Pie #56- Fudge Nut January 24, 2013

On Saturday evening, our family had been invited to a dinner party for 16 hosted by Bob and Kathryn Hunter. This meant I needed to bake two pies to feed our group. Coming off of my four-hour pie from the previous post, I was desperate to find a chocolate pie that I could whip out in far less time.

A good friend of mine from my Ohio days, Lisa Blidar (Llama Lisa), sent me a little pie recipe book for Christmas this past year. Lisa and her husband Ron now live in Colorado near my two younger brothers and their families.  And if I have my way this year, I will be baking a pie with her at some point. Let’s hope it is not out of a camp trailer.

I used my mom’s crust recipe. (See below.) With the exception of the pecan garnish on top of one, these Fudge Nut pies are the same.

JAN MOM’S PIE PASTRY

• 1 cup flour + 2 tablespoons
• pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup Crisco vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cold water

Mix flour, salt and oil with a fork. Add water and form into a ball. Roll between two pieces of wax paper. Peel top layer of wax paper off and flip other layer of wax paper and rolled dough onto a 9″ pie pan. Form decorative crust. (Poke holes around rim of crust if single). Bake for 12-14 minutes at 400° or until golden brown if recipe asks for a “baked pastry shell”. Cool on a wire rack.

This is one of two pie crusts I made since I doubled the recipe.

Beautiful fresh eggs from the Rudin family that went into our pies.

My one-bowl filling. All the ingredients are in there. Note the recipe was doubled.

Same filling just garnished differently.

Both pies baking in the oven. Look how high they both rose!

Pie #56- Fudge Nut

Ready to eat with ice cream!

Enjoying the pie project with Fr. Brian and the Rudin and Hunter families! Thanks for a fun evening!

Personal Notes:

• A HUGE thank you to the Hunter family for the gracious invite and delicious dinner. What a fun evening it was!
• Thanks also to the Rudin family chickens for the tasty eggs. I will trade left-over carpet samples (to keep your chicken feet warm) for fresh eggs any time! They are liquid gold. A dozen doesn’t last long at our house.
• Love the recipe book, Lisa! There will be more pies coming out of this little paper treasure!
• This pie was EASY and delicious. All of the dry ingredients came straight out of my pantry with no extra trip to the grocery store needed. Between the pie crusts and the filling, this took me about 35 minutes to assemble.
• This is another version of a chocolate pecan pie…. chocolate + pecan= soooooo good!

#54- Chocolate Pecan Whiskey January 15, 2013

It’s when I have a pie like this that I begin to convince myself I should be making a pie a week for the rest of my life, not just in 2013! Things this good should be eaten weekly, or at least until I am diagnosed with diabetes. Let’s hope I am years away from that. Ha!

I love trying new recipes and this pie proved to be one that knocked it out of the ballpark for me. This one was amazing! All the flavors of chocolate, pecans and whiskey were in each and every bite. And even though I have no idea from what magazine or cookbook I cut this recipe out of, it definitely will be tagged now in a new category as one of my favorites.

My pie crust this time around was the Basic Flaky Pie Pastry from cookbook, Pie, by Ken Haedrich. Also, I should note two other things. One- that I accidentally added 1/2 cup more cornsyrup than the recipe called for, but rather than starting over, I just forgave myself for the mistake and moved on. And two- whipping cream was optional, but in my opinion is a must. This pie is so very rich that the fresh whipped cream really helped me quickly devour my piece and want to indulge myself with seconds.

Pie crust + whiskey = Yum!

Let ‘er Buck! Hats off to Pendleton, Oregon whiskey!

The chocolate, pecan and whiskey filling

Oven ready.

Didn’t come out as pretty as I had hoped. My pie crust shield prevented the crust from burning, but smashed the crust in the process.

Serving up chocolate pecan whiskey pie!

Pie with friends!

Pie #08- Maple Pecan Pie February 23, 2010

Look what Travis and the boys got me for Valentine’s Day!

So this week it is Maple Pecan Pie for my Sweetie-pie!  It’s my post Valentine’s Day pie.  Pecan pie has always been a personal favorite of  Travis and I can’t think of a better way to show him how much I love him than to tempt him with some lovin’ from the oven!

I pulled this recipe from my brand new Pie cookbook by Ken Haedrich.  (In the photo it’s the one on my right with the empty pastry shell)  And after reading parts of the book, let me tell you- Mr. Haedrich is the true “Pie King”.  Brothers Dan and Mark, you can quit your trash talk about who is the better pie maker.  This guy wears the crown in my book.  I never read or seen a more comprehensive resource on pie baking.  Truly, he should retitle his book to be called the Pie Encyclopedia.  There are 300 recipes for pies in this book and the majority of them are sweet pies.  He barely scratches the surface for the savory ones.  And the pie crusts- 21 different crust recipes!  Ge’ez, I could bake a new pie almost every day from this book alone. Could, but won’t.  Once a week is enough for me mainly due to the blogging bogging me down.

Anyway, so here is the Maple Pecan Pie recipe and the Flaky Pie Pastry recipe that is recommended to go with it.

 

Personal Notes:

• I really like mixing my crusts by hand.  But if  I had a bigger food processor, I would probably enjoy that way too.  No doubt it is a faster process.
• I pricked the bottom of this crust before baking like I do with all of my partially baked pie crusts.  This time, I regretted doing so.  When my pie was baked, cooled and ready to serve, my crust stuck to the bottom of the pie plate!  I have never had that happen and needed some serious tools to pry each piece out of the pie plate! The syrupy filling must have seeped through the partially baked crust holes and found its way underneath to the bottom of the crust during the baking.  Then the sticky mess dried to the crust like glue.  
• Did you notice how much filling was left (see photo)?!  I followed the directions exactly and had at least a cup full of filling that would not fit into my pie pastry. Not to be wasteful, I pulled out my cupcake pan and  paper liners and baked the crustless mini pecan tarts for 25 minutes.   These gooey tarts stuck also to the bottom of the liners and were a bit of a challenge to get out.
• Another “feature” of this pie recipe was that it was very gooey in consistency.  My experience with pecan pies up until now has been the filling turns into some what of a solidified structure after the baking process, so that when the pie is cool and cut , pieces can stand-alone (i.e. don’t fall apart).  This was not the case with my pie this time.  It was pie soup. 
• It was a very yummy pecan pie soup, I will add.  I think my Valentine really enjoyed it!  The maple syrup and the touch of almond extract were very noticable and added to the overall aroma and flavoring of the pie.  So I have to rate this pie high on the taste end but low on the presentation end. 
• And I definitely call for a pie mulligan or pie re-do on this one.