Beet Pot Pie

I think I was overexposed to certain things as a child. Things like ponies and precious little heart-shaped objects and anything pink.

I hate pink. Pink is for little girls and Valentine’s Day cards and Pepto Bismol commercials. It is very rarely allowed to invade my home.

Obviously there’s an exception clause for food. Raspberry tarts and curds, salmon poached in red wine, and anything made with beets can’t help but be pink. If the flavor is assertive enough, I’ll forgive my dinner for looking a bit girlish and twee.

This definitely makes the cut.

Beets and goat cheese really should never be separated. Puree the two together, bake them in a crust, and you’ve got a delightfully filling vegetarian meal. It is also the most brightly colored pot pie you’ve ever seen.

The filling and crust can just as easily be made in a 9″ tart or pie tin. I enjoy the deep dish ramekins, but mostly because they provide an excuse to dig in with a spoon.

Ingredients

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups flour

1 t salt

1/4 t white pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

8 T (1 stick) cold butter

3 T ice water

For the filling:

3 medium beets

4 oz goat cheese

1 egg

1/4 cup cream

1/4 t white pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

salt, to taste

Directions

First, roast the beets. Rub them with a little olive oil, wrap tightly in foil, and bake at 400°F for an hour or so.

While those are roasting, make the crust. Combine flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg in the bowl of a food processor.

Pulse briefly to combine. Add the butter in chunks.

Pulse in 1-2 second bursts until the dough is the consistency of damp sand. Add the water and run the machine until the dough comes together.

Sprinkle the counter lightly with flour and turn out the dough onto it.

Roll it about 1/8″ thick in a vague rectangle shape (or round if using a pie/tart pan). Butter two 10-oz ramekins (or 4 6-oz ones, or a pie tin).

One could line things neatly. Or, if one is not talented at doing things neatly, just flop the dough into the prepared bakeware, call the draping parts rustic, and have done with it.

Put the ramekins in the refrigerator while you make the filling. The food processor is useful again here, so I’m afraid you’ll have to wash it. Put the roasted beets in the bowl.

whirr

This is not pink. It is a delightful deep red.

Add the goat cheese and process until uniform in color.

Now it’s pink. Lament.

Add cream, egg, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Give it another whirl to combine.

Pour the filling into the crust and bake at 350°F for 45 minutes.

Serve with green beans sautéed with dried cranberries. Just trust me. It’s a weird combination but oh so good.

This is just as good as a hot dinner or a cold meal the next day. The filling is very soft. If you feel it would be improved by a bit of crunch, throw a handful of chopped walnuts on top or fold them into the filling before baking.

More GMO Notes, and a Chocolate Caramel Coffee Tart

Do you see the little “Science!” label down there on the right? After you scroll down a bit, underneath all the tasty stuff?

Exhibit A: Tasty Stuff

Those scientists and science bloggers are working hard to make foods better, safer, and more understandable for everyone else. Recently, the good folks at Biofortified have explained, in very clear terms, why GM foods don’t have any more scary genes in them than any other foods you’ve ever eaten, since of course bacteria and viruses are already everywhere, and every time you eat anything you eat the little guys and all of their genes as well. And if you still think after my earlier discussion of the subject that GM foods lead to horizontal gene transfer and presumably plant-people? The GMO Pundit explains an article that shows that a happy little beetle managed to get a useful little bacteria gene all his own, without a GMO in sight.

I know this is a food blog, and I promised chocolate, so I’ll keep this short. Basically, if you cook, you use science. You don’t have to think in terms of chemistry when caramelizing sugar, because following the protocol recipe will get you results just the same. You don’t need to know the biological mechanisms of capsiacinoids to add the heat of chile to a dish. But I think at least knowing the information is out there– and that it’s available and understandable if you’re interested whether you did well in science in school or not– is important. And hey, it’s cool! Scientists are doing things with plants and nutrition that look straight out of science fiction, and it’s brilliant. Give it a quick peek, is all I’m saying.

So now we can get back to caramelizing sugar and melting chocolate and keeping that smell in your kitchen as long as possible.  Because caramel and chocolate go together like nothing else. Because coffee makes both caramel and chocolate taste better. And because everyone should have a chocolate tart recipe. So I adapted one from David Lebovitz. I removed the flour from his filling, as mine seemed thick enough without it and I want to be able to pour it into a gluten-free crust* if we have company with Celiac. The chocolate is a tad darker in mine as well, but offset by the slightly sweeter chocolate ovals used to decorate it. And the smell in the kitchen? I turned off all air circulation in the apartment just so we could breathe it a little longer. It’s sweet and complex and full of coffee. If we could bottle that smell, I could quit my day job and just sell chocolate-caramel-coffee scented candles because who doesn’t want a dozen of those?

