Tag Archives: pear

An Heirloom Pie

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Pear Pie

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Two years ago, I was given this recipe for a Cranberry Pear Pie by my friend Marilyn. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to make it, but make it I did for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, and I want to say a great big thank you to you now, Marilyn. Thank you so much for sharing your special recipe! Everyone who tried the pie was absolutely delighted with it.

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The method of assembling the filling of this pie was the reverse of what I’m used to. Usually I start with the fruit in a bowl and add sugar, lemon, spices, and later on (after the fruit has had a chance to juice) the thickener, whether it’s cornstarch, tapioca, or flour. For Marilyn’s Cranberry Pear Pie, start by mixing together the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cinnamon, and salt) and then mixing in lemon juice, cranberry sauce, and finally the pears, gently. For pears, this makes so much sense; it’s better that they weren’t stirred around so much but were just coated in all the other ingredients before being tucked into the pie. If you try this pie yourself, please do use absolutely beautiful, flavorful, perfectly ripe pears as I had the fortune of using. (Here I go with my advertising again, but mine were Trader Joe’s Organic D’Anjou.)

Marilyn, since we share some family members, I was excited to let my aunt and your granddaughter Jenna and my cousin and your great-granddaughter Kylie know that this pie I had made was from your recipe.

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I hope all of your holidays were wonderful, with full plates and full hearts! As always, thanks for reading.

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Pears of Yore

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by in Pear Pie

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Why have I not posted for two months? Why have I not posted the pies I made for CHRISTMAS when it’s MAY?!

These are the burning questions that I constantly struggle with.

I made the delightful Streusel-Topped Pear Pie with Walnut Crust last Christmas Eve. Levi’s family has a get-together on that night and I’ve brought pies to the celebration for as long as I’ve been grafted into the Sommerville clan…Pear and Fig with a Pine Nut Crust and Chocolate Cream with Cinnamon Meringue were last year’s stars. Dried Cranberry and Walnut Pie the year before that…

I love it when pies have secret ingredients.

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Yes, very often “secret ingredient” is synonymous with liquor. After adding this pear brandy to the pie, we sipped it alongside the finished product and it was not at all a bad plan.

Nutty Pie Pastry made with walnuts…check. IMG_5267

Christmas Eve Morning Piefie…check. IMG_5268

Along with brandy, these pears are tossed in lemon, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt and are warmly luminescent in the morning light.

(Sometimes I just make up flowery sentences to see if you’re still paying attention.)IMG_5269

The pears are topped with what Ken calls a “blond streusel” which basically just means it has none of the dark ingredients that often make it into a pie topping (brown sugar, cinnamon…) and all of the white ones (cream, butter, white sugar, you know, all the healthiest food groups. If you know me you know I have no fear of the butter.)

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What’s next??

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What a trick! That’s not a pie, that’s a baby nephew on his first Christmas!

Here’s the pie, in all it’s pear-ish resplendence. I’d heartily recommend trying this recipe at any time of year. IMG_5277

“So, this was Christmas…

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Chocolate Pie, Cream Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie

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…and what have you done?”

Not kept my blog up to date, that’s for a surety.

Let’s not dwell on the fact that these pies were made at Christmastime. Just ignore Levi’s “Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal” sweater in the picture below, which was supposed to be a selfie with a pie (the pie was in the basket) but instead you can just see Levi and I, so I guess instead of a piefie, I ended up with a spousie.

IMG_2422Also, please forgive the fact that nearly every picture below, taken while putting together the astonishingly beautiful Pear and Fig Pie with a Pine Nut Crust, shows off my glittery holiday manicure.

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This pie is made with dried figs, which I don’t love half so much as the fresh figs that my Great-Uncle Benny somehow grew every summer in his concrete backyard. Still, the combination of fig, pear, honey, and pine nut is really a delight.

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Trader Joe’s should pay me for all the advertising I do for them. HONESTly. IMG_2418 IMG_2419

To make the crust, just roll out a standard crust and then sprinkle the pine nuts over the top and gently press them in, your fantastic fingernails guiding the rolling pin.IMG_2420

When glazed with milk and sugar and baked, this pie truly looks like a masterpiece. Studding the top crust with nuts would be a fun trick for a variety of pies…just keep an eye out for burning and be prepared to tent the pie with aluminum foil for part of the baking if needed.

So here’s something that happens often. (As in, every time I make more than one pie at a time.) I do a swell job documenting the process of whatever pie I start first. Then, by the time I remember that I still have a whole other pie to make and it’s probably past my bedtime already, I don’t bother with all the pictures and just take one token one of the finished product. I have way fewer pictures of this Chocolate Cream Pie with Cinnamon Meringue. 

Point to ponder: Is that what’s going to happen when I have two children…?

IMG_2421Let it be known; this was MY FIRST EVER MERINGUE. I kid you not. I’ve been making new pies for going on five years now and I’ve never made a stinkin’ meringue before. And look how purty it turned out. I’m such a proud mama.

