interesting life commentary? nope. pie.

Pie #8

Blueberry Peach

Now that I have a feel for the basic pie makin rules, I've become more comfortable and able to have fun playing around with the filling.  I wanted to do more with the prep of the fruit as opposed to just mixing about all the ingredients. I started with the blueberries and sauteed them in butter, brown sugar, Grand Marnier, (an orange liquour*), ginger, and orange and lemon zest. Just when they started to juice, I combined them with the peaches which had been tossed with lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon before adding tapioca and sugar to everything.  

 

I've always used cornstarch over tapioca, but really liked the solidity the tapioca provided without the gelatin texture that I tend to get from cornstarch.  The crust worked out great. I had frozen it a few days prior to baking it, which I found was insanely helpful while rolling it out, as the more cooperative the dough is the less I mess with it, which makes my chances better for getting my favorite flaky/chewy combo. The pie was pretty tart. This worked out great, because the perfect thing for a tart pie is extra whipped cream. Especially when it's a frangelico infused ginger cream, which is pictured here, sideways, as I have become too frustrated to fix whatever is making it difficult for me to place it upright.

I'm beginning to realize the sort of pie-fixation that's overcome me during this project. I think about pies much more than I care to admit. This weekend my knee threw a fit, so I had to forego my pie making.  In its place Ben & I whipped up a peanut butter mousse brownie. It was a gooey, chewy, delicious treat... but the only thing I could think about while eating it was why it was inferior to pie. Chocolate tortes and Brownies have long since been my dessert of choice (although pumpkin anything trumps everything, always), so to find myself questioning my sweet loyalties was quite a shock. But pie's done it. It has stolen my heart. 

Speaking of things I love...

 I received an unexpected delivery from the UPS guy on Thursday. It was this:

  a Williams-Sonoma pie dish that I have literally been dreaming about. Along with it was a note from my sweet mom. She knows how to spoil people better than anyone I know. Adding to the fact it had been a particularly rough day, opening this package was better than Christmas morning.  Per her request, it will soon hold a lemon meringue... and as my tenth pie! I hope to do my mother proud! I love my mom so much. & not just because she bought me a pie pan. Although it certainly helps that she bought said pie pan as a distraction from homework which then allows me to make pies to distract from my school work! My mom is an enabler of the best kind &, fact: has the ability to make anything better. Even the most awesome pie pan is now cooler, which I didn't think was possible.  But that's my mom: making the impossible possible each and every day. 

If I haven't made it apparent, I like food. So much so, that there are very few things I refuse to eat. One of them is cherry pie. When I was in the 5th grade I went with Jill Fowler to her dad's work picnic, where I had the wise idea of entering a cherry pie eating contest. I may have won the contest, but in the end it was the cherry pie which was truly victorious, and I the defeated. After too much time spent with a trash bin, a strong hatred of canned cherry pie filling was born and I vowed to never eat cherry pie again- from a can or not. And I haven't considered it since. Until now. After offering to pick up the next pie filling, Ben returned with a giant bag of cherries and added a twist to my pie challenge: to make a cherry pie that even I will enjoy. I think I'm up for it. After all, it's been well over ten years since the unfortunate picnic incident. I'll be fine, right? I'm hoping to find something to add to it so it's not a straight-up cherry pie. Chocolate maybe? Any suggestions are welcome. I want to give cherry pie a licking it won't soon forget... a licking of my plate! *ba-dum-ching!* 

 .......anyone?... no?....... 

well, try this one on for size:

When the Liberty Bell was forged, the Philadelphia city council decided to celebrate the inauguration by having a pie baking competition. There would be two categories. The best bell-shaped pie and the best overall pie. Competition was furious but all ended well as one of the winners was a popular senior nun from their local community who baked a superb vegetable dish. It had to be. Everybody knows that Mother Teresa Wins No Bell Peas Pie.

or maybe third times a charm....

Many years ago there was a small town that had several bakeries. One of these was run by the aunts of a man named Penn. He and his aunts baked the best pies in the state. Not only that, but they were also the least expensive. Now the other bakers could make pretty delicious pies, but Penn always sold more, for no one could beat the 'pie rates of Penn's aunts'.

 -----*-----

*Cooking with liqueurs is one of my favorite things. Liqueurs offer a sweetness and a variety of unique flavors that you just can't achieve with extracts. I recently learned that alcohol is what helps keep a cake fluffy. If you ever omit vanilla extract from a recipe, your end result will be much more dense. (Crazy science!) So if having to make a purchase from a liquor store is offsetting, keep in mind that alcohol is essential to the success of your baked goods, and besides that, there's only a 5% difference in alcohol between liqueurs and extracts! (Which explains why that debate kid in my high school was always smelled like vanilla...) Once you try brownies with frangelico, you'll never go back.  As long as you can keep the frangelico out of your diet coke, there should be no problem with introducing some liqueurs into the spice cabinet. The best part is they come in bigger bottles than extracts which works great for swapping with friends!*

*after thought: i realized this could be summed up as "go buy booze! it'll make your cakes taste great! don't forget to share with friends!" which is just funny enough to make me not go back and edit myself. :)

bacon chocolate pie

Pie #7 

Bacon Chocolate Cream

 If you haven't had bacon and chocolate together, you're missing out.  At first it can seem like a crazy pairing but if you've ever eaten bacon with maple syrup or dipped fries in a milkshake, I guarantee that once you give it a try bacon and chocolate will seem like a natural duo just like peanut butter and jelly (except maybe even tastier!).

