Cherry Rhubarb Pie

My one complaint about this pie is that I should have added a bit more sugar. That, or I used inferior cherries that weren't terribly sweet (from a cheap grocery store down the street). I eyeballed the amount of fruit that went into the pie, and I think my ratio of fruit-to-sugar was off. When you're cooking with tart and tasty rhubarb, you really don't want to screw that up. If I made it again, I probably would add another half cup of sugar to the filling. That said, with a dollop of vanilla ice cream to mellow out the tartness, it was perfect. Here's the recipe:

Cherry Rhubarb Pie

ingredients:
pastry dough sufficient for two pie crusts
1 large bag of cherries, pitted and halved
about 6 stalks of rhubarb, cut into 1/2" slices
1 cup sugar
5 T. arrowroot starch

Mix all the filling in a large bowl. Roll out bottom crust and place in pie dish. Pour filling in. Roll out upper crust, place on top, cut vent, and crimp to seal edges. Bake at 425F for 25 min, then reduce heat to 350F and bake for another 40-50 min, until crust is golden and fruit goo starts splashing out of the crust vent.

Current Pie Tally: 88

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Reinforcements showed up to help us unpack boxes and arrange furniture. Thanks Meemaw! In exchange, I made Meemaw's favorite pie: Rhubarb Custard. This is my mother's (a.k.a. Meemaw) grandmother's recipe. Since my new house has a gas oven from the '40s, I felt like I was able to recreate the baking conditions that might have been used at that time. The verdict: gas ovens and pies were meant to be together. I followed the original family recipe to the letter and cooked it in my retro Pyrex pie dish. The resulting pie was perfect. The crust was golden and flaky and the custard was creamy and evenly cooked throughout. My mother and I consumed half of the entire pie ourselves on the first day of its existence. This definitely came out better than the first time I made it, and I will definitely be making more. The ingredients are the same as the first version. Here are the cooking instructions I used this time: Bake at 400F for 50-60 min. (52-54 min. for the one I made).

Current Pie Tally: 87

Summer Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

In true Wonder Wife fashion, I pulled this pie out for our "hey, we just moved down the street" neighborhood BBQ. With the generous help of our friends and neighbors, we were able to get all of our belongings moved into our new place by noon. I pulled this pie out of the freezer and popped it in the oven while we were shuffling things around in the afternoon. I was excited to see how the frozen pie would bake up in the new gas oven as opposed to electric. I like it! I would definitely say it does a more even cooking job. I liked it so much I made a Rhubarb Custard Pie the following week. More on that in the next post. Here's the recipe for the Strawberry Rhubarb pie from the freezer:

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

ingredients:
pastry dough sufficient for two pie crusts
2 quarts strawberries, hulled and halved
about 4 cups of rhubarb, cut into 1/2" slices
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup arrowroot starch

Mix all the filling in a large bowl. Roll out bottom crust and place in pie dish. Pour filling in. Roll out upper crust, place on top, cut vent, and crimp to seal edges. Freeze for up to 2-4 months. Bake at 425F for 25 min, then reduce heat to 350F and bake for another 50-70 min, until crust is golden and fruit goo starts splashing out of the crust vent.

*It occurred to me that I normally add cinnamon to Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. I left it out of this one as an oversight and thought it came out quite nice. I wouldn't say I prefer either, but it's definitely good either way.

Current Pie Tally: 86

Lime Meringue Pie

This pie is the result of my dessert contribution to a neighborhood Iron Chef contest. All the contestants unanimously agreed to let a child win the dessert round, but that aside, I don't know that my pie would have won. There was some tough competition! I will also admit that Lime Meringue Pie is not an earthshattering pie. It's good, on par with any Lemon Meringue Pie, but I would prefer many of the other pies I make. I am, however, very pleased with the visual effect of this one. I deduced that the pie would be yellow unless I did something about it, so I added 1-2 drops of liquid green food coloring. The secret ingredient of the contest was lime, after all, and I didn't want to serve a yellow lime pie.

