I just had my first mad scientist moment.

I made a plum pie last night and it was flippin' awesome. It's gone now. Just me and Chris in one day.


I know I've been slacking about the blog. I'm sorry. It just isn't holding my interest. I'm even a week or so on pies. It's too hard to come up with new things I haven't made before.
But I'm here to talk about that Plum Pie. Nice and tart, not too sweet, crisp and moist in all the right places. SO DELICIOUS

But it was pretty runny; the filling didn't really hold itself together. As a result, it was hard to cut and serve, and as time passed, the streusel top lost a lot of its crisp. We talked about how to try to fix that each time we ate a slice and in the moments after while we reveled in the yum. One thought was that the plums were overripe and therefore too wet with juice. Or, that the recipe's ambiguity (it calls for four cups or one and a half pounds of plums. we measured both ways and it was about two pounds at four cups, so we just went with that) lead us to make a mistake. So as we devoured it, we devised a series of tests for this recipe. As we ate the final slices and I considered how many plums to buy, I threw my head back and laughed. Loudly.

I think I may have put a streak of white through my hair.

Needless to say, I'm excited about my new project.

The oldest pie yet

It's a recipe known as Gradma Wilke's Cheesecake. But Grandma Wilke was my great-grandmother, so it's a recipe that's been around for a while. My mom always used to make this when I was a kid and I helped out a few times, so you might say it was my very first pie. When I was in middle school, we invented a key-lime variant that I'll tell you all about later. Anyway, it's a pretty basic recipe, but it's super delicious.

B-T-dubs: remember all that talk about graham cracker crusts in the last post? For this recipe, don't bake it. I used the two-thirds/no-extra-crumbs-on-the-sides version. But then, the filling goes in the unbaked crust.

3 (8oz) packages cream cheese
1 cup sugar
5 eggs
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

I got to use my brand-new (refurbished) Kitchenaid Stand Mixer! Turns out they're made real close to my hometown in Ohio, so I went and got one for cheep when I went home to visit recently. I'm super excited. Anyway, get the cream cheese and the sugar going, then add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla, and scrape down the sides and paddle, then mix it up a bit again. Pour it in the springform on top of the crust, and bake at 300F for an hour. Meanwhile, get on the topping:

1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Just mix em all together. Easy. Once the hour is up, spread the topping over the cheesecake and bake for five more minutes. Let it cool for an hour or so, then stash it in the fridge.

I brought a bunch in to work with me last weekend, and it was pretty darn popular. Since we have strawberries on the salad bar, lots of folks topped a slice of cheesecake with strawberries for great success.

A Very Ugli Kickoff Pie

This year's Piebrary is fully underway! I made three pies for the Kicoff party on Saturday, and two of them were new. Well, one is a variant on a recipe I've done before and one is a very old recipe I've never made by myself, until Saturday.

The one I'm talking about for this post is Ugli Pie, and it lived up to its name. It's a variation on Lemon Icebox Pie; I saw some Ugli fruit at the store a day or two before and immediately started brainstorming pie ideas. Since Ugli is a citrus fruit, I decided to use one of our other citrus pies and switch the fruit juice. Since the Ugli is pretty tart, I thought a simple pie that helps make the tartness stand out would work well, so Lemon Icebox Pie was the winner.

It's just a graham cracker crust; for this one I used similar proportions to any other graham cracker crust. However, I've noticed that I'm not terribly accurate with the previous graham cracker crust recipes, so I'm gonna break it down again.

When I'm feeling enterprising with cheesecake, I usually go with this:

30 square graham crackers (they typically come in big rectangles; break those in half and you get squares)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 stick of butter, melted

I preheat the oven to 300F and toss the butter to melt. Crackers and sugar go in a bag, and I punch 'em a bit to break up the crackers. If I'm impatient, the butter only gets about three-quarters melted, and I break down the rest with a fork and some vigorous sloshing. Then I mix the crackers into the butter, adding them slowly at first to avoid big buttery clumps. about a third of the mixture goes out onto a pan and the rest in the bottom of my springform (which I've lined with parchment paper). Then, both pans go into the oven for ten minutes. After the cheesecake is totally finished, you can squish the extra crumbs into the sides for a delicious and attractive result.

