Category: Pies

Hand Me A Hand Pie, And I’ll Tell You A Story

Post author By Shibow
Post date December 5, 2014
No Comments on Hand Me A Hand Pie, And I’ll Tell You A Story

Do you ever notice yourself having the same conversation with different people within a short period of time? (And not the boring “Ho, man, the weather, right?!” conversation that should never, ever have to happen between people who like each other.) I realized that in the past week, I’ve talked to three separate people about how easy it is to completely change the course of your life with a seemingly small action, and then not realize until years and years later– in my case, almost a decade– how massive that shift actually was.

I’m not sure how specific I can or should get without upsetting a few balances in my life, even though I’m not sure how “balanced” those balances even are right now. But I’m also not sure how cryptically general I can be without making you lovely people hate me for being so freaking cryptically general. I guess I’ll just say that I made a decision to assert my independence at a young age and have only just realized that, in the process, I may have inadvertently completely bleeping jacked up any chance of “following my dreams.” Those last three words are in quotes because part of me– probably the Indian part of me, since I feel like “dreams” are a privilege and brown people laugh at those things– thinks that most people in the world aren’t afforded the opportunity to lament not pursuing dreams, and so I should STFU and be happy with my life. And for the most part, I am. But then…Eh. I dunno. I guess the title of this blog does start with the word “sad,” so, you know, can’t expect Sesame Street, right folks? I’m trying not to complain. Like I’ve said many times before, I am thankful for so much of my life. But sometimes it’s hard not to feel like there’s something I’m not doing that I could be, you dig?

(Giving you a break again, you’re welcome. Also…it’s amazing.)

Alas, in the meantime, as I said, let us celebrate and be grateful. For, Thanksgiving has just passed, the greatest holiday that ever could be. A friend innocently asked me how I was preparing and I shook the mini-booklet of recipes that I collected and had SPIRAL-BOUND at her. Yeah. That kind of cray. And on page one of that booklet? Hand pies. There is nothing more genius than a hand pie. It’s pie. In your hand. That you share with exactly no one. How does life get more awesome? It doesn’t, right? Hand pie pizza, hand pie cakes, hand pie steaks. I don’t even eat steak and I could totally get behind a hand pie steak. I feel like the person who invented hand pies is such a wizard, such an innovator, such a problem-solver, that s/he could probably help me figure out my mess of a life. Hand Pie Creator, oh, Hand Pie Creator, where art thou? Does thou take payment in, um, hand pies? (Prob not.)

Pear Cranberry Hand Pies (makes eight pies)

based loosely on a recipe from Food and Wine

1 pear, cored and chopped (you can peel it too if you prefer, but I like the texture of it so I keep it on)

2 pears, cored and cut into 1/2 inch dice (I realize I put pears on separate lines, but you’ll see why in a second, promise)

12 ounces of fresh cranberries

1 cup of sugar

1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour

1 pinch of cinnamon

1 pinch of salt

14-ounce package of cold, all-butter puff pastry

1 egg white

Sugar for dusting, optional

So, to start, I’m going to let ya’ll in on a secret: this recipe is a monster hybrid of two other recipes, only one of which you’ll notice I linked to, because the other one sucked so badly. It was so bad that I realized about halfway through preparing the “treat” gave it the side-eye and decided to ultimately Tim Gunn it into this recipe (holla at me if you get the reference). Cool? Cool.

Start by pureeing the one chopped pear together with your cranberries, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water in a blender. Mix until smooth, then transfer puree into a medium-sized saucepan and cook over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally (be careful, as this will most certainly splatter, neat freaks), until thick.

SONY DSC — Yeah… this will be scalding. Don’t try to taste test unless you’re prepared to part with your tongue for a few days.

Transfer to a medium-sized bowl and set out to cool at room temperature, about 2 hours.

When puree is cooled, add in your remaining chopped pears, flour, cinnamon and salt, and toss to combine. Set aside.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the puff pastry to a 12 to 14 inch square. Note that you don’t have to be exact about it. I sure as hell wasn’t.

One of my Instagram friends compared this to the Windows logo, prompting me to wonder if there’s any universe in which Bill Gates would pay me for this. (There is not.)

