Cooking with Betty Crackpot: Pie Crust & Rhubarb Pie

I just wanted to post a pic of the rhubarb pie I made last week, from the rhubarb plant at my friends' place.  Two of the friends were rhubarb virgins and one didn't care for the stuff.  Well, I am happy to say I have made three rhubarby converts!  Yesssss!!!

I made them a pie, and here it is.  The pastry recipe is Betty Crackpot's - again.  It's a no-fail recipe, really. You can find it here.

And here is the pie, complete with a pretty lattice and everything.

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

I had the opportunity to do some catering last month during a trip back home, and one of the jobs was to prepare a banquet lunch for a seniors curling bonspiel. The food was copious and excellent, and it was very well-received. The menu included a stuffed chicken, a rich potato casserole, and a selection of pies, including this pumpkin chiffon pie recipe. This has been a favourite of my SIL's mom, C's, family for holiday gatherings, and this time we made it in bulk. It was delicious. The chiffon filling is like a pumpkin mousse; I might use the mousse for a cake filling one of these days as I can see it being very versatile. The recipe comes via C's sister, B.

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

1 9" pie shell, blind baked and cooled

1 envelope gelatin
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2/3 cup evaporated milk
3 eggs, separated, yolks lightly beaten
1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree

Combine gelatin and 1/2 cup sugar, salt, and spices. Stir in the milk and beaten egg yolks. Cook, stirring constantly, over low heat, until thickened to custardy consistency. Whisk in pumpkin and chill.

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks, gradually adding the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. Fold into cooled pumpkin. Pour into shell and chill. Serve with whipped cream.

We also made lemon meringue pies. Here's a peak at those, too.

Enjoy!

Shindig Rundown

Yesterday I had a small gathering at my place as a kind of going-away party, with the ulterior motive of using up as many of my leftover baking ingredients as possible before I move - all part of OPC (Operation Pantry Clear-out). It was lovely to just bake and bake for a couple of days. I realize I've been missing that in my life. However, the weather here was so hot, and continues to be, so it was a tad uncomfy to be in my kitchen for the amount of time I was. But it's OK.

Here is a shot of my spread:


So, on the white platter, top left, we have these rum & chocolate chip blondies, only without pecans because I'd already used them all up. Also on that plate are sour cherry & chocolate chip brownies. That recipe is basically my usual blondie recipe, only I replaced 1/2 cup of the flour with 1/2 cup of sifted cocoa powder. They are amazing!

In the pottery bowl next to that platter (the pottery was made by my super-talented potter friend, S) are these cookies. They were great.

Bottom row, left, we have a rhubarb tart. I made the pâte brisée recipe from Earth to Table, which you can see here. Incidentally, that's the same pumpkin pie recipe I used for the pumpkin pie you see in the bottom row, right, in the photo. It's sooooooooo gooooooood! I love that pumpkin pie recipe! It was a big hit at the shindig yesterday. For the rhubarb tart, I used frozen rhubarb, that, as it thawed, shrunk into probably just less than 4 cups of rhubarb; very annoying. But it was perfect for a tart, and I decided to do a lattice top. The rhubarb tart was a hit, too. The filling also contained 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, and about 1 tbsp of cornstarch.

Finally, between the two fruit pies/tarts, we have a basic banana bread. Very basic. I got this recipe from my friend Anita, who made this regularly when we were in university together. It's been my go-to recipe ever since because it's super simple and super moist.

Anita's Banana Bread

2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
dash of salt
1/2 cup walnut pieces, optional

Beat the eggs with a whisk and add butter, brown sugar, and bananas until well-combined. Sift in the flour, soda, and salt until the batter comes together. Add nuts, if using. Pour into a greased or lined loaf pan and bake at 350F for about an hour.

Everyone went home with a baking doggy bag. I'm leaving soon after all - I didn't want to keep any of it.

Up next, my trip to the Maritimes, Wolfville, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, PEI, to visit family, I just know there is going to be absolutely TONS to food blog about! I can't wait!

Dad's Birthday & Black Forest Cake

Steak & Kidney Pie and Black Forest Cake: probably two food items better not seen in the same sentence, but...

