Tag Archives: blackberry

Lemon Meringue Pie with Blackberry Lemon Sauce

Although I would like to say my second pie of presentation week was smooth sailing after the myriad of annoyances that accompanied my Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie, I have to say the stress level that accompanied my lemon meringue pie was equivalent to its partner this week. Perhaps my focus wasn’t quite on point. Perhaps I was trying to be too bold with my presentation. Musings aside, there is one lesson I learned with this pie that I will never forget…it is impossible to create a meringue by hand. Impossible. Think you can do it? Want to prove me wrong? Don’t. Honestly. It’s miserable. I spent about an hour vigorously whipping those egg whites and that sugar and that dash of cream of tartar to no avail. I stirred so much my arm was more sore the next day than it was after my lift on Friday. The best I could achieve was a marshmallowy goo that, although tasty, was still, well, goo. Even when Tala valiantly brought the electric hand mixer from home and I had beaten the goo for about 15 minutes and I had added way more sugar than the recipe called for, it remained slightly lighter, slightly tougher goo. Absent were the so-called “peaks” that were supposed to have appeared ages ago. Serves me right, I suppose, having the audacity to attempt the elegant meringue with nothing but a whisk…

Aside from the melty meringue (which firmed up a bit after baking, and really did taste terrific), the rest of the pie was wonderful. I created my own take on whole wheat graham flour (which BonAppetit.com requested) by combining whole wheat flour with graham cracker crumbs, and it did the trick just fine.

What a good-looking crust, right?!One problem–the butter that I ever-so-lovingly worked in by hand was supposed to be melted an act as the connecting agent. I was preparing to mourn yet another irreparable mistake, when David saved the day with a nifty trick. We put my concoction in a bowl over a pot of boiling water to create a makeshift double-boiler and melted the butter without burning anything in the process! It was quite the success, and the dough came together really well.

The lemon-blackberry sauce also turned out beautifully:

And one more close up for good measure:

There we go…the good stuff.

Lemon and blackberry is a stellar combination, and I owe many of the laudations my pie received to that wonderful sauce. I think the fresh blackberries really made it, despite the recipe calling for frozen. Also, I did not use fresh lemon juice because the stuff was really in demand this week, but still got lovely results with using lemon juice from the bottle and fresh lemon zest.

Week 1: Sweet pies — complete!

Cider-Infused Apple Pie and Sour-Cream Blackberry Pie

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)

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.

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.

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!