I loves me some pie. Many different kinds. So of course, being also something of a techie, I also am familiar with Pi and uses of it. I once had it memorized a bit farther than this, but I can still rattle off the 3.1415926 and call it good.
In my past, I've submitted and won two prizes for pies - blueberry - at some fairs. So I loves me some blueberry pie, some lemon meringue, some chocolate, some cherry, but most of all, I loves me some apple pie. With a dutch apple pie crumb crust on top.
Follow me over the streusel swirl for some musings and even a recipe for pie. I'm going to make one tonight so tomorrow I can have the proper food at the proper time - 9:26 AM and PM on 3/14/15.
This slice of pie was consumed at a Kossack meet-up. When I get home this evening I'll post a picture of another one - a blueberry one that I made for a gathering over at Brahman Colorado's gorgeous home with garden for another Kossack meet-up.
In the meantime, I'll wax a little rhapsodic about pies and invite your own memories, favorite recipes, and other thoughts concerning Pi(e) and tomorrow.
I've been a cook for most of my life - one of my earliest memories is from a nursery school I attended where I was excited about being complemented at how well and evenly I was pouring the batter for pancakes we made one day. Baking has been my favorite method of cooking. I used to have a bakery catering business (strictly off-the-books and illegal) called the No-Nut Bakery due to my allergy to tree nuts. Peanuts are fine - I'd be much distressed if I couldn't have peanut butter, but since I've never been able to eat tree nuts, it's nothing I miss. I'm not sure if I'm troubled by coconut - my sister once ordered me a drink made of coconut milk without thinking it through and it didn't seem to upset my stomach, but it's not the kind of thing I want to go experiment with, you know?
I used to bake various sweets and bring them to work and eventually some co-workers asked me to bake their wedding cake for them. It was my first commissioned piece and also my first effort at something that large. There were 75 expected for the reception. The cake was three tiers of chocolate, with plates of chocolate on the sides of the tiers and strawberries on top of the tiers. The cake was supposed to provide enough for 150, but it was completely gone and I noticed very little was left on anyone's plates, so I considered it a success.
Anyway, a friend who had been competing in the 4H fairs for years encouraged me to enter a pie into the county fair back in the 90's. She helped me with many suggestions as to how to help it look its best and it must have pleased the judges because I won a white ribbon (3rd place) and it promptly sold before the time I was to pick it up. I was pretty happy to win at a county fair in Kansas - somehow that seems like an especially tough audience to have to please. I have since won a couple of ribbons for baked goods - another for blueberry pie and a couple for breads. I have a variety of desserts that I can make to impress folks for a dinner, but a fruit pie is one that always makes people very happy.
The crust is something I sometimes make from scratch. I realize this is a potential point where the "real" bakers in the DKos crew might start getting their dander up, but I've tried the vodka in the pie crust recipe from America's Test Kitchen and I've tried the Crisco crusts from my youth and I just haven't noticed it being worth the time and effort compared to unrolling some refrigerated pie dough and just laying that down in the pan. If I have time and the ingredients, I'll make the dough, but tonight's pie will have pre-made dough. Sorry, folks.
If I'm going to make an apple pie, I'll use whatever for the bottom crust, but the top is usually my mother's crumb topping. It is simply the following:
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar (usually white, but sometimes I mix in some brown)
1/4 cup butter
That's it. The ingredients are cut together either with knives or a pastry blender and then spread/sprinkled over the top of the pie. It has no problems from the unevenness of the apple pie chunks/slices, it doesn't need to have cuts placed in it to allow steam to vent and it rises and falls with the volume without cracking. It's good enough to eat raw on its own, but that's probably not good for the tummy if you eat too much. Or so I would imagine my mother telling me. I just love it.
For pies other than apple that need a top crust, I sometimes use a lattice, but often I'll use something for the design that I've been doing since college. I will lay the top flat crust on the pie, press it with the thumbs to attach it to the bottom crust usually with sharp angles rather than curved patterns around the edge, and then I'll get a partner to play a game of tic-tac-toe with me on the top. This gives us the necessary steam vents, with a bit of fun. Only once have I ever won a game; I celebrated by making a huge gash down the row of symbols to show the line through them. After the game is completed, I will either put a light coating of milk or sometimes an egg wash over the crust and then sprinkle with sugar and perhaps some cinnamon.
I know I've spent most of the diary talking fruit pies, but they're my favorites. I can't really say how to make a perfect pie because I've never concentrated on one variety enough to get it to come out the same way over and over again. The only one I've made that often has been apple pies, and even those are an adventure from having different apple varieties (5-7, peeled, cored, sliced/chopped) and just eyeballing the amount of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cornstarch, butter and occasionally ground cloves to put into the mixture. I like good vanilla ice cream for my pies. Occasionally I'll put on whipped cream, but I more often have ice cream at hand. I've had friends who like cheese on their apple pie, but honestly, that's just never appealed to me.
I've made and enjoyed a wide range of pies - many varieties of fruit pies, lemon meringue is wonderful as is an orange-lemon meringue I picked up from an ancient Pillsbury cookbook; chocolate cream pies are also very good.
On the savory side, I also like pot pies. I'll buy the frozen pot pies and have them for lunch - I like the Marie Calendar ones. I usually add ketchup - an affection from childhood when most things tasted better with ketchup. I've thought about getting one of the Costco pot pies but they're pretty large and I'd wind up eating most of it myself. I think I've only made my own pot pies from scratch a couple of times. I'm more the kind to make a stew and maybe have dumplings on top if I want the dough.
I don't think I'd want the kind of pies they used to make for lords where there were live animals baked inside the crust so that the crust would be cut open and the animals (thinking here of four and twenty blackbirds) would then fly out to their freedom. Just mean to the animals and not really appealing to me if I want dinner from it. I realize that was more for the presentation and skills of showing off by the baker, and maybe having enough money to create non-edible art, but I like edible art.
Tonight's pie will be refrigerated crust with a Costco frozen berry mix - I think it's blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, but there may be strawberries in there. I can't recall at the moment and it doesn't matter much anyway. Fruit with light sweet pastry and vanilla ice cream is going to be delicious.
7:04 PM PT:
The blueberry pie enjoyed at a Kossack party