My dad has his birthday on Dec. 24, and though many people assume he gets stiffed with his day occurring in the midst of the biggest holiday of the year, the guy is actually spoiled freakin' rotten! We always have a great meal and I always make a special cake as per his request. The traditional meal for Dad's birthday is his favourite dish ever, Steak & Kidney Pie. Can we all say "yuck"? Yeah. We all detest it, but Dad's very British and this is our family tradition. I always associate raw kidneys with Christmas, because growing up when my parents were still married, my mom would buy a kidney from the butcher and soak it in the dishpan in the kitchen. It would ooze..."fluids." It was disgusting.

Now the pie is generally made by my SIL Shan and Dad gets the kidney. Here is a post from a couple of years ago about the making of the pie, including some detailed shots of Shan chopping the kidney up. This year, she couldn't do it. She just didn't have it in her, she told me. So she had my brother Jem do the chopping, and because kidney stinks like nothing you've ever smelled before, the filling for the pie was cooked entirely outside of the house: the kidneys were grilled on the BBQ and then combined with the other filling ingredients in a slow cooker that was placed in the far reaches of their garage.

Shan makes a great meat pie. This year, she did steak & kidney Guinness Pie for Dad and just a Steak & Guinness Pie for the rest of us. Our pie was great; Dad loved his version, too, and had plenty of leftovers to enjoy, too.

Here is Dad's pie, complete with his initials so there is absolutely no confusion about which pie is which!

And here is our pie, followed by a shot of the interior, and it was delicious. Shan knows how to make a mean meat pie, I can tell you that!

Now onto a more pleasant topic, Dad's cake! He requested a Black Forest Cake, and that's what he got. I made the cherry filling from scratch and it was absolutely amazing! I had wanted to get frozen cherries from the States, but bringing stone fruits, including cherries, across the border isn't allowed, and although I didn't know if that meant only fresh cherries and not frozen, I wasn't willing to take the chance, so I instead used a 720mL jar of sour cherries in juice purchased from LOGS (local overpriced grocery store).

Here is what I did. I didn't measure anything - sorry! Also, I had wanted to use kirsch as is traditional, however it's way too expensive for my modest budget and there weren't any minis available. So I used rum and it worked great.

Sour Cherry Filling

• 1 jar (720mL) sour cherries, strained, juice reserved
• a bit of sugar until I felt the sweetness was right, but not too sweet
• some cornstarch mixed with the reserved juice
• generous amount of amber rum, again to taste

- boil cherries & half of the reserved juice & add sugar to taste. With remaining cherry juice, add some corn starch & mix to dissolve. Add slurry to boiling cherries until desired consistency. You don't want it too liquidy but not too solid either as it will thicken as it cools. When desired consistency is reached, throw in some rum and combine. Let cool.

For the cake, I used my go-to cake recipe and baked it in a bundt pan. Because the dinner was being held in another town, I assembled the cake there for easy travel.

I cut the bundt in half lengthwise and spread in the filling, and then I put the top half back on. At this point, I kept things simple: I sliced & served with generous dollops of whipped cream.

It was a hit!

Coyote's Kitchen: Latest Article

Here is my latest article, published in Bread & Molasses Magazine's January 2010 issue! Bakewell Tart rocks my socks!

Apple Pizza

This is the second recipe I've made from Lucy Waverman's A Year in Lucy's Kitchen. The original recipe calls for plums, but I don't like plums and a had a whack of apples on hand that my dad had acquired from his neighbour. The original also specifies an 8" springform pan, but I only have a 9" and so I decided to make this into more of an apple tart, using my 9" ceramic tart pan (there was too much crust for my 8" tart pan with removable side to accommodate). I was attracted to this recipe because of its simplicity - which is what this book is all about. The end result was marvelous! This was a lovely tart and I'll for sure make it again.

Apple Tart (adapted from Lucy Waverman's Plum Pizza recipe on page 208 of A Year in Lucy's Kitchen)

Crust:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed

- sift dry ingredients together and add butter, cutting in to make a coarse meal. press into tart pan. bake @ 350F for 15 minutes or until lightly golden.

Filling:

4 apples, peeled & cored, & sliced in to thick slices
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup whipping cream

- toss apple slices with sugar & cinnamon. arrange over crust.
- whisk yolks & cream; pour over apples
- bake @ 350F for 35 - 45 minutes, or until custard is golden & apples are softened
- serve & enjoy!

Like I said, this was wonderful! I even ate it for breakfast one morning!

