I made my first two pies this weekend. I’ve been re-reading Pascale LeDraolec’s American Pie (nothing to do with movie of the same name). It chronicle’s the author’s drive across America looking for pie, and it includes a bunch of pie recipes.
My first two attempts were marriage pies (pies containing two different but complementary fruits). I made AppleBlack™, or blackberry-apple first. I hybridized the crust recipe from the back of the Crisco package with Dave’s Huckleberry Pie recipe from Pascale’s book. I adapted the filling recipe from Doris Kemp’s Accidental Apple-Blueberry Pie from Mammy’s Cupboard in Natchez, Mississippi.
The AppleBlack was good, but not awesome. The crust turned our great: nice and flaky. The filling, however, I had two complaints about:
- Way too much nutmeg. I only used .5 teaspoon, in accordance with the recipe, but that was still way too much.
- Way too much sugar. I thought 1.5 cups of sugar seemed like a lot, and it was.
My second pie was strawberry-peach. I used the same crust recipe, but accidentally mixed in the spices destined for the filling with the dough. It didn’t seem to make any difference, good or bad. For the filling, however, I omitted the nutmeg and .5 cups of sugar. This pie was much better. In the future, though, I will add more strawberries (I was afraid of adding too many).
I’m really enjoying cooking and baking, so much so that I turned down my wife’s offer to bake me an apple pie.
“It’s not just the having of pie, but the baking of pie,” I told her.
While I am far from conquering pie, I do think I made a good first attempt, at least good enough to eat, and encouraging enough to keep trying. However, this could turn into an expensive habit. Not so much the fruit and flour, but the dishes, utensils, and appliances that I will no doubt need if I keep this up.
Next step: apple dumplings!
Comments are closed.