TWD: Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie

I think many people get into food blogging because they read a lot of food blogs, think it looks like fun, and decide to start a blog themselves. I, however, had never read a food blog before I started food blogging, other than my friend Amanda's. All I knew was that Amanda was in this online baking club that had her baking something every week and blogging about it, and I thought it sounded like a riot. So I joined TWD and started a blog. At the time, because I had not read food blogs, I did not realize that attractive food photographs are kind of the point. Since most of my blogging was done as a part of organized groups with participation requirements, I assumed that my pictures merely served as proof that I actually made the assigned recipe. Sort of like turning in homework. Eventually, as I started reading more and more blogs, and viewing stunning photograph after stunning photograph, it dawned on me that I had woefully misunderstood the significance of the pictures. Once I got a clue, I began trying, within the confines of my limited photographic and artistic talents, to take better pictures. I took the food outside in the late afternoon light. I thought about things like whether a particular bowl complemented the food. I garnished with mint leaves. I tried.

I say all that just to make it clear that I really, really wish that I did not have to post the following photograph. I wish it so much that I almost skipped posting today altogether -- but when I make something, it always seems foolish not to post, thereby wasting a permitted skip that could otherwise be used on a week that I don't bake. So here is my Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, which I (1) turned into a parfait when my mini graham cracker crust fell apart, (2) accidentally burned with my blowtorch, and (3) photographed in my kitchen at approximately 10 p.m. And boy, does it show:


I fiddled with the photo editing software and tried to crop, adjust the light, etc. to help the situation, but nothing could help a lime pie that's been so abused. All I could do is post later in the day on Tuesday in the hopes of subjecting as few people as possible to this fugliness. I'm sorry if you're not one of the lucky ones.


I made one mini pie parfait for my husband. He really enjoyed it. I've made other (easier) key lime pies before (ones that don't require the whisking eggs over the stove routine) and he liked those a lot as well, so I'll probably stick with the easier kind (e.g., Mark Bittman's key lime pie from How to Cook Everything). Also, hubs prefers whipped cream to meringue, and I prefer whipping cream to whipping egg whites, so I'll stick with whipped cream going forward. But just because this probably won't be my go-to key lime pie does not mean that it wasn't wonderful. It was, says hubs! Linda of Tender Crumb picked the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie - thanks for the great summer pick, Linda!

TWD: Banana Cream Pie

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Banana Cream Pie, chosen by Amy of Sing for Your Supper . Since this is the only non-chocolate TWD dessert for the entire month of April, I went into this one really hoping that my non-chocolate eating hubs would enjoy it, because if he didn't, it would be May before he gets another dessert (at least from my oven!)

There are three parts to this recipe: the crust, the custard, and the topping. We'll start from the bottom.

THE CRUST

I had a single recipe of Dorie's Good for Almost Anything Pie Crust in my freezer, left over from the Thanksgiving Twofer Pie that we made in late November. I had some serious doubts about using it, because (1) Dorie says that the crust can stay in the freezer for up to two months, and I'd exceeded that by a good margin, and (2) there was potentially a substantial amount of bad juju tied up in that crust, given what happened with my Twofer Pie. I am extremely superstitious by nature. As a recovered sports fanatic (when I was a kid, I would cry if the Yankees or my hometown UConn Huskies lost) I firmly believe that I have the power to affect the outcome of a game based on where I am sitting or what I am doing during the game. I know this only because there have been numerous occasions over the years when my team has been tearing it up on the field/court while I sat on the end of the sofa with my arms crossed and my feet up on the ottoman facing west, only to fall apart as soon as I got up to get a drink. It is a terrible burden to have that kind of power. All of that energy spent worrying about how my popcorn bowl placement was affecting Mike Mussina's slider eventually chipped away at my enjoyment of the game, and somewhere along the way I realized that I derive no pleasure, only pain, out of watching sports. So I quit paying attention. I knew that I was fully reformed when UConn lost in the Final Four this past weekend (I did not watch the game), and I remained completely impassive as I scanned over the front page of our local paper's Sunday Sports section while en route to my favorite weekly stop, the Letters to the Sports Editor (which are written primarily by highly impassioned people who are convinced that our sportswriters are disrespecting Alabama or Auburn and favoring the other school).

So being a superstitious person, I struggled mightily with the thought of using a crust that might be permanently tainted by its association with that previous pie making experience (which involved, among other things, a horrifically burnt pie crust, undercooked filling, and injury to my person that culminated in a sloppy self-surgery right there on the kitchen counter). But ultimately, my lazy nature reigned supreme, and I decided to take my chances with the frozen crust.


