Friday, November 14, 2008
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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.
Dessert, Pies and Tarts
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21 Responses to “Coconut Almond Cake with Blackberry Lime Curd”

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    Ashley Bee (Quarter Life Crisis Cuisine) — March 21, 2013 at 9:14 am

    I am really very terrible at frosting/decorating cake :\ This came out way better than anything I could make!

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:18 pm

      Ha – I’m pretty bad too. That’s why I love putting stuff on the sides. Coconut does a good job of hiding my sloppy decorating skills.

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    Nutmeg Nanny — March 21, 2013 at 3:11 pm

    Coconut and almond, you’ve already got me reeled in 🙂 two of my favorite flavors rolled into what looks like a moist, fluffy cake. YUM

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    Natalie @ Once Upon a Cutting Board — March 21, 2013 at 6:57 pm

    This cake looks so beautiful and the texture is perfect! I love curd as a filling between cake layers but i never knew the trick for preventing it from seeping out – thanks!

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:19 pm

      Yea, it’s definitely very helpful. Even more so when you ACTUALLY do it 😉

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    Megan — March 21, 2013 at 7:20 pm

    We’ve all had those cake experiences. It looks like it turned out well in the end! And it sounds delicious!

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:20 pm

      Glad to hear I’m not the only one. I think it’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking we all need to project that all of our baking/cooking endeavors are hugely successful…

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    Ashley — March 21, 2013 at 8:50 pm

    Regardless of any kitchen mishaps, this cake looks divine! Layer cakes always look so special, and the addition of fruit here makes me swooooon!

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:20 pm

      I agree. Layer cakes always look special 🙂

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    Michelle — March 22, 2013 at 7:49 am

    Oh this looks amazing. And aren’t we all our own worst critics when we bake? I can’t tell you how many times I say something is terrible and my husband looks as me like I’m crazy.

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:21 pm

      I agree. At the end of the day, it tasted delicious and no one knew about all the issues I had with the cake. I did want to keep it real on the blog and not give anyone any false sense that things are always easy for me…

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    Erica @ In and Around Town — March 22, 2013 at 9:04 am

    I always shy away from layer cakes – yours always come out well, I need some more practice I think! Your “mistakes” are great learning points – did not know about the frosting damn, but it makes so much sense!

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:23 pm

      That’s why I wanted to talk about them. I definitely could have posted about this cake without mentioning any of the issues I had. I’m hoping they’ll help someone (myself included) to learn something for the next time they tackle a layer cake. Yours will definitely improve with practice. Mine surely are. I really want to make that coconut cake you just posted!

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    Shannon — March 22, 2013 at 3:12 pm

    i’m always hard on myself too, but you wouldn’t know by the taste i’m sure! looks absolutely wonderful, not to mention i’m drooling over the flavor combo 🙂

    • beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:24 pm

      I agree, I think we all are. I wanted to keep it real with this post in case anyone else found it to be a difficult set of recipes…

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    Rosie @ Blueberry Kitchen — March 23, 2013 at 4:18 am

    Yum, your cake looks so delicious and I really love the sound of the blackberry lime curd!

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    Laura Dembowski — April 26, 2013 at 2:37 pm

    I love coconut cake, and blackberries are my favorite fruit. Such a great idea to put them together. This cake is gorgeous! I would happily take a large slice . . . or maybe the whole thing 😉

    • beantownbaker — April 27th, 2013 @ 10:02 am

      Then you would definitely love this cake!

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    Kristina Koranek — August 10, 2013 at 9:06 pm

    Could anyone post the blackberry lime curd recipe? The link is no longer working.

    Thanks!

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