I used half bacon fat and half butter for the crust which I did two layers of so the bacon could be sandwiched between them and be guarded from filling to protect it's crispiness. The extra grease from the bacon added a lot of moisture which made for an incredibly flaky crust, but caused the baking time to be dramatically increased which dried it out a bit.  I'll try doing a better job at trimming the fat off the bacon next time to try and fix that problem. I had never made a chocolate cream pie, and was impressed with the results.  However, the pudding texture isn't necessarily ideal for the flaky crust and crunchy bacon.  I think a more solid chocolate base would work better, maybe a silk? I'll have to explore my options.  

 This pie was by far the most complicated I've tried yet. This was mainly due to the fact that I was making it up on my own. For a pie makin newby, I'm pretty impressed with myself. It turns out that bacon fat doesn't stay cold very well. Even when frozen the second you touch it, the melting begins. This made the fat/gluten mixing tricky as once the fat gets warm it activates the gluten which can make a chewy unpleasant crust. It was quite the process but even the problems I stumbled over made for a true baking adventure and I'm looking forward to improving upon it even more.

jar-o-bacon-fat

  kind of makes you wish you had a spoon, eh?

I cooked so much bacon I had to wash my hair twice to not smell like a grease monkey. Totally worth it.

The closest thing to bacon art I may ever make

second crust layer

baked and ready for chocolate

What would bacon chocolate cream pie be without chocolate dipped bacon for a garnish?!

My prior vegetarian self would be so ashamed. 

Next week: Blueberry Peach

I'm always looking for suggestions, what's your favorite pie?

weekend fun

for anyone tiring of pictures of my pastry attempts, my apologies in advance. All I do these days is eat pastries and write papers. And who wants to hear about what I have to say on the binary system?! so.... pie it is.

Pie #5 (&6)

Strawberry Rhubarb

 I took a stab at a lattice top- and it was cake! (easy as pie seems like a horrible saying these days.) I had limited dough, so the strips aren't as wide as I'd like, but not too shabby for my first go.

The reason for my limited dough was for an experiment for my next pie. A bacon chocolate cream. I've been doing some research on the best way to execute this idea, as I haven't been able to find any resources of anyone attempting it before.  Luckily working in the food industry I have lots of culinary smarty pants who are happy to let me pick their brains.  After my pastry chef shot down my idea of caramelized bacon crumbles beneath the chocolate cream (it turns out the bacon will sponge up all moisture and turn soggy. and no one likes soggy bacon) I came up with this great idea- sandwich the bacon in the crust! I made these little suckers, and I think I problem solved the crap out of the soggy bacon conundrum. 

behold!  bacon sticks!

I tried a thinner and a thicker bacon.  The thicker of the two won. I'll have to do a thinner crust, and definitely plan on replacing some of the butter in the crust with bacon fat (ohhhhh yummmmmmm) but I think I just might be on to something here.  I can't wait to share my discovery with my pastry chef. And I'll admit- I hope he's impressed with me as I am.

-*-

the best part of my pie project has been eating them up with friends.  the first pie we gobbled up after a beautiful afternoon by the river with our friends Matt and Melissa.  We walked down to sellwood riverfront park, which is just a mile away, and had a blast playing with the dogs and enjoying the sun.  The pups are still recuperation from the exhausting but fun day. 

 Zig doing his part to help to save the planet

M&M's cute pup, Jet.

Bauer barely made it home,

and gave up as soon as he made it in the door.

  -*-

One of these things is not like the other:

On our way home from the river, Melissa spotted this little guy- a plastic plant nestled amongst the living. You're not fooling anybody, mister. Maybe I should give that type of gardening (that would be the fake kind) a go!

 -*-

My girlfriend Emily is moving into a new place this week, so she had me and our friend Jillian over for desserts and one last hurrah on her darling porch. I brought my second pie to share with them (sadly, my battery was almost dead, so photos were limited and not so great) and had lots of laughs while we filled our bellies with pie and Emily's divine molasses cookies.

I met Jillian and Emily at the Grill (although they've both since left me behind as they've moved on to bigger things) and I adore them both.  Emily is a force to be reckoned with.  She is always involved with a million things- her motivation is amazing.  She's a yoga instructor, trail builder, and am pretty sure you'd find her name under the definition of "great friend".  Jillian could not be more different than me and I love it. I have never met such a girlie girl- there is never a time you won't find her in heels. But unlike most of my encounters with designer shoe loving girls, doesn't have a stuck up bone in her body and is one of the most genuine, sweet people I have ever met.  With her guidance I may become a lady yet!