Ingredients (Makes 1 9-inch tart; serves 10-12. Crust adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s sweet tart dough, filling adapted from David Lebovitz’ chocolate tart)

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 t salt

1 t vanilla

9 T butter

1 egg

For the filling:

1 cup sugar

6 oz. espresso

8 T (1/4 lb, 1 stick, 4 oz) butter

3 oz unsweetened chocolate

3 oz bittersweet (72% +) chocolate

2 eggs at room temperature

1 T vanilla extract

optional: for a bit of heat, add 1-3 t chile powder when you add the chocolate (how much you use depends on the heat of the powder you’re using; a pinch of Habañero powder goes a lot further than a whole teaspoon of Poblano).

Directions The crust comes first, of course. To prevent it being grainy, you’ll want to use superfine sugar. To make superfine sugar, place granulated sugar in the bowl of your food processor  and run it for about 30 seconds to a minute.

Add the flour and salt and pulse briefly to combine.

Add the butter and egg (and the vanilla, not shown).

Apparently I forgot to keep taking pictures of dough making, but if you’d find them helpful it’s just about the same dough as used way back here for a lemon-blueberry tart. Sorry about that. Pulse the dough in 2-3 second bursts until it comes together in a smooth ball. Chill the dough for two hours or more, then roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick. Line a buttered 9-inch tart pan with the dough, and line the prepared crust with buttered tin foil. Add pie weights and bake with foil and weights at 375°F for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and weights and bake another 10 minutes to brown. Set aside the crust and turn the oven down to 350°F. Start the filling by caramelizing some sugar. Just pour a cup of sugar into a saucepan. . .

. . .and heat it up over medium-high heat, stirring gently, until you have thick, bubbly caramel.

Pour in the espresso and whisk vigorously to combine.

Try not to spill espresso all over the chocolate. Add the butter to the coffee-caramel mixture.

Whisk in the butter and add the chocolate.

Whisk the mixture until smooth.

Test the temperature of the mixture by dipping a spoon in it and tasting. If it’s scalding to the tongue, keep whisking until it’s merely pleasantly warm before adding your eggs. Unless of course you want scrambled eggs in you chocolate tart. When the mixture is not too hot, add the eggs.

Whisk the eggs in, giving the filling a lovely pudding-like texture, and pour it into the waiting tart shell.

Bake at 350°F for 20-22 minutes until the filling is just set but not dry or cracking. If you have any pretty chocolate pieces like these Valrhona fèves lying around, grab a handful for decorating the top. What can I say? I can’t resist the bulk chocolates at Central Market.

The texture is completely smooth, almost a warm pudding. The tart shell adds sweetness and a lovely crunch to the mixture, and the sweeter chocolates on top (only 53% cocoa) finished it out perfectly.

I didn’t cut into the tart warm, as it was a birthday tart for a co-worker and tradition dictates that the birthday boy or girl gets to cut the first slice, but I did re-heat a slice in the oven the next night and it was divine. Not that anyone complained at room temperature; there really is no comparison to a good chocolate tart.

Sadly, I can’t make or eat anything like this right now; I had my third molars removed this morning and am having a certain amount of difficulty with yogurt and mashed potatoes, let alone a delightful flaky-crisp tart shell. So eat one of these for me, okay?

* to make this a gluten-free pie or tart, simply use this filling and the gluten-free graham cracker crust found here, or any other GF crust that you like.

Broccoli Cheddar Tart

Broccoli and cheese is one of those rare irresistible combinations. Children everywhere know that no matter how much they hate broccoli, it will be magically transformed into tasty green nachos if you just throw enough melted cheese at it. Adults who know better than to say they hate broccoli enjoy it for the excuse to eat all that glorious cheese while still claiming they’re being healthy. And for those of us who love broccoli already? Jackpot.

A normal person, faced with the first really chilly day of Fall, might work from this principle to make broccoli cheese soup.

I don’t eat soup.

I made a tart instead.

This little beauty is somewhere between a quiche and a pizza, and better than both. A hot, flaky crust spiked with mustard powder holds in a thick, almost smoky filling of cheese and broccoli and more cheese.

Most foods containing cheddar are barred on principle from being labeled “elegant”. This tart is an exception to that rule. I would be happy to serve this at a fancy dinner party (although I’m happier making it for just Mr. B and me, and having leftovers for a few days), especially considering how simple it is to put together.

The crust is adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, filling adapted beyond recognition from an olive and goat-cheese tart in Cool Food.

Ingredients (makes 1 9-inch tart, serves 6-8)

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups flour

1 t salt

1/2 t mustard powder

8 T (1 stick) cold butter

3 T ice water

For the filling:

2 cups broccoli florets

6 oz sharp cheddar cheese

1 egg

1 T mustard

dash Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup cream

salt, to taste

Directions

Crust comes first. Preheat the oven to 400°F if you plan to pre-bake the crust (I recommend it). Combine the flour, salt, and mustard powder in the bowl of a food processor.

Pulse the dry ingredients briefly to combine.

Add the butter in chunks.

Process the butter and flour until it looks like damp sand.

Add the water bit by bit and process just until the dough comes together in a ball.

Butter a 9-inch tart pan and roll out the dough. Sorry, I get too covered in flour when rolling to risk the camera, so no pictures of that step.

