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Tag Archives: chess

A 2020 Pie Roundup

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Apple Pie, Berry Pie, Buttermilk Pie, Chess Pie, Coconut Pie, Mini Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie, Original Pies, Summer Fruit Pie

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apple, blueberry, buttermilk, chess, coconut, cranberry, creme brulee, meringue, nectarine, peach, pear, rhubarb, saturn peach

2021 is upon us, and, arbitrary though it may be, it feels good to move forward. It feels good to set new goals and intentions, to re-dedicate ourselves to our core beliefs and values and relationships, to know that any pain and struggles we experienced in 2020 will carve space for deeper joys to come, if we let them.

This is going to be a long post. The format was the most recent guest baker (aka Levi)’s suggestion so if you get too the end of this and think “THIS WAS TOO. MUCH. PIE.,” you can take it up with him. I was intrigued by the idea of starting my blogging life somewhat afresh in 2021, so I went for it. Without further ado, here is a roundup of eight dessert pies I baked in 2020 that had not yet been blogumented.

Yep, I just made that word up.

Indiana Buttermilk Pie

August 2020. First of three pies from when our friend Matt was in California to visit us for slightly over a week. Three pies in a week, that’s well above my usual pace. To put it in perspective, if that was my standard pace, this project would have been over by 2013. This was my first buttermilk pie (there are three buttermilk pie recipes in Pie) but not my last in 2020, as you’ll see. Simple, basic, uncomplicated flavor. 1 teaspoon of vanilla is the only real flavoring agent, and the tartness of the buttermilk shines straight through. I loved this.

“White” Summer Fruit Pie…sort of!

August 2020. Second of three pies in aforementioned week. We really wanted one of them to be a fruit pie, and Matt (Pie Hype Man) really wanted me to make progress in the cookbook, so we chose this “White” Summer Fruit recipe. It called for Rainier cherries and either white peaches or nectarines. As it turned out, we weren’t able to locate Rainiers so late in the summer, so we followed the recipe exactly but used zero cherries, white Saturn peaches, yellow nectarines, and rhubarb (of which I freeze lots each spring). While it was absolutely divine and we ate it with homemade vanilla ice cream (extra divinity points) my overactive conscience won’t allow me to check this pie off my list until I make it again with Rainier cherries. *Avoids eye contact with Matt, who totally thought this one counted.* But look how pretty!!

Little Crème Brûlée Pies

August 2020. Third of three. Unusual and unforgettable mini pies. My first time making Ken’s “Extra Flaky” pie crust recipe, which calls for cake flour. (Also my first time purchasing cake flour! A few of the pies in this post had ingredients outside the typical realm of my pantry, as you’ll see.) The pastry was lovely to work with and yielded enough for four miniature pie pans, pictured below. After these pies are baked, they are topped with a layer of brown sugar and blow-torched to perfection. I mean, what could be better?

Coconut Cream Pie with Coconut Meringue Topping

October 2020. More ingredients I never hardly ever buy: sweetened flaked coconut and cream of coconut (as in, the stuff in piña coladas, not to be confused with coconut cream aka thicker coconut milk). My cousin Martin’s family visited us for a weekend and I wanted to make a great pie to enjoy all together. When we were growing up and on summertime vacations in Vermont, Martin and I were the little kids who would order coconut almond ice cream without fail when we’d all go to our favorite ice cream shop (our grandparents’ treat). Our shared love of coconut led me to choose this pie for the occasion. Decadent. A coconut lover’s dream come true; yet, not overpowering or artificial in any way.