All I had to do was roll out the crust and then fully bake it. How hard could that be? I swear that when I put the unbaked crust into the pie dish, there was plenty of dough and it completely covered the edges of the pie dish; in fact, it hung over the edges. But somehow it shrunk when it baked. Note the fissures and the portions of the edges that are lacking crust completely. I am sure a science-minded person out there could turn this into a teachable moment, but I am at a loss to explain what happened. It really looked sad and pitiful, and had some seriously overdone portions around the edges (to the extent that there were any edges). But I decided that it would just have to do, and I forged ahead to

THE CUSTARD

I feel like at this point I have baked enough different things to be able to say with authority that I really don't enjoy making custard. It involves stirring eggs over heat, and that is just fraught with danger for me. They could scramble at any moment. Dorie has you pour a little bit of hot milk into the egg mixture to temper the egg yolks so they won't curdle. That sounds great in theory, but I still set my odds of messing that up at about fifty/fifty. Fortunately, the egg yolk tempering gods were smiling on me that day, and it worked fine.


After the eggs are tempered, you have to continue to whisk the egg mixture vigorously while pouring the rest of the milk into the egg mixture in a steady stream. I don't know about anyone else, but for me whisking vigorously is a two-handed job in and of itself. I whisk with one hand and hold the pan handle with the other. So once I have to add in the additional task of pouring milk steadily from another heavy pan while whisking, I start to feel like I need more hands than Octomom. It is just not a physically comfortable process. Anyway, while the custard making process was not remotely enjoyable, it seemed to do its custard thing, and for that, I was grateful. I stuck it in the fridge for a while. When I was ready to assemble it, I whipped together

THE TOPPING

Which is essentially a super fabulous whipped cream that I was far too busy licking off my fingers to photograph.

THE FEEDBACK

David's parents were visiting this weekend, so they got to try some of the banana cream pie. It was so great to have some other tasters for a change, because honestly, even I get seriously bored reading about what David and I think about these desserts week in and week out. Both David's mom and dad seemed to really enjoy the pie. David's dad had another piece on night two, and said that while he would typically not order banana cream pie in a restaurant, he would order THIS banana cream pie in a restaurant if he knew ahead of time how great it would be. Isn't he the coolest?

It was obvious to me that my hubs REALLY enjoyed the banana cream pie, but he did qualify his praise by saying "you know, it's like chartreuse." I realize that "it's like chartreuse" might seem like a non sequitur in the context of banana cream pie evaluation, but David and I have been together long enough that we have pretty much formed our own shorthand/code for communicating with each other. So I knew immediately that what David was saying, fully translated, was: "you know what they say about chartreuse: if you look good in chartreuse, you'll look even better in a color other than chartreuse. I think this banana cream pie is really, really good, but if I think this banana cream pie is really, really good, I'll think a dessert other than banana cream pie is even better."

I tend to think of banana cream pie as the chartreuse of the dessert world myself, but this one has me rethinking that position. I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of this. Each component was fabulous on its own, even the crust (which looked cursed, but did not taste cursed), and they came together beautifully to form an extraordinarily delicious dessert. Despite how rich and heavy this actually is (chock full 'o the usual suspects: cream, egg yolks, butter) it tastes light and refreshing, and it goes down SO easily. I felt no pain whatsoever as I consumed my cholesterol allotment for the quarter. It was so worth it.

Thanks for this great pick, Amy! You can find the recipe on Amy's blog, and for a couple of hundred other interpretations of this pie, be sure to check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll!

TWD: Thanksgiving Twofer Pie, Or "Why I'm Thankful That Nobody Was Really Counting On This To Be The Thanksgiving Dessert"

I have no cooking or baking responsibilities this Thanksgiving. My only job is to show up with my family at my parents' house 1000 miles away, which is a Herculean feat that requires the planning of a small-scale military operation. Common sense told me that I should have been spending any extra time that I had over the weekend packing lollipops and Dollar Store surprises in the carry-on bag to pull out when Elizabeth starts kicking the seat in front of her on the plane. Besides, I knew that if I made this pie, we wouldn't have time to eat it all before we left, and seeing as it's not freezer-friendly, most of it would go to waste. But despite all of the compelling reasons that I had not to make this Thanksgiving Twofer Pie, I did it anyway, because I am stark raving insane a committed TWD-er.

