More pie!

Today, we had our children's Christmas play at the church. It is done! It went well! And yesterday, I made the last two pies to share at lunch after service today. They're all done! Some went well!

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Fig Frangipane

ff (fortissimo), awesome! Not that it was a loud pie. It was a tasty pie. A frangipane filling is made with egg, vanilla, and almond meal (and sugar). It was my first frangipane, but not my last. The fig was good, but I'd like to try it with plums. And then you can't read it musically (unless you play too much Brahms and then you can poco forte/plum frangipane your heart out. I used a recipe I found online. Ricardo's?

Gingerbread Pie (no picture)
I tended to make more than one pie at once and I'm pretty sure the partner to gingerbread was W. It was an unusual weekend of pie. And, interestingly enough, also made for a lunch at church. Moral of the story, if you want pie, come to our potlucks.

Gingerbread pie was the flavour of gingerbread in a cheesecake-like texture in  tart shells (read: small pies). I thought my kids would like it. They did not. But they didn't even TRY W.

Honey, honey
H was one of those difficult letters. Honeydew? Hazelnut? Wait, I could have done hazelnut!? I want a do-over. I mean, I want YOU to make me a hazelnut pie because I'm tired and I've been making Christmas cookies all day.

What I ended up making was "honey-lemon pie". It was from a honey cookbook I have. I thought straight honey would be too cloying and the lemon would tone it done. It sounded a bit too much like the title of a cough drop, but nothing's perfect. And it really was nothing like a cough drop. Not hard, more silky and it did nothing for my cough.

Anyway, I always have lemons so we were off to the races! Or so I thought. At a crucial step in the recipe, I ran out of honey. It did have some honey in it, but not enough. So, to finish and not have to run to the shop, I substituted in golden syrup for the rest of the honey. They're both sweet, right? Both thick and sticky?

BAD IDEA.

It was sweet, with a flavour of sweetness and a hint of sugar. This was a pie that was not finished. We had a slice (as did my poor in-laws). We did not need/want more. Probably this would be better as a petite-four. You know, like really, really small portions.

To bake the Impossible Pie, to eat the whole coconut jar!
Impossible pie is one of those things where you mix all the stuff, plonk it into the pan and throw it in the oven. You may be sceptical that it will make its own crust. You may be sure that it won't taste nice at all. But at the end of the day, it's a coconut pie that made it's own crust and tastes like more.  It was even one of my dear friends' (who ate many of the pies) favourite!












Jam tarts
I doubled the crust from my frangipane and made tiny tarts, topped with jam: blackberry and strawberry pear. I chose those specific flavours, because they were the first ones that I managed to grab from the fridge. Word of warning: jam somehow expands and turns to boisterous lava when cooked.









Key Lime
It's delicious. It's three ingredient - key limes, condensed milk, cream.

Lemon pie with blueberry sauce
It has the distinction of being the first pie I made in 2018. It was good, but also a long time ago. I always have lemons, so it made sense to jump on the list. The blueberry sauce was nice, too.






Macaroon
Note the double o. This was not an almond meal circle sandwich, this was chocolate and coconut in happy harmony. Well, pretty happy harmony.  See, I had this theory that dark chocolate and coconut are both sweet enough to make a pie without adding sugar. Had I been using 45% chocolate and sweetened coconut, I'd have been right. Instead, I was using 85% and unsweetened. It was satisfying, but dark.  Good with coffee. You only needed a small piece. (Note the white chocolate melted on top of the pie to make it a tinge sweeter. The other pie is banana cream.)

Okay, that's enough sweet talk for one day. If you decided to pie it up one year, I recommend this: SHARE. Baking is fun. Giving away baking is more fun. You get a bit, others get a bit and no one's hips start shouting. Happy Baking!

Next time - N is not for noodle

Chippy the Christmas Squirrel: The Lost Files of Stuart McLean

The Jones family weren't excited about Christmas that year. Work was too hard, the days were too long, life was too demanding and there just didn't seem to be money for extras. As tired out and grumpy as they felt, Christmas just seemed to be an extra. An extra full of extras.

Chippy the squirrel sat in his tree outside their house and watched them as they trudged out of the house in the mornings and slumped into the house in the evening. Even the house itself seemed to sag with melancholy.

Chippy was sad for them, but then really, what can a squirrel do to alleviate the worry of a household? Chippy thought awhile longer, because he could feel the sadness rubbing off on him. No one wants a sad squirrel, he thought.