Three Sisters Coconut Buttermilk Pie

October 2020. Remember that sweetened flaked coconut I’d just bought? Me too…so I looked for another recipe that called for it. Since making the Indiana Buttermilk Pie and absolutely adoring it, I had been looking forward to trying a second buttermilk pie – this was an easy pick. Like a coconut custard pie but with the tang of buttermilk to take it to the next level; a real treat. We shared this pie with our good friends Brad and Deb at our big outdoor table. It seats 18, but we’ve been so grateful for the few times this year that we’ve used it to seat even 4. ❤

Homestead Chess Pie

November 2020. I was looking for something very simple, with pantry ingredients, as I decided to put this pie together at the last minute. This fit the bill: eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla, a bit of vinegar and cornmeal. In my last blog post, I mentioned that I made a (correct) executive decision to bake my Tarte au Sucre an extra 15 minutes past the time given in the recipe. I initially took this pie out at 35 minutes (recipe calls for 30-35) but ended up putting it back in the oven later, cause it clearly was underbaked. Yikes. Perhaps my oven does run cold and I am just waking up to this fact? I shall ponder this further. A delightful pie in the end, for all its simplicity. The fifth of the five Chess Pies in Pie – I’ve now exhausted that category. I confess, I did secretly wish this was a Lemon Chess Pie when I was eating it. Levi probably did too because he is Mr. Lemon Dessert.

Crock-Pot Fall Fruit Pie

November 2020. The name above ruins my punch line. Which of the desserts pictured below do you think was my Thanksgiving pie this year? That’s right, it’s the only one that looks nothing like a pie! This oval-shaped semi-imposter, though not what you would expect of me, was a popular and tasty dessert table choice that I’d recommend any of you try. It’s made with baking mix (like Bisquick – I used Birch Benders Organic Classic Pancake and Waffle Mix), fresh cranberries, pears, apples. Super Thanksgiving-y and great with a dollop of homemade whipped cream.

Apple and Blueberry Crumb Pie

December 2020. This was an important pie for me. I didn’t follow a recipe. I made it for my dear Linda (Pippa’s former nanny) and her family. My apple pie is Linda’s favorite, my blueberry pie is her daughter’s favorite, and they both love crumb topping. Linda had filled a pie dish with homemade tamales for us shortly before Thanksgiving. After the tamales sustained us for several days, I was left with this empty dish (it says Blessed on the bottom – I’d actually given it to her as a gift the last week she worked for us). I couldn’t picture giving it back like that, so I made this pie while Pippa took an afternoon nap one day. This has been a season of grief, and that was an afternoon when the grief was more present than I realized. There was something so visceral in making that pie with my hands, both painful and healing at the same time. I didn’t expect to react the way I did to peeling and coring the apples, to breaking up clumps of butter with my floury fingers – each familiar step generating a physical heartache – but perhaps I should have. Linda said her whole family agreed it was the best pie they have ever had.

Through that experience, I recognized that pie making has become a way to let my heart speak what is on is mind. It is a path I can walk any time, in any weather. And it is a way I can return blessings on the givers in my life, of whom there truly are many.

Be blessed in 2021, my friends, though it may look different than you expect. Happy New Year!


A few editorial notes:

  • You probably got this already, but a pie named in bold type is a pie from Ken Haedrich’s Pie baked for the first time. The two fruit pie titles are not in bold, denoting that they aren’t counting towards my count to 300.
  • While at this moment I’m feeling 96.5% sure that I covered all of 2020’s sweet pies, there were also a couple savory pies I’d like to tell you a bit more about another day. Also, there are still some pies of yesteryear that will occasionally pop into my mind or out of old photos which have yet to claim their rightful place in the gallery. So, if you had any fear that I was completely done with flashbacks…fear not.

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Dynamic Duos

31 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Chess Pie, Chocolate Pie

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

chess, chocolate, cornmeal, travel

Once upon a time, there were two babies named Pippa and Milo. They were the best of friends.

When Milo read books, Pippa read books. When Pippa cuddled her baby, Milo cuddled his baby. When Milo said, “Time to eat!” Pippa said, “I’m all in.”

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Pippa and Milo both like sweet treats. Pippa’s mama is a pie baker, and Milo’s parents have an ice cream maker. When their families stay together, decadence ensues.

Here’s Milo blessing the pie pastry for this Fancy Chocolate Chess Pie.