Divide the square into eight sort of equal smaller squares. Spoon some of the pear mixture onto one side of the pastry, then fold over and crimp the edges. You’ll notice that I said “some of the mixture” and did not give you an exact amount. Try less than what I did, but more than a teaspoon. Basically just make sure you can close them properly. I mean, I could, but it took some maneuvering and a LOT of annoying questions about the elasticity of puff pastry dough from my boyfriend. Still, I ain’t complaining about oozing, hot, gloriously gooey hand pies.

Transfer pies to a parchment-lined baking sheet and chill for at least 30 minutes.(The first time I made these, I chilled them overnight because I was exhausted and still had to prep two pies, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, cornbread, Brussels sprouts and myself mentally for all of the foods I just mentioned. Chilling the pies overnight worked out totally fine.)

Preheat your oven to 400ºF, and brush each pie with a bit of egg white. Sprinkle sugar on top, if desired, then send these babies into the oven for 30 minutes, until they are golden and the fruit mixture looks bubbly.

Ok, originally the plan was to haul these over to my parents’ house as part of our Thanksgiving dessert menu but…um… I was having a lot of feelings that night and decided to eat them. The pies. Also my feelings. I definitely ate a lot of feelings that night. And the feelings tasted PHENOMENAL. They’re flaky, gooey, tangy and overall wonderful. They’re also not too sweet, which I greatly appreciated.

Note: I’m writing this at about 9:20pm on a Wednesday night and I just made another batch of these because I had leftover filling. I purposely brushed my teeth while baking to avoid attacking one fresh out of the oven. Then I saw the pies, promptly forgot about my teeth, and had at ’em. #worthit

Also! Without getting all preachy on all of you, I’m trying to put together a toy drive for homeless kids, working with Coalition for the Homeless. Here’s a link to the wish list based on a list provided by the Coalition. If you’re willing and able, or know someone who is, please contribute. Thanks friends!

Tags fancy hand pie, hand pies, holiday hand pies, individual pies, pear cranberry pies

Desserts with Fruit Fancy Pantsy Pies

Plum Galette, AKA One Appropriately Hot Mess Of A Pie

Post author By Shibow
Post date July 23, 2014
No Comments on Plum Galette, AKA One Appropriately Hot Mess Of A Pie

(This is here to distract you, but also this is here because Weird Al is a national treasure and is so, so right)

Hi guys. Wanna hear about the time I almost literally exploded on a busy street in Midtown? Yes, I am using the word “literally” correctly. I almost blew the &%(^ up two Fridays ago while walking to work. Instead of strolling down the street I normally take, I’d decided to cross in the middle of the block since the roads were empty– something I never do, since New York drivers be cray, but again, empty roads. Suddenly, there was a massive explosion– smoke, fire, giant boom– that shot up out of one of the grates I’d just been walking next to. That I’d just been centimeters from. Fortunately, as far as I’ve been able to surmise, no one else was hurt (I ran like a madwoman while a bunch of curious/dumb bystanders just…stood). An electrician friend of mine later confirmed that it had been a transformer explosion, which initially pissed me off because I thought he was trying to distract me from my shock with some garbage story about Optimus Prime. I’m not super duper bright when I’m scared. I guess the morals of this story are, 1. that Con Edison completely, utterly sucks and 2. it’s maybe time to reevaluate the way I’ve been doing things. As I told Sylvapotamus, it seems God moved the chess piece that is me, and perhaps there is a reason for that.

When I was younger, I wanted to be an actress. Growing up, the only people who looked like me were Apu from the Simpsons (a cartoon man voiced by a white dude) and Jasmine from Aladdin (not Indian and…also not human). As a preteen, I went to a casting agent who sneered at me as she told me to come back when I’d lost some weight and fixed my teeth. Obviously, that hurt, even though I’d be the first to admit that, if placed in a casting call for adorable, sprightly, precocious children and every other child but me came down with a mysterious, food-borne illness… the agents would probably cancel the audition (unless the audition was for pint-sized Orville Redenbacher impersonators). And so, I stopped going to casting calls, I stopped sending out head shots (no, I do not have copies of them, I think because the photographer who took them just, like, couldn’t even deal), and I threw myself into writing, which ended up being a saving grace for me. I even applied for a dual screenwriting/theatre program at a fairly prestigious college in Boston… and got in! Aaand then I didn’t go, due to a combination of having twelve dollars to my name, disappointed parents, and a paralyzing fear of maybe making it all happen and maybe not making it happen at all.