For this pie (and when I'm lazy), I reduced by about a third and skipped the extra pan of crumbs for the side of the pie. Like so:

20 squares

1 tablespoon sugar (so what if it's a little sweeter?)

6 tablespoons butter, melted

The method is basically identical, so I won't bother

Here's the Ugli filling:

1 (8oz) package cream cheese

1 (14oz) can condensed milk

1/2 cup Ugli juice

1 tablespoon zest (the Ugli rind was not very nice, so I would recommend lemon, if you have it)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix it all together, and when the crust is done, pour it in and chill that bad boy! This time, the filling was just mixed by hand (I think I usually use an electric mixer), so it had little clumps of cream cheese. It took a little longer to set, but other than that, turned out well! and ugly. I also poured the filling in too fast, so some of the crust broke off and floated to the top. This and the clumps of cream cheese helped the Ugli Pie live up to its name.

But Ugli Pie was delicious!

Piebrary 2012!

Whoo! It's almost time for this year's pie adventure. Are you guys ready!?

The past year has been pretty busy; so here's a quick breakdown of my pie-sploitations for the past year:

Lots of pies during the holiday season, particularly the pumpkin-themed ones, although I've switched to butternut squash pretty much exclusively. Primarily because it's available for a lot longer - I saw pumpkins in the store for about two weeks, but the squash was available for at least another month. In addition to that, butternut squash is a lot more flavorful! You'll have to check it out. Anyway, for Thanksgiving, I set a record: five pies in one day. I wouldn't have been able to do it without Chris R's help.

Then, for my 23rd birthday, 23 pies! It took a little over a week to get 'em all done, but it was a whirlwind adventure that I can't wait to try again! I also bumped up the pies-in-one-day record. I think I managed eight, but I don't remember exactly. So I guess I'll have to try and repeat it, to make sure!

And more recently, rhubarb is back! Lots of rhubarb pies and rhubarb cheescakes at the beginning of may have been getting me excited about trying some new crazy things this summer!!

So this Saturday, we're kicking off this year's Piebrary! There's a big brunch party at my place. I'm baking at least a few pies. Some are prolly repeats, but no less than one of them is going to be new and I'll tell you all about it after. I'm also going to make some various breakfast/brunch type things, and hopefully some of the other folks coming to help celebrate will bring some delicious things. If you want to come, let me know in the comments, and I'll invite you to the facebook event. (I don't know if there's anyone who reads this that I don't already know on facebook, so we'll deal with that hurdle if it comes up.)

Yeah pie!

Peachy

All right. So I guess it's inevitable that I'll always be behind schedule on either baking or blogging.

Anyway, this pie was for Monday, August 8th. It's a Peach Cream Tart.

The crust is a sweet pastry, flavored with sour cream. I think it was a nice touch, but the sour cream made it a bit stickier than a normal crust, so it clumped up and made it tougher to press into the tart pan. The sides of the crust ended up a bit thicker than the bottom.

1 1/4 cups flour
1 stick butter
2 tablespoons sour cream

I made this one just like the normal pie crusts, substituting the sour cream for the water step. So cube up the butter and freeze it for about fifteen minutes. Pulse it into the flour in three additions, then add the sour cream and pulse a few times until incorporated. Then press the clumps into the tart pan, starting on the sides. Chill for half an hour, and preheat the oven to 375F. Then bake for fifteen minutes and reduce the oven to 350F.