For me, the combination of that spectral green with the white fluffy merinque evokes visions of mermaids and sea blobs (for more on sea blobs, click here). I toyed with the idea of calling it Sea Blob Pie - both to honor the recent literary accomplishment of our neighbor (also in the Iron Chef competition) and because the pie didn't set very well. I was under time pressure as the hour of our Kitchen Stadium debut neared. As a result, the pie didn't get as much cooling time as it needed. The filling was all oozy. It really needed half a day in the refrigerator prior to slicing. Despite the shortcomings, I would definitely make this pie again if the meringue mood hits and I want something with a touch more zip than lemon. For the recipe, click here. My substitutions are that I used lime juice and lime zest in place of lemon, and I used arrowroot starch instead of cornstarch.

Current Pie Tally: 85

A Quartet of Birthday Pies: Part 2 of 2

There were two minor setbacks to this version of the Coconut Cream Pie (same preparation as in the last Coconut Cream post, but made more of the pastry cream filling). The first was that one of my crusts got droopy in the oven again. Since it got covered up with a mountain of whipped cream, it didn't end up affecting the aesthetics at all. The second downer was that I overindulged in libations before making the whipped cream and toasting the coconut. I honestly don't even remember if I added any sugar or flavoring to the cream before whipping it up. And I had a teeny bit of help toasting the coconut and manning the mixer while I ran upstairs to use the bathroom.

So I was incapacitated, I'm making an exception and taking credit. Sometimes we all need a little help from our friends. Considering the quantity of pies made and the overall excellence of the finished products, I'm letting the help on the finishing touches slide. Churning out all those pies didn't even earn me a nice hiatus for awhile. We went strawberry picking the following day and they finally had rhubarb at the co-op, so I put together a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie for the freezer bank. It's chilling, and so am I. More on that one when it sees the heat of the oven. It's not in the tally yet.

Current Pie Tally: 84

A Quartet of Birthday Pies: Part 1 of 2

I'm still having a hell of a time finding a reliable source of local rhubarb, so I went ahead and made two Mixed Berry Pies instead of Strawberry Rhubarb for the birthday festivities. They were spectacular in every way. Here is the recipe:

Mixed Berry Pie
ingredients:
pastry dough sufficient for two pie crusts
1 bag cherries (sorry I don't remember the weight - maybe 1.5 lbs.)
1 pint blueberries
1 pint blackberries
1 pint small strawberries, hulled but left whole
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup arrowroot starch
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all the filling in a large bowl. Roll out bottom crust and place in pie dish. Pour filling in. Roll out upper crust, place on top, cut vent, and crimp to seal edges. Bake at 425F for 25 min, then reduce heat to 350F and bake for another 40-50 min, until crust is golden and fruit goo starts splashing out of the crust vent.

Current Pie Tally: 82

Coconut Cream Pie

This pie was made as part of the menu selection process for my husband's birthday party. It was easily the most popular item on the dessert table at my husband's work party the weekend prior to his birthday party. I was pleased with how easy it was to make. I'm really becoming fond of these "throw the cooked filling in the pre-baked crust and you're done" kind of pies.

However, there were a couple spots in the recipe where my pie vision diverged from the written instructions. For one thing, the recipe has a lot of fussy instructions for cooling and pouring and then re-chilling the pastry cream filling. Here's my advice: once the filling is prepared, stick some plastic wrap to the surface in the bowl you mixed it in and then put it in the fridge until you're ready to finish the pie. I don't know why anyone would tell you to chill it in the bowl for so many hours and then transfer it to the crust and chill it again. Maybe it's to create a firmer textured filling, but I don't think that's worth having the crust get all damp in the fridge. Pour it into the crust and top with the whipped cream and coconut JUST BEFORE SERVING.

My second qualm is that the pastry cream to whipped cream ratio was not up to my standards. When I make these for my husband's birthday, I'm upping the ante on the filling. I plan to make three times the amount of filling and put it into two pies on the next go-round. I also used my own crust recipe and used powdered confectioner's sugar in the whipped cream instead of granulated.

Current Pie Tally: 80