Tag Archives: pie

Apricot Pie

food and cooking,


Before Advent, I’d resolved to bake fewer cookies and more pies at Christmas. I managed to do just that. One new pie I made was apricot. It was a big hit. No one ever seems to mind my unusual crust formations. You can see more of this accidental art in the other “pie” category posts.

(The book picture wanted to be included in this blog, for the obvious reason of its title, but also because it was wrapped and under the tree while we were smelling the pie baking.)

Lacking fresh apricots in the winter, I planned to use canned fruit, but in order to get more intense flavor I added some dried apricots.

Here’s how I did it:

Christmas Apricot Pie

4 15-oz cans apricot halves
1 cup packed dried Blenheim apricots
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
dough for a two-crust deep-dish pie

Put the dried fruit in a pan with the water, cover and cook on very low heat until the apricots are stewed and mushy. When cool, add the sugar, arrowroot, and almond extract.

Roll out the bottom crust and put it in the pie plate. Drain the canned apricots and spread them as neatly as possible on the crust. Slather the stewed apricot mixture on top of the apricot halves. Roll out the remainder of dough to form the top crust, and lay it on. Trim the crusts to even them out, and fold the two layers under together so that the raw edges are hiding against the edge of the pie plate. Crimp and flute this rounded edge, and make a few slashes through the top of the crust.
Bake at 450° for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350° for another 40 or 50 minutes. I always like to wrap some foil around the edge for part of the baking period to prevent over-browning. This post shows that technique, and also another vegan apricot pie I made once or twice. I hate to even mention such a variation in the context of a Christmas feast.

What we ended up with was defintely a deep dish pie; the recipe could probably be made with just three cans of fruit, keeping the other ingredients basically the same. The amount of sugar seemed to be just right; there wasn’t so much that it masked the distinctive apricot tang.

If you can’t find Blenheim apricots, I’m afraid you won’t get the same rich flavor we enjoyed. They are worth hunting down. The package I used had been sitting around for the better part of a year with no loss of flavor, and I will probably buy some more at Trader Joe’s pretty soon, so that there won’t be any question about being ready for next Christmas and what may be our new tradition.

The little guy at right doesn’t have much to do with my subject, but writing about pies always seems to make me a little goofy. Anyway, he looks cute enough to eat.

Recalling Pies and Martyrs

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This week’s pies probably aren’t anything you will want to imitate, but I couldn’t miss the chance to add a post to the Pie category.

First there was the Lenten Pie Challenge. For myself, I would not bother baking or eating a pie made without butter, or at least eggs, and would wait until after a church fast to eat the real thing. But today at church we were commemorating Saint Lawrence of Rome, patron saint of our rector, who loves pies. We are in the middle of a short period of fasting, so if we want to show our appreciation by baking pies for him, they need to be vegan.

Let me interject a story about today’s saint, who lived in the third century, and an icon that is painted on a door in our church. It shows St. Lawrence and also the first martyr Stephen. Click on it to see more detail, and their names.

The Jewels of St Lawrence

After the death of Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. Ambrose is the earliest source for the tale that Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth. Lawrence worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the poor as possible, so as to prevent its being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. One account records him declaring to the prefect, “The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor.” This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom.

Last year for this celebration I made some apricot pies with lots of walnuts. They would have looked much like the picture below but for the walnut meal on top of the pies that didn’t get photographed. This year I decided to try something with coconut and pineapple. I used canned pineapple, shredded dried coconut, coconut milk, and some other things. The challenge was mostly knowing how much thickening to include. I made two, and they were well-received at the brunch following church, but I’d like to improve the recipe before I pass it on. It’s unlikely, at any rate, that many of my readers are holding their breath waiting for vegan pie recipes.

It didn’t feel right, making pies to take to church when my dear laboring husband was not there to partake–even though he did assure me that my weird pie did not appeal. So I made him a cherry pie today that he and his father could share.

On rare occasions I have been given fresh pie cherries and without a doubt they make the best pies. But the menfolk around here are perfectly pleased with the results that come from using canned pie filling, so I often settle for that. There’s no recipe to share, except to say that for one 9″ or 10″ pie you must buy two cans of filling at a price that is likely outrageous these days. I recommend finding a generous friend with a cherry tree.

Still, the pie is homey-looking and you can almost smell the butter. In my past pie-posts I forgot to tell you that when I bake a pie that needs to be in the oven for the better part of an hour I put some foil collars around the fluted edge of the crust, to keep it from getting too brown. Many people don’t eat this part, but for the sake of us who do, I want to keep it edible and beautiful. A pie doesn’t seem too appetizing to me if its crust is approaching the color of the bottom of my oven. This task takes a few extra minutes, because one has to be careful not to smash the dough with the foil. You might decide that it’s not worth the trouble.

You have to watch the pie in the oven and decide whether to take the collar off a few minutes before the pie will be coming out. It can happen that if your pie dough recipe doesn’t have sugar or milk in it, the crust will not brown as much as you want if you leave the protective collar on until the end of baking. This pastry recipe uses sugar, which is probably why the crust browned nicely even with the foil reflecting some of the heat. I didn’t remove the guard until the pie came out of the oven.

This cherry pie might have kept a sharper fluted edge if I’d stuck it in the fridge for a while, but I was too impatient. And I don’t mind the relaxed look.

Pie Amusement

food and cooking,

I think I must create a new tag and category just for pies. I love making them, and I’m sure readers could learn something if they looked at all the pie posts at once. Like, how NOT to make pies. The unfortunate thing is, you can’t taste the pies from where you are. Even the Buttermilk Pie that was too sweet had a tasty crust. But for the purpose of laughter, my latest experiment takes the cake–I mean pie. The flavor was WONDERFUL. But its looks were, well…interesting.