6 peaches, peeled and sliced thin
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 egg yolks
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour

While you're slicing the peaches, toss them in the lemon juice to prevent them from browning. Then arrange the slices in overlapping circles in the crust. They might stack up higher than the crust in places, but they'll cook down a little so don't fret.
Mix the other stuff in a separate bowl until smooth, then pour over the peaches. Pour extremely slowly. It's pretty viscous and the cracks between the peaches are pretty small. If you have to, pour some in and just let it settle down for a few minutes before adding more. Once you get it all in there, pop the pie into the oven for an hour or so. It may be difficult to tell if the custard is set, with all those peaches in there. Mine hadn't set entirely when I took it out, but I didn't know it until I sliced the pie. Still delicious, though!

quiiiiiiiiicccccccchhhhhhhhhheee

I baked this quiche a week late, but it has been rolling around in my head for a while.
Because I love me a Reuben sandwich.

Good ol' pie crust, blind baked just like the rest of the quiches. Then I laid down a nice bed of sauerkraut, then corned beef, and some Swiss cheese to top it off. The usual egg base was modified to include a bit of my homemade Russian dressing. I reduced the half and half to about 3/4 cup, and finished it off with the Russian dressing. I used about two thirds of a 25oz jar of sauerkraut, and 8oz of the corned beef. There was prolly about half a cup or so of cheese on top, and I might consider adding some inside as well.
Reuben Quiche 2.0 hopefully will include a rye crust. I might try using either rye chips or some rye bread crumbs in place of some of the flour. Oughta be delish.

WINNER

So I've been doing all these crazy things with fruit curds, right? And I made one that reminded me vaguely of blueberry, right? Well I decided to see how blueberry would work out in this recipe.

I tried puréeing blueberries to strain the mush for some juice. No dice. It turned out way too thick.
So I just used the purée. Pow.
Half a cup plus about a tablespoon to replace the lemon juice and zest in the Lemon Meringue Pie makes a Blueberry Meringue Pie.

If there should be a winner of the Fruit Curd and Meringue Experiments, this is the one. Shit it's tasty.

The Marty

I was bothering everyone I know about pie ideas, as usual, and Marty gave me a good one. He told me to make something with custard and graham crackers. He said I had to call it The Marty. It was such a simple idea, and one I'm a big fan of. I had to make it different from the straight-up custard pie I made earlier, so I decided to make an Eggnog Custard Pie.

I made the graham cracker crust with the same recipe as many before, and I put it in my new tart pan. It worked quite nicely, I think, but the very wet filling soaked through it. I think it worked pretty well anyhow.

4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 (12oz) can evaporated milk
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup bourbon
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix the eggs and sugar together, perhaps with an electric beater. Then add the rest of the ingredients, reserving a bit of nutmeg to sprinkle on top. Mix to fully combine, then pour very slowly into the crust. It's quite wet, so you'll want to put it on a cookie sheet or sheet of foil with the edges turned up; some of the filling oozed out of the pan as it cooked. Bake at 350F for 55 minutes, until mostly set.

As Emily says, it tastes like Christmas. One thing I might try next time is to separate the eggs and beat the whites to soft peaks, whisking them back in at the end. It should make the pie fluffier and a bit less wet in the end. Additionally, I'm not entirely certain why there's water in the recipe. I might try to fudge that out with something much more delicious.

About a month left...

A month of Pies!! That's just about 16 pies. I did the math tonight; it turns out I'll have baked sixty one pies on Labor Day. That means a nice round sixty pies from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but you'll remember I started the Saturday prior to Memorial Day. Pretty classy.

Anyway, I'm pretty behind on the blog (as usual). This pie was Monday, August first, but you'll recall that I was at a Brewer's game with Ian's; it was actually baked that Wednesday. Anyway, it's one that was also made last year but after the blog went poopy.

It's a Creamy Watermelon Pie. Pretty tasty and among the easiest pies ever.

I used the same, good ol' pie crust, though the recipe I used called for a graham cracker crust. I think it would be quite tasty with either. If you use the regular one, bake at 425F for ten minutes with weights and ten minutes without. A graham cracker crust should be baked at 350F for about ten minutes.