Press the dough into the buttered tin and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Bake the tart crust at 400°F for about 15 minutes, then set it aside while you prepare the filling.

Turn the oven down to 350°F. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets and boil or steam them for just a minute or two–only long enough to turn them bright green.

Drain the broccoli well.

Arrange the broccoli in a layer in the tart crust (this was the moment when I realized that not pre-baking the crust would lead to soggy crust. Oops.)

Grate the cheddar and add it on top of the broccoli.

Crack the egg into a small bowl.

Add the cream, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.

Mix well with a fork or tiny whisk (incidentally, my tiny whisk in the Santa hat died. Anyone know where tiny whisks come from?)

Drizzle the egg and cream mixture over the cheese and broccoli.

Sprinkle some kosher salt over the top if you like. I always like more salt. You could add a sprinkling of bread crumbs, too, if you want some extra crunch, but it isn’t necessary.

Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes, until the cheese begins to brown. Serve hot with a spinach salad or on its own as a light meal.

My favorite part about this is the broccoli. Boiling it prevents it from burning, and the long turn in the oven gives it the rich, smoky flavor of roasted broccoli. Basically, you should make this. It will make grown men do dishes in hopes of sneaking seconds. It’s that good.

Not-Quite Mary Mac’s Peanut Butter Pie

I know it’s been said about 84 million times before, but it still bears repeating: peanut butter and chocolate are made for each other. It’s Mr. B’s favorite-ever flavor combination. So you can imagine my shock when, at a delightful restaurant in Atlanta clever enough to ask you to order dessert before you eat, he went with peach cobbler.

I ordered the peanut butter pie for him. After I tried it, I wouldn’t share. It was that good. (Mary Mac’s, people. I’d move to Georgia just for this restaurant.) That pie was the sort of dessert that leads to religious conversions and serious risks of diabetes (the peach cobbler was also delightful.) It was the silky texture of a Key lime pie, and tasted more peanut-buttery than peanut butter by itself. It was an awe-inspiring dessert.

When I decided to make it at home, I had to guess. There are a million peanut butter pie recipes on the Internet, and half a dozen in my modest scary and growing cookbook collection, but none of them seemed quite right. The one I ended up making was good, but I had to go order the Mary Mac’s cookbook at the end of it, because after eating theirs a close second simply would not do.

This didn’t stop us devouring it.

Ingredients (makes one pie, serves 8-12 depending on gluttony and availability of ice cream)

For the crust:

24 Oreos

4 T melted butter

For the filling:

1 1/2 cups sugar (I’d probably use 1/2 brown sugar next time; I was out.)

1 1/4 cups peanut butter

1 8-ounce package cream cheese

1 T vanilla

1/2 t salt

4 egg yolks

1 cup heavy cream

Directions 

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Place the Oreos, filling and all, in the bowl of a food processor.

Process them until finely ground. There will probably be a few outlying chunks. I just ate them and didn’t worry about it.

Pour the crumbs into a bowl and mix in the melted butter.

Press the chocolate cookie mud into a buttered pie pan. Set the crust aside.

Place the cream cheese, peanut butter, and sugar(s) in a mixing bowl.

Mix well. The mixture will be very grainy and thick, like cookie dough.

Add the egg yolks, salt, and vanilla.

Mix them in, too. The mixture should be creamier now.

Add the cream.

And mix.

Pour the mixture into the Oreo crust.

Bake at 300°F for 40-50 minutes until the filling doesn’t slosh anymore. The filling on mine cracked and bubbled and was altogether rather evil-looking (I’d have taken pictures, but we had guests.) but it was very tasty. I think it needed less cream, maybe even none at all, to get the thicker and richer consistency.

Chill before serving. As with most pies, this only gets better with ice cream!

Lemon Blueberry Tart

Right about now I have to stop and let you know that it is day 800 (okay, so I lost count and am guessing. It feels like 800.) of temperatures over 100°F. Until further notice, all desserts are cold and 90% of them will come in the form of milkshakes. However, my friend likes blueberries best, so there was also this.

Apparently this tart is the best thing I’ve ever made. So say my co-workers. And I have to admit, it was pretty tasty. I love this tart crust (Dorie Greenspan’s), even if it always resists my every attempt to roll it neatly and transfer it to the tart pan. It falls to crumbs. The texture that makes the chilled dough so frustrating to work with leads to such a delightful crunchy crumb once baked that I always forgive it instantly.

And then there’s the filling–as lemony as lemon curd, light, tangy, joyful, and COLD. Can I just make one of these and go live in the refrigerator until it rains or we get a cold front or both? Thanks.

Finally, top it off with piles of blueberries. Or any other fruit you like. I made a pair of single-serving tarts with the leftover crust dough, and topped mine with sliced banana and Mr. B just had his plain. But really, who doesn’t love blueberries?

Ingredients (makes 1 9-inch tart, serves maybe 10-12. )

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup superfine sugar*

1/2 t salt

1 t vanilla

9 T butter

1 egg yolk

For the filling:

3 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup cream

For the topping:

2 cups fresh blueberries, or 3-4 sliced bananas, or a few mangoes and kiwis, sliced, or anything else you can think up.

