Pluot Pie

 Pluot pie (hybrid between a plum and an apricot) is ready for the oven!

Basic pie crust recipe or store bought.

About 3 lbs pluots, washed and quartered.

1/2 cup sugar or up to a cup if you like very sweet pies.

Add a 1/2 teaspoon of the following;

Cinnamon

Add a 1/8 teaspoon of the following;

Ginger, allspice, nutmeg

Bake at 375 for 50 minutes!

Happy eating!

Gratitude Pie

So, are you wondering what a "Gratitude Pie" is?  My pie is a mix of blueberry, blackberry and raspberry, and it's a pie that you bake and give away to your coworkers because they have so generously bought raffle tickets week after week since November for a good cause.  The good cause - was to raise funds for our 8th grade end of year activities.  Thanks to their generous support, we raised $1,014.00 for our students!

November - Election day bake sale, no school, but I dropped a pie off!

It started innocently enough - bake two pies and bring them in for a Thanksgiving raffle.  Who wouldn't be happy to have a home-made pie for Thanksgiving?

Then it was 3 more pies until Christmas (one a week) - gee, this money is starting to pile up!  Maybe I should bake one a month for special occassions.

January - Martin Luther King's Birthday
February - Super Bowl Sunday Apple Pie
February - President's Day & Valentine's Day - Cherry pie with white chocolate hearts
March - St. Patrick's Grasshopper pie
March - MCAS Pie (to cheer everyone up after the high stakes testing)
March - Family game night
April - Kentucky Derby
April -Easter Chocolate Cream pie with cocoanut crust
May - Mother's Day Apple Pie
May - Apple Pie for major school fundraiser
June - Gratitude Pie

Who knows, there may be one more in store, school's in session until the 18th!

Now, my question to you is this; do you think I should continue this for next year?  Or will people get bored buying raffle tickets for home made pies?

Blind Baking

No, it's not baking with your eyes closed or wearing a blindfold!  Goodness, can you imagine what a mess you'd make!

What I'm talking about is rolling out a pie crust and pre-baking it in the oven.  Have you ever done that?  Only to find your pie crust has shrunk like a wool sweater washed in hot water then thrown in the dryer? Blind baking is typically done for cream, custard, pudding and some fresh fruit type pie fillings that do not have to be baked (most of the time).

The secret is, freezing the pie shell once you've rolled out your crust and nicely placed it in your pie dish, then crimped your edges.  I've listed the steps below, I hope you find them helpful!

1. Dock the bottom of your pie shell with a fork, as you can see I dock the bottom quite a bit.
2. Dock the sides around your pie shell.
3. FREEZE your pie shell for 5 minutes!!!  
4. Put a piece of parchment paper on the bottom and up the sides a little.
5. Use a pie weight on the bottom. I use dry beans.
6. Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes depending on your oven
7. Take the shell out of the oven and carefully remove the parchment paper with the beans, be careful, the beans will be hot.  Once cooled store them for later baking use.  I use mine over and over when baking pie shells.
8. Place the pie shell back in the oven for another 7 - 10 minutes, keeping a watch on it.

I hope you enjoyed this helpful pie baking tip!

Have a wonderful week and thank you for following!  I truly appreciate your friendship!

Chocolate Coconut Easter Pie

This recipe came out of my Martha Stewart Pies & Tarts Cookbook.  I've made some notes below before you begin.  Mostly because sometimes the recipes fall short of my expectations.

-I made one tweak, you really need six cups of coconut.  

-You will need to make a foil ring for the crust or use a pie crust ring.

- Use convection if you have it, and you will want the bottom lightly browned before you take the pie shell out of the oven.

Ingredients

For the crust

•    4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

•     6 cups of sweetened shredded coconut

For the filling

•    1 cup heavy cream

•    8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (preferably 61 percent cacao), finely chopped

Directions

1 Make the crust: Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a food processor, process butter and one-third of coconut until mixture forms a ball, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl. Sprinkle remaining two-thirds coconut over mixture and combine with your fingers.

2 Place a 9-inch pie plate on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet. Press coconut mixture into bottom and up sides of pan to form crust, leaving top edges loose and fluffy. Place a foil ring over edge to prevent burning. Bake until center begins to brown, 10 to 15 minutes; remove foil and bake until edges are browned, 4 to 5 minutes more. Transfer crust to a wire rack to cool completely.

3 Make the filling: Bring cream just to a boil in a small saucepan; pour over chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl. Let sit 10 minutes, then stir until chocolate is completely melted and mixture is combined. Pour into coconut crust. Refrigerate until filling is set, 1 hour or up to 1 day.

Makes one 9-inch pie.

Ya baby, it's that easy to make & it's gluten free!

Happy Easter!

