Thursday, February 24, 2011

Peach Pie

Hey all-- this is Lou with this weeks pie. And it's of the peach variety. We have a couple peach trees in my yard and we frequently have more fruit than we know what to do with. So mid-summer you will find us blanching, dicing, sugaring and freezing mass amounts of fruit. And this late in the winter a lovely summery peach pie tastes really nice.





I used my mom's homemade pie dough recipe, but I haven't perfected it yet
so I am withholding the recipe. Muah ahahah.
I defrosted and heated up the peaches, since they were already sweetened I just added a lot of cinnamon, some nutmeg, and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.


We thought about doing a lattice crust but decided not to bother with it. :) We just cut some slits in the top crust and crimped the edges. Baked at 350 for about 45 minutes or so, until the crust was golden brown.


This was a delicious summer treat during a dreary winter day. But I think next time I will do a sugared crust instead of an egg-washed and maybe some bright spice in the filling. Possibly cardamom.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Pecan Pie

I don't eat pumpkin pie, so at Thanksgiving I eat pecan pie. However, until this weekend I had never made it myself. I never tried making it before because I heard it was difficult... not so. It was actually quite easy. Just make sure to keep an eye on it to keep it from burning.


First gather all your ingredients....

Yes there's LEMON ZEST in this pie. Which is a little different from your normal pecan pie.
Personally I liked the little bite of the lemon. Here's the RECIPE we used.

Mix the wet ingredients and chop up half the pecans.

Add the chopped pecans to the wet ingredients and then pour into the pie shell.


Then top the pie with half pecans in pretty concentric circles.



The recipe we used called for 30 minutes without foil and then 30 minutes with foil. We ended up caking it for 20 minutes without foil before it started looking really brown, then only cooked it 20 more minutes with the foil. The recipe says to cool it for 4 hours, we didn't do that. We let it cool on the counter for half an hour and then in the fridge for 45 minutes. It cut just fine without oozing all over. Pie is one of those things you just don't want to have to WAIT for! :)

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Coconut Cream Pie




Hi all! This is Amy coming at you with a yummy recipe for Coconut Cream Pie!

Coconut cream pie is Kimmy's fave pie to order when she's out to dinner so it was about time we tried making it on our own. The recipe was posted on Epicurious and you can find it HERE. We didn't really make any changes but just used the recipe as is so I'm not going to re-post it here.

The good:
This pie was super tasty. The combo butter/shortening crust was really yum and the filling had a great coconut flavor. I also thought it was pretty easy, you steep the coconut in milk and then add it into a sugar, egg and flour mixture, simmer until hot and thickened.

The bad:
This pie was time consuming. Not so much the active steps...but the chilling times etc. I would definitely make this the day ahead and let it chill out in the fridge overnight if you want ANY hope of neat slices. My slices were ugly but delish...which i will take any day over pretty but not tasty.

A word about whipped cream. Sweeten it to taste. I like whipped cream barely sweetened, Lou loves it SWEET. But however sweet you like it make sure you top your pie with lots