Directions

First of all, I don’t know if you can buy superfine sugar. Confectioner’s/powdered sugar isn’t ideal here, because there’s corn starch in it. That can taste chalky, and possibly mess up the crust. To turn granulated sugar into superfine sugar, just toss 1/2 cup of sugar into the bowl of a food processor and run it for 30 seconds to a minute.

Voilà! The grains are tiny now. Add the flour and salt and pulse briefly to combine them. Add the cold butter in chunks, the yolk, and the vanilla.

Pulse in 10-second intervals until the dough comes together in a ball.

Let it chill in the fridge for at least two hours. When you get it out again, it’ll need a few minutes to soften up enough to work with. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

You don’t have to roll it, but don’t try to use all the dough to line your tart pan, either. The easiest way for me to do this is to roll out the dough and transfer it to the pan in irregular patches, then press the patches together. I had enough dough left over to line two 3/4 cup tart pans.

Cover the crust in buttered (guess who forgot that step?) foil and bake at 375°F for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake another 10.

Slightly burned. Just as tasty. Time to start the filling! Whisk the sugar and eggs together.

Whisk in the lemon juice and cream.

Pour the filling into the tart shell.

Bake at 375°F for about 20 minutes until it no longer sloshes.

Put the cooked tart in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. When you’re ready to serve, pile on the blueberries. Try not to eat too many berries at this time–you need enough to cover the tart.

And that’s it. You can add a sprinkling of powdered sugar if you like, or melt some apricot jam and brush it over the berries to make them shiny and glue them in place, but you don’t have to. Eat cold with a big glass of lemonade. Repeat until the weather improves.

Cherry Limeade Pie

You may recall that I make the best lime pie in Texas. That’s still true, but it turns out that there was ever so little room for improvement. You see, there are graham crackers and there are graham crackers, and short of making your own nothing beats these gluten-free graham crackers. I swear, I’m never buying the regular ones again. These taste rich and nutty (despite being nut free) and when made into a crust the crumbs actually form a pliable dough instead of a thick sandy mess. They’re delightful. The only fault I can find with them is that they come in small crackers instead of large sheets, which might make them more difficult to use for s’mores.

But I digress. We were talking about pie. About tweaking my favorite lime pie for the summery taste of cherry limeade. About adding cherry limeade to the whipped cream for a double dose of sour flavor. And most of all about ignoring the whole idea of bikini season. Thank goodness Mr. B and I are almost always the only ones using the apartment pool!

Ingredients (makes 1 pie, or 8-12 servings depending on how gluttonous your friends are.)

For the crust:

1 package S’moreables or 9 regular graham crackers

5 T butter, melted

3 T granulated sugar (or brown sugar. That’s even better.)

pinch salt

For the filling:

6 egg yolks

1 14-oz can of condensed milk

zest of 2 limes

1/2 cup lime juice (from about 5-6 limes)*

1/2 cup sour cherry juice**

For the topping:

1/2 cup whipping cream

2 T sour cherry juice

1 T lime juice

3-4 T granulated sugar

slice of lime, for garnish

*I’d like to make a brief note on shopping for limes. The yellower they are, the more flavorful the zest will be. Most people try to buy the most uniformly green limes. Not me! I go for yellow, mottled, and preferably not rock-hard. These will yield more juice.

**Even though sour cherries are in season right now, I could not find them at either of the farmer’s markets or any of the four grocery store chains I looked in. So I bought a can of sour cherries and used the liquid from the can. If you go this route, it’s important to look carefully at the ingredients of the canned fruit. You want to see cherries and water. Any sweetener will translate to an overly sweet pie filling. We want sour here, folks. Use your own discretion when it comes to preservatives. Some of them affect taste, others don’t.

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Pulse the graham crackers in a food processor until you have a fine powder. Add the sugar and salt.

Stir the dry ingredients together.

Add melted butter and stir with a fork until combined. Press the crust into a pie tin and bake for about 15 minutes.

I used a spoon. Why? because I'm a rebel.

 

Meanwhile, make the filling. Whisk together yolks, zest, and condensed milk.  Remember, order of operations does matter here! Add the citrus to eggs without the condensed milk, and you will chemically cook the eggs. It’s not so good.

Now you can safely add the lime and cherry juice. I won’t begrudge you a bit of red food coloring or grenadine here, but I get a little weirded out by artificially colored foods. But then, I eat Cheetos, so maybe I’m just a hypocrite.

Pour the filling into the crust.

Set aside some extra cherry-lime juice and a slice of lime for later and put the pie back in the 350°F oven for 20-ish minutes.

The pie is done when the center jiggles a bit when shaken but no longer sloshes.

Chill the pie at least two hours or overnight. Shortly before serving, make the cherry-lime whipped cream. Just whip all the ingredients at high speed until it’s thick and fluffy.

Spread the whipped cream over the top of the pie, daubing with the back of a spoon for a mottled effect. To make a lime flourish, slice from the center to the edge of a slice of lime, and pull the wings in opposite directions. It looks a just a little fancy, but isn’t any extra effort.