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Pies, Pies, and More Pies

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in Apple Pie, Berry Pie, Mini Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie, Original Pies

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It’s March already? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Let’s get down to business. First of all, I would like to announce that the Five-Spice Pear-Apple pies I mailed out during Thanksgiving week made it safely to their destinations.

timIronically, I’m pretty sure that standard mail to Australia is faster than priority mail to Georgia, Illinois, or Virginia. What in tarnation?! Lesson: The United States Postal System is an abject failure.

Eric Lange, my official domestic tester in Virginia, sent me this lovely ditty after receiving and consuming the pie:

“O Apple-Pear 5 Spice

You are so good and nice

You make my taste buds sing

You are the greatest thing!

A brown box in the mail

Delivered, without fail

A complete, delish pie

I was one lucky guy!”

Eric, you are the greatest thing.

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Following that mini-pie episode, I embarked on another of epic proportions before Christmas, making about 30 pies to give as holiday gifts to the wonderful and devoted teachers I work with and some of my faraway family in New Jersey and Georgia.

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Just one of the fillings I used was a recipe from Ken Haedrich’s book: All-Pear Pie with Maple and Candied Ginger. I’d been meaning to try this pie for so long (it’s one of my cousin Carly’s favorites, and she gave me the cookbook so she ought know). Funny thing is, I didn’t gift myself one of these pies, so I’ll be no doubt re-doing this recipe so I can actually have some. (I did have one bite of a friend’s, to be fair. But it wasn’t enough.)

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The next two fillings were my own made-up combinations. Here’s the Cran-Apple Spice; I love how beautiful the fresh cranberries are and the sourness they bring to the table. I choose sour flavors over sweet every time and I have to say that I thought this pie was a win-win combination of both.

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And here is the Honey-Apple-Raspberry filling, looking like a bit of a mess. But yum.

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Mini-pie manufacturing is no piddling job. By the time you make multiple batches of crust, a few fillings, crumbs for the topping, labels for the tops…you’re looking at a long night.

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The three pies below traveled not by car, not by mail, but by carry-on. This conversation happened.

TSA agent: I’m going to have to re-run your bag, miss.

Me in my head: Crap.

TSA agent: What are these?

Me: They’re pies….in jars.

TSA agent: Pies in jars?? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!! (Calls other TSA agents to marvel over the coolness that is pie-in-a-jar.)

TSA agent: I think I’m going to have to keep one of these…*laughs*

Me: I’ll make an extra one just for you next time I come through *smiles*

Would this have happened at any other time besides Christmas? Doubtful. But I loved it.

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While we’re on the subject of mini pies (which, as it turns out, is more often then not…) for the third year in a row, I had the opportunity to contribute pie to a bake sale supporting my students. (Last year I sent this batch of minis…the year before I had not yet perfected the art of sending pie traveling and sent two whole pies to be sliced and sold.)

I made another Honey-Apple-Raspberry filling (since they had been pretty popular the last time ’round) and a Blueberry-Pear filling with cardamom and maple syrup, both my own recipes. I think I have figured out a pretty exact ratio for mini pie filling; the amount of filling that would fit into one largish normal pie fits roughly into nine jars. Okay, perhaps “exact” isn’t the right word, but it’s a helpful rule to follow. So the filling below made 18 mini pies. And the filling overflowed, so I really could have done 19, or 20.

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This was the first year I was able to see the bake sale in person (and I forgot to take any pictures, wouldn’t you know!) By the time I got there, the sale had been going on for perhaps two hours and most of my pies were already gone. I hope they were thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks so much to those who bought them or supported the Palm Springs bake sale in any other fashion. Over $1600 was raised for the Christadelphian Heritage School!

As always, thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a reminder…PI DAY IS NEXT FRIDAY!

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Let me know if you’re planning on celebrating.

Better Late Than Never…

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Apple Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie

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I made another round of Pies-in-Jars today!

Due to certain circumstances, some of which are explained in this post (the rest can be chalked up to the fact that I take a long time to get around to doing things), I hadn’t yet been able to send my official domestic and international testers their Pies-in-Jars that I’d promised them back in April.

But thanks to my school’s week-long Thanksgiving break (for which I am truly, deeply, thankful) I was able to bake, box, and ship the belated little goodies this morning. Phew!

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(I should probably mention that we didn’t get a new dog. Rags is just visiting for the holiday week while his mom and dad celebrate their first anniversary in Cancun. The best things about Rags are how much he loves to cuddle and how much he looks like a stuffed animal. Or a mop, come to think of it.)

I used the Five-Spice Pear-Apple Pie recipe from Pie and then just divided it up into my little jars…I ended up with enough filling to make nine. I had leftover crumb topping and used just slightly less than two single pie crusts.

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Here’s what the pies looked like straight out of the oven. Super tall and bubbly! They settled down some within a minute or two of resting. I got the lids on, no problem, and tried my best to wipe the sticky off the sides.

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Oh. Oops. It’s supposed to be Pear-Apple Pie…meh.

photo-13And now, most of these jars are winging their way through the postal offices of the country/world. We await news of their arrival and sincerely hope that they have smooth landings. Stay tuned!