1 cup sugar
1 (8oz) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
2 cups balled or cubed watermelon, small pieces

Blend everything but the watermelon together, then fold in the fruit. Then put it in the baked pie crust and chill for at least two hours. I cut the chill short and it was pretty soupy.

We brought it up to the capitol lawn for Concerts on the Square. Always a nice time, made better by pie.

Staff meeting Quiche

The fourth and final pie that I baked all at once for our staff meeting/party at Ian's: Roasted Poblano and Corn Quiche.

As with most quiches of late, I used the standard crust, baked at 375F for ten minutes with pie weights and ten more without. I also used the same eggy stuff I've used quite a few times; you'll find the ratio on the Quiche Lorraine recipe (and each one since, I think).
On to the good stuff: I also roasted up a couple of Poblano Peppers, an ear of sweet corn, and sautéed some onions and mushrooms. I used Fontiago Cheese I got at the Farmer's Market.

It turned out really well, though I burnt one of the peppers and had to discard about half of it. This meant that there was less pepper in it overall, and I think I would even go so far as to increase to three or four peppers.

It didn't take long to make this quiche disappear during the staff meeting. I would say it was a hit.

More pie for our trip

This is the third dessert pie I brought to Milwaukee, a Blueberry Bavarian Cream Pie. Quite yummy.

I finally picked up a tart pan with a removable bottom. A bunch of recipes use them for crusts that have a crumblier crust that wouldn't be very easy to ball up and roll out. I've attempted them before and tried squishing their bits into my glass pie plates, but they usually end up stuck to the pan. It also has sides that come up very near perpendicular, so it's easier to get the crust even around the corners. The lower angle of the pie plates tends to create thick corners. Of course, the removable bottom makes it super easy to get the pie out of the pan entirely, which makes serving easier. Overall, I like the pan a lot. I might try getting two or three more so I can use them exclusively.

So yeah, this crust is a bit different; it's a sweet pastry and is put together differently.
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter, slightly softened
1 egg yolk

Mix the sugar and flour in a bowl, then make an indent in the center. Mix the butter and egg yolk together in the indent with your fingers. Once it's combined, mix the flour and sugar into it. Once it reaches that crumbly-but-sticks-together-if-you-squeeze-some-of-it stage, sprinkle it into the tart pan. Squish it against the pan, starting on the sides and making the corner a nice 90 degrees. I used a fork. Then chill the crust for thirty minutes. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes or so, until golden brown.

2 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons cold water
6 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
4 cups blueberries (I actually had some extra that didn't fit. Snack!)

Heat the milk and vanilla on medium heat just until it boils. Let cool for ten minutes. In a small bowl, bloom the gelatin with the water. Whisk the eggs and sugar together in a mixing bowl and, while whisking, slowly add the warm milk. Return to saucepan on medium heat. Stirring constantly, heat to 180 degrees or until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

Fill a bowl with ice water in the sink. Divide the contents of the saucepan (known as Crème Anglaise), taking one cup to become the Bavarian Cream. The remainder will be served as a topping or side for each slice. Cool it in the ice water, whisking occasionally.
Meanwhile, combine the one cup of hot Anglaise with the bloomed gelatin. Mix well, until gelatin is completely dissolved. Fold in as many of the berries as will fit, then pour into the pie crust, spreading to make it even. Chill until fully set, about two hours.

The Bavarian Cream was surprisingly stiff. I had never had it before, so I had no concept of it. To explore this, I've been preparing Bavarian Creams separately. The first batch followed a similar recipe exactly, which used whipped cream to lighten the consistency. These were also quite stiff, so I'm experimenting a bit. I used less gelatin, which resulted in a softer cream. I quite like it. I also want to try using brandy to spike the desserts.

All in all, this was a fun pie that opened new avenues for me. I am excited.

And it was delicious.

