Pie Trials

I just have to share this experience. I signed up for a Pie-Off at work. It’s taking place on Monday. All week I’ve been obsessing over what pies I am going to enter. The rules are quite simple. We can only enter 2 pies and they have to be in a pie pan. Other than that, it’s whatever we want.

The judging categories are: Best Overall, Most Colorful, Most Creative, Best Traditional, Best Combo (ie with ice cream). Keep in mind I’m not really a pie girl. I made these lemon meringue cup-pies, but other than that, I stick with other baked goods. But I do love a challenge, so here I am…

Tonight I wanted to make some trial pies. But Hubby and I don’t need two pies in the house. And I don’t want to send a pie to work with a piece or two cut out of it. I have actually never eaten a pear (shocking, I know!) but this pear-cranberry pie from Katie looked so festive and I thought I might have a shot at Most Colorful with it. The other pie I wanted to try is from Dorie Greenspans “Baking From My Home to Yours” as made famous by the TWD group. (BTW, I grabbed the cookbook at TJMaxx for $24 and man it’s HEAVY! I didn’t realize it was so big!). So the other pie is called Depths-of-Fall Butternut Squash Pie. It has butternut squash, pears, dried cranberries and walnuts in it. And the squash isn’t pureed like a pumpkin pie, it’s left in chunks. This intrigued me.

So back to tonight. I wanted to make 2 pies without having 2 pies at the end of the night. Then I got this crazy idea to make them both in the same pan. Yep, you read right. In the same pan. The squash pie needed a double crust and the pear pie is open on the top. So I used two crusts and just folded one in half for the squash pie and then cut the other crust in half for the pear pie. The pictures show it better…

This is the filling for the Dorie Pie. Let me tell you – I wanted to eat this with a spoon. But I decided I should bake the pie as planned. 

This is the pear filling. Quite simple and tasty. I couldn’t get it all to fit in the 1/2 pie pan so I ate the rest. Mmmm. I had no idea I liked pears so much. 

Here’s the Dorie pie in it’s crust. As you can see, it’s one pie crust (yes, I used store bought for tonight – I’ll be making homemade for Monday). I just folded the top over the filling and crimped with a fork.

Here’s the pie after I crimped the edge of the Dorie pie. I left enough pie for the pear pie to have crust on all sides so the juices wouldn’t get mixed into the Dorie pie.

Here’s the other half of the pear pie crust. I used some mini leaf cookie cutters to cut out the decorations just like Katie.

This is the pie as it looked before it went in the oven. As you can see, the pear half of the pie is quite full. One difficult thing about this project is the cooking time/temp. One said 400 and one said 375. I heated my oven to about 385 and threw it in. The pear pie required being loosely covered with foil. 

The two-pies-in-one-pie-pan masterpiece is in the oven right now. I’ll post the results from this little experiment tomorrow.
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3 Responses to “Lemon Meringue Cupcakes”

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    1
    Elina (Healthy and Sane) — March 2, 2011 at 9:33 pm

    What a fun contribution to a virtual bridal shower. What girl doesn’t like cupcakes? Love that they’re filled too. Fantastic!

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    Elina (Healthy and Sane) — March 30, 2011 at 11:26 am

    What a fun contribution to a virtual bridal shower. What girl doesn’t like cupcakes? Love that they’re filled too. Fantastic!

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    3
    Erica Campbe — April 6, 2022 at 10:59 pm

    I make a rhubarb syrup that is wonderful heated up and served on vanilla ice cream. Simmer rhubarb just covered in water for a couple hours to pull the flavor and color out. Strain and add sugar to desired sweetness and bring to a boil like you’re going to make jelly but omit the pectin. I water bath it like
    Jelly as I usually end up with a lot of pints. From your description this would be good on your rolls

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