It was then that he had his idea. He could make them happy with what made him happy. He enlisted his friend, Oslo the beaver. Oslo was always up for a good chin-wag and soon they'd fixed the plan good and proper.

Oslo got to work right away. He worked and worked through the night and, by all accounts, the Jones family should have noticed when they left their house the next morning.  Such was their collective fog of stress, they just passed right by.

It's difficult to pass by a beaver chopping down the tree in your front yard, but if you get distracted enough, you can manage it.

With the tree down and the glum folks away, Chippy and Oslo had time to get the tree into the house.  They might have broken a lock to get in, but it was that dodgy one that Mrs Jones had been meaning to get to anyway. If they hadn't broken it, it would've broken itself soon enough.

With the tree up, they set to decorating. It wasn't the prettiest sight. A squirrel and a beaver are not known decorators.  Still, it was done. It was thorough. From a scavenged Barbie at the top of the tree to a not perfectly round wreath of nuts on the front door.  It wasn't meant to be perfect, though. It was just meant to be a piece of joy, a little spot of light to shine through those clouds that had blocked out the Jones family smile.

When they got home and realized what had happened, even as they almost couldn't believe it, they felt that joy. They saw the half-gnawed doll tucked in the tree.  They saw the badly misshapen nut wreath on the door.  They looked at the stump in their yard and at a squirrel racing around trying to refill a summer's stockpile of nuts.

The Jones family was no longer under a cloud of too busy and too tired.  They seemed to bounce through their days, the merriest part of the street.

That year Chippy got the biggest Christmas present he'd ever seen. It was a kind of dog kennel, but fitted up with tunnels to hide and play it. And nuts! There were nuts from countries that Chippy had never even heard of and more than he'd need in three years. 

The next Christmas, Dave and Morley would be surprised to find that they'd gotten each other squirrel kennels. In fact, it was a very popular gift on their street that year. Oh, it wasn't a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. No, they were hoping that they'd get a piece of that joy and glow that the Jones family had seemed to have all year. A pet squirrel would be worth that.

But the Jones family knew that joy came from efforts that seem impossible, like maybe you couldn't believe they really happened. Joy came from someone loving you enough to give up everything. Every Christmas they managed to find joy.  They always hung an acorn on the tree as they celebrated their little reminder with the very big heart.

This is not actually written by McLean, but it's funnier if you read it in his voice. No disrespect meant.

A is for Apple... E is for?

(Oh yeah, that's why I stopped blogging. No time!)

Me to 4yo: "Eat a bit more meat."
4yo: "I just want kale!"
Me to 4yo: "One more piece of meat and then all the kale you want."
4yo: "And broccoli?"
...
6yo: "Can I have more kale?"
7yo: "Look! I just finished it."

These are the people that I'm trying to convince to eat pie.  These beautiful, strange people who would rather eat freshly made kale chips.  Actually, this pie adventure (pieventure?) has been beneficial. They are more likely to try new foods. Of course, that could just be because we make them try new foods all the time.  Still, we've gone from our boys eating pie NEVERNOTINAMILLIONYEARSHOWDISGUSTING to two of them having a favourite pie.

Our daughter, on the other hand, will eat all of the pies but the kale she shredded and dropped on the floor. It's cute but irritating when she finds a food she doesn't like. She sneakily* drops the food on the floor instead of just ignoring it. Then gets more and drops it.


Without further ado, let's talk pie! I have not made the pies in alphabetical order, but will tell you of them in that order.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Apple Crisp Pie
Apple crisp pie is something that happens when you want apple crisp but you've made some stupid plan to make a lot of pies, you are behind in making all of the pies and you have accidentally over purchased apples.**

When I make apple pie I use the method that involves cutting up the peeled apples very finely and then coating them in the sugars/flour/cinnamon/nutmeg mixture. Apple crisp is a much easier beast as you just peel and cut the apples and have the seasoning come from the crumb on top. In deference to it being pie, I did add a bit of liquid to the apples as well as butter (which is what you do with apple pie, but not with apple crisp.

Vague ingredient list/Prep

Cut some peeled apples. Put them into a pie shell (unbaked), or if you are lazy, a sheet of puffed pastry in a pie dish. Add a couple of tablespoons of milk and a bit of cubed butter. Cover with crumble topping (scant 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/3 cup softened butter). Bake at 180 (375) until it's done, approximately 40 minutes.