Pumpkin Pie!

This is the first recipe I've made from my recently reviewed copy of Earth to Table, by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann. I knew this was something I had to make as soon as I laid eyes on the recipe - adore pumpkin pie, and sometimes you need to branch out from the same old recipe you've been using for a decade, right? Right! The fact that this is no-bake is a bonus.

First of all, let me tell you about the pastry. You all know I'm always on the lookout for great pastry recipes, right, because I've had pastry-making issues in the past? I was actually not going to bother making the pastry recipe from Earth to Table because I like this one so much, but I decided to give it a whirl after I read through the instructions. In them, the author advises to use a grater to grate the cold butter into the dry ingredients. This means you don't need to touch the pastry as much with your hands - making a flakier pastry and much less of a mess. This was such a brilliant idea! And it worked fantastically. I can honestly say that this is the nicest pastry I've ever made: it was perfectly flaky, light and airy, and tasted excellent. It was a bit on the salty side, however, but that is easily remedied. I added a bit more sugar to it since it was going with a sweet pie.

Pâte Brisée for 9" single crust pie, page 306 of Earth to Table, very slightly adapted by me

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
2 tbsp - 1/4 (approx.) cold water

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Grate butter directly into dry ingredients. Stir. Add water, a tbsp at a time, kneading dough slightly until it comes together. Turn onto floured work surface. Shape into a disk and chill until needed.

In this case, you need a blind baked pie crust, so I rolled out the pastry dough immediately and lined my pie plate with it and stuck it in the freezer until it was cold. Then I pressed foil onto the surface of the shell and added my pie weights (I use rice), and blind baked the crust at 350F for 15 minutes the pie weights in it, removed the pie weights, then baked the crust an additional 20 minutes until it was light golden. I set it aside to cool.

The pumpkin pie recipe in the book is called "Mile High Pumpkin Pie." It uses a meringue made with maple syrup on the top, which is then broiled to get a nice toasted effect. I didn't do this because it required a cup of maple syrup, and because that particular ingredient is expensive for me and I didn't want to part with a cup of it for one dessert, I topped the pie with whipped cream instead. This was just dandy. The filling recipe is amazing, though! For it, I used pumpkin that I roasted last year and froze. That pumpkin was a little pale, so this filling doesn't have the dark orange colour that a typical pumpkin pie might have.

Pumpkin Filling (page 212, Earth to Table)

1/4 cup cold water
1 packet powdered unflavoured gelatin
1 cup cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 cups roasted pumpkin
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Combine cold water with gelatin and let it sit (bloom) for at least 10 minutes.

Cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add whipping cream until incorporated, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add pumpkin, salt, and spices; beat until smooth. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, cook gelatin mixture over low heat, stirring until gelatin dissolves completely - about 1 minute. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix until well combined.

Pour filling into prepared shell. Chill at least an hour before serving.

This was a huge hit! The filling was so light it was almost mousse-like, and it wasn't too sweet. The spices were perfect. This will definitely be made again in my kitchen - it was excellent!

Thanksgiving Rundown

This year it was just Dad and me because my brother & SIL were visiting family in another province. But, just because there were only two of us, we did not simplify anything and had the full-on, slap-up Thanksgiving turkey dinner we wanted. On the menu:

• turkey breast roast (my dad hates everything about turkey except the white meat, so he only buys turkey breast roasts and usually has 3 or 4 of them in his freezer at any given time) roasted with double smoked bacon & sausages made by a local butcher
• potato cakes made with garlic & Parmesan cheese; a departure for us, but this is an old dish my grandmother used to make apparently
• stuffing, gravy, yams (only dad eats yams)
• Brussels Sprouts sauteed with bacon & pinenuts & topped with Parmesan (made by yours truly)
• and for dessert, Bakewell Tart, also made by yours truly

Here is a nice collage I made of the meal:Everything was delicious! The recipe for the Brussels is basically this one from this post, only I used regular bacon instead of pancetta, and I topped the dish with Parmesan cheese.

