More Pie Failures

or Why You Should Never Bring Pie to a Picnic.
My birthday was last week and to celebrate I had a picnic with a bunch of friends in the Sheep's Meadow in Central Park this past weekend. It was a beautiful day for a picnic, plenty of people were out enjoying the gorgeous weather, but not too many to make it overcrowded. There were several children celebrating birthday's in the same area, including three legged races and water balloon fight. All in all an ideal picnic day and I asked everyone to bring something while I brought pie.

You'd think I would have learned my lesson from the last attempt to bring pie somewhere. Despite having a plastic pie saver so that I don't repeat the mess I had last year when taking a pie on the subway to a Newsies sing along on the Upper West Side where I ended up with pie juice dripping out of the pie dish all over me, my scarf, and the subway car, it's still inevitably a disaster whenever I try to take pie out of the safety of my apartment.
For the picnic I made two pies - Strawberry, Peaches and Cream pie and Three Berry Star Pie (Strawberry, Blackberry and Blueberry). I made both pies the night before thinking they'd have plenty of time to cool and be less liquidy the next morning. I tried making the crust dough in my food processor for the first time and as was my fear, when I wet to roll it out, the texture was off. I added eggs and milk and put the dough back in the fridge and was able to salvage the dough however so I thought things were looking up.

Three Berry Star Pie Before

Three Berry Star Pie After

This was the obvious problem of pie juice shifting during carrying. Not as big a mess as last time since the pie had cooled over night, but it still made for a tie dyed sort of pie look.

Sadly I don't have a before picture for the Peaches and Cream pie, but it was a lovely one crust pie with a brown sugar crumble topping. After pulling it out of the oven around midnight, I covered it with foil to protect it without thinking too much about it. It looked perfect. I was tired so I figured I would photograph it the next morning for the blog, but by morning the crumb topping had mostly melted into the rest of the pie. No matter, I thought, it would still taste good. Then when I unwrapped it at the picnic it had REALLY melted. I tasted it, but the texture was so funny that sadly this was one pie that just never got served.

On the plus side the salad I made with my CSA share partner for the picnic turned out fabulously including the roasted beets.

Semi-Failure Pie

I was invited to a friend's to watch this year's Tony Awards (my thoughts on which I'll spare you on this blog as they have nothing to do with food, crafts or general domesticity) and I of course decided it was an opportunity to make pie. However clearly I had not made pie in some time, and I yet again forgot to pick up more tapioca because I've been out of it for weeks, so while still tasty (since really any homemade pie is tasty to some degree or other), the end result was an extremely runny Strawberry Blackberry Pie.
Better luck next time. And there will most assuredly be a next time as berries are super cheap at my fruit and veggie market.

Return of the Pie!

More from the CSA bounty:

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie


I used this pie making opportunity to use a new mini cookie cutter set I have in the shape of Noah's ark and the animals. I've never made a strawberry rhubarb pie before and I fudged the measurements for the filling based on a number of different recipes (primarily that old standby the Betty Crocker Cookbook). I used almost two full cups of sugar for the filling which is more than I normally put into a fruit pie filling and made the whole thing a bit sweeter than I personally like, but still very good. Sadly rhubarb is not the easiest thing to come by in my neighborhood and so I'll have to wait until the next time the CSA box has some to experiment with it again.

Happy Pi Day!

3.14 pies - or as close to them as my baking dishes would allow.

Corn pie is the same as from Thanksgiving.

The sweet pie and the mini pie are both strawberry apple. The big pie has an almond crumb topping. The little one I tried to cut a pi into, but it didn't work out so well.

Pretty Pie for the Oscars

Strawberry Blackberry Pie

Why? Because strawberries and blackberries were cheap and had to be used that day.
The crust was a basic butter crust but came out particularly flakey. I also felt like being artistic with the top.

As to the Oscars...well let's just say I've never seen so many cut shots to so many bored and clueless actors. It was priceless.

Ignoring the New Year's Resolutions

While most people are jumping on the eat healthy and get in shape band wagon, I'm making my first real post in the new year about what might be the epitome of an unbalanced meal: macaroni and cheese and pie. The pie is a pear and strawberry pie.


The macaroni and cheese was inspired by clearing out leftover cheese in the fridge.

Recipe:
16oz box of elbow pasta, cooked
3 cups of white sauce
3 cups mixed of Gruyere, cheddar, mozzarella, and Parmesan
Top with 1/2 cup of buttered bread crumbs (this time I tried Progresso's herbed panko)

White Sauce:
6 Tbs butter
6 Tbs flour
3 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste


Pear & Strawberry Pie Filling
5 ripe pears peeled and sliced
approx 3/4 of a lb of strawberries sliced
3 Tbs tapioca
3/4 cup of sugar

Unmentionable Pie

My book club met this past weekend to discuss Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and in honor of it and since I was hosting I decided to bake of course. I made the fruit tarts in the previous post, but decided that I needed something thematically appropriate for our gathering. Incidentally Jane Austen is greatly improved by the addition of zombies and ninjas. The zombies are known as "unmentionables". I decided to take all the remaining fruit in my fridge and mix it up into "Unmentionable Pie". I figured it would be vaguely reminiscent of the mix of zombie body parts.


The filling is made up of apples (which I did buy for this purpose), peaches, grapes, strawberries, raspberries and kiwi.

In addition I also made a vegetable pie using cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, string beans, potato, a bit of cream, cheddar cheese and some broth. A variant of unmentionable pie as it also cleaned out parts of my fridge.

Green and Red fruit tarts

In an effort to branch out from pie and to use my new silicone tart dish I decided to make fruit tarts. I also felt the need to buy several small tartlet dishes and a medium sized one, so I made lots of fruit tarts. It was only when I started to assemble them that I realized I had a color scheme going on. I was impressed with how easy the tart shell was to pull out of the silicone, but I did feel like the sides sank more in that dish than the other metal ones. Still, though the edges didn't turn out perfect the pastry cream came out well and they were tasty and pretty.