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.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
This looks amazing, Jen. I think both my husband and I are slowly becoming more lactose intolerant as we get older. Goat milk ice cream may be something we’ll try soon. Can’t wait to see what other non-dairy ice creams you come up with!
beantownbaker — June 19th, 2013 @ 10:23 am
Thanks! Like I said, coconut milk has been my go-to so far, but it’s definitely fun to try new milk varieties.
Looks incredible, I need to find a local goat milk supplier…
beantownbaker — June 19th, 2013 @ 10:24 am
Yea, I definitely want to find someone local to get my goat milk from. For now, I’m just happy that I can find it at all. Even back in Boston, it wasn’t on the shelf at my grocery store.
This looks amazing and I love that you used goat milk..so interesting!
i had to give up gluten a few months ago and just realized a few weeks ago that i also must give up dairy. i am not sure if it is lactose or casein that i am intolerant of, but i love that you are doing stuff that i may be able to eat someday! (also, we bathe Olive is goat’s milk. it’s great for her eczema!).
beantownbaker — June 20th, 2013 @ 6:58 am
Going dairy free isn’t too bad honestly.
Oh wow, bathing in goats milk sounds so luxurious!
Oh wow, this looks so perfect! I’d love to try this soon 🙂
Sounds delicious, I’ve not thought about using goats milk in ice cream before but would love to try it!
beantownbaker — June 24th, 2013 @ 8:24 pm
You should definitely try it!
Thank you so much for posting this!! I gave up cow dairy in the winter (makes me break out) and have been glaring at my ice cream maker, because sorbets are just not the same and coconut ice cream is good, but so coconutty! I’ve been wondering if I could make ice cream with goat’s milk and now I know I can! The canister just went into the freezer 🙂
beantownbaker — June 24th, 2013 @ 8:23 pm
Nice – glad I could help. I don’t find coconut milk very coconuty… I assume you drink goat’s milk so you’re familiar with the flavor? It definitely has a distinct taste.
Goat milk?? I bet it goes fantastic with chocolate. I love this combination, I can’t wait to try it, yum!!
In the ingredients, you say condensed goat milk, but the directions say heavy cream. Which did you mean? Really excited to try out this recipe!
beantownbaker — July 22nd, 2013 @ 1:14 pm
Sorry about that. I used condensed goat milk, not heavy cream. I’m updating the recipe now.
Hello,
I want to place an order from you to our store in The Netherlands.I want to know if you can ship here and accept credit card as a form of payment.
Reply back asap
Thanks
beantownbaker — September 4th, 2013 @ 9:27 am
I don’t sell anything.
My wife and I raise a couple of dairy breed goats for home milk use. I don’t find that the milk tastes goaty, it’s actually richer and better tasting than cows milk in my opinion. Although before we discovered that we should pasteurize the milk asap after filtering, we did notice a musky kind of taste…… but with pasteurization started within a minute or two after milking, our milk is just as good or better than the flavor of cows milk. I just ordered an icecream maker. We will definitely use this recipe. Thanks for posting it.
beantownbaker — September 25th, 2013 @ 4:15 pm
Fresh goat milk is not something I have tried. I would love to get my hands on some though!
I’m looking forward to trying this! We got hooked on Laloo’s goat milk ice cream several years ago, but it’s been increasingly difficult to find, and very expensive ($7.79 a pint as of 2 days ago). It would be great if I could find a homemade alternative.
beantownbaker — January 2nd, 2014 @ 1:36 pm
I agree – Laloo’s is good, but quite expensive. Let me know what you think of this recipe if you try it out.
GOOD NEWS!! Laloos is filling the pipeline and more flavors are coming soon to you your local Whole Foods store.
I have dairy goats so will toss in my 2 cents worth 😉 Not all goat milk is the same!!! If you like the goaty taste, go ahead and buy your milk at the store. Personally I find the goaty taste vile and disgusting! So for those who want to try goat milk but don’t like that nasty goaty taste, you want raw milk, and the breeds vary in taste a lot. Nigerian Dwarf goats have the highest butterfat and do not have the goaty taste. Their milk is really good! Nubians are second best. It would be worth your while to find a local source of nice raw milk from either of those breeds. Healthier too, as raw milk has all the nutrients nature intended.
With rare exceptions – goat’s milk should not taste goaty. I can’t comment about grocery store milk, but would urge you and your readers to look for direct-from-the-farm sources. There are a few goats with funny tasting milk – and those work great for making blue cheese! If a goat is healthy, has a good diet with the right balance of vitamins and minerals (very important!), and the milk is handled in a clean manner with quick cooling, it should have a rather sweet taste. I have Nubians and like Cindy above, appreciate the high butterfat. If you’re looking for a milk source – try realmilk.com. There’s also tips there for buying safe milk.