Pie Extravaganza

Many factors contributed to the Pie Extravaganza of 2014. First, last year I was taught by a lady at church how to make pie. I didn't actually do much of the baking, I mostly observed, but she showed me methods for making crust from scratch, how to measure very precisely and how to put a crust in a pie dish and pinch the top. It was a long process, but I left feeling more confident about trying to make pies myself. Second, in the past year, I perfected Ree Drummond's Perfect Pie Crust. I have made numerous quiches and a pie or two and this crust recipe is my favorite. Third, I have been trying to get Alex more comfortable in the kitchen, so getting him in on the pie making was the first step toward an extravaganza. And finally, Alex and my competitive natures kicked in when we decided to have a taste off and make these pies Chopped-style. 

He was in charge of the Pecan pie and one Pumpkin pie. I was taking the Dutch Apple and the other Pumpkin pie. The plan was for 4 pies. We ended up with more, but I won't get ahead of myself. 

I began with the crust. I made one batch of this crust, which yields either two large, thicker crusts or three thin smaller crusts. I obviously made the two thick ones. I love a substantial crust. 

You can find a step by step recipe here: Pioneer Woman's blog, but I will include the quick version here:

3 cups All-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups Crisco Vegetable Shortening

1 egg

5 tbsp cold water

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp salt

Combine flour and shortening with a pastry cutter (will take 3-4 minutes). Pour in a beaten egg and combine. Add water, vinegar and salt to mixture. Don't overwork, but blend all ingredients. Split the dough in half, ball up each half and put in separate Ziplock gallon sized bags. Gently pat down into a thick disc and place bags in freezer. Let chill for 20 mins and then roll out.

Here's the trick that helps me with rolling out the crusts. I learned this from the lady at church. Take two empty cereal bags and open them up all the way so you have two plastic sheets. Roll the dough out between them and you will have no need to add flour to keep it from sticking, the plastic on these bags doesn't stick to the dough. Before putting the rolled dough in the pie pan, slowly pull off one of the plastic sheets from one side of the dough. Replace the plastic lightly. Flip the dough over and slowly peel off the second sheet. Leave the plastic off of this side and put your hand under the plastic on the other side. Flip it into the pie pan, trying to center it as much as possible. Peel off the loosened sheet of plastic and then begin putting the crust into the pan. Make sure there are no air bubbles and tuck up the extra dough around the top of the pan and press a cute design into the edge. 

Here's where part one of the competition came into play. Alex decided to make a different kind of crust for his pies, one that called for mostly butter instead of shortening and included a little bit of sugar. We will revisit his pie crust later, at the taste test.

Onto the pies! I started with the Dutch Apple, using a recipe I found on Pinterest. The original recipe can be found here: Easy Apple Crumble Pie. I was drawn to this recipe because 1. Easy Apple Crumble. 2. The topping included oatmeal and no nuts. A perfect crumble topping if you ask me. 

For the recipe, visit the blog I linked to above. I will say that I multiplied the topping recipe by 1 and a half. I wanted just a bit more of that beautiful topping. The apples were quite juicy and left a bit of juice in the pie itself that escaped with slicing. We served it at room temperature with ice cream and it was perfection. 

Alex's first pie was the Pecan. Here he is putting his pie crust in a deep dish pan, getting ready to house a chocolatey, bouborn-y twist on a Pecan pie. 

We ended up getting too impatient to wait for Thanksgiving Day to eat a pie.. and when I say we, I mean Alex, me, and my parents. So we cut into a Pecan pie on Wednesday and Alex went about making another one! On the second one, he replaced the bourbon for Kahlua and placed the chocolate in the bottom of the cake before pouring in the filling so that it would be evenly spread. Both versions were absolutely delicious (hence we couldn't wait for Thursday to cut into one...).

This day of pie making was fun, but pretty exhausting. Especially since I looked like I was about to pop! Emmett was only about a couple weeks away from joining us at this point! 

Once our Dutch Apple and Pecan pies were done, we moved on to the Pumpkin pies. Here's one of my crusts. I had used a cookie cutter to put leaves along the top and had a little extra dough, so there's a hidden squirrel under the pumpkin filling. 

We used a Paula Dean recipe for our filling and it was ridiculously creamy and delicious. It also made way more filling than we needed for 2 pies, so Alex threw together some more crust and we made extra Pumpkin pies with all that filling. He also added some extra spices and a splash of bourbon to his filling. Here's the recipe we started with (and I stuck to): Pumpkin Pie Recipe.

We even made a few pies in ramekins! There was seriously so much filling. These also did not make it to Thursday. Mmmm. 

By the end of the night, our counter was filled with pies. 1 Dutch Apple, 2 (more like 1 and a half) Pecan, 3 full and 3 ramekins of Pumpkin. Not bad for a Thanksgiving of 8 people!

As far as the taste test went, we got so wrapped up in the baking and eating that we didn't really take a poll on which crust or which pie was the favorite! After all that work, the contest just didn't seem to matter after all. I did notice that the butter crust that Alex made browned quicker than the shortening crust, but the sugars in his crust paired really well with the sweet pies. My crust doesn't have sugar and may go better with savory foods (quiche). However, the Dutch apple was SO sweet that my crust balanced well with it. 

I'm so proud of us and I'm glad that a competitive spirit got us motivated to make all these pies, but I think next year we will jump in with our gained confidence with pie making and our desire to cement the pie extravaganza as a new tradition! 

|| Posted by Kate ||