So now I’m a little bit depressed, possibly because I feel like I once had something great, something that was mine, something only I could do, something that came to me with an ease nothing– not human interaction, not calculus, not baking– has ever come close to matching. And now it sort of feels lost, and I feel lost, and I don’t know how to get it back, or if that’s even possible. So, what do you do when it feels like that thing you had is gone? I’m always reminded of Kristen Wiig’s character in Bridesmaids, and how she saw her dream of owning a bakery (!!!) come true…and then go completely to hell. She spends most of the movie down and out while Maya Rudolph doles out free puppies and whatnot… that’s kind of how I feel about myself (Kristen Wiig) and the whole rest of the world (free puppy-giver-outers). Which I suppose is why I stayed off of Facebook for a good while. FOMO and shiz, feel me?

So, do I still want to be a writer/actress extraordinaire? Uh… that’s hard. I don’t know. I don’t think I have the self-confidence to even attempt to take a risk like that, plus now Mindy Kaling exists so I can stop playing with my Princess Jasmine doll and wistfully sighing that “one day, I’ll just be you.” Actually, I stopped doing that a long time ago. Really. Promise. But if there was ever a time to figure things out, I imagine it’s now. While I do that, let me teach you how to make a galette, aka a rustic pie, aka lazy person’s pie, aka IT’S AWESOME.

Plum and Blueberry Galette with Fresh Rosemary Crust

for the dough (dough adapted from Savory Simple)

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of fresh rosemary, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of sugar

6 tablespoons of cold butter, chopped into small chunks

2-3 tablespoons of ice water

for the filling

4-5 red plums, sliced and core removed

1 1/2 cups of fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons of raspberry preserves, optional

2 tablespoons of sugar, plus more for dusting

1 egg, beaten

For the crust, you can either process the ingredients in a food processor or by hand. I prefer by hand, just because I’m a bit of a crusty control freak, but do as you please. By hand, toss together flour, salt, rosemary and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Cut in butter chunks gently, until mixture becomes crumbly. Slowly add in ice water, a little at a time, and stir together just until a dough forms. Cover and chill for at least two hours, and preferably overnight.

Once chilled, roll dough out to an approximate 9-inch round, then place either on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or in a greased pie plate. Return this to the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. While dough is chillin’, set out a large bowl lined with paper towels, and place plum slices inside. Allow to drain at least until most of the moisture is gone, then toss with blueberries and sugar.

Take your dough back out, and brush lightly with beaten egg. Sprinkle sugar over dough, then arrange plum slices and berries however you’d like. Spread preserves on top, if using. Now, gently fold over the sides of the galette, like so:

...Better than this, even — …Better than this, even

Brush the sides with egg wash, and sprinkle sugar along sides as well. Send into the oven for 22-25 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the crust looks done. Let cool for at least an hour.

THEN YOU MUST SERVE WITH ICE CREAM.

Not a lot, just a dollop, but… you must. You simply, simply must. #swoon

Tags easy rustic pie, galette, plum and blueberry galette

Desserts with Fruit Fancy Pantsy Pies

Plum Galette, AKA One Appropriately Hot Mess Of A Pie

Post author By Shibow
Post date July 23, 2014
No Comments on Plum Galette, AKA One Appropriately Hot Mess Of A Pie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
(This is here to distract you, but also this is here because Weird Al is a national treasure and is so, so right)

Plum and Blueberry Galette with Fresh Rosemary Crust

for the dough (dough adapted from Savory Simple)

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of fresh rosemary, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of sugar

6 tablespoons of cold butter, chopped into small chunks

2-3 tablespoons of ice water

for the filling

4-5 red plums, sliced and core removed

1 1/2 cups of fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons of raspberry preserves, optional

2 tablespoons of sugar, plus more for dusting

1 egg, beaten

Once chilled, roll dough out to an approximate 9-inch round, then place either on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or in a greased pie plate. Return this to the refrigerator.

Brush the sides with egg wash, and sprinkle sugar along sides as well. Send into the oven for 22-25 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the crust looks done. Let cool for at least an hour.

THEN YOU MUST SERVE WITH ICE CREAM.

Not a lot, just a dollop, but… you must. You simply, simply must. #swoon

Tags easy rustic pie, galette, plum and blueberry galette

Pies Strange and Yummy

Honey I Shrunk The Pie. Also, Honey I’m Totes Going Off The Grid For A While.