Enjoy with a cold glass of cherry limeade. Embrace the sour!

 

 

 

Berry Meringue Pie

You may not be aware of this, because you may be summering in the Southern hemisphere or on the space station or fielding an expedition to the North Pole, but it is HOT out here in Texas. I’m talking 107°F without a cloud in sight. And since the Dallas area has some kind of religious aversion to trees, there’s not much shade to be found, either.

Times like these call for desperate measures.  For things crisp and cold topped with fresh berries and then frozen again because fresh berries just aren’t cold enough. It helps that this pie is also easy to make, enough so that I didn’t mind making it between 11:30 PM and 1:00 in the morning so that it would be nice and frozen for the fourth of July shindig I was heading to after work. Another bonus to baking in the middle of the night? It’s not so damn hot. Only about 85°F. My air conditioning can do more than growl helplessly at 85°F, even with the oven on.

I found the idea for this lovely pie here,  and my first thought was “Cool. But that looks finicky. Why not use an Italian meringue?” So I did. I also used chocolate graham crackers instead of Oreos, because I’m not allowed to have Oreos in the apartment. It isn’t safe. The filling, even at room temperature, is a pile of sticky goodness that I just wanted to eat out of the bowl (Note to everyone who ate these pies: I did not. I did, however, lick the spatula once the pies were in the freezer. And it was great.) and I’d like to try to make meringue cookies using this much berry flavor. I don’t know if that will work, though. It’s a lot of berries.

Ingredients (makes 1 9-inch pie. I doubled the recipe and made two. Each pie serves about 12.)

For the crust:

9 chocolate graham crackers

3 T granulated sugar

1/2 t salt

5 T butter (6 if your graham crackers are freakishly dry, like mine were.)

For the filling:

3 cups mixed berries (I used half blackberries and half raspberries)

1 cup sugar (divided use)

1/4 cup water

3 egg whites

extra berries, for garnish

Directions

We start with the crust. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Then you want to crush the graham crackers. There are about 84,000 ways to do this, including putting them in a bag and handing them to a husband or child, but my favorite is this.

Put them in a food processor and process until you have a fine powder. This leaves no big chunks you have to pull out and eat so no one finds them.

Add the sugar and salt to the crumbs and stir with a fork.

Then stir in 5 T of melted butter. If you can’t get a pinch of the crumbs to stick together at this point, add another tablespoon of melted butter and stir it in, too.

Press the crumb into a buttered pie dish. I forgot to butter my pie dish. This made removing pie slices complete with crust virtually impossible. Butter your pie dish, kids!

Bake the crust at 350F for about 15 minutes. Set the crust aside while you make the filling. Oh, you can turn off the oven. We’re all stove top from here on out. Rinse out your food processor and fill it with berries.

Puree!

It’s worth noting that when one doubles this recipe, the berry puree surpasses the maximum liquid fill line of a seven-cup food processor. This line is not a polite suggestion. It is the point at which your food processor starts oozing berry puree underneath the blade. On the plus side, you can use a blender if you have one, and liquify as many berries as you want.

Pour the puree into a fine mesh strainer and scrape it down until everything that isn’t a seed is in a bowl. This took me twenty minutes. I need a slightly less fine mesh strainer. You could skip this step if you are very fond of seeds, but I don’t think most people are. I can’t stand them, and obviously I represent complete normalcy with regards to taste. Set the berries aside.

Pour 3/4 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of water into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

While the sugar starts to cook, whip the egg whites and a pinch of salt to soft peaks in a large bowl. Add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and continue to beat on low speed until your sugar reaches the soft-ball stage.

Oh. I don’t use (or own) a candy thermometer. The one time I used one is the one time I burned caramel. Just use your eyes. when the bubbles in your boiling sugar look lacquered and the syrup makes long thread as it drips off of the back of a spoon, it’s done. At that point, pour the boiling sugar into the egg whites. Whip the sugar and egg whites together for a long time, until the bowl is room temperature. This took me almost ten minutes. When you’re baking after midnight and have to get up for work at 5:30 the next morning, this seems like forever. I did it anyway.

Now pour the berry puree over the whipped meringue.

And fold the mixture together.

Pour the berry meringue into the pie crust.

Oops! there was some unmixed berry in the bottom of the bowl! No matter, we’re going to cover that up. Put the pie in the freezer at least 4-6 hours. Arrange 12 red raspberries and 12 white raspberries (okay, so they’re yellow. I didn’t name them) around the perimeter of the pie.

My white raspberries came with a mangled, leafy raspberry branch, so I plucked the best looking leaf and posed it under a white raspberry in the center of the pie. A mint leaf would do fine as well. Or no leaf, since no one’s going to eat it anyway.

Let it soften for 5-10 minutes before serving. It’s perfect on its own; I think whipped cream or ice cream would just be too rich and a bit redundant. I mean, it’s a frozen meringue. Do you really need to add something cold and sugary to it? If you decide it needs an accompaniment, a pile of fresh berries or a squeeze of berry puree would do nicely.

