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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
Looks great – I love all the sprinkles! 🙂
I don’t think I’ve ever made ice cream with coconut milk. I’ll have to remember to try this next time I want to make ice cream! which is often, but I already have three flavors in my freezer right now haha.
beantownbaker — June 14th, 2013 @ 9:47 am
Wow three flavors in there at once! You should definitely try using coconut milk. It’s very creamy.
i really need to get my ice cream maker base in the freezer 🙂 yum!
beantownbaker — June 14th, 2013 @ 9:47 am
Mine goes right back in the freezer once it gets washed so it’s always at the ready!
I never thought to make ice cream with coconut milk! What an awesome idea!
beantownbaker — June 14th, 2013 @ 11:45 am
It’s pretty much the only way I make ice cream. SO GOOD.
Yummy! What delicious looking ice cream!! I want a bowl and it’s only 6am!
beantownbaker — June 15th, 2013 @ 11:44 am
Ice cream is an acceptable breakfast food 😉
vanilla Beans Are In The Directions But Not The Ingredients…Should They Be Included?
beantownbaker — June 15th, 2013 @ 5:21 pm
Sorry about that. There are no vanilla beans in this ice cream. I have fixed the recipe instructions to reflect that.
fun way to use up leftovers 🙂
This recipe is great! The ice cream looks absolutely delicious 🙂
So excited to try this with coconut milk! It looks super yummy! Pinning! 🙂
beantownbaker — June 20th, 2013 @ 6:57 am
Hope you enjoy it!
What a fun combo! Now, I need to decide whether to make your sugar cookie or your snickerdoodle ice cream first!
beantownbaker — June 24th, 2013 @ 3:47 pm
Oh – that’s a tough call! They’re both good.
sounds delicious!
I love sugar cookies and putting them in ice cream was a great idea so i just had to include it in my ice cream round up. Happy Fourth of July!
beantownbaker — July 3rd, 2013 @ 5:00 pm
Happy 4th to you too! Thanks for featuring my ice cream in your roundup.