Peach Pie

My friend Michael jokingly told me to bake him a peach pie for his birthday. I did it last night, though it's admittedly probably not my best work as it's made from pre-made pie crust and canned peaches. Still, my first real lattice crust looks pretty good. Also, I'm in Iowa City for the day and my camera's hanging out on my bed in Des Moines, so it's a phone photo.

This is the most complicated thing I've made in awhile. Before that, it was a a pepperoni sandwich that required cooking. This is not the summer of advanced culinary arts.

Strawberry Lemon Merginue PIe

One day during final exams, my roommate came home with four pounds of strawberries. Whatever could we do with them except make a pie? I started making a recipe I found online that I didn't read very carefully, but while waiting for the strawberries to cook down, I realized that she said the recipe as she'd started it didn't taste good. This called for an emergency change! I ended up adapting the recipe into my go-to lemon meringue pie recipe and creating a strawberry lemon meringue. It was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself. It was refreshing like strawberry lemonade.

I don't actually have a picture of the strawberry pie, because I scorched the meringue and was mad about it. But, the these pictures are of a lemon meringue pie I made for M's graduation from law school where I finally managed to pipe the meringue. It was a sticky mess, but it looked awesome! Here's a close-up:


Strawberry Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb of ripe strawberries
• 1/2 C Unsalted butter
• 1/4 C Lemon juice
  
• 3/4 C Sugar
• 7 Eggs - 3 whole eggs + 3 egg yolks for the base, 4 egg whites for the meringue, 1 yolk wasted
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 10 TBSP Sugar

Instructions

1. Bake the pie crust according to the directions on the box or your standard recipe. After, turn the oven temperature down to 375.
2. While the crust is baking, cut the strawberries up and cook them in a dry sauce pan until they turn soup-y. Cook them over medium heat and cover them. I turned them frequently to keep them from burning and squished them once they started to cook to encourage the process.
   
3. While the strawberries are broken down and have let a significant amount of liquid, take them of the head. Pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, and try to force as much liquid through as possible. This will keep the pulp out and minimize the number of seeds in the pie.
   
4. In a saucepan, put in the butter, 3/4 C of sugar, lemon juice, and 1/2 C of strawberry mixture. Turn the heat on low and whisk until butter melts.
5. In a bowl, beat together 3 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks.
   
6. After the butter mixture is fully melted, spoon some slowly into the egg mixture and stir. Do this a few more times, to raise the temperature of the egg mixture slowly.
   
7. Off heat, pour the egg mixture into the saucepan with the butter mixture. Put it back on the heat, and whisk constantly.
   
8. If the eggs start to scramble - hopefully this doesn't happen - pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer after it is cooked all the way.
   
9. Cook mixture until it begins to thicken. You will notice this as you drag your whisk across the mixture and the the lines you leave close up more slowly. This takes about 6-8 minutes.
10. Pour the mixture into the baked pie crust and bake for 12 minutes. Take the pie out of the oven. It will still be rather jiggly, but don't worry.
11. For the meringue, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer on high until soft peaks form. If you're not sure what type of peak you're looking for, check this out. After the soft peaks form, add in the vanilla extract. Turn the mixer back on and spoon in the sugar one tablespoon at a time. After all the sugar is added, beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.
    
12. After the meringue is mixed, spoon or pipe the mixture onto the pie. Make sure you take the meringue all the way to the outer edges, as it will shrink as it cools and this will keep the yellow part of the pie from being exposed.
13. Put the pie back in the oven. If you have an electric oven, turn the oven to broil; if it's gas, just leave it at 375. Watch the pie, and take it out when the meringue starts to brown. This takes about 3-5 minutes if the oven is on bake and no time at all if it's on broil. Watch it carefully.
    
14. Remove the pie and let it cool for at least 5 hours, preferably overnight. Let the pie sit out of the oven but not in the refrigerator for about an hour, as this minimizes the chance of the meringue cracking. Then cover and refrigerate.

S'More Pie

We did not enjoy this pie at all, obviously. Not one little bit.
This scene of destruction was a mere 4 hours after the pie was ready to eat.

This pie was really, really good. I made it from Smitten Kitchen's recipe. For the chocolate base, I used a bar of bittersweet Ghirardelli baking chocolate and a 3/4 of a big bar of Hershey's milk chocolate. It was amazing.

Lemon Meringue Pie

I made a lemon meringue pie the other day, and I haven't wanted to bake anything else since. So, I basically haven't. I've baked three in the last two weeks. That's a lot of pie. I rationalized eating this pie all the time by telling myself that it contained fruit and eggs - that's basically healthy, right?

I'd recommend baking this in a deep pie dish. One of the times I baked this, I didn't have a pie dish so I baked it in a casserole with a lid. That actually worked extremely well because I didn't have to worry about the plastic wrap harassing the meringue. It looked kind of funny, though.

Lemon Meringue Pie - from Food Noveau

Ingredients

• Pre-baked pie crust (I'm lazy and I use the pre-made pie crusts from the grocery store that you just roll out - follow the directions on the box for baking a cold pie)
• 1/2 C Unsalted butter
• 3/4 C Lemon juice (fresh is best, but again, I'm lazy so I often use Costco's bottled lemon juice)
• 3/4 C Sugar
• Zest from one lemon
• Pinch of Salt
• 6 Eggs - separate the whites for the meringue from 3 of the eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 7 TBSP Sugar

Instructions

1. Bake the pie crust according to the directions on the box or your standard recipe. After, turn the oven temperature down to 375.
2. In a saucepan, put in the butter, 3/4 C of sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Turn the heat on low and whisk until melted.
3. In a bowl, beat together 3 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks.
   