Key Lime Pie Done Right

I make the best lime pie in Texas. And yes, I will fight anyone who challenges my claim.

I’m sorry, but I am a Floridian. We’re discarded at birth if our lime pie genes aren’t optimal, like weak and deformed Spartans.

By the way, even though I titled this post “Key lime pie,” I did not use Key limes. Unless you have access to a South Florida farmer’s market, neither will you.

“But wait!” you say. “They sell whole bags of Key limes at my grocery store!”

I’m sorry, but no, they don’t.

Well, maybe. I’ve seen them at Central Market in winter before. They are tiny and almost spherical and most importantly, yellow. Not green.

Averette at en.wikipedia, from Wikimedia Commons

Those tiny green limes that are advertised as Key limes in most of the country are Mexican limes. They are cute and tiny and make a nice garnish, but they do not have the thin skin (almost like a Meyer lemon) and extra sourness one finds  in a real Key lime. Since the Mexican lime and the Persian lime taste the same, and the little ones are way harder to juice, I’d just use Persian limes. Unless you’re going to a farmer’s market in South Florida. Then, get the good stuff (and send me some, too!)

There are three parts to a lime pie: graham cracker crust, lime filling, and whipped cream. Some people say a meringue topping is more traditional, and that’s probably true (the Key lime pie would never have been invented if fresh milk had been widely available in Florida in the 20′s; fresh cream would have been equally unavailable). However, I find that barely sweetened whipped cream offsets the tartness of the pie perfectly without adding the overwhelming sweetness of meringue.

We’ll start with the crust. Please make your own. It’s quick as can be and the taste is vastly superior to the premade cardboard-graham cracker crusts you’ll find at the supermarket.

Ingredients (makes one pie. I made three, and still ran out without feeding everyone who wanted some. It is that good.)

for the crust:

9 graham crackers

6 T butter, browned

3 T dark brown sugar

1/4 t salt

For the filling:

4 egg yolks

1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cups fresh lime juice (I was testing that bottled stuff above, hoping for real Key lime juice. It isn’t, but it is a perfectly good bottled lime juice if you, like me, always have 8,000 cuts on your hands and it hurts to squeeze citrus)

zest of 1-2 limes

For the topping:

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1 T granulated sugar

1 t vanilla

one whole lime

Directions

For the crust:

Preheat the oven to 350°F

Crush the graham crackers into a fine powder. I used to put them in a bowl and smash them with my lovely beat stick rolling pin, but now I make the food processor do all the work. I love that machine. Add brown sugar and salt.

Add browned butter.

And stir the crust mix with a fork.

Press the crumbs into your pie tin using your fingers or a cup or ramekin. I only own one pie tin, so I used that and two 8-inch cake pans for my three pies. It works.

You’ll want to make sure the crumb is pressed in well, or it will crumble in the oven.

Bake 15 minutes until the crust just starts to brown.

Voila, a graham cracker crust! If you want, you can replace up to 1/3 of the graham crackers with walnuts or other nuts. I like it best plain, though.

While that’s baking, start on your filling:

Take your happy little yolks (remember, I made three pies. You only need 4 yolks per pie)–

–and add in the zest.

Mix well.

Add the condensed milk.  Order of operations is very important here. If you add lime juice before condensed milk, the acid chemically cooks the eggs. It’s not so good.

Mix it up, add your lime juice, and mix that up, too.

That's two quarts of lime filling. Om nom nom.

Pour the filling into the baked crust.

Bake the filled pie for 10-15 minutes. It should be jiggly but not liquid when you take it out. Do not let the filling brown!

Put the pie(s) in the refrigerator for a couple of hours at least.

When you’re ready to serve (or any time after it’s chilled; whipped cream stays good in the fridge) make the topping:

Combine cream, sugar, and vanilla and mix with a hand mixer on high until light and fluffy.

Spread whipped cream over the pie.

Now this part was once a secret. This is the part that makes people’s eyes go wide as they freak out about how perfectly limey your pie is.

Squeeze the juice of half a lime over the whipped cream. No, really.  Slice the other half for garnish–sometimes I candy the slices, but usually not. Even if they’re candied, no one but Mr. B and I will eat them.

This pie is best served on its own or with fresh raspberries. It needs no ice cream or sauces.

I do have a few warning notes. If you dishonor the lime pie, I will know, and I will be sad.

1: Make your own crust. I know I said it before, but it’s important. The pre-made ones are garbage.

2: Do not use food coloring. I mean it. Lime pie is supposed to be yellow.

3: Don’t put too much sugar in the whipped cream. Milk is naturally sweet, and you want the lime flavor to shine through.

4: Don’t worry about calories. You’ve just made the official pie of Florida. Relax and enjoy it!

Oh Honey Blueberry Pie

Orange and blueberry do wonderful things together. Today, they’re going to join together in the glorious medium of pie. Because who doesn’t like pie?