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Milo’s dad doesn’t bake pies too often, but he has made two kinds of pie, one of which happens to be Chocolate Chess. This isn’t as coincidental as it sounds – Milo’s family lives in Virginia, and Chess Pie was born and bred in the South. The other pie Milo’s dad can make is a PB & J pie. Pippa’s mama thinks it is a very unfortunate omission that there is no recipe for a PB & J pie in her cookbook, and might just have to try making one soon anyway.

Here is a picture of many egg yolks that put the Fancy in this Chocolate Chess Pie.

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Pippa’s mama couldn’t remember if she had made this pie before. She thought she hadn’t, until just now, when she was browsing the “Chess” tag on her own website and stumbled upon a post from 2013. Now she remembers that this was Pie #99 in her gallery and she can’t count it again. Too bad, cause this would have been a fiiiine looking image for the pie gallery. But y’know, no real regrets. It was delish again, seven years later, eaten with different folks.

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Milo’s mama used a Salt and Straw Ice Cream Starter Kit (link here but it looks pretty much unavailable anymore which is sad and disappointing news for all of us) to make absolutely delicious Freckled Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. The two decadent desserts were enjoyed side by side one evening; a slice of pie followed by a bowl of ice cream. Don’t worry, Pippa and Milo got to taste-test the ice cream at lunch the next day.

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P.S. Pippa’s mama now owns an ice cream maker also. She’s written about her love for Salt and Straw Ice Cream before. If S&S ever starts selling Honey Lavender Starter Kits, you all know what she wants for her birthday for the rest of her life.

The End.

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Pertaining to Pasties…

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Chess Pie, Savory Pie

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chess, handheld, lemon, meat, savory

Our good friend Phil spent a week with us in February. He’s the type of guy who never does anything halfheartedly, whether it’s becoming an overnight fan of the Utah Jazz basketball team or making an authentic Australian meal.

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Once Phil and I had the idea that we must make pasties while he was visiting, the whole thing kind of snowballed.

Oh wait, take a step back. What’s a pasty? Take a second to educate yourself if you’re not sure. (They’re basically meat and vegetable handheld pies.) But if you’re going to make proper pasties, you need to be even more specific.

Things that I discovered while grocery shopping with Phil:

1. Proper pasties contain beef, onion, potato, and swede.

2. Swede is Australian for rutabaga. (!!)

3. In a good and just world, pasties are accompanied by HP Sauce. Not surprisingly, the very American grocery store that we had visited to locate the swede did not stock HP sauce. There was clearly nothing for it but to make our own. Into the cart went the tomatoes.

So there we were, on a Monday night, chopping some steak and swede, mincing fresh rosemary, forming pastry, and simmering homemade HP sauce on the road. I made extra pastry, because savory pie followed by sweet pie is pretty much a perfect meal. As we were making enough food to feed a small army, it was luckily that we had six friends on our way over to share in the goodness.

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(Thanks to Phil for the above photo!)

Here are the recipes we used for the pasties and the sauce. To be fair, we more glanced at the recipe to establish the necessity of including the swede. I used Ken Haedrich’s Basic Flaky Pie Crust for the pastry and we included some herbs in our version, most notably fresh rosemary from a friend’s garden. The sauce was lip-smackingly good; I’d definitely make it again for any and all future steak situations.

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An egg wash over the pasties never hurts. Nor does the accompaniment of a nice Aussie red. I can think of many things that would hurt far more than those.

And now, dessert. A very simple Lemon Chess Pie, which perhaps did not receive a completely thorough cooling before it was consumed, but was none the worse for its lingering warmth and just a tiny bit of runniness.

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PS to Phil/File: Here is a little note I received from a certain young 2nd grader later that week that I thought you might enjoy.

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Meet the Real Housewives of Simi Valley

31 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Chess Pie, Chocolate Pie

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

butter, chess, chocolate, nuts, pecan, Thanksgiving

Did you know that making pie is an occasion for playing dress-up?