P.S. I can't wait for school vacation at 3:35 p.m. today!  Eleven glorious days off to catch up on blogs!

My Designer Pie!

My freehand shamrock!

My pie crust design above, I'm starting to get creative!

Below, is my "masterpiece" out of the oven!

My home smelled wonderful!

So I baked a strawberry rhubarb pie for St. Patricks Day weekend!  I got a little adventurous and did a little design on my pie crust!   I thought it came out pretty cute!  I even free-hand cut the shamrock!  What do you think?  I love how golden this crust looks too, all I did was an egg wash, maybe it was because I used farm fresh eggs.

The strawberries were from California, the rhubarb was from my garden.  I couldn't use the rhubarb fast enough over the summer so I froze it!  I have to tell you, it freezes nicely.  I need to make room in my freezer too, so this may be on the Easter dessert table!  Yes, I have that much rhubarb in my freezer!

Hope you can stop by for a slice!

Recipe

1 pie crust - home made or store bought

4 cups of rhubarb

2 cups of strawberries

2/3 cup of sugar

2 teaspoons flour (sprinkle around the top)

2 pats of butter (broken up and sprinkled around the top)

Place bottom crust in the pie plate

Add the above ingredients

Place top crust

Add a decoration (I made a shamrock, but it's optional)

slit to vent

Bake at 400 degrees for 60 minutes in a pre-heated oven!

Spring Multi-Berry Pie

I have been wanting to make this multi-berry pie for a week, and I've finally got around to it.  I added blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.  Some of the berries had been from my garden, some I purchased and froze, some I bought last summer (60 pounds of wild Maine blueberries) and froze and some I bought this weekend at the market.

For the filling I used 1 cup of raspberries, 2 cups of blueberries, 1 1/2 cups strawberries, 1 1/2 cups blackberries.  I topped it with 1/2 cup of sugar*, and then sprinkled 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of flour and 2 pats of butter cut up and placed around the top.
  
If you look close you can see the big bunny on the pie to celebrate Spring!  I love to decorate the tops of my pies to give them a little character.  Would you like a slice?

My husband loves his dessert and now I'm enjoying them as well - too much though!  LOL!  I didn't grow up having dessert each evening, but my husband did.  I think the difference was he was his mothers only child, and I am one of seven!  Therefore, my mom would have been baking a cake every day to feed nine people dessert after making dinner for us each evening! 

The pie came out of the oven at 10:20 last evening! I have to tell you, my home smelled fantastic!

I used Ina's perfect pie crust recipe (sorry nana) which was really easy to make in the food processor, and super easy to roll out.  The recipe is below.

Ingredients

12 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter*
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening
6 -8 tablespoons ice water (about 1/2 cup)

Directions

1 Dice the butter and return it to the refrigerator while you prepare the flour mixture.
2 Place the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to mix.
3 Add the butter and shortening.
4 Pulse 8 to 12 times, until the butter is the size of peas.
5 With the machine running, pour the ice water down the feed tube and pulse the machine until the dough begins to form a ball.
6 Dump out on a floured board and roll into a ball.
7 Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
8 Cut the dough in half.
9 Roll each piece on a well-floured board into a circle, rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make sure it doesn't stick to the board.
10 Fold the dough in half, place in a pie pan, and unfold to fit the pan.
11 Repeat with the top crust.
12 **Ina Garten prefers to use Crisco shortening, that has been stored in the refrigerator.
13 ***Cook time does not include 30 minute refrigeration time.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream!

My substitution notes

* I did not use sugar in an effort to reduce calories. It's really tart, but I enjoy a tart pie.

**I used Smart Balance butter sticks to reduce fat and calories.

It's Pie Day!!!

Blueberry

Today, the day before Thanksgiving is what we refer to as "Pie Day" in my family!  It's become a family holiday!  It is a much awaited for event where multiple generations of the women, girls and sometimes the guys, get together and make pies!  We gather at my Aunt Mae's and we bake from about 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  The most pies ever made in one year - 45!  You could say it's a regular work day!  LOL!!

Pumpkin

Everyone brings their own ingredients, pie plates, rolling pins, fillings and specialty tools.  What makes this so much fun is now the young girls are useful - they peel the apples! We also each bring a bottle of wine.  The wine isn't uncorked until the last of the pies are in the ovens.  The running joke is we make pies, they we get pie-eyed!

Lemon Meringue

The tradition started about 10 years ago, Aunt Mae was the only one who had nana's pie crust recipe and who could make her pies.  So, she told us to bring our stuff the day before Thanksgiving and she'd teach us how to make pies - we are now a family of pie makers!  There are at least 25 of us making pies!

The Queen of Pies - Apple

Happy Thanksgiving to all!