Summer Solstice

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Apple Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie, Original Pies, Summer Fruit Pie

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On the afternoon of the Summer Solstice, Grandmother was taking her well-earned daily nap, Aunt Sarah and cousin Matt were swimming off the dock, and Levi and Uncle Joe were shopping til they dropped at Gander Mountain. Granddad and I worked on a puzzle and made this pie. He has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember much of anything these days, but I think baking is a relatively familiar territory for the following reasons.

1.       He has eaten possibly hundreds of my Grandmother’s delicious pies (blueberry and apple are the best kinds.)

2.       “Grandfather bread” is a term used in my family to refer to the amazing bread he used to make every week in his bread machine. Grandmother has since taken over the breadmaking (Zante currant is the best kind.)

3.       He used to be a research chemist, and what is baking, really, other than edible chemistry? (Post-Its and Scratch and Sniff were some of the best projects he worked on.)

IMG_0941I told Granddad that we were going to make an “Experiment Pie,” meaning that I had no recipe to follow. He laughed and stirred the filling: rhubarb, an apple, a pear, a little bit of pomegranate-lime juice, a squeeze of lemon juice, lemon zest, orange zest, powdered ginger, and nutmeg.

IMG_0939Butter pats go on top, because more butter is more better.

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IMG_0944IMG_0955That evening–the sun didn’t set until ten–there was a Summer Solstice feast of epic proportions at the cabin.

There was a strawberry jicama salad from neighbor-friend Jackie.IMG_0951IMG_0952There was a pile of crispy walleye and bass straight from the St. Croix.

IMG_0953IMG_0954And to top it all off, we enjoyed a trio of pies (Experiment Pie, the Nectarine-Lime Pie of yesterday’s post, and a Grandmother Marie Apple Pie).

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Pie-in-a-Jar!

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Apple Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie, Summer Fruit Pie

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Pie-in-a-Jar is as exciting as it sounds.

  • They’re pies. In JARS.
  • They’re so super cute.
  • I think they would hold up really well in the mail. Big question is whether they’ll hold up internationally. Now taking domestic and international volunteers to help me test this theory out.

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A year ago, I send some normal pie pies (as opposed to pie-in-a-jar pies) to a bake sale in Palm Springs benefitting the school I teach at. You can read that post here. This year, I was asked to contribute again to the same sale. I decided to make mini pies in jars this year after pondering the following key points.

  • What’s better than a slice of pie? A whole pie to yourself.
  • What’s more socially acceptable than eating a whole pie? Eating a whole mini pie.
  • What’s easier to transport than a jar with a lid?…Nothing.

(My points just seem to be rolling out in groups of three this evening.)

This post from Our Best Bites provided me with some inspiration, and even comes with some rather adorable labels to top your jars with. It’s worth checking out if you’re interested in making your own pies-in-a-jar. For my part, I did what I usually do…read some blog posts on the subject at hand, then decided not to follow any of the recipes after all. So, in all accuracy, I probably couldn’t replicate these exact mini pies ever again.

(Awkward silence as you ponder how unhelpful of a blog writer I really am…)

I made two types of pies-in-a-jar; a pretty basic apple pie with lots of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, lemon and lemon zest) and a pear and mixed berry pie (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, almond extract).

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I love how they look here, all packaged up and ready to travel!

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Have you ever tried baking pies (or anything else) in a jar? I would love to hear:

  • Stories about YOUR mini pie experiences, or questions about mine.
  • Interest in being a mail-tester for a pie-jar (depending on the number of comments I receive, I’ll put your name in a drawing.)
  • Which of the two above flavors you would have purchased had YOU attended the bake sale?

One of Those Times

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Berry Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie

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I just love fruit pies. Have I mentioned that before? Love, love, love ’em. Especially mixed fruit pies, like this Pear-Raspberry Lattice-Top Pie.

If you’ve never made a lattice-top pie before, don’t worry. It’s super duper easy. Here’s one good trick from Ken to get you started right…shape the pastry which will become the top crust into a square (as opposed to a disk) before rolling!

I like to roll my pie crust between two pieces of wax paper–it just makes the process so much easier. For extra ease, I also refrigerate the pastry before rolling it out. This isn’t as necessary for oil-based crusts, but it’s an important step if you use a solid fat like butter and/or shortening.

Another lattice trick: use a pizza cutter to cut strips of crust! (I made eight strips and followed the clever diagram given in Pie, which makes the actual assembly of the lattice a cinch.)

The color of this pie is gorgeous. It doesn’t smell too shabby coming out of the oven, either.

I was happy to be able to share this pie with several good friends of ours. As we were eating our first slices, Levi asked if this might not be “One of those times” where it would be appropriate to just cut the rest of the pie up and finish it right then and there. Indeed, it did turn out to be the thing to do.

Along with mixed fruit pies, I love eating outside in the summer, twinkle lights, glasses of wine, and good company.