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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 tartsI 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