4. After the butter mixture is fully melted, spoon some slowly into the egg mixture and stir. Do this a few more times, to raise the temperature of the egg mixture slowly.
   
5. Off heat, pour the egg mixture into the saucepan with the butter mixture. Put it back on the heat, and whisk constantly.
   
6. If the eggs start to scramble - hopefully this doesn't happen - pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer.
   
7. Cook mixture until it begins to thicken. You will notice this as you drag your whisk across the mixture and the the lines you leave close up more slowly. This takes about 6-8 minutes.
8. Pour the mixture into the baked pie crust and bake for 12 minutes. Take the pie out of the oven. It will still be rather jiggly, but don't worry.
9. For the meringue, beat the eggs with an electric mixer on high until soft peaks form. If you're not sure what type of peak you're looking for, check this out. After the soft peaks form, add in the vanilla extract. Turn the mixer back on and spoon in the sugar one tablespoon at a time. After all the sugar is added, beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.
   
10. After the meringue is mixed, spoon or pipe the mixture onto the pie. Make sure you take the meringue all the way to the outer edges, as it will shrink as it cools and this will keep the yellow part of the pie from being exposed.
11. Put the pie back in the oven. If you have an electric oven, turn the oven to broil; if it's gas, just leave it at 375. Watch the pie, and take it out when the meringue starts to brown. This takes about 3-5 minutes, depending on your oven. Seriously though, watch it!
12. Remove the pie and cool for at least 5 hours, preferably overnight. Let the pie sit out of the oven but not in the refrigerator for about an hour, as this minimizes the chance of the meringue cracking. Then cover and refrigerate.
    

Key Lime Pie

My friend Allison came through on a quick visit earlier this week while back in the Midwest for a wedding. She and I had recently dicussed Ben & Jerry's Key Lime Ice Cream and our inability to find it. This is unfortunate because it sounds pretty awesome.

With Allison coming to town and her birthday just around the corner, I decided to make the next best thing - a key lime pie.

Key lime pie is one of the first things I ever learned to bake. I probably made 5-10 of them in the summer of 2007. That summer, I worked three jobs (Security, Alumni Relations, and a Thai restaurant), had six roommates, and taught myself how to stay alive in America. This on the heels my adventures in the Czech Republic, from which I returned with what Allison and others will always call "clown mouth" -- AKA lesions on the sides of my mouth from vitamin deficiency and clear indication that I was not an adult. ANYWAY, BACK TO THE PIE.

Key lime pie is really, really easy. I consider it one of those things where, if you go above 4 ingredients for the filling, you're doing it wrong.

Key Lime Pie
4 Egg Yolks
1 Can Sweet & Condensed Milk (I'd use Eagle Brand or Carnation - brand names for something like this)
1/2 Cup Lime Juice (Fresh is best, even if it's just a normal lime, not a key lime)
1 tsp Vanilla
9" crust (You can make your own graham cracker crust, but sometimes I'm lazy and just buy a pre-made one. Homemade is amazing, but sometimes I'm not up for the mess.)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Stir together egg yolks and S&C milk until smooth. You really want smoothness.
3. Wisk in lime juice until well-combine and consistent throughout. If you think this thing needs to be green (heathen), then add your food coloring in.
4. Pour into crust and bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate until serving.

Mini Cherry Pies for Valentine's Day in a Muffin Pan

These are, by far, the cutest thing I have ever made. Interestingly, they are also easy, mess-free, and inexpensive.

I'm a big Aldi shopper when I can because you can usually good deals on random things and it's also an easy way to try out new things. For this recipe, I bought all the supplies at Aldi for less than $5.

Mini Cherry Pies

2 Refrigerated Pie Crusts (they come in a box together and are usually near the refrigerated cinnamon rolls)
1 Can Pie Filling
1 egg
Cooking Spray

1. Roll out one of the pie crusts. I used a cup with 3.75" diameter to cut out each crust - you might have to experiment a little bit to see what fits your muffin tin best. If you're careful, you should be able to get about six crusts out of each crust. Don't worry if you don't, as you can roll the scrap dough back out to get a few extra.
2. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with cooking spray.
3. Press each circle into a muffin cup, being sure to push it all the way into the cup.
4. Fill each cup with approximately 6 cherries. They might overflow, but this should keep it to a minimum.
5. Create a top for the pies. I cut out little hearts and layered them, made a full top with a heart cut-out, and a lattice.
6. Whisk an egg in and brush the tops of the pies with egg. If you don't have a brush, you can use the back of a spoon.
7. Bake at 400 degrees for about 18 minutes. Watch these - they might burn! Since you're using a canned fruit, you don't have to worry so much about the fruit cooking through, just for the crust to brown.

Pear Raspberry Pie

This is a test run of a pie (from Martha Stewart - I used refrigerated crust and added almond extract to the filling) I'm planning to make for my roommates' and my party before Barrister's Ball next week. I don't make much in the realm of pie, but I wanted to make something Valentine's Day-y.

Coincidentally, my roommate is reading really unromantic Family Law cases to me and she's trying to be menacing by telling me that if I don't listen, I won't know when I'm not obligated to pay child support. Oh, darn it. Whatever will I do?