More Brewer's trip pies

Sorry for additional delay... I can't seem to avoid it. Oh well.

This pie was devised by Paige at Ian's. I was asking for pie suggestions at work because I was plotting to bring lots of pies for them. I figured it would make sense for them to eat pies they would like. The Lemon Icebox Pie I wrote about previously was inspired partially in a similar way; Jack and Staci were telling me stories of such a pie that they had both enjoyed. I had many times encountered recipes for Lemon Icebox Pies, but hadn't really paid them much mind. I sort of assumed they might be a fruit curd type thing, as with a Lemon Meringue Pie. I was quite wrong and, based on the resultant pie, quite pleased that I was.

Anyway, Paige requested a chocolate and peanut butter pie. I have often attempted peanut butter something-or-others, with mixed success. On one hand, these attempts have always failed to create a cohesive pie, yet they have always been delicious. This Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie was no different. It was basically soup; delicious, peanut-butter-and-chocolatey soup.

For this pie, I baked the same Chocolate Pie that I made earlier in the summer, minus meringue, plus a peanut butter mousse. Most recipes I've come across make a point of telling you not to use natural peanut butter for these things, but I think that's just silly. However, I've found they have some consistency issues when I simply substitute my preferred peanut butter. So I went searching for a recipe that called for natural peanut butter. This one turned out beautifully, if lacking form. Then again, it's mostly just whipped cream, so it stands to reason it'd be about that consistency.

1/2 cup chunky natural-style peanut butter
1/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
Pinch of coarse kosher salt
1 cup chilled heavy whipping cream, divided
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peanut butter, brown sugar, and salt go in a bowl. Beat them together with an electric beater and slowly add 1/4 cup of the cream. Then add another 1/4 cup and beat just to combine. In a second bowl, beat the other half-cup of cream, sugar, and vanilla until peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the peanut butter mixture in three additions, then chill. When both parts of the pie are fully cooled, spread the peanut butter mousse over the chocolate custard. Keep chilled until ready to serve.

The fact that our cooling methods for our trip were perhaps sub-par to keep the mousse solid-ish may be all that contributed to the soupy nature of the pie. I'd have to try again, making sure it's entirely chilled until the moment of serving, to be certain. Otherwise, I may substitute some cream cheese for some of the heavy cream to give it a little more firmness.

Piesplosion

I baked four pies in one day and they were all gone in less than 24 hours. New personal best!

I believe that I mentioned that Ian's took a trip to the Brewer's game yesterday. It's an annual event that brings employees from multiple Ian's stores together for food, drink, and a sweaty bus. And some baseball, I guess.
Anyway, I saved up pies for the week preceding so they would all be fresh for the party.
The lineup:
Lemon Icebox Pie
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
Blueberry Bavarian Cream Pie
Roasted Poblanos and Corn Quiche

So these pies, in no particular order, comprise the pies for July 25th, 27th, and 29th, with the quiche on the 30th. They were actually baked on the 31st and 1st of August. I will start with the Lemon Icebox Pie because WHOA it was easy.

This one is in a graham cracker crust. I did the whole recipe for this, based on Alton Brown's cheesecake recipe.
30 graham cracker squares (AB does 33, but I like 30)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 stick butter, melted

