The pie you are about to witness is possibly the best pie I’ve ever invented. If not in design, than at least in execution. And I remembered to write down the recipe.
I started with the blackberries as the base of this pie. I’ve been wanting to give berry pies another crack and blackberries are really understated in their sweetness.
From there I began building up ways to compliment the blackberries.
(“Hey blackberries, you lookin’ foin fo realz tho.”)
Fans of Pushing Daisies will recognize this pie! I’m rewatching the series for just about the millionth time and every time I do I wonder: is pear pie with Gruyere cheese baked into the crust actually good? Or did Bryan Fuller just want to make clever cheese rhymes with his fictional pies? This time around it was just too much for me to take, I had to know for sure.
The facts were these…
I recently downloaded the Epicurious app for my iPhone (which is awesome by the way! Organized, interesting, and you never need to worry about forgetting your shopping list!) and while I was flicking through it I stumbled on this recipe. I had a whole bulb of fennel and some chicken stock left over from making chicken pot pie so I thought I’d give it a try!
The only changes I made to the recipe were that I did not use fennel seeds in addition to the whole fennel, and I didn’t include the fronds in the tomato relish (I accidentally threw them away, my bad).
The soup was light, healthy, and super (or should I say SOUPer) easy to make. I also paired it with a few slices of toast with goat cheese spread lightly on top.
Nothing quite like an Arizona sunset reflected in the smooth, pristine surface of a lemon curd tart.
This is actually a rebake of a pie/tart I made my freshman year of college when this blog was in its infancy. When I made the switch over from blogger to tumblr it didn’t make the switch. I can’t remember why now.
I’m currently visiting my grandparents in Arizona where lemons are in season in a big way. One of their neighbors brought over a whole bag of lemons from her lemon tree! And since I’ve been looking for an excuse to show off my baking skills to my grandma (who is an amazing cook), I thought I’d take another crack at this pie. It was a bit like playing telephone since I was following the directions from my own blog and I made some changes the first time (I really hope I’ve gotten better at writing out my recipes, that was a bitch to slog through).
So here goes:
Happy Day After Pi Day everyone! I hope you all celebrated by getting appropriately pie-faced.
After I made the earl grey tart a while back I started thinking of other teas I’d really like to taste in a chocolate ganache filling since I’m absolutely addicted to tea. Chai lattes are my cold day jam and since March in NYC can’t decide whether it wants to be a lion or a lamb (inadvertent rhyme!) I thought I’d hit that flavor up for a pie. For Pi Day sharing and convenience (and because I knew you only want a shallow little bit of ganache in the middle anyway) I made them into cup pies.
I want to take a minute to talk about healthy eating. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and I just want to get into the spirit of that practice with today’s post. I know I post a lot of desserts and a lot of my recipes feature a lot of cheese and butter and potatoes, but I want everyone to know that I can be zen and hip, too.
So today we’re gunna deep fry some fuckin’ tofu.
This week was a bit rough. I won’t bore you with the details of my personal life, but I think everyone has those weeks where you just don’t want to leave the house to go and get that much needed comfort food, baked good fix. It turned out to be perfect since I’ve been meaning to make this recipe for microwavable cookies in a mug for a while.
Normally I’m exceedingly well stocked in the baking department, but when you don’t have what you need and don’t want to leave the house for the right ingredients in the midst of baking, you’ll substitute where you can.
You don’t need pastry flour or any fancy ratio of multiple flours, just your all-purpose shit will get the job done.
I like salted butter on my toast and I don’t have the cash moneys to buy all the kinds of butter, so I buy salted and then when I bake I just don’t add whatever tiny amount of salt they list.
When we were 90% finished with these I realized that my vanilla extract had been lost in the move to my new apartment. So, with all of the other ingredients assembled I had to come up with a solution that didn’t involve leaving the house. Honey. We substituted a dash of honey for the vanilla and M&Ms from the building’s vending machine instead of chocolate chips. The result was a little bit blander than the chocolate chip cookie we’d hoped for, but it was still really good.
I’ll probably leave the house today (probably) and pick up some other ingredients so the next time I make these I can (maybe) do them right.
I made crispy tofu. It needs more work before I can present you with a recipe though. Just so you know I haven’t been idle.
I’ve gotten into this bad habit of buying boxes of pasta and jars of marinara sauce and then I don’t cook for myself, not really. So I’m not buying box pasta for myself anymore, I’m going to challenge myself to cook more diversely and to more actively. I think it’s going to benefit me as a foodie and a blogger. And if I do buy pasta I’m going to buy it in fresh little bundles from the farmers market OR maybe I’ll make it myself!
If you’re like me, getting ambitious in the kitchen can be a dangerous endeavor. One minute you’re all like, “I’ma make a flat piece of crust and layer pears on it, the next you’re like, “Wow, the butter in the crust melted rather than baked and now I have a square of flour swimming in molten butter.”
Accidents happen, is my point.
I used to be really big on the idea that I didn’t want to cut corners; no store bought crust, no canned filling, pumpkin pie is always hard for me because my inclination is to carve and boil a whole pumpkin rather than use the canned stuff. But when those aforementioned accidents occur, it’s nice to have a quick and easy back up plan.
Phyllo dough is where I’m going with this. It’s crisp, it’s light, it’s layered, you can keep it in your fridge for a super long time as a plan B; we love it. So when I royally screwed my initial flat crust idea, I decided to wrap my pears in phyllo.
What you’ll need for this quick-fix, emergency dessert:
Big surprise. I’m back at school and I WISH I could bring my sewing machine with me and continue working on my quilt, but I think part three of my stupid bitches quilting series will have to come later.
Thank you so much for the advice! Seriously, I’m flyin’ blind here so it’s really nice to get support and tutelage from people who actually know what they’re doing. Like a lighthouse in a storm, to mix metaphors. Ah, the miracle of the internet.
I’ve basically been sitting on these crappy iPhone pics for the past three days. After becoming a basement-dwelling quilt gremlin Sunday through Tuesday, I decided I needed to take a break and reacquaint myself with the sun Wednesday through Friday. Seriously, those first three days I basically sat in the basement from 10 am until 10 pm with very few breaks. SEE! You were thinking, “I dunno, ‘gremlin’ seems a little strong,” but you were not expecting 12+ hours of quilting per day.