-*-

Caitlyn Joi and I had another bakery tour pastry date last week.  This visit was to Petite Provence. Everything was delicious, and as always, the company lovely.  However, I learned that stuffing yourself with a rich pastry isn't always the best idea right before a two hour lecture.

It was a great joint with very impressive sweets, but I still prefer the more homey bakeries. The type that feel like grandma's in the back baking up a storm. The apple rhubarb tart won the prize.

triumphant failure

Pie #4: fail #1

banana cream 

I type before you today, oh computer, with my head hung low, but with a full belly-o-pie just the same.  I made my 4th pie and it did not go as well as planned. It started out great- the dough was perfect. I could feel it in my bones that this pie would be a success!... until I had the wise idea to to try it in a spring-form pan, as it it much larger than any pie pan I have.  My greed ultimately lead to the pie's demise. the edges, surprise surprise, did not stay up well at all and folded down like a poor schmuck with bad posture.  Of course this is the pie night that caitlyn joi was bringing over a pie of her own, so I didn't dare end up completely pie-less.  I'm glad I stuck it out, as it actually tasted pretty great.  the crust was a bit thick,  especially when paired with the pie filling which was more than a bit shallow due to the lack of depth my slumpy crust provided- but I couldn't have had a more flaky crust and the filling set up perfectly.  

caitlyn joi's had attempted her first ever meringue pie, a lemon. and it was gorgeous.

 

  check out those golden brown peaks!  and it was delicious to boot! 

We've decided to enter a pie contest in August, so now my baking quest has some sort of end goal.

 Four months should give me time to become a semi-pro. 

A perfect pie wasn't all Caitlyn Joi had brought either.  She bestowed upon me her first handmade apron- complete with custom pie screen printing.  I am officially a maker of pies!

Never before have I looked so domestic!

Ccaitlyn's beautiful pie made my first disaster all the more painful- but the apron made it all worth it. and I even convinced her to let me pose with her pie to make me feel better.

i tried a first of my own this weekend, too. biscuits! i don't mean to brag.... but they were AWE.SOME. 

I feel like I'm being a horrible girlfriend by subjecting Ben to his inevitable heart attack from all the mass amounts of buttery baked goods we've been consuming, but so far we've managed to avoid packing on the pounds-- and have even managed to lose a few! (biscuits and pie! best weight loss solution ever!)  having the beautiful Portland weather back after a particularly gray winter, it's been great to spend more time out side. staying active can become such a challenge in all the rain. extra long walks with the dogs and hanging out in the yard has been great and makes me so excited for summer. 

  

Now all I need is a BBQ....

It turns out taking pictures of my kitchen is a bit challenging- it isn't the most roomy of spaces and doesn't have an awful lot of light. Here's a peak at our finished smurf and kermit cupboards. it's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do in an outdated house!

 

baking quests 2010

spring has arrived and it has me buzzing around like a bee. i don't know where all of this sudden motivation has come from, but i'll ride it out as long as i can and enjoy this feeling people refer to as "accomplished". i started my (drum roll, please) final term at pcc, after which i will have my associates all set and ready to transfer me to a real school!  my ten year plan is working out perfectly!

after 5 months of being surrounded by beige, tan, and all colors boring, permission from the landlord for adding some color was granted!

we went with a bold blue and green which we now refer to as "smurf" and "kermit". the living room wall, bathroom and kitchen cupboards all look bright and happy and makes me that much more antsy for the rain to be done with for a few months.

after a delicious run in with a grand central's berry pie, fully equipped with the most divine pie crust i had ever put in my mouth, i have declared the spring of 2010 to be the spring of pie!  i have decided that i will make several pies a month until i can master the art of the pie crust.  so far i feel pretty confident that i am on my road to success in achieving the perfect pie crust! 

#1 Ginger Peach

#2 Strawberry Blueberry

#3 Peach Strawberry Rhubarb

i haven't had problems finding help to eat them up, which i'm taking as a good sign. the good tasting part is proving to be much easier than the beautifin'.   i have plans to give a lattice top a go, but for now i've been sticking with decorative hearts (courtesy of miss kaycee jacklin and the lovely valentine cookie cutters i received from her!) the third was probably the best, which has been encouraging. soon enough i think i might just be able to master this pie making thing!

 sacrificing good hair days in the name of pie! 

i'm not the only one keeping busy in the kitchen.  i was spoiled rotten this week by chef ben.  he made one of my favorites, his orange chicken, friday night which made for a great accompaniment for our kung fu movie watching. 

oh but he didn't stop there! 

ben started his 2010 baking quest- the perfect biscuits and gravy. 

he is certainly well on his way! his benja-biscuits & gravy were phenomenal.