Post author By Shibow
Post date January 22, 2014
No Comments on Honey I Shrunk The Pie. Also, Honey I’m Totes Going Off The Grid For A While.

Whoa. It’s been so long since my last post that I had to go back and remind myself about what my life was like the last time I wrote in this thing. After some ~~careful, intense reading~~ light, lazy skimming, I recalled that I was talking about how I hoped for a much calmer, quiet year. WELP, as my old friend Jesus Christ liked to say: LOL! Wait…

Anyway, yeah, I have been hiding out big time. It’s weird. I guess the older you get, the more your relationships to people, places, (animal, vegetable, mineral…) and just yourself change. Or maybe that’s just me and I shouldn’t be weirdly speaking in the second person? I don’t know. As much as I love this blog, and as much as I love all things social media– my boyfriend would tell you it’s an annoyingly unhealthy amount– it makes me sad that it’s all taken the place of hours-long phone conversations, face-to-face meetings and just social interaction in general. It’s easier to find out if someone has a cold through Twitter than it is to find out through a phone chat, because PHONE CHATS? ARE YOU MY MOTHER? And in this weird, counter-intuitive way, it’s all made me super anti-social. Like, I’d-rather-be-knitting-awesome-headbands-and-just-watching-the-paint-in-my-bathroom-dry-than-oversharing anti-social. By the way, I am SO going to Pinterest the ridiculously awesome paint job my boyfriend did in our bathroom. Sh*t. I’ll just never learn, will I?

I definitely didn’t explain that well. I think the short version is that I’m a very private person who cherishes my relationships with people and is scared to see those relationships disappear or change. I guess that’s the abridged version. You can skip all of the crap above this if you want. Or just skip straight to the mini pies below.

*RECORD SCRATCH*

Mini pies?! Dude… why didn’t I just LEAD with that, right? I know, unbelievable. Let’s just…get on with it then.

So, these are basically something I just came up with after I realized I had a lot of leftover dough from a failed coconut pie attempt. I plastic-wrapped the remaining dough up, froze it, and finally thawed it out when I was feeling just sad enough for a taste of pie but not sad enough to make regular-sized pie. Feel me?

Mini Pies (how many this makes depends on how much dough you have)

For the crust (note: this will make enough for a single-crust 9-inch pie. You can totally use this for a regular pie and then take the scraps and use the heck out of them for mini pies. Or just make a bunch of minis. Do you.)

1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of sea salt

1 stick of very cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

A bowl of ice water

Melted butter

Cinnamon sugar (1 teaspoon of cinnamon + 1/4 cup of sugar)

For the filling (note: you can kind of go crazy here as long as you’re not trying to make fruit pies, since those will cook differently)

Chocolate Chips

Peanut butter

Jelly

Shredded Coconut

…You get the idea. It’s an EXPERIMENT!

So, I just sort of winged this. Wang it? Mmm…no. I improvised. I preheated the oven to 375ºF. I busted out a mini-muffin pan and brushed the cups with butter. Then, I stamped out little pieces of dough just big enough to fit into the bottom and sides of each cup. I rolled each dough piece in cinnamon sugar (never said these were healthy, homies) and then pressed them into cups.

Then, I basically went a little bit crazy. I dropped a couple of chocolate chips here, a dollop of peanut butter there, a little jelly, a few more chocolate chips, a little malted milk powder because I’m wild. You get the idea. Here’s a visual if you’re terrified of the process:

Then, I covered the tops of most of them (ran out of dough, sadly) with more dough, and cut tiny slits in each so I wouldn’t be dealing with baby pie explosions for days afterward. Then, I sent these into the oven for 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through.

I knew they were ready when the tops were golden brown and the filling was bubbling out a little bit. (Btw, sorry for the conversational tone instead of the instructional one guys. I haven’t fully taken ownership of this post yet, which I know is unhealthy, but I’ll totally work on all of that later, promise.) After about ten minutes of cooling in the pan, I popped the pies out and let them cool completely on a cutting board.

Some of you might remember that I made a mini-s’mores pie with leftover pie dough last summer. That one served as the inspiration for these minis, which, um, RULED. I want to say my favorite was the PB&J one I made, but I can’t. They were all so good. It seems almost impossible to go wrong when your base is a buttery, flaky, sugary crust.

