Archive | October, 2011

Caramel Pumpkin Pie

31 Oct

There is a distinct rank and file to my Thanksgiving table:

1. Pumpkin Pie

2.  Pumpkin Pie

3. Oyster dressing

4. Turkey

Nothing upstages pumpkin pie in my book.  About three weeks before Thanksgiving, I find myself drawn to every magazine at the grocery store.  “Your best Thanksgiving Ever!” (Yes!)  “A Pumpkin Pie to Wow Them!” (Of course!) “The Best of the Best Pie Recipes for Your Table!” (This is the one!).  And every year I set out to find the best pumpkin pie recipe – one that people will talk about for years to come.  It never fails, the chosen recipe tastes like, well…pumpkin pie.  I was starting to feel like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come, each year hoping that the recipe Gods would pick me as the most sincere baker of all.  That is until last year when Dorie Greenspan and her Caramel Pumpkin Pie entered my life.

If you own only one baking cookbook, I say it should be Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  She’s the author of Baking With Julia (yes, Julia Child) and knows her stuff.  Her technique of caramelizing a portion of the sugar before adding it to the pumpkin mixture gives this pie a depth of flavor that will knock your socks off.  It’s like a pumpkin pie has hit puberty – that soft, sweet, creamy pastry grows up to be a deeper, darker, more mature dessert that means business.  If you’re like me and always looking for that next best thing – this is your year!!  Continue reading →

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Pie it Forward: Norm and Carol – The Market Connection

24 Oct

Sometimes, you only need to look across the street to find some inspiration.  When it was time to choose my Pie it Forward suspect, I knew exactly who was next on my list.

Elliot has signed on as my accomplice

Norm and Carol’s house was the first one we noticed when we bought our new house in the Spring of 2010.  Every weekend we would load the boys in the car for a nap and drive to see our new neighborhood, eager for the day those keys would land in our hands.  During one of our trips, we noticed a sign in front of the house across the street.  It was advertising an open house to come meet local farmers and sample their products.  Somebody pinch me!  Our new neighbors love local food and know farmers!  I could feel my depression from abandoning our beloved North Union Farmer’s Market slipping away.  We wanted to go so bad, be felt weird because we were not “official” yet.

Fast forward to a year later and what I have come to learn about Norm and Carol’s involvement in the local food movement has earned them the honor of getting Pie Eyed. Continue reading →

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King Arthur vs. Queen of Food Blogs vs. Pie Princess: One Big Dough Experiment

20 Oct

“You’re taking something that’s perfect and trying to make it more perfect” said my friend Kelly.  I was trying to convince her that the mini pies she took home a couple of weeks ago were some of my worst – a chocolate pudding pie experiment gone wrong.

And she got me thinking – is there such thing as perfect pie?  Pie elicits such an emotional response in people.  It takes them back to memories of a slice of time when the world was right.  The feelings captured in that memory infuse the taste of the pie they remember, making it nothing short of perfect.  For me, it’s sitting at my Grandmother’s kitchen table eating strawberry rhubarb pie.  In my memory, the pie was amazing and something I would never be able to replicate.  Then I made it and you know what – the crust was awful.  It was a strange recipe that made a soft, cake like crust that was bland and tasteless.  And there were no actual strawberries!  Just rhubarb with strawberry Jell-O.  That was surely not the pie I so fondly remembered, was it?  It was.

What made that pie perfect was our whole family crammed into my Grandparents’ tiny efficiency apartment.  Nowhere to sit but the kitchen table where a spread of pie, kiflis (Key-Fleas), muffins and cookies helped you pass the time until Grandpa took you down the hall to play pool or outside to play shuffleboard.  What made that pie perfect was my Grandmother who in her Hungarian tradition, fed us until we loaded back into our car for the two hour ride home, settling in against our pillows drenched in the smells of meat, potatoes and most importantly…pie.

I am aware that there is no such thing as perfect pie.  But I’m going to make MY perfect pie and I still have some work to do.  I went full steam ahead with a three-way dough experiment this week.  Continue reading →

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Strawberry rhubarb minis (aka: I miss spring)

17 Oct

My parents came to town this weekend, so I wanted to knock their socks off with all this pie I’ve been ranting about (plus, if we’re being honest here,  I knew they would play with the boys and I could bake!).  I planned a pie-a-palooza of a weekend – dough experiments, mini pies, whole pies.

Staring out my kitchen window at the soggy leaves and rainy sky, I wanted just one more taste of warm weather before the winter suffocated me in the northeast Ohio snowbelt.  I knew I had the perfect solution to both a flavor my parents would love and one that would lift my spirits – strawberry rhubarb!  Lucky me, I had the last of the farmer’s market rhubarb frozen in my freezer along side some strawberries.

I had done a trial run a while back, so I set out to perfect my recipe.  I ended up crafting my own filling recipe from a hybrid of Smitten Kitchen and my Hungarian Grandmother’s.  The result: pure spring in every bite!  Love, love, love.

Continue reading →

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Pie It Forward: A Double Dose

16 Oct

I was so excited about my plan to give away pie that I went a little crazy last week.  After dropping in on Jackie at the Shop-N-Go, I was hooked.  So, I decided to keep delivering pie to see how people responded.  And from what I can tell so far, people love getting pie!

Bedford Heights Police Department

I will be the first to admit that I have never thanked a police officer until last week when I delivered some pie.  I’m kind of embarrassed about that.  24 hours a day, wherever we are, there is a police force in the background operating as a safety net for all of us and I’m trying not to take that for granted.

