TWD: the creamiest lime cream meringue pie (or perfection pie)

Things FINALLY seem to be calming down a little around our little home front  (I shouldn’t have written that, right?).  You may have gleaned through earlier posts that Colin is a bit of slacker/laid back kid.  Well, he took that to the extreme last week by missing the first THREE days of kindergarten.  Of course, it wasn’t really his fault.  The poor kid had pneumonia and then had the unfortunate luck of having an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic.  Pneumonia + hives does not a happy boy make.  This is also the child that is allergic to almost every tree pollen known to the Midwest.  So much for the benefits of breastfeeding!

The good news is that he has recovered and started kindergarten on Monday.  True to his nature, he was most looking forward to recess.  I wish I could say this pie was a great send-off to the brave new world of “real” school but we all know Colin wouldn’t come near this baby.  His older brother shocked me and refused it as well.  Too bad for them cuz it was goo-ood.  [UPDATE:  Will had some the next day and declared it a winner]

Yum – minus one stick of butter! I just couldn’t throw it all in.

My absolute favorite pie growing up was lemon meringue with a key lime a close second.  This was like a perfect combination of the two. I loved it more than a pie should be loved.  What I did not love was standing at the stove stirring and cursing a thermometer that would NOT rise above 137 degrees.  No one who has ever met me for even a minute would confuse with a perfectionist so you can bet I didn’t wait for any 180 to magically appear.  The lemon cream tart was my first TWD recipe and I honestly can’t remember if I had this problem then.  I started the blog the next week so we’ll never know….

No matter.  It was great regardless.  A perfect taste of summer (a season I am not ready to bid farewell.  If we could just skip winter…)

That’s all I have to say about this pie…

Thanks to Linda of Tender Crumb for a great pick.  The recipe is on her site.

YWPWT: Blueberry Cream Cheese Tart

I’m back.  It has been a while since I participated in So You Want Pies With That.  Life (and an ever slowing metabolism) gets in the way sometimes.

This month our theme is summer.  There are million ways to go with this one.  “lemon pie to celebrate the sun I haven’t seen in months;” “my kids are home all summer rum soaked pie,” etc.  But I chose to honor two summer specific things: fresh berries and hot kitchens.  While I can find a banana, apple or pear year round, fresh berries only make an appearance during the summer.  I consider it my duty to gorge on them accordingly.

And let’s face it.  Who needs the stress of keeping butter ice cold for pastry dough in July?  Not to mention an extra hour with a hot oven…Not me.

So, I present Blueberry Cream Cheese Tart.  It is chock full of fresh berries and almost (!) no bake.  I wish I had a picture of a slice but it was gone quickly on the Fourth.  I had overnight visitors and errant fireworks to worry about.  Photography fell off the radar.  Between the graham cracker layer and the blueberries is a thin layer of cream cheese filling.  The result?  Delectable (and easy).

Blueberry Cream Cheese Tart

Crust

• 10 graham crackers
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 4 tablespoons melted butter

Cream Cheese Filling

• 6 oz. cream cheese (room temperature)
• 2 tbps. heavy cream
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Blueberry Topping

• 4 c. fresh blueberries
• 3/4 c. sugar
• ¼ c. water
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter or spray  9 inch tart pan.  Grind graham crackers and sugar in food processor.  Add melted butter and stir to mix.  Press graham cracker/butter mixture into pan.  Cook for 10 minutes.  Cool.

Whisk together the cream cheese, heavy cream, sugar and vanilla.  Set aside.

In a small saucepan, combine 2 c. berries, sugar, salt, water, and cornstarch.  Cook over medium heat for a few minutes until liquid thickens and turns clear.  Remove from heat and add remaining blueberries and lime juice.

Spread the cream cheese layer over the crust.  Spoon on the blueberry mixture.  Refrigerate for an hour.  Enjoy!

TWD: Banana Cream Pie (or is Potassium enough to justify the caloric intake?)

Do you find that there are some categories of food that you like in one form but not in another?  I know, from my experience in this group, that some people have an aversion to cooked fruit.  Me?  I like peanut butter but peanuts not so much.  I like melted cheese but I don’t like it cold.  No cheese platter for me.  For the longest time, I loved bananas but couldn’t really tolerate banana flavored goods.  I am largely over that now but was reminded of my past banana aversion when this week’s TWD selection came up.  I realized I had never had actually had Banana Cream Pie.   (If Banana Cream Pie is available, Chocolate Cream Pie is usually only inches away.  Which would you choose?)