Banana Cream
Banana cream is a pie that reminds me of home. It was one of the first pies made, way back in January. In a homemade pie crust, you put in a layer of sliced banana, cover with a homemade custard and then top with lightly sweetened meringue. Bake until the meringue is lightly coloured. And awesome.

As this isn't a food blog, that's all the info you get, dude. Want a recipe? I'll give it you.




Citrus Coffee
This was a bad idea.***

Not enough?

Okay, so it was a citrus custard****. I wanted to use oranges, but we only had mandarins and I figured, what's the difference? Answer: punch of flavour. Oranges have a much stronger flavour and zest, so the citrus was a bit weak. The other problem with this is that I tried to be fancy and put it in a "crust" made of ladyfingers soaked in espresso. Tiramisu with a twist! Or, you know, a bit of a sodden mess. It tasted okay, but in a "well, it could've been worse" sort of way. I don't know about you, but at the end of a cooking adventure I like to have the bar higher than "this was edible". Also orange + chocolate = yum. Mandarin + coffee = meh.

Date
All I can say about this is that I "made" it. That is to say, we were visiting my family and Mom and I made a pie, except I actually played with my daughter and then made the meringue to pretend I was helping. My boys were fishing with their father and grandfather. A good pie, a good memory.




Everything
That's right. With five letters left in the alphabet (E, F, J, Q, Z), it's time to get creative. Egg pie? Isn't that a quiche? Or egg tart? I've got a similar one coming! Everything pie was a triumph. It was good and fully made from me standing in the kitchen and adding whatever I could find that seemed pie-ish.

This everything pie:
baked pie crust
with a layer of cream cheese blended with icing sugar,
finely sliced banana evenly spread,
slivers of fresh, juicy mango,
topped with small pieces (rectangular) of apple, cooked with smashed blueberries, the juice and zest of a lemon and a lime and a bit of powered sugar and water.

It looked like beetroot. It had a yummy zing. Each mouthful had a slightly different taste. Served with ice cream or cream (two different days) just to prove that it was made of everything available.

So that's the pie du jour!


*not sneakily, but super obviously but she thinks no one notices
**accidental apples: when you and your spouse run to the shop for a few things (over a couple of days) and both buy a large bag of apples, believing you are out
***I have MANY bad ideas, but like a fool, will follow them through assuming it will work out. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't, spectacularly.
**** Oh, there was cardamom too, which was the saving grace, as I recall.

Alphabet Pie

Hello!

It's been awhile. This blog is nearly as dusty as my high heels! I had good reasons for not using either, as I recall. The one hurts my knees and the other - well, I wanted to tell funny stories of things that my children got up to, but it seemed unfair to write things that they would one day be upset that I'd shared. It's one thing to tell a funny story about your child pooping on the side of the road to a friend, but different to share it to the internets in general. Not saying that my children have ever pooped on the side of the road. My children don't even poop. Stop starting rumours like that.

(I've just realized that this post was meant to be about food and it started with poop. It's an interesting thing to have to segue. Like, should I start singing the "Circle of Life" or...)

So, this year to shake things up, I decided to make my new year's resolution doable. None of this self-improvement malarkey, this year was a challenge: Alphabet Pie.

See, even though I've lived in this country for 9 years, I still miss sweet pie. Pie tends to be savoury down here. If you casually mention to someone that you'd like pie, they won't hand you a piece of cherry. More likely steak and bacon!  I quite like pie (both sweet and savoury) and I like cooking/baking. Why not put these things together?

The challenge: Make 26 pies over one year. A pie a fortnight. Easy. Except, have you looked at the alphabet lately? That thing is crazy with its x and w and q and e. And h. It actually has been a challenge to accomplish. I got a bit of a slow start, however, at this point I've made 19 different letters of pie.  Some were tasty. Some were shared. Some were just a bad idea.

You would think, "Alphabet pie, that's easy! Apple, blueberry, cherry, doughnut, eggplant, fish.." but you have to remember that I can't do anything the easy way and tend to decide to make pie before I look in my pantry/fridge.  It's been unusual.

Oddly enough, this plan to eat has backfired and I've actually worked out pretty regularly and try to eat healthily.

It's been fun, this pie adventure and I want to share it. But how? That's where this blog came in. While it is not transmogrifying into a food blog, it could be the place where you look into my pies. (Ha. Look into my pies - you are getting hungry, hungry!) But if you don't want to read about my pies, I'm not wasting my laundry folding time typing about lemons and coconut. Let me know. Should we give it a go?

[First up, Apple Crisp Pie]