Graham crackers go in a plastic bag and get punched repeatedly. You'll get some that are tiny little crumbs right away, but try to break up the biggest ones. Some variation in size of crumbs is what you're looking for, not some tiny ones and some huge ones. Anyway, then toss in the sugar and mix it around a bit. Transfer to a bowl and then add the butter. If you add it slowly while you mix the crackers, it's a little easier to get even. Otherwise you might end up with some really wet clumps and some that are practically dry. You can always just keep mixing it to even it out, but the quicker it gets to the oven, the crisper the crust will be. That's what we're aiming for here. I used a springform pan because I really dislike trying to pack graham cracker crusts in normal pie plates. So once I got a nice base using about half to two-thirds of the crumbs, I sprinkled the rest right around the sides and used a fork and my fingers to convince more of the crumbs to stack up along the outside edge. It was easier than I expected and turned out quite attractive. Sadly, I could only get it about halfway up the side (which works for this pie, since the filling is smallish. But usually you're making a cheesecake when you're using a springform, which fills up the whole thing. So the edge of the crust wouldn't really turn out for that). Then into the oven at 400F for ten minutes- ish. I think you can just bake the crust at whatever temp you've already got the oven on. Since this pie doesn't need any other baking, it's just the crust you're doing. I think the recipe I got this from said 300F, but it was a cheesecake and I think 300F is just what the cheesecake needed to bake at. I liked the way this one turned out at 400F, so it must not be too picky.

So that crust description got kinda long, but this next part is so short it'll make up for it.
1 (8oz) package of cream cheese, at room temperature.
1 (14oz) can of condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put it all in a bowl and mix until smooth. Pour into crust and chill overnight.

WOO. I used a hand mixer to speed it up, but it flung a bit of stuff around, and the zest kinda got stuck on the beaters. I would recommend mixing it with a spatula to start, getting it about even consistency then beating with the mixer to work out the lumps. Then go back to the spatula and scrape the goodness off of the beaters, mixing to incorporate.

Yeah, I added a little and it got longer, but not by much! But hey, this is an easy pie, and super tasty. It's all about that lemony tartness! It's the best.

How could I forget?

Quiche! I've been saving this week's pies for the Ian's staff trip to a Brewers game on Monday, but I totally forgot that I brought back the quiches!
I brought Ben with me to the farmer's market on Saturday (July 23rd) and he helped me pick out some baller ingredients for a quiche. We got some fingerling potatoes, swiss chard, green onions, crimini mushrooms, Hook's Gorgonzola cheese, and a nice big tomato.

This one's with the same pie crust as usual, baked at 375F for ten minutes with pie weights and then ten more without them.
I cut the potatoes into small pieces and boiled them. Nothing fancy.
Then I sautéed the onions with a couple tablespoons of butter, adding the mushrooms once the onions started to soften. As the mushrooms started to soften, the swiss chard went in as well, chopped small, stems and leaves alike. Once all that is sautéed and beautiful, it went into the crust with the crumbled cheese. Some of the potatoes went on top, at which point I had already basically filled up the whole crust. Then I topped it all off with a few nice, big slices of tomato.
I used the same eggy mixture as with a few quiches before: 2 eggs and 2 yolks; 1 1/4 cup of half and half, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, and a bit of nutmeg. after I poured it in, it seemed to find a crack or two in the crust and some of it just leaked out. Oh well.
Baked for 30 minutes or so, and then I brought it in to work. Everybody chowed down on it, and everyone had good things to say. I think it was fantastic. Tons of stuff going on in there, and man was it good.

The last (for now) experiment

This one is pomegranate.

They're a little trickier to juice, but here's what I did. Slice the top and bottom or the pomegranate, and score the sides top to bottom four to six times around. Submerging in a bowl of cold water, break it apart by planting your thumbs next to each other on one end, fingertips on the other, pulling apart with your fingers. Then gently remove each juicy little pod by rocking it out of the pithy stuff. The good stuff will sink while the waxy stuff that tastes like an empty coffee cup floats, so once you've removed all of the seeds just get rid of all the stuff that floats. Drain off the water and put the seed pods into a blender or food processor. 30 seconds should be plenty. Then strain it out to get rid of the seed bits, leaving just the juice. Take a half-cup of this juice (I used three pomegranates but had some left over, so two might have done the trick) to your fruit curd recipe, and voilà!

This one was also a little odd, but delicious. It tasted not entirely unlike pomegranates, but also tasted slightly like blueberries. The purple-ish color that the fruit curd turned out was also reminiscent of blueberries, so you could prolly fool your friends into thinking it was a Blueberry Meringue Pie. Makes me want to try that too, so maybe next week I'll get a whole load of blueberries at the farmer's market.