As for the dessert, Bakewell Tart, my dad has been nagging me for this for a long time, and I finally gave in for this special occasion. He was so thrilled and so impressed and as soon as he bit into it, he said, "This is it!" I don't know why I put him off on this so long, because it was ridiculously easy to make. Alas, I'm not going to post the recipe because I want to use it for my next Bread 'n Molasses article, so you'll have to wait until January! But here is another collage:The cool thing about this year's Thanksgiving is that we're getting two of them in the family! When my brother & SIL get back from their trip, we're having another turkey dinner! This will be later this week, and I'll be making two dishes for it, too. Those recipes I will definitely share, so stay tuned!

I hope my Canadian readers are having a great long weekend!

Full Flickr set is here.

Beef Stew & Biscuits, Commercial Style

Here are some shots I took at work the other week, when beef stew & biscuits were on the menu. I'm not a fan of beef stew, but this looked really good & smelled just great. My shift ends before dinner, so I didn't get to sample it, but the residents, I heard were happy. The biscuits, which I made, turned out great! Dessert was provided by one of the residents, who spent the morning making homemade apple pie for everyone.

First, the cook started off using the grill to brown about half a cow's worth of stewing meat.

Meanwhile, potatoes & turnips get par-cooked.

The cook chopped up onions, celery, & carrots, then added them, along with the potatoes & turnips, to a big pan with the beef.

Some gravy (Bisto) gets going...

The gravy gets added to everything in the pan...

And we get this...

...And this...Then the whole thing gets covered with foil and put in the oven at 250F for 4 or so hours...And here are my biscuits (recipe here, minus the dill & cheddar):
And here are the gorgeous apple pies that resident made for dessert!

A great meal!

Magazine Monday # 50: Chocolate Walnut Tart

My dad's friend, who lives near Kelowna, has a walnut tree and some time ago I was gifted with a bag of walnuts from it. Yeah, I said "a while ago" because I let the nuts - still in their shells - sit around my kitchen for over a month. Why? Because I hate cracking nuts. Remember my hazelnuts from last year and the blister I got cracking them all? Well, I wasn't too excited about a repeat blister or sore hands. But, I didn't want to let the nuts go to waste, so I got out my cracker and set to work.

Man...About halfway through the bag - which yielded me 1 whole cup of nuts - I had a blister and a bruised-feeling palm. I'd also made a mess: the nuts were harder to crack than the hazelnuts and I guess letting them "mature" over the summer wasn't a good idea and the shells flew all over the place as I cracked them. My kitchen table & floor were both a disaster. But I had my one measly cup of nuts, enough for this Chocolate Walnut Tart recipe that came from the Feb. 2009 issue of Taste of Home, which came to me via my good friend Pierce earlier this summer. My nuts didn't need to be chopped; I had such a hard time prying them out of their shells that they were all in pieces - but my fingers were nice and soft from the oil and smelled really nice, so it wasn't all bad...

Chocolate Walnut Tart

Pastry for 9" single crust pie
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 eggs
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla

1. Press pastry into bottom & up sides of 9" fluted tart pan with removable bottom; trim off excess pastry. Sprinkle nuts & chocolate chips into crust.

2. In a bowl, combine the remaining filling ingredients & mix well. Pour into crust.

3. Bake at 350F for 25 - 30 minutes or until top is bubbly and crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate leftovers.

OK. This was a massive FAIL. FAIL, I tell you!

First off, I made this in a 9" square pan because I wanted to freeze most of the tart and cutting it into squares would be much simpler. A 9" square pan is 81" in total area; a 9" round tart pan is 63.6" in total area. I mean, this is basic math, here...Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, my point is the square pan is bigger than the tart pan, so the filling was spread over a larger surface area.

But my tart didn't set! At all! I baked it for the allotted time, at the correct temperature, according to my oven thermometer. I then put it in for an additional 10 minutes - twice. Then, I put it in again, only to take it out shortly thereafter because the crust was getting too brown, as was the top. Upon cooling, the filling still didn't set. The sides were OK, if a bit gooey, but OK nonetheless, but the centre was a different story altogether. I refrigerated it for several hours, and still it didn't do its thing. It was a mess.HMPH!!! I was not happy and couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong. The pan size shouldn't have made a difference. This is basically a pecan pie filling, and I've made tons of them before, and never had this problem. The only thing I can think of was that it was the recipe itself. Perhaps 2 eggs would have sufficed, instead of 3. I don't know.

I managed to salvage the squares around the edges and freeze them for our camping trip, and the middle I picked away at when I needed a sugar craving - but still, I found this to be a waste of valuable ingredients for me, not to mention the time I put into cracking all the nuts! Grrrr!