I don’t consider this one of the more exotic offerings in the book so it kind of surprised me to realize I didn’t really know what a successful Banana Cream Pie should taste like.  It was thicker and darker than I expected but I liked it.  I have only one measly picture and not much time to write this up.  One of my taste testers this week was my dear friend Stephanie who was in town from Phoenix.  Steph and I were summer associates and junior associates together.  We suffered through our first bar exams (I moved to a city bordering two states and took two more – not recommended) and first years of practice together.  I know there are some other lawyers on this site and they have immediately recognized from my description that Steph and I are now bonded for life.  So, I spent the first part of this week reminiscing with her.  I will try to get around to some of the other blogs tomorrow.

For the record, she couldn’t recall ever having Banana Cream Pie either.  The novices give it a thumbs up.

PS  As I ponder the ingredients, is this the most decadent thing we have made?  Who knew a little banana could go so so bad…

YWPWT: Tortilla Pie

Despite my lacking photography capabilities (still camera-less and using laptop), I am back for the March You Want Pies With That.  This month the pie was supposed to celebrate herbs and spices.

My natural inclination would be to go with cinnamon or nutmeg or anything normally associated with a sweet delectable pie (snickerdoodle pie immediately came to mind).  BUT, and it’s a big one, I gave up most sweets for Lent.  I am far too weak to make a succulent sweet pie and not even taste it.

So, I decided to showcase the spices I probably use more than any others: Cumin and chili powder (chipotle in this case).  I don’t know if they are my favorite but I use them over and over and over.  I also threw in some cilantro which I love and usually have around.

Clearly, we have deviated from sweet.  There is no real recipe.  The crust is made of flour tortillas.  The filling is black beans, onion, garlic, red pepper, cumin, chipotle chili powder, oregano, salt and tomatoes.  Saute all that and then top it with some cilantro and a mexican cheese mix.  Pop it in at 350 for about 20 minutes.  Voila!  Tortilla pie!

TWD: Twofer Pie for Thanksgiving

Well, possibly for once, I don’t have a lot to say this week. I made this pie. I read the P&Q thread beforehand. I was a little leary of pre-baking the shell so I half pre-baked it, if that makes any sense.

I don’t have a deep dish pie plate so I had to remove some filling. It started to overflow.

I baked it. I didn’t eat it. Nuts are not my friend. In fact, I wasn’t even there when the family ate it. We had to exit Thanksgiving a little early with a sick child (he’s fine now). I head later it was OK and the crust was a little overdone. Everyone liked the brownies I made more. The brownies were Dorie’s Quintuple Chocolate Brownies. They were chosen early on in the TWD rotation. I started at the beginning of April and I missed them. I made them for a rewind before and I would suggest – STRONGLY – that you go back and make them. NOW. They are awesome. I would also humbly suggest that you use semi-sweet for the glaze. So so so good.

Thanks to Vibi of the La Casserole Carree for picking something that married so well with American Thanksgiving. The full recipe is on her site.  Other pumpkin pecan pies are here.

I won’t lie. November was not my favorite month in the TWD world. The rugelach is probably the only one of these recipes I would repeat. Here’s to a yummy cookie-ful December.

YWPWT: Anarchy in the UP!!!*

*Parts of this post may not be suitable for impressionable readers. Hee hee.

That would be United Piedom, in case you were wondering.  This month’s You Want Pies With That? Challenge was a fashion themed pie.  And so we have Punk Rock Pie. 

Let’s think about this for a minute.  Did I really have any other choice?  Really?  Baby was in the corner on this one.  We all know my artistic/decorating skills are subpar at best.  I was going to come up with something to compete with these other bakers and their perfect pie crust leaves and artistic swirls of whipped cream and so on?  Exactly.  So, I had to go the other way.  Completely.  This pie doesn’t want to be pretty or delicate or glazed with a simple syrup of spring water, organic sugar and freshly grated kumquat.  *%&# that!  It is saggy in the middle, crumbly on the outside and sporting a (sort of) purple mohawk.

And don’t try to pigeonhole the ingredients either, suit.  (we don’t need your stuffy rules, a**h&#$).  Is it pie?  Cake?  Candy?  Nothing in this pie is a classic “pie ingredient.”  The crust is an unholy mixture of pretzels, honey nut cheerios and butter.  Cheerios for breakfast?  Maybe for the bourgoisie.  