It’s true!

My lovely friends Elona and Janine and I had rather too much fun taking these photos on Thanksgiving morn, as we made a Fancy Chocolate Chess Pie (Thanksgiving, I know. Ouch. What a slacker.) I had also made a Louisiana Browned-Butter Pecan Pie the night before, which I proudly showcase below.

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And now for the nonsense…

IMG_1019It is very important that one wears pearls when baking.

Also that one has all of the proper ingredients on hand.

IMG_1023As well as the proper tools.

IMG_1024Begin melting butter and chocolate in a double boiler. This will only work if you wear heels at the same time

IMG_1027What puts the Fancy in Fancy Chocolate Chess Pie? Fine yellow cornmeal.

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Don’t be alarmed if chocolate accidentally gets on your face amidst all of the whisking.

And another thing…spare aprons make excellent capes.

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It would be rather a sin to let any Fancy Chocolate Filling go to waste. Just don’t let your dog lick any up.

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IMG_1054This has been a real, honest-to-goodness portrayal of what it looks like every time I make pie.

(Just kidding.)

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Classic Chess Pie and Related Musings

11 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Chess Pie

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

chess, egg, lemon

I made my first chess pie a couple weeks ago. For my initial musings on this wonderful new genre, scroll down…keep going…there’s the post. It’s called “Chess Pie?”

To answer my own question: Awww yeah.

I flipped back to the beginning of the chapter of Pie entitled “Rich, Sweet, and Simple: Chess, Buttermilk, and Other Custard Pies.” Let’s start at the very beginning…a very good place to start. Classic Chess Pie.

As I mentioned when I was writing about the Angus Barn Chocolate Chess Pie, one feature of chess pies is that they contain eggs. This one contained four. I’ve been particularly excited about cooking/baking with eggs lately as we’ve started buying our eggs from a local lady who has a bunch of chickens (or, “spoiled girls,” as she refers to them) running around her yard. Fresh from the coop, free-range eggs for $3 a dozen….you can’t beat that. Plus they’re pretty. Like a rainbow.

(Check out the size of the white one in the middle….daaaaang.)

So four of these beauties went into my pie, as well as a large lemon (zest and juice) from a church friend’s lemon tree. Love that.

This French dame is getting crushed by the final product! I think the best way to describe the flavor of this one is that it’s kind of like a lemon bar…but the good kind. Not overwhelmingly sweet and nothing fake about it.

And now for the Relating Musings:

1. I do this to Levi (poor Levi) every time. “Leviiiiii…Ken says that this pie is supposed to be VERY dark brown. Would you say that this is VERY dark brown or just DARK brown?” (Like he actually has a better idea than I do…psh.)

But seriously, what do you think? I wouldn’t have said this was VERY dark brown…in fact I think I may have baked it slightly too long because of that description. The texture was still nice…gooey and stuff…but I am unsure that this was the way the pie was supposed to look at the end of the day. Those of you who are experienced in the ways of chess pie (aka Southerners), please chime in.

2. Prebaking crusts. Now. I understand the merit of prebaking, but here’s the thing.  When I partially prebake a crust, I feel like seven times out of ten the end result is a crust that’s just a little bit annoyingly too hard. It doesn’t affect the taste of the pie so much, and isn’t as annoying as a soggy crust would be, but it’s definitely off-putting when you go to cut a piece of crust with a fork and it just doesn’t happen. And then you have to pick up the whole end part of your slice of pie and shove it into your mouth like a caveman. In front of your company. I exaggerate slightly but still. I need to find a balance here…perhaps by cutting down the time I allow the crust to partially prebake? I’ll get back to ya’ll on this.

(After you’ve baked one or two chess pies, you start to develop a Southern accent. Word.)

I agree that this final picture may have been taking things a little too far….but let’s roll with it, shall we?

The chess pieces hungrily eye the remainder of the chess pie. (Except for the knight, who’s oblivious. He’s only a horse, after all.)

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