of my lovely partner tackling large amounts of Crisco:

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2)   CREATING THE APPLE PIE

The most difficult part about the filling of the cider infused apple pie was peeling/coring/slicing TWELVE CUPS of apples by hand!

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The rest was easy. We stewed the apples for in ¾ cup of cider (a seemingly miniscule amount of cider given the number of apples) for five minutes.

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We then added a little sugar, spice, other nice things, and threw them into Robbie’s pie crust. He made a beautiful design on the top crust with an impressive amount of vent holes.

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I’m curious to see how the texture turned out. The apples got pretty mushy and we were bordering on applesauce-status. But it smelled so good while cooking; it’s got to taste good, at the very least 🙂

 

3)   CREATING THE BLACKBERRY PIE

This pie filling was very straightforward. The only finicky thing was prebaking the pie crust. The crust was hopping back and forth between the oven and the “freezer” (i.e. sitting on the open window sill), being baked with weights, without weights, with crust-browning-protector-things and without them, being stabbed by a fork, whose holes were then sealed up with egg whites, etc. It was a saga.

An hour later: BEHOLD, our prebaked pie crust:

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The rest of the pie was a breeze. We changed the recipe slightly by doubling the amount of streusel topping (you can never have too much streusel, I am told).

The sour cream mixture being poured over the blackberries:

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Our streusel-topped final product! Can’t wait to taste…I have no idea what to expect.

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Blueberry Lattice Pie

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.

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Very Cranberry-Pear Pie

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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…

Mixed Berry Pie

Heyo, two days late on the update, but better late than never, right?

First thought: Cleaning is a lot of work:

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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!

Sour Cream Blackberry Pie

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!

Blackberries

Streusel ToppingSourcream mixBlackberries in Pie Crust

Blackberry Sourcream pie pre ovenSourcream Blackberry Pie Baked

Apple Cider Infused Apple Pie

Apple Cider Infused Apple PieAs 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.

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’

How we discovered that we didn’t have any small saucepans

IMG_7010Ladles, however, we had in spades.

 

Red pepper and goat cheese tart

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That’s goat cheese mixed with a egg and layered at the bottom of the crust after it’ been placed in the tart pan. Then a layer of fresh basil leaves on top of the chèvre.

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Then many layers of red pepper rings (about 3 peppers’ worth) with some additional crumbled goat cheese interspersed for variety. Drizzle with honey, sprinkle with salt and black pepper, and bake.

20131226-red-pepper-tart-3Happy Boxing Day!

Christmas pies!

20131225-Christmas-piesThat’s the apple butter pumpkin pie at the bottom, and the pear mincemeat pie on top. The latter was served with homemade hard sauce as well—because really Christmas is just an excuse to put brandy in everything 😀

Pear mincemeat pie, in progress…

Never made a mincemeat pie before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had mincemeat pie in probably 30 years or more, not since some childhood Christmas vaguely remembered. But as soon as I smelled the mince as it began stewing, a flood of childhood memories came back and I knew that this was precisely what Christmas was supposed to smell like!

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That’s homemade mince there: pears, dried Turkish apricots, dried currants, golden raisins, sliced almonds, orange and lemon peel, brown sugar, spices (nutmeg cloves ginger cinnamon) and brandy. No suet in this one, will try that another time.

20131225-mincemeat-pie-2…and a little autumnal decoration (yes fine it’s winter, I know. Stupid rain melted all the snow right before Christmas anyway…)