pies, oranges, and a new contributor

Hi, my name is Becca. I have known Inez and Elise for ten years and have been following their blog since its creation. I was asked to do a guest post for pi day, and seeing as I have been meaning to contribute something beautifully delicious for a while now, I immediately agreed.

I asked my brother if he was interested in helping me make pie for pi day, and since he is as much of a pie enthusiast as I am a math enthusiast, he agreed. I knew I wanted to make a pecan pie, but was thinking that since there were two of us, maybe one pie wouldn't be enough, so when he suggested we make pecan, pumpkin, blueberry, and rhubarb, who was I to disagree? So, we made pecan, chocolate pumpkin, blueberry, and strawberry-blueberry-rhubarb. And, even more impressive, we did this all without going grocery shopping (an advantage of using mom's kitchen - it is always well stocked with baking supplies).

Making four pies at once means I have to decide whether to arrange my post chronologically or one pie at a time. As of now, I have decided to write chronologically, so the confusion you feel while reading better represents the chaos of the kitchen. The pecan pie was my great grandma's recipe, which I remember from Christmases growing up. The chocolate pumpkin pie recipe was clipped from the newspaper, and I had never tried it before. The blueberry pie was my great aunt's recipe. And the rhu-berry pie recipe was sort of taken out of a cookbook, but modified a little.

Oh, and while all this pie baking was going on, we also made candied orange peel, because the parents just got a case of oranges. The first step was peeling the oranges, and not peeling them the way one would normally peel an orange, but actually taking a peeler to them.

The next step was to make the pie crusts. We used a pretty basic pie crust for the pecan and rhu-berry pies. The pumpkin pie recipe came with its own crust, which had cocoa powder in it. And I will include the blueberry pie crust here, just because.

Sweet Pie Crust

• 1 stick less 1/4 inch butter
• 1 cup flour
• 3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Mix together with your hands. Press evenly into a 9 inch pie pan, making sure the corners aren't too thick. Bake at 325 degrees, for about 20 minutes, until golden.

After making the crusts, we made the fillings. We did make a small substitution for the pecan pie - we used some molasses mixed with light syrup in place of dark syrup.

Sorry, the pumpkin pie filling is not represented in the pictures. Here is the recipe for the blueberry pie filling, to go with the crust recipe above.

Blueberry Glace Pie
Wash and drain 1 quart of blueberries. Put

• 1 cup of the blueberries
• 2/3 cup water

in a sauce pan, smash, and simmer for 3 minutes. Blend

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/3 cup water

and add to the boiling mixture. Boil for one minute, stirring constantly (until it starts to thicken). Let cool. If desired, spread 3 ounces of cream cheese over the bottom of the cooled, baked pie shell (we didn't have any cream cheese, so skipped this step). Spread a thin layer of the cooked mixture on the bottom and sides of the baked pie shell. Alternate layers of uncooked berries and cooked mixture. Refrigerate 2 hours (or just go straight to eating). Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. (You could also use strawberries or raspberries instead of blueberries.)

Not having to bake the blueberry pie meant that we could make more pies at once. We mixed the filling for the rhu-berry pie and the pecan pie, rolled out the crust for the pecan pie, filled it, and put it in the oven. Then started making the blueberry pie filling on the stove top, while the pecan pie was cooking. The pumpkin pie went into the oven next, because, although the filling was ready for the rhu-berry pie, we hadn't rolled out the crust yet. But before the pumpkin pie was done, we decided to throw the rhu-berry pie in the toaster oven. It was originally going to be a strawberry rhubarb pie, but after dumping the filling into the pie crust we decided it looked a little empty, and so threw some blueberries on top before adding the top crust. Then we assembled the blueberry pie, after the sauce had had a chance to cool (which took a little longer than necessary since we heated it back up again after the first time, trying to get it to thicken more). After the pumpkin pie came out of the oven we put the pecan pie back into the oven because we had forgotten to set the timer the first time and took it out a little too early.

Now we return to the candied orange peel, which we boiled with lots and lots of sugar, laid out on waxed paper, sprinkled with more sugar, and experimentally dipped some of in chocolate.

And to finish up this post, I will leave you with pictures of the completed pies.