Citrus again

More along the same lines: Grapefruit this time, for Wednesday, July 20th.

So if you've figured out the way this works, you'll know that it's basically just a half-cup of grapefruit juice and a tablespoon of grapefruit zest to change this recipe.

Unlike the strangeness of the watermelon, this one definitely tasted just like grapefruit. I think it worked really well. Folks at Ian's who tried it agreed on the whole.

I don't know what else to say. Try it!

I took a break.

From Saturday the 9th to the following Saturday, no pies were baked. I had to deal with some insanity regarding my rent (which I think I mentioned earlier, as I was writing a post during this time), and there was already too much pie in the house, so I was just catching up on eating.

BUT THEN

Pies returned. Monday the 18th was another in the series of fruit curd and meringue experiments. This time: Watermelon.

Now, I know watermelon isn't a very traditional juice or pie or anything even close. But bear with me here. It's all exactly the same as the lemon and clementine varieties, except you use a half-cup of fresh-squeezed watermelon juice. Just cut out the watery flesh of a watermelon, and squish it. Strain out the seeds and pulp, and you're ready to go.

I have to say, the flavor was strange. Not strange as in non-delicious, just not what I expected from watermelon juice. I had a bunch of extra juice and drank it during my shift at work, and it shared the weirdness. I brought the pie in to work as well, and they enjoyed it. It certainly was tasty.

And now for something...

different. Not completely, I guess, because it's still a pie.

My friend Anna sent me this recipe and it looked so good I just couldn't wait. Too bad I didn't have a food torch. It was still super delicious even without the brûlée top. There is one thing I think I would like to try if I make this pie again: flambéing the top with rum or some such liquor. It should serve the same purpose as the torch, I just didn't think of it until the pie had been eaten.

This is the Apricot Mango Crème Brûlée Pie.

The recipe uses a sweet pastry crust rather than my standard all-purpose one, so I went for it. It's basically the same process, but with some powdered sugar thrown in.

1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, cubed
ice water in a spray bottle

Flour, sugar, salt into a food processor, then some butter, then the rest of the butter, then some water, and repeat the water until it's just wet enough to stick together nicely. Dump into into a bag and squish it all together, then into the fridge for thirty minutes or so. Then roll it out and transfer to a pie plate. Then to the freezer for about fifteen minutes, and finally into the oven. 375F should do nicely, ten minutes with pie weights and ten or so more without. Then reduce the oven to 300F. Hooray, pie crust.

1 cup mango in small pieces
1 cup apricot, also small pieces
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

Now, my fruit was a little underripe, especially the mango. If necessary, go buy your fruit a couple days early. Those stone fruits are often enough sold well before they are ripe. Then, in a saucepan, heat the honey on medium and add the fruit. Sprinkle the cornstarch over and stir it in well. Cook about 15 minutes or so, until the fruit is broken down a bit and it's all pretty thick. Pour into the bottom of the crust.

4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar for brûlée topping

Beat the eggs and sugar in a bowl and combine the cream, vanilla, and salt in a saucepan. Heat just until it boils, stirring constantly. Then turn off the heat and let it cool for about ten minutes. Very slowly add the cream to the eggs while whisking them. Once it's fully combined, pour it over the fruit in the crust. Pop that bad boy in the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes until the edges are set. The center will still be a bit wobbly, but it will set as it cools. Stick it in the fridge for at least two hours. Just before you serve the pie, pour the sugar in an even layer over the pie, and flame it up in whatever method you like. Using a kitchen torch is prolly simplest, but if you pour a little bit of liquor over the sugar and light it up, I think it would work nicely. Just be careful with the open flame as such.

Like I said, I hadn't come up with the work-around for the torch and my fruit wasn't quite ripe, but man that was a tasty pie. The custard was super creamy and rich. The fruit was a little crunchy, but still, yum.