The filling is chocolate cake loaded with an assortment of leftover Halloween candy…caramels, snickers, butterfinger, Hershey bar and peanut M&Ms.  It sagged in the middle under the weight and oozed out a gooey glob when cut.  Perfect. 

Nothing refined about this one.

I asked my tasters for an appropriate expression to go with the punk pie.  This is what I got…

 

Crust

There are no measurements.  That doesn’t fit the aesthetic here, people.

A bunch of mini pretzels, a bunch of cheerios, a few tablespoons of sugar and of melted butter.  Process the pretzels, cheerios, and sugar in the food processor into fine crumbs.  Stir in the melted butter.  Press into the pan you are using and stick in the fridge.  

 

Cake pie filling

1.5 cups of AP flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 c. cocoa

salt

baking powder

1 c. cold coffee

1 c. vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp. Cider vinegar

a handful or many of assorted candy, chopped.

Preheat to 350 degrees.  Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.  In a separate bowl, combine the coffee, oil, and vanilla.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir to remove any lumps.  Quickly stir in the cider vinegar and stir til uniform in color.  Pour the batter into the refridgerated crust.  Throw in the candy and bake for about 20 – 25 minutes.  Be careful.  I stuck a cake tester in and thought it wasn’t done but I was hitting melted butterfinger.

If you are wondering why this kind of looks like a cake (don’t judge me, man)…after consuming 18lbs of Halloween goodies, I halved this and baked it in a 6 in. springform.  The recipe as written would work for a pie plate.

 

 

You want (insert long name here) Pie with that?

 This was not the pie I was originally going to make for the inaugural You Want Pies With That? round.  But I was at the grocery store on Saturday looking at my overflowing cart and then at my purse and back to my cart…and you get the idea.  A sizeable amount of money changed hands at the ol’ Hy Vee.   I decided to hold off on some items.  It immediately reminded me of the scene in Terms of Endearment when Debra Winger (Emma) is at the grocery store in Iowa and doesn’t have enough money so she keeps giving items back to the snotty clerk.  And an idea was born.  This would be my Terms-of-Endearment-got-no-money-use-what’s-in-the-house-pie.  The name kind of rolls of your tongue, yes?

 It is fitting as I love that movie.  If you haven’t seen it, rent it.  I can’t explain it all here.  My husband says I have a sixth sense that allows me to know when and where it is on TV at any time.  If it were for some reason on the Weather channel at noon on Tuesday I would somehow be there to watch it.   It also does not matter how far the movie is along when I turn it on.  I WILL cry at the hospital scenes.  Now that I have two boys it is practically unbearable.

 

The whole underlying theme of the movie is how life does not always lead where you think it will (did Emma really plan to end up in Iowa with Flap?).  So, here is my unexpected peanut butter pretzel mini-pies  (that sort of turned out more like a cheesecake – but don’t tell anyone).  I had left over chocolate peanut butter cookie dough in the freezer from the blueberry ice cream TWD awhile back.  I had some cream cheese and peanut butter pretzels.  Left over caramel from this week’s TWD and voila!

 

Well, the “pies” took the theme of the movie and ran with it.  The cream cheese puffed and burnt.  I wanted a thicker layer of caramel to make it more “pie” like but oh well.  Some of the cookie crust burnt a little, too.  I was shaking my head at the poor little things thinking how can I post these to be compared with everyone else’s?  then it hit me.  I am Emma at the New York lunch with Patsy and her friends.  Keep that in mind when you are comparing.

The good news:  I really liked the taste.  I congratulated myself on the automatic portion control of the muffin size pies.  Then I ate two in 6 seconds.  With a little tweaking, it could be even better!

 

Terms-of-Endearment-got-no-money-use-what’s-in-the-house-pie

 Crust: 

Maida Heatter’s peanut butter chocolate cookies (about 1/4 of a batch for 6 mini pies)

Filling:  (I had a little extra…)

• 4 oz cream cheese (room temp.)
• ¼ c. sugar
• pinch salt
• 1 egg
• ¼ tsp vanilla
• handful of peanut butter covered pretzels (broken)

 Topping:

Left over Dorie Greenspan caramel sauce

 1.                   Preheat oven to 325 degrees and prepare muffin pan. (I baked mine at 350 and I think a lower temp would be better).

2.                   Prepare cookie dough and press into six muffin cups.

3.                   Beat cream cheese until soft.  Add sugar and salt and beat to combine.  Add egg and vanilla.  Mix well.  Stir in broken pretzels.  Pour batter into muffin cups.

