Simple Pie Crust - Mother's Day Pie

Yesterday was Mother's Day. With all the to-do here about pie, I decided to make my wife a pie. It would be a personal homemade gift for her, and a new blog entry for me.

Win - win.

In any case I decided to make a cherry lattice pie. This had less to do with the fact that my wife likes cherry pie than with the lone can of cherry pie filling in the pantry.

Besides, I was going to go all out and make the pie crust myself. That makes it all better, right?

Don't answer that.

You may remember that I don't like making my own pie crusts. I always have trouble with them. A friend of mine, Micheline Savard, sent me a dirt simple pie crust recipe. It's similar (in one case nearly identical) to other pie crust recipe's I've tried, but so what? I'd try it anyway. Here it is:

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium size bowl. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter until you have coarse crumbs. Add ICE water just until it holds together. Press into a pie plate and make as thick or thin as you want.

I didn't have that much butter in the house, so I used shortening instead. I didn't just press it in, either. I divided the dough ball in half and rolled it out. It was nearly the same as a double crust recipe I know so I figured it would be fine.

Getting the pie crust off the cutting board and into the pie plate is always the trick. I've learned a few different methods of doing this. One is to roll the dough onto the rolling pin and then unroll it into the pie plate. The other involves folding it into quarters and then unfolding it into the pie plate.

It always looks so easy when I see other people do it.

For whatever reason, it never works out that way for me. I always err on the side of trying to make the crust really flaky. I love a good flaky pie crust. Of course that means that you can't add too much water to the mix, which also means the crust is harder to work with. Sure enough, this pie crust kept falling apart in the transfer. After two or three tries I gave up. I dropped the pieces int0 the pie plate as best I could and reassembled it there, sealing the cracks by smooshing the edges together. It looked more like a car accident than a pie crust.

After pouring in the canned filling, I started to work on the lattice top. Cutting the rolled out crust into thin strips was the easy part. Getting those strips onto the pie without breaking apart was an act of faith.

Apparently I don't have enough faith when it comes to pie crusts, because every one of them broke apart. Thank goodness a lack of faith in pie crusts isn't going to affect my standing in the church. I used several words at the time that I will need to repent of, though

Trying to weave them together was a nightmare. After a quick try, I decided to cut to the chase and laid several rows left to right, and then several more top to bottom. The checkered effect was there, but to say it was a true "lattice" is like saying a glob of melted steel is a true Rolls Royce.

Pretty, this pie was not. It didn't look that bad, but it was nowhere near as pretty as the picture you see at the top of the blog. I'm not daring enough to post pictures of my own creations.

It was flaky, though. Well, it was half flaky - half crumbly. Ugly it may have been, but mmmmm. It tasted good.

I have a confession to make. (Go figure. Have you seen the title of this blog? Duh!) Even though I made it for my wife, I ended up eating more slices than she did. More than my kids, for that matter.

Sorry, honey.

Mmmmmm . . . honey . . . .

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The Glory of Pie

Pies played an important role in my childhood. I can remember my mother making pumpkin pies, minces pies and rhubarb pies, I've never liked those, every year. Come to think of it, my Dad makes a pretty good apple pie.

I love pie. Want to make me happy on my birthday? Forget the cake. Make me birthday pie.

My favorite time of year for pie was late summer. Growing up, my parent's had a peach tree in our back yard. When the peaches were ripe our family would harvesting them for use during the rest of the year. We’d cut them up and bottle them, make jam out of them, eat them fresh off the tree, and my mom would make a fresh peach pie.

Now, before you go pulling out your pots and pans and heating up your stove, let me explain something about this pie. It isn't what you might expect. My mom would blind bake a pie crust, fill it to the brim with sliced fresh peaches, and then pour orange flavored gelatin over the top (they didn't have peach flavored gelatin, back then). After it set up, we'd top it with Cool Whip. As I got older I started making my own whipped cream, instead, but I still love that pie.

I know this recipe sounds like something out of a weird homemaking magazine, and maybe it was. But fresh peaches on your fork, stuck to a tasty pastry crust and smeared with whipped cream is quite the treat. In my book, it beats a cooked peach pie, hands down.

Over the years I've learned to make pies my mother never dreamed of making. My mother never made key lime or sweet potato pies, but I'm pretty fond of them, and I think mine are pretty tasty.

The only troubling thing about making pies is the crust. Fillings are easy, but making a good pie crust is a nightmare. I've found a few good recipes (my great-grandmother’s pie crust recipe is pretty darned good), but getting the right consistency of the dough is more of an art than a science. You want it to just barely hold together to make a flaky pie crust, but if it's too loose, it will fall apart before you can get it into the baking pan.

In recent years, I've given up. Instead of making my own I've started buying the ready-made pie crusts at the grocery store: graham cracker crusts for my key lime pies, and the frozen dough for the sweet potato pies. They're not as good as the home made variety, but they're a heck of a lot less work. What can I say? I'm lazy.

UPDATE: My cooking obsession has overcome my lazyness, and I've started making my own pie crusts, again. Recently, I found a recipe that used a cooked corn-starch slurry to help it stay tender and hold together. It was touted as being “fool-proof” and was presented by someone I really respect in the cooking industry. I've made it twice now, and I can tell you it was crap. Yeah, the dough was easy to work with, but it cooked up like rubber. Ick. Back to traditional recipes, for me.

Zucchini Breads

With all the crazy talk about zucchini around here, I thought I'd share two zucchini bread recipes with you. Joyce Ashton, my mom's neighbor, compiled a bunch of zucchini recipes for her ward (a ward is an individual church congregation, in Mormon-speak) several years ago. These two recipes are from that compilation, modified to fit my own tastes. Thanks Joyce!

Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cups zucchini, grated

1/2 cup chopped walnuts, pecans, cashews, or whatever you like (optional), toasted

Non-stick cooking spray

Preheat the oven to 325 °F.

Beat together the eggs, oil, and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar until well combined. In a separate mixing bowl, mix the flour, soda, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. Add the egg mixture, zucchini, and nuts to the flour mixtures and gently mix the whole thing until well blended.

Spray two 9-inch by 4 1/2-inch bread loaf pans with cooking spray. Divide the batter evenly between the loaf pans, and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula.

Bake on the center rack for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick can be inserted, and come out clean.

Place the bread pans on a wire cooling rack and let cool for 10 minutes, in the pans. Remove the bread loaves, and transfer to the cooling rack. Let cool at least 30 minutes before slicing.

This bread can be kept in a freezer, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and then aluminum foil, for up to six months.

Zucchini Banana Nut Bread

Ingredients

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups grated zucchini

2 bananas,quartered and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

3 cups all purpose flour (alternately you could use 1 1/2 cups all purpose, 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup raisins

3/4 cup chopped walnuts, pecans, cashews, or whatever you like (optional), toasted

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl along with the oil, and vanilla. Add in the sugar and mix thoroughly. Gently fold in the zucchini and bananas until well blended. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Mix in the egg mixture, and then fold in the raisins and nuts.

Spray two 9-inch by 4 1/2-inch bread loaf pans with cooking spray. Divide the batter evenly between the loaf pans, and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula.

Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick can be inserted, and come back out clean.

Place the bread pans on a wire cooling rack and let cool for 10 minutes, in the pans. Remove the bread loaves, and transfer to the cooling rack. Let cool at least 30 minutes before slicing.

This bread can be kept in a freezer, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, and then aluminum foil, for up to six months.