As with all pies, this one starts with a crust. A delightful, flaky, orange-flavored crust. I know a lot of people don’t care about the flavor of the crust, and treat it more as a textural foil to the filling, but flavor is everything. I add sugar to my pie crust (unless I’m making chicken pot pie or something else savory). I try to flavor it to meld with the filling. A maple tart might get a pile of vanilla extract. A nut pie might get a nut extract. And berries love citrus, so this pie gets both orange extract and a healthy dose of orange zest. In other words, this crust stands out as all crusts deserve to do.

This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.

Crust Ingredients (makes one top-and-bottom crust for a 9-inch pie, with enough spare for a couple of single serving tarts)

2 1/4 cups flour

1 t salt

2 T sugar*

16 T butter (two sticks) cut into chunks and frozen

7-8 T ice cold water

2 t orange extract

zest of one orange (I know my orange looks a bit red and infected. Don’t be alarmed, it’s only a blood orange.)

*You can use brown sugar if you like. You may recall that I almost always prefer brown sugar, because it has a lovely complex flavor with which simple sweetness cannot compete. However, I sweeten this pie with honey rather than refined sugar, and in this instance I didn’t want the crust’s sweetening to compete with the flavor that honey brings.

Crust Directions

Pour the flour, sugar, salt, and zest into the bowl of a food processor and pulse briefly to combine. The goal is to avoid any large clumps of sugar or salt or zest that could be distracting.

Add the butter and pulse until the whole mixture looks like damp sand, as above.

Add the orange extract and then begin adding water just a bit at a time, pulsing continually, until the dough comes together into one great shaggy mass. Divide the dough into two balls and chill them in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes. We want that butter to never reach its melting point until it goes into the oven.  Next, roll out half of your dough until it’s really thin. Don’t worry if it breaks off, just patch it with a bit of dough and a drop of cold water and keep going. Roll it bigger than you think you need. It’s easy to trim edges, not so easy to stretch out a crust that doesn’t fit.

Trim off that excess until you have only about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of overhang around the edge of the pie tin. Put the lined pie tin in the fridge while you make the filling.

Filling Ingredients

5 cups blueberries

Juice of one orange

1/2 to 3/4 cups honey* (depending on how tart your berries are. Use more for tiny, sour, wild-type berries, less for plump, sweet, cultivated ones)

2 T cornstarch

2 T cream plus a bit for the top of the pie

2 T butter

*If you have orange blossom honey, you’re in for a treat. If not (I didn’t) it’s still delightful, just a bit less orange-themed.

Directions

Mix the blueberries with the honey and orange juice by turning gently with a spoon. You don’t want to bust up those berries. Mix the 2T of cream and cornstarch and add to the berry mixture. Fold that in as well.

Sorry about the close ups; those berries are just so pretty! Even after being bruised with a spoon. Pull the bottom crust out of the fridge and fill with a generous amount of filling, heaping it toward the center. I had a bit more than I wanted to use, so I saved it back. Dot the top of the filling with bits of butter.

Then roll out the other half of the dough for the top crust. This was the moment when I realized that I had no eggs, not even one, in the fridge.  So no egg wash for me. It was the perfect excuse to actually trust Mr. Bittman about the use of cream as a wash instead, which I did try, but I think I prefer an egg wash in the end. Anyway, fold in the edges of the bottom crust so that it will overlap slightly with the top one. Drape the top crust over the pie, trim the edges, and pinch it down to seal it to the bottom one. (put an egg wash or at least a brushing of cold water between the two to glue the seal! I didn’t, and I got a great big mess out of it.)

Now cut a vent or two for steam, decorate with little crusty stars, brush with cream (or egg wash!) and bake at 400°F for 45-50 minutes.

But what about the extra dough and filling? I had enough extra dough for two individual tartlets, but only enough filling for one. That took care of the small blueberry pie for Mr. B, who would have been very sad to not get any pie because I took it all to work otherwise.

For the other one, I quickly chopped half of a granny smith apple, tossed it with one or two tablespoons of brown sugar and a drop of vanilla, and plopped a top crust over it. No real measuring, but my boss (who says he doesn’t care for blueberries. Weirdo. ) said it came out just fine. Even though I forgot the cinnamon.

The small pies have the same bake time and temperature as the big one, so just throw ‘em all in the oven together and enjoy!

Pecan Pie: Better, sweeter, and without corn syrup

Mr. Blackbird loves pecan pie. So does the co-worker I promised to bring this to. So I’m actually a little nervous about reception, because I know this is not going to be the pie either of them grew up with. First of all, I went through four cookbooks to find the recipe I wanted. My first inclination was to cook out of Baked, which I love. I saw the words “3/4 cup corn syrup” in the ingredients, and I balked. Surely this was a mistake. When you were a kid helping your parents bake, did you ever sneak a taste of corn syrup to eat plain? No way! Maple syrup, honey, brown sugar by the handful, sure, but no one actually wants corn syrup. So I looked at Jim Peterson’s Baking, which I trust implicitly to get me through a difficult spot. Corn syrup, and lots of it. Well, surely The New Best Recipe wouldn’t disappoint, or at least the good people at Cook’s Illustrated would tell me why corn syrup was the sweetener of choice here. But alas, nothing. So I finally turned to Mark Bittman, who generally doesn’t mess around nor will he bear the use of inferior ingredients. And finally, I found what I was looking for. Well, close to it. I can’t help changing every recipe I see.