4.                   Bake for about 25-30 minutes.  Check early if you get nervous.

5.                  Cool to room temperature.  Drizzle or pour carmel sauce over the top and chill overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWD: Florida Pie….sort of

“You put the lime in the coconut, you drank ‘em both up, you put the lime…”  Did everyone else sing this all week?  Just me.  Alrighty, then.

This week’s recipe was Florida Pie chosen by Dianne of Dianne’s Dishes.  It is basically a key lime pie with a coconut cream layer and a coconut meringue.  Yes, I took a bite the night before.

My first instinct was to skip this week.  I luurve key lime pie…coconut not so much.  Mostly, we were just insanely busy.  I am entering my busy season at work, my kids were both ring bearers in a wedding, we had tickets to see Wicked (yeah, it just got here) and on and on.  I was assigned to bring breakfast for Friday breakfast club this week.  So that was my only real opportunity to do any baking.  I strongly considered chucking the pie for the orange berry muffins, easy to make for breakfast and I missed it in the recipe rotation.

BUT…I got it in my head to make the pie and somehow adapt it for breakfast.  My husband tells me, and he is absolutely correct, that I have tendency to be inflexible once I decide on something.  I believe this is affectionately referred to as pigheaded.  So I forged ahead.  Meringue?  Out of the question.  I have actually never made it and this was not going to be my first attempt.  Whipped cream instead?  No time.  Coconut cream?  Nope.  I thought about pineapple or banana cream but decided on lemon/lime.  I just grated in a little zest.  Since I didn’t really have an appropriate topping and wanted to get more servings I decided to convert the pie into bars.

I chickened out on the pineapple.

I stirred that cream for over 20 minutes, got impatient (not the week for this recipe clearly) and quit.  Good thing too…my youngest assistant had been “helping” me wash and he had flooded the counter and drowned the coffee grinder.  15 more minutes and we may have needed a rowboat.  I don’t know why I thought the cream would cover the increased surface space.  Mental lapse I guess.  I think I could have skipped this step (especially with the yolks and sweetened condensed milk…another dieters’ delight).

 All the cream added was calories.

Four innocent limes gave their lives for these bars.

I did put some toasted coconut over half and that half was gone first.  Guess I am in the minority on the coconut aversion.  I am happy to report that it tasted great.  I love key lime pie and was pleasantly surprised that this non key lime recipe did not disappoint.

Kitchen lesson #412: When a recipe contains words like “stirring almost constantly”… “reduced by half”…MERINGUE(!) and you are pressed for time this is not your recipe. 

 Next week:  Madeleines (maybe…I don’t have a pan so we shall see).  To see the “real” pie check out the other TWD blogs.

 One of the reasons, I was so short on time this week.

Florida Pie

Adapted from Baking from My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan

1 9-inch graham cracker crust (page 235), fully baked and cooled, or a store-bought crust
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
4 large eggs, separated
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup fresh Key (or regular) lime juice (from about 5 regular limes)
1/4 cup of sugarGetting Ready:Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Put the pie plate on a baking sheet lined with parchment of a silicone mat.Put the cream and 1 cup of the coconut in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring almost constantly.  Continue to cook and stir until the cream is reduced by half and the mixture is slightly thickened.  Scrape the coconut cream into a bowl and set it aside while you prepare the lime filling.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl beat the egg yolks at high speed until thick and pale.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the condensed milk.  Still on low, add half of the lime juice.  When it is incorporated, add the reaming juice, again mixing until it is blended.  Spread the coconut cream in the bottom of the graham cracker crust, and pour over the lime filling.

Bake the pie for 12 minutes.  Transfer the pie to a cooling rack and cool for 15 minutes, then freeze the pie for at least 1 hour.

To Finish the Pie with Meringue:

Put the 4 egg whites and the sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, whisking all the while, until the whites are hot to the touch.  Transfer the whites to a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, or use a hand mixer in a large bowl, and beat the whites at high speed until they reach room temperature and hold firm peaks.  Using a rubber spatula, fold the remaining 1/2 cup coconut into the meringue.

Spread the meringue over the top of the pie, and run the pie under the broiler until the top of the meringue is golden brown.  (Or, if you’ve got a blowtorch, you can use it to brown the meringue.)  Return the pie to the freezer for another 30 minutes or for up to 3 hours before serving.