The Pie Ho
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…
Per usual I’m going to withhold the actual recipe for this pieminister pie because I still occasionally get a squeamish about copyright. But I modified a lot of the ingredients (mostly because the specificity of the ingredients hinges on a lot of ingredients that or more prevalent in Britain), so I’m including the list of what I put into this pie:
I’ve wanted to share this playlist for a while but wasn’t sure how to do it; it’s the playlist I’ve cultivated specifically for the baking of pie. This is just a sampling of the full playlist, but it’s a pretty good survey if I do say so myself. The full playlist is on Spotify as “Pie Music” and you might be able to find it with some clever searching, but hopefully I’ll make another one of these soon!
Sample playlist: listen here.
- You Are Here - The Wailin’ Jennys
- Morning Comes - Delta Rae
- Make It Out West - The Greencards
- Dreams - Fleetwood Mac
- Ohio - Honeyhoney
- Raise Hell - Brandi Carlile
- Higher Love - James Vincent McMorrow
- Let It Be - Ray LaMontagne
- Middle of June - Noah Gundersen
I pride myself on being a pretty good mix-maker so I’d love to know what you think!
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 promised you tiny pie earrings and dammit I follow through. So, although I haven’t made real pie in a while, these are available for purchase at my etsy store. I’m also making cupcakes, because I know some people swing that way.
Blingberry Pie earrings (in cherry and blueberry) - $9.00 + shipping
Let Them Eat Cupcakes earrings - $6.00 + shipping
I’ve cut a lot of prices in my store recently as well, so check out the new, improved, slightly lower prices on some of the other earrings I posted before.
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:
I got the recipe for this tart from a blog called The Jewels of New York, which, in searching google for the recipe again, lead me to an escort website. So, you know, if you live in the New York area and are looking for a certain kind of good time, there’s that.
The original recipe is for tartlets, but we didn’t have a tart pan and, consequently, made a very thick, pie-sized version. C’est la vie, you do what you can. This recipe actually worked out really well, I only made two subtle changes! Well, in addition to making it into a pie. Whatever.