This is the second time I made Dorie's Good For Almost Anything Pie Crust. The first time was for the peach galette, and it was amazing. This time, I accidentally started making the recipe for a double crust, but I just went with it and figured I'd freeze one of them. The dough came together fairly easily, just as it did the first time.

After inventing a whole new shape while trying to roll a circle of rugelach dough, I asked Jacque for tips on how to roll a dough circle, and she was kind enough to leave me a really helpful,really detailed comment with some great pointers. And, as you can see, they helped a ton! Thank you, Jacque!

Much more circle-ish:



While the mixing and the rolling went well, the whole pre-baking thing really tripped me up. I followed the instructions, covered the crust with foil, weighted it down, etc. And yet the edges of my crust seemed very "post-baked" after the pre-bake:



I could not envision a scenario in which those edges would not be downright charred after another 45 minutes in the oven, even at a relatively low heat oven. When it came time to bake the pie, I tried to cover up the edges with foil for part of the bake time


but it really didn't do a whole lot of good.

Moving on to the pie fillings. I've got to say, there is no better way to stock your bar than to join an online baking club. We live a tame life around here. I might order a glass of wine with dinner, David will have a beer when he watches the game or order a bourbon out at a restaurant. So our bar is not particularly well-stocked, and I don't tend to have whatever liquor I need a teaspoon of for these various recipes. I'm always tempted to go knocking on the neighbors' doors, in the great American "may I borrow an egg?" tradition, to see if I could borrow a shot of Chambord. Shake things up a little bit. Anyway, I'm sure that I could have skipped the Meyer's that was part of this week's pumpkin filling:



But I splurged, because rum seems like a nice basic liquor to have around, and I figured that even if I use two teaspoons of it every year to make this Twofer Pie, I should still have plenty left over for that island-themed party I'm planning for 2024.

I made this pie in fits and starts throughout the day. I did the pie dough when I woke up and the pumpkin filling later in the morning. I figured that I would be able to do the pecan filling, and then assemble and bake the pie, at my leisure later that afternoon after running some errands. But the day got more complicated when my son started complaining that his ear hurt, and since I was worried about him flying with an ear infection, I scrambled to get him an appointment at the after-hours pediatric clinic. Instead of just waiting until after his appointment to finish the pie, I tried to horseshoe in the pecan filling in a 3 minute window that I had. In my haste I tried to cut through some frozen butter, but when the knife slipped, I cut my thumb instead. David was raking leaves, so I stuck my head out the front door and said "Hey, I just almost cut my thumb off. Can you please come inside?" He has heard some variation of that sentence so many times since we've been married, that if you witnessed his reaction, you might have thought that I had just said "Hey, dinner's ready. Can you please come inside?" Cool as a cucumber. All I could think about was that the last time I cut my finger (it was an onion that time) I spent four hours at the ER, and it wasn't even a Saturday night. No, my pie would never get baked if I had to go to the ER. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the competing medical emergencies, the stress of trying to get out of town, and my unfinished pie. All I could think to do was sit down right there in the middle of the kitchen and have a good cry, when suddenly, I remembered my Doctor's Choice Advanced Wound Care Skin Closure Kit^®

.


I've lived with myself for long enough to know that I should never take to the kitchen without a couple of these puppies at the ready. Just one minor home procedure later, David was off to get the boy some ear relief, and I was back to my pie!

I filled it up -- there were a few breaks in the dam:



I think I was so shaken by the knife injury and the subsequent DIY surgery that I forgot to sink my pecans into the syrup as Dorie advises. This step was clearly not simply for aesthetics -- keeping the pecans submerged in the syrup appears to prevent them from burning. I learned this the hard way, because all of my exposed pecans burned. I ended up just picking off and eating the burned ones, but there were so many of them that by the time I was done, I was left with something that most closely resembled a Thanksgiving One And a Halfer Pie.

My finished pie (before I raided the burned pecans):



And a unit of pie best classified as a "slice":



Almost turns you to stone, doesn't it? It was edible, but this pie really didn't work out for me. The crust was overdone and not as flaky as when I made it for the galette. Half of my pecans were burned as well, and the pumpkin part was just barely set. I don't know where things broke down exactly, but break down they did. The house smelled amazing while this was baking, though, so it was worth all of the hubbub just for that! And I am sure that many of you knocked this one out of the park, so I can't wait to hear about how great this pie is when done right! Thanks for this great holiday pick, Vibi of La Casserole Carree!

I hope that you all enjoy a special day with family and friends on Thursday, and I hope for your sake that you don't get stuck sitting near us on the plane. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!