Magazine Monday #49: Apple Tart

This is what I was hinting at on Friday's post about the transparent apples: Apple Tart. This is such a simple recipe I almost didn't think it would be all that spectacular. I couldn't have been more wrong, and making this brought home the lesson "less is more."

Recipe is here, from a back issue of Bon Appetit.

The crust recipe alone was an excellent discovery, and I used it in another upcoming post, and think it's a great go-to recipe for when you just need a simple single-crust pastry recipe, or a quick base for squares.

I didn't make the caramel sauce - I didn't have any whipping cream and I was lazy. So, instead, to give this some extra flavour, to keep the apples moist, and to add some visual appeal, I brushed the baked tart, still hot out of the oven, with melted butter. This melded wonderfully with the spices in the filling.

This is a very quick, very easy recipe to put together, and the results are elegant. And they also make a great breakfast, with some vanilla yogurt. Trust me!

OK, so this is my last time hosting Magazine Mondays, and Ivonne will be back next week. I want to thank all of you who participated for sending me their links! It's been a slice, guys!

Also, just to let you know, I'm away most of this week, so you will be enjoying posts courtesy of Blogger's scheduled posts feature, but I won't be around visiting at least until Friday. Have a great week!

Joining me this week with their Magazine Monday contributions are: no one. *sniff sniff*

Lunch at The Hume Hotel

Another week, another trip to Nelson to take advantage of Save-On Foods' weekly specials. Which also means a lunch out with my most constant dining partner nowadays, my dad.

This week, I suggested the Hume Hotel, which has a salad bar I was interested in. My appetite being what it is these days, I needed the flexibility the salad bar had to offer. That, and I really wanted some soup. The salad bar comes with soup of the day, which that day happened to be white bean & chorizo. Not my bag, so I subbed in the French Onion Soup.

Now, if you read this post, you'll see that the Hume has a history, and part of that history for me, involves a spectacular French Onion Soup I had there when I was a kid that had beer in it. To this day, it is the yard stick against which I measure all other French Onion Soups! In fact, my dad is the same - he still rhapsodizes about that soup. I knew, however, from our last lunch there that the recipe had changed and the beery soup was no longer on offer, but the current soup is supposedly made with sherry, as specified in the menu's description.

After having a sampler from the salad bar, my soup finally came. And...
...Well, it was good, but not that good. A bit weak, and not tasting too much of the sherry. It also didn't have very many onions in it. Also - they hadn't taken the bay leaves out and had used small bay leaves, so twice I took a spoonful and chomped down on bay leaves. I was a little annoyed.

My dad had ordered the lasagne, which came with garlic toast and a surprise Caesar salad. The salad was a surprise because the night shift had just come on and they put salad with their dinner entrees, so Dad got lucky.He said the lasagne was really good and enjoyed it very much.

The shift change might explain the slowness of the service. Because it was S-L-O-W.

Dad was full, but I wanted dessert, and I knew that the Hume has a great dessert list. I opted for the lemon meringue pie and was not disappointed at all - except, once again, it took forever to come out. But it was delicious and I realized I hadn't had lemon meringue pie in ages. Yum!
So, while the food was good, the service was iffy. Perhaps they were having an off day. It happens.

Magazine Monday #45: Perfect All-Butter Piecrust

Well, this is Monday #1 of my hosting Magazine Mondays! To remind you, Ivonne, our usual host, is away, and in her place I'll be hosting until Sept.14th. So, if you've made a magazine recipe and would like to submit it here to be linked to, please send me an email at wandering_coyoteATyahooDOTca.

So, here is my post for today, and following are links to the post of other Magazine Monday participants.

Despite my training & experience, I'm not a huge fan of making pastry, as I've mentioned before. I've had so many failures it's embarrassing! My go-to recipes are this one from Gourmet and this one (scroll down) from an older cookbook. I make this one at work and it's been fine, though it is made with shortening, something I try to avoid like the plague. I'm always on the look-out for new pastry recipes, however, and I was intrigued by one I found in the most recent issue of Food Network Magazine. Touting itself as "perfect" I was skeptical - until I read the recipe. The butter content is extremely high compared to any other recipes I've seen & used. To 3.5 cups of flour, there is 1.5 cups of butter. Also, this recipe has a higher sugar content than most recipes; in fact, some pastry recipes have no sugar in them at all.