My office has recently moved to Bedford Heights and unfortunately, we have had some run-ins with the police.  A suspicious car in the parking lot, a couple of broken windows from a BB gun, alarm trips (oops, we’re getting used to a new building), and some rowdy protesters (they come along with the territory).  Every time the police show up, they are just so nice, professional and understanding.

They even forgave me when I called about what turned out to be a cop doing security in an unmarked car in our parking lot.  When I kept asking when the police were going to arrive to check out this suspicious car that keeps showing up, the dispatcher finally said, “Honey, that  IS a cop in your parking lot.”  Oh – oops.  We’re BFFs now.

I was too nervous to ask to take their picture!

To the Bedford Heights Police Department – you deserve some pie!

Subway:  Russ

Part of the reason I am doing this is to make myself more aware of the people who are making everyone’s day a little better.  Russ at my local Subway proves that you can make someone’s day better no matter where you are or what you are doing.

I started to take notice the third or fourth time I went there.  Every time I left, I had a smile on my face and before long, I was looking forward to going there.  It was because each time I went in, I laughed – and so did others.  The place is boisterous and contagious.  Russ and his crew have a mutual respect for each other and their customers.

What I love the most is that Russ is the sandwich judge.  The line of customers get their ingredient choices evaluated and given the thumbs up or thumbs down.  “Oooh, she’s on fire!” he’ll holler if he likes your choices.  “Oh, watch it now, don’t go there” I’ve heard him say to the man behind me thinking about black olives.  “I know you’re addicted to this salad because we make it so good” he says.  And he’s right.  They have rocked my world with a spinach, buffalo chicken salad that’s made with love and laughter.

Russ gets Pie Eyed!

So, Russ, here’s to you and your crew at Subway!

xoxo, The Pie Eyed Piper

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Pie Eyed’s First Suspect: Jackie

13 Oct

I have passed the Shop-N-Go convenience store in Bedford Heights hundreds of times over the years.  Now that I work next door, I drive past it everyday.  But I’ve never gone in until recently.  I was on a Diet Coke run and decided to pop into the store.  Upon checking out, I met Jackie, the store manager.  She was so incredibly nice!  We chatted for a bit and I could tell that she really takes pride in her store and cares about the customers.  She totally made my day.  Who knew there was such a gem like Jackie inside that store that I’ve been passing all these years?

So, to my new work neighbor Jackie, you’re my first person to get Pie Eyed!

Jackie gets Pie Eyed at the Shop-N-Go!

XOXO, The Pie Eyed Piper

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Pie It Forward

12 Oct

There’s just something so genuine about pie.  It’s holidays, it’s grandma, it’s welcome to the neighborhood.  It is made to be shared.

There is no reason I need to bake all of this pie and keep it for myself.  So starting today, I will be delivering my pie to someone who deserves to be thanked or have their day brightened.  An unsuspecting person or group will get Pie Eyed with a delivery of fresh pie.

Check back soon to see who got Pie Eyed this week!

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The L Word

10 Oct

I had to do it.  It was the natural next step.  It was time to make pie crust with LARD.  For some reason, I was having a hard time making the leap.  It’s the word – lard.  The first thing that comes to mind is the Lard A$$ pie eating contest in the movie Stand By Me.  Lard and pie together in a hard to watch ending.  But I’m ready to reclaim the word and find out if I will join the ranks of those singing its praises.

On a tip from my Mother-in-Law, I found non-hydrogenated pure lard at our local Heinen’s grocery store.  Right there next to pork bones and other non-identifiable pork products was a shiny white tub marked “Pure Lard.”  I almost made a mistake and bought beef suet, but I remembered that all the articles reference Leaf Lard from pigs.  Good thing I didn’t – the beef suet was like a hunk of fat and the pork lard is creamy.

I was carrying the tub to the front with my fingertips – like it was going to seep through the plastic.  Then I felt the need to chit chat about why I was buying lard to the 16 year old cashier who humored me and confirmed that it was “gross.”  But it was at that moment that my heart started to embrace this little tub of fat – it rang up $.99!  WOW!  A 14 ounce tub of Lard for $.99 and a 20 ounce package of Crisco costs nearly $4.50.  This could be the beginning of a beautiful pie partnership.

Continue reading →

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Pie Hangover (Mini Apple Pies)

2 Oct

I’m feeling the consequences of too much pie.  I think I am honestly hung over.  It is not news that pie crust is nowhere near healthy – I’m not even going to try to claim the calcium from butter.  Ian and I have been eating an average of one mini-pie a day…for the past month.  We’re like a pair of bears getting ready for the winter hibernation.  I thought the 17 Day Diet was the solution – I would start today, detox, and find the strength to make pie and not eat it.  Then Ian suggested that we should just make ourselves sick on pie, then we would no longer want it.  So, with a sigh, I brewed some coffee and had a pumpkin mini-pie for breakfast.

I couldn’t let fall pass me by without working on an apple mini-pie.  There’s just something about a local apple – I could eat one for every meal.  So, this week I embarked on experimenting, eating, and more experimenting.

I used the apple pie filling recipe that I posted earlier, but made some tweaks and figured out how to pre-cook it without turning it mushy.  Then, instead of glazing like the pumpkin, I sprinkled them with sanding sugar.

Unlike a regular apple pie, the apples need to be cut pretty small to pile into the  middle of the little circle.  They are even a little big in the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading →

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