I think I almost like these more than normal-sized pie because they made me feel like I had my very own pies that were just for me and no one else, (ok, fine, and my boyfriend who ate a bunch of them too) and sometimes it feels good to be selfish. Though these do seem like the exact sort of thing I should be making for dinner party guests, whenever I decide to rejoin the land of the living, breathing humans. I’ll get on that. Eventually. (Most likely)

Tags easy mini pies, Mini pie

Desserts with Fruit Fancy Pantsy Frozen Desserts Ice Cream Pies

They’re Laughing At Me. Not With Me. That’s Cool, Because I Have All The Ice Cream.

Post author By Shibow
Post date September 16, 2013
No Comments on They’re Laughing At Me. Not With Me. That’s Cool, Because I Have All The Ice Cream.

There’s this article and picture of a crying baby elephant circulating around the ‘nets. I briefly considered posting it here but…too sad, even for this blog. I think the elephant is crying because his wench mother keeps stomping on him and generally just hating on his greatness. You’re probably thinking that I’m about to say that I’m the baby elephant and the world is the baby elephant’s mother. I wasn’t going to say that, but if you were to think that you’d be totes right. MY LUCK SUCKS.

I could go on, but let’s just say that I’m worried and sad about moving, money and all of the people I love and miss and never get to see. If I haven’t seen you in a while, know that it’s not because I do not love you. It’s because the universe does not love friendship. 😦

And now to cheer you all up. Lately, as many of you have noticed, I have tried to position a random, usually uplifting/funny photo somewhere at the beginning of my posts. Today will be no different, aside from the “random” part. Once you’ve all caught your breath and gotten your bearings back, I’ll meet you after the below photo:

Are you good yet? You can thank me later for the incredible abdominal workout you got from laughing hysterically at the above. Just for the hell of it, allow me to explain.

When I was little, my very best friend at the time and I were, like most very best friends, completely inseparable. I wanted to do everything she did, and since she wanted to go to modeling school (Jesus Christ on a whole wheat cracker, I truly cannot believe I am sharing this), so did I. As you can see from the above picture in which I am apparently dressed like a miniature popcorn salesman–and yes, I did say salesman, thanks mom for the unfortunate pageboy haircut– with an affinity for People Magazine, I did not make it very far in the catalogue model game. Before you ask, no I have no idea where that outfit went, but I imagine it now resides in a special little nook in Hell. Special thanks to my dear younger sister for sending along this gem. Sylvapotamus, if you’re reading this, obviously you can name your price for the rest of these photos, because sadly I know there are more.

Whew. So. Now that I’ve lifted you all up, or at least made you laugh at my expense, let me depress you by reminding you that summer is pretty much just totally over. That’s insane, right? I still feel like I never even completely got a summer. Maybe that’s why I insisted on randomly making an ice cream pie just as the temperature started to drop. Whatevs. You’re going to want to, too.

Key Lime Ice Cream Pie (no ice cream maker required!)

adapted from Serious Eats

For the crust:

10 graham crackers

1/2 teaspoon of salt

3 tablespoons of sugar

5 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled

For key lime ice cream:

1/2 cup of key lime juice (regular is fine if you don’t have key lime)

1 tablespoon of lime zest, plus a bit more for garnish

3/4 cup of sweetened condensed milk

1 cup of heavy cream

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Now, let’s start with your crust. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together graham crackers, sugar and salt until powdery. Pour butter in and continue to pulse until a coarse meal is formed, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Transfer your crumbs to a pie plate and press evenly into the sides and bottom of your pan. Refrigerate the mixture for about 15 minutes, then bake for about 15 minutes until the crust is dark and takes on a nutty aroma. Remove and cool completely, then freeze until ready to use.

For your ice cream, in a large bowl, whisk together key lime juice, lime zest, condensed milk and cream. Stir until thick, which should take about a minute, and then salt the mixture to taste.

Pour your ice cream mixture evenly into the pie crust, smoothing out the top with a rubber spatula, and then freeze until the mixture is firm, 2 to 3 hours. To serve, allow the pie to sit out and soften for about five minutes, then garnish with more zest and serve this baby.

So this was AMAZING, obviously. It’s key lime ice cream. It’s ice cream sans ice cream maker. That cuts the time between me thinking about the ice cream and me making the ice cream in half. That also cuts the expense in I don’t know how many (math schmath), since ice cream makers are hella expensive. But yes, if you miss summer like I miss summer, you need this thing in your life. Immediately.

Tags ice cream pie, key lime ice cream, key lime pie

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