So, on the weekend, I gave this a go, and decided to use it to make a blueberry pie with some blueberries I got on wicked sale and froze a couple of weeks previously.

Food Network's Perfect All-Butter Pastry, from Aug./Sept. 2009

3 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chilled butter, cubed
1 tbsp white or cider vinegar
1/3 cup ice water

Pulse dry ingredients in a food processor. Pulse in 1/2 cup butter until combined. Pulse in remaining butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add vinegar. Gradually pour in water, pulsing until combined. Turn out onto a clean surface & press into a cohesive dough without overworking (you should still see bits of butter). Press into a disk & wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling out.

If you don't a have a food processor, don't worry. I don't; I used my hands, as I usually do when making pastry, and it was fine.

The dough was lovely! It rolled out beautifully!

The recipe made way more than enough for one pie, though. I got one deep dish blueberry pie and three decently-sized apple turnovers, using up some frozen apples I had from last year's apple harvest.

Here is the pie...
And here are the turnovers...My dad came over for dinner that night, and he sampled a turnover as an appetizer. The first thing he said was that the pastry was amazing, and that he could tell it was very rich with butter. So, I had a sample myself, and he was right: this is amazing pastry, and it is very rich! In fact, this is now my new favourite pastry recipe, I think.

Joining me in testing out magazine recipes this week are:

Wizzy The Stick of Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Punch made some gave her hot dogs a makeover by making some gourmet dogs from Bon Appetit magazine.

Debbie of Dining with Debbie made a delicious-looking Brazilian Black Bean Soup from Cuisine at Home.

Paninigirl made a great Zucchini Curry from an issue of Gourmet from 2002.

Di of Di's Kitchen made her version of BBQ Braised Vietnamese Short Ribs with Sweet Vinegar Glaze from an issue of Fine Cooking.

Thanks for participating, you guys!

Black Forest Pie

If you aren't a reader of Pierce's blog, Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel Head Manor, I suggest you become one! She recently posted a recipe for Black Forest Pie, and when I saw it, I knew I had to make it. Luckily, my brother Jem had a birthday coming up, and he always requests Black Forest cake, his favourite. Since we were camping, the pie was much more easily transportable. I made it the day before we left, and bought a can of whipping cream to top the pie at the birthday meal.

The recipe is here.

I made a few changes to the recipe. For one thing, I used a graham cracker crust because I wasn't in the mood to roll out pastry dough in the heat. It turned out beautifully. I also used a full 19oz can of pie filling and topped the pie with fresh cherries, which are just coming into season here.

The pie was super easy to make and had a fabulous texture: somewhere between a chocolate pudding and a brownie. And it was a HUGE hit with my family!
So, thank you Pierce for the great recipe! This one is a keeper for sure!

Making Pastry

Despite my training and experience, I've had a lot of trouble over the years making pastry dough. It's weird, but I just have never been able to have a successful result with a variety of recipes, except for a couple: a butter recipe (here, scroll down) and a recipe from Gourmet (here). Today at work, I was asked to make pastry dough for the chicken pot pies being served for dinner. I was a little skeptical that I could pull this off, but I actually did it! I have no idea where this recipe came from, but I suspect it came from a shortening box. The shortening we use at this place is often purchased from Wal-Mart, and it's the Wal-Mart brand, and it doesn't have a recipe on the box, so that's not the source. But whatever the case, it worked out.

Pastry Dough

2 cups flour
1 cup shortening
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tbsp cold water
1 tbsp vinegar

Whisk together the dry ingredients, and then cut in the shortening with a pastry blender. You'll have something that looks like this:
Crumbly, with some larger chunks in it - it doesn't have to be perfect.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and add them to the dry.
Stir until combined. I was making three times the recipe and I wound up using my hands, and my dough was a bit sticky, so I just added a bit more flour.
The work surface needed to be well-floured for easy rolling, and one of the things I love about commercial kitchens is that you have a lot of room to roll pastry out and you can use as much flour as necessary without it making a huge mess.I needed 36 tops for 36 chicken pot pies, cut with the oval ramekins the pies were being baked and served in.Cute, eh? I was pretty pleased with myself. My confidence in my pastry-making skills has been restored!