Citrus is easy

So the next entry in The Fruit CAME: Clementine.

Since these are all basically the same recipe, the post for each will really only be what I changed, as well as some reactions to the pies.

To turn the Lemon Meringue into Clementine Meringue, I substituted some clementine juice for the lemon juice and orange zest for the lemon zest. Clementines are significantly more difficult to squeeze. After two or three I devised a way to squish each half of a clementine against the flat of my widest knife that worked pretty well. Clementine zest, on the other hand, is pretty much impossible to come by. Instead, I went with an orange. That worked out well.

In my opinion, this pie was a little too sweet. The tartness of the lemon curd is just about my favorite thing ever. But don't write it off based only on my opinion; Marty at Ian's says this is his favorite pie out of all those I've brought in. Everyone who tried it liked it. It was definitely worth the experiment.

Lemon Meringue (and ensuing madness)

You'll notice there was not a Quiche Saturday in there. I'm sort of at a loss for quiche inspiration, so they'll be on hiatus until we get a new round of interesting veggies I can play with.

So I skipped forward to Monday, July 4th. (Technically, the fourth is when I baked the berries-that-are-not-all-berries pie, and the Lemon Meringue was the following day. Pies have all been off schedule for a while, but they've all been accounted for (except quiches)). I realized that even though I had baked this pie last year, it was after the blog side of things had fallen into disrepair. So I decided to revisit it.

Not only that, but I decided to play around with this one in the next series of pies. I wish I had a snappy name for it. How about 'the Fruit Curd and Meringue Experiments.' The Fruit CAME for short.

Anyway, Lemon Meringue is the first because it is the recipe that all those to follow are based on.

This starts out with the standard pie crust; in fact, this recipe is the rest of the Good Eats episode from which my pie crust method comes, I Pie.
Bake the pie crust blind at 425F for ten minutes with your pie weights and ten or so more without.

Beat your meringue up while it's baking. Beat 4 egg whites (the yolks are in the lemon curd part, so keep them around) with a pinch of cream of tartar. After they get to stiff peaks, slowly add 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) of sugar. (I say eight tablespoons because it's easier for me to add that in bit by bit. If you had a stand mixer you could just slowly pour in a half cup as it's running, but I have to set down my hand mixer to add the sugar so I go by the tablespoon.) After it's all been added, beat for a few more minutes, until you can rub a small amount of meringue between your fingers and there's no grit from the sugar. Cover and stash in the fridge until everything else is ready.

4 egg yolks
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup water
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed is where it's at)
1 tablespoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons butter

A helpful instrument for this recipe would be an egg timer or stopwatch. Three times while cooking the curd, you'll be letting it boil for a full minute, so any implement that you can use to time out sixty seconds will make this quite a bit easier.
Beat the egg yolks in a mixing bowl until they lighten slightly in color. Combine the sugar, water, salt, and cornstarch in a saucepan over medium heat and whisk to combine. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then continue to cook for sixty seconds while stirring.
Remove from heat and temper the egg yolks by adding a whisk-full at a time of the hot mixture to the eggs, beating together and working quickly. After quite a few whisk-sized transfers (shoot for about a third of the hot stuff) return the saucepan to the heat and add the tempered eggs to it. Bring to a boil again, then cook for sixty seconds for a second time.
Turn the heat down to low and add the lemon juice, zest, and butter. Stir slowly until fully combined then return to a boil. Cook for a third sixty seconds after it's boiling. Then pour the curd into the pie crust.
Beat up the meringue one more time, for about thirty seconds. Top the curd with the meringue and let cool for at least two hours. Overnight is prolly best.

I LOVE this pie. Like whoa. Strong contrasts in both flavor and texture make the pie experience great. Crispy crust, creamy filling, fluffy meringue paired with the sweet-tart flavor combo: YUM.