What, I’m supposed to decorate the top with those extra pecans? My, but you have high expectations!

First, the crust. Rather than break out two different cookbooks, I stuck with Bittman’s. As a perk, he let me put a little sugar in the crust. Hooray!

Flaky and Flavorful Pie Crust

This recipe makes one 9-inch crust. I made two pies, so I doubled it. Bonus: I didn’t have to measure 1/8 of a cup, because seriously, who does that? So if you’re making one pie like a normal person, I’d double the recipe anyway and just freeze the half you don’t need for next time. Frozen dough keeps forever.

1 1/8 cups flour

1/2 t salt

1 T brown sugar

8 T butter (Cut it into chunks and freeze it. Yes, I’m serious.)

3-4 T ice cold water (you might need more. I just put a bowl of water in the freezer until it got an ice film, then cracked it while pretending to be a monster destroying a frozen lake and the surrounding town. There were sound effects. Never let me catch you saying that cooking is boring; you just need to try harder.)

1 t vanilla

Give Me the Directions Already!

Plop the flour, sugar, and salt into your food processor. Pulse once or twice so your final crust won’t end up with one very salty and slightly disturbing bite in it.  Stick the butter in the food processor too, and pulse in 5-second bursts until the mix resembles damp sand.

Pour the sandy stuff into a bowl and add 3 T of flour and the vanilla. Stir with a wooden spoon until the dough can just barely hold itself together in a ball. Add more water a bit at a time if it seems too dry.

Once you get the dough into a ball, wrap it in saran wrap or foil and toss it in the freezer for 10 or 15 minutes. If you doubled the recipe, make two equal sized balls now; it’s more annoying when they’re frozen.

 

Now flour everything. The counter, the dough ball, the rolling pin, the cat if she gets in the way, everything. You’re going to want to roll your dough out to at least a 10 inch circle (Recipes always say “circle”. It’s misleading, because dough never rolls into a neat circle, it rolls into a horrible ragged trapezoid that has no excuse for existing in this Euclidean world. But I digress.) It will be very thin, so flip the dough and sprinkle on a bit more flour after every few passes with the beat stick rolling pin. Otherwise the dough will stick to the counter and it will tear and you will want to throw it at the fridge door (or husband, or cat. . .)

Butter your pie tin and drape the dough over it. Make sure to press it gently into the corner area of the tin; you need that room for filling! Trim the dough less close to the edge of the tin than I did (maybe 1/2 to 3/4 inches of overhang would be good) Freeze for another 10-15 minutes. Yes, I still mean it. You’re not ready for that butter to melt. You can preheat your oven to 425°F while you wait.

 

 

 

 

Done waiting? Good. Now it’s time to line the thing with tin foil and toss in your pie weights (or in my case, stone chess pieces. It works.) Bake with lining and weights for about 12 minutes, then pull the crust out of the oven and gently remove the foil and weights and set aside. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F and bake the crust for 10-15 more minutes, until it looks a bit browned and the smell of flaky, buttery crust is making you crazy.

 

 

It should look like this:

Uh-oh! They shrank!

Mine did shrink a bit. Still tasty, but less room for filling. Speaking of filling, while all that crust baking was going on, I hope you were making yours!

Pecan Pie Filling

5 eggs

2 cups pecan halves (or chopped if you like. I don’t mind.)

1/2 cup boring old granulated sugar

1 cup rich dark brown delicious sugar

Not one drop of corn syrup (I feel better now)

Just a bit of salt

6 T butter

1 T vanilla extract

2 oz. semisweet (say, 60%) chocolate, if you want chocolate (who doesn’t?)

Directions

Remember, I doubled everything, so I used a pretty big saucepan. You might want a littler one.

Crack your eggs into a saucepan and use a hand mixer to whip them up. Take your time and make sure it’s completely uniform in color and a bit frothy. Toss in your sugar, salt, butter, and vanilla and mix again. Put the saucepan on the stove over medium heat and stand there, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is nice and hot. Don’t let it boil! Your eggs won’t like it. The best way to tell if it’s hot enough? Keep tasting it! When the graininess from the sugar is gone and you taste a hint of caramel, you can add your pecans.

While you’re waiting for the custardy-caramely-abomination-of-deliciousness to heat up, chop some chocolate. I use a bread knife and saw at it, so I get some nice sized chunks and some itty little flakes. You could use chocolate chips, I guess. I just really like sawing up chocolate.

 

 

 

Stir briefly, then pour those bad boys into your nice, hot, freshly baked pie crust. If you want to, add some pecan halves in a pattern on top to make your pie prettier. I didn’t. Sorry. Bake at 375°F for 30-40 minutes, until brown and delicious smelling. And now you have pie! Sweet, nutty pie. I’ll let you know how folks like it.