You can’t tell how interesting from this picture of my first ever Lemon Meringue Pie. It is the most flattering I could manage. I wanted to start you off with the best, so you don’t get discouraged.

The flour, sugar, salt and butter are being coarsely blended together with my favorite pastry blender. The recipe for this pie dough is here.

When I first started making pies, I used a pastry mat and a rolling pin cover to keep the dough from sticking and tearing. After I found this lovely marble rolling pin at a garage sale I stopped needing those helps. Maybe it was a coincidence, and it was just that I had by then developed a feel for pie dough. It is pure pleasure to use it.

I knew I was going to need all that flour on my dough “pancake” because I had added a few too many drops of water, making this lump a bit moister than ideal.

See that rift developing on the lower right? It can be fixed.

You carefully tear off a piece that happens to be sticking out somewhere else, and it becomes a repair patch.

After “gluing” with a little water, dusting with some flour, I patted the patch on,

and then rolled it smooth.

With the empty pie plate nearby, I roll the dough part way back on to the rolling pin and then lay it back gently on to the pie pan, draping it over the edges and making sure that it is snug but relaxed into the corners of the bottom.

Trim off the excess and ragged edges of dough. How much is excess? When you look at the pictures below you’ll realize that I don’t really know the answer to that.

When I was learning from a book, the author didn’t explain how to make the edge of the crust neat. It took a veteran pie-maker showing me, to learn that after trimming, you fold the rough edge under to make a rolled edge. Perhaps my sloppy rolling this time contributed to the later problems.

I’m sorry I couldn’t show you how I flute the edge. B. was on a ladder outside and the dough wouldn’t wait for him to take my picture, so I proceeded without documentation. It involves a sort of pinching with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, twisting in opposite directions.

The pie shell was ready to bake at this point, and after pricking it with a fork, I laid some rice on to wax paper in the bottom of the shell, to keep it from puffing up while baking. In the past I have used beans or another, smaller pie plate.

While the shell was baking I started the filling. If you want a lot of lemon flavor, be sure to add plenty of lemon zest. I used a tablespoonful. For years I struggled to get the precious peel off of my lemons with an old and dull grater. Eureka! The microplane, now one of my most beloved tools. See how it can take off the finest shreds of peel, without any of the bitter white part. And it does it without any strain to the old elbows.

The filling recipe I used came out perfect, not runny at all. I followed the advice of several people to use a full 6 tablespoons of cornstarch, and my recipe used 5 large egg yolks and one cup of sugar. I’m not giving you the whole recipe for this pie, because most recipes are similar, and some aspects of mine were obviously not the best. Instructions were for a deep-dish 9″ pie plate, but I think a shallow pan might have worked better.

This is the most revealing picture, showing the homeliness of my poor pie shell. I wonder if my repair job made that section of crust too soft so that it melted outward? But why did some parts shrink down into the pie plate? Was it the extra moisture requiring extra flour? There is probably a pie troubleshooter somewhere that I haven’t bothered to consult.

The filling is now poured into the shell, and you can see the oddly shaped crust from a different vantage point.

 

My beloved pot. I really never thought about how thankful for it I am until today. I have had my set of stainless steel cookware with its copper layer sandwiched in since we got married 37 years ago. This 3-qt. pot has probably been used every day at least once in that time. The brand was Seal-O-Matic, “waterless” cookware, and they aren’t in business under that name anymore.

Now I have dumped the first load of meringue on top. I can’t imagine how this is going to work; the meringue seems too stiff to spread without pushing the filling all out of level. But if it isn’t stiff, how will it stay in those lovely swirls I expect to make?

The shrunken-in edges of crust make it very hard to follow the directions to spread the meringue right down to the crust, sealing in the filling. But I end up with a mountain of meringue, sculpted out of about 2/3 of what was in the mixer bowl. I noticed that the recipes vary in the number of eggs used, from 3-5, and they always use all the yolks in the filling and all the whites for the meringue. I would prefer a pie with only a 3-white meringue; it’s
that fluff that put me off so long from being interested in this kind of pie. But it was delightful work, swishing the soft and shiny stuff around.

What to do with the leftover meringue? There was no time to read ideas or think much, so I made a snap decision to use the leftover pie dough to make cookie platforms…

I folded some almond meal and cinnamon into the meringue and put little dollops of that on the rounds of dough, and baked them. They were cooked at various temperatures, kind of “on the back burner” because I didn’t have time for them, really. And after I assembled them I thought, Oh, dear, meringue-type cookies want a slow oven, and pie crust cookies a fast oven. So these will be terrible.

But they were fine.

 

 

 
Now I’ll show you a less becoming photo of the finished pie. The meringue looks great, but there are handles….They might be useful if you were trying to eat a slice of pie out-of-hand. I hope you don’t do that!

This picture shows how 1) the filling did in fact get pushed out of shape when I swirled all that meringue around, 2) the meringue topping is way out of proportion to the filling, which should be the main event, and 3) the crust soaked up a lot of moisture from the filling. Is that supposed to happen? Won’t it naturally go through the holes pricked in the dough? The crust was very good nonetheless, not soggy at all, but the pie was sitting in a pool of lemony liquid. So maybe that is the runnyness that people talk about trying to avoid.

I hope you can tell also that the crust is nice and flaky. It’s buttery and yummy.

I’m ending this account with my other fairly flattering photo of a cut piece. And I hope my adventures make you want to bake your own pies. Even the failures are usually good to eat.