Thanksgiving is over. Black Friday deals are done. Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday too. Amazon still doesn't know which PS3 Games I want for Christmas, and I'm still out of ideas for gifts. So how about an intermediate consolation holiday?
National Pie Day!
So I got home late last night, did some grocery shopping and got started baking a pie for national pie day around 9:30.
Geez. So I wanted to make a Blueberry Ginger pie, but I didn't have any lemons or lemon juice. Went with the Pucker Up Raspberry Pie from Vegan Pie in the Sky, with an olive oil double crust. But I didn't have 5 cups of raspberries. So I did 2 cups raspberries, 2 cups blueberries, and 1 cup cranberries. I subbed out 1/4 cup sugar for maple syrup and added about 2 tablespoons turbinado sugar. I guess I'd call this variation Tongue-Tied Triple Berry Pie.
The crust was difficult to work with. It is a delicate dough thanks to the lack of saturated fats (the kind that stay solid at room temperature). As such, the binding of solid fats only obtains for a limited amount of time and below a threshhold of heat and movement.
This led to much frustration. And homicidal thoughts....
I wish I had the hands of a sushi chef; mine may not be little embers of blood vessels, but they were warm enough that I had to keept transferring the dough and utensils back and forth from the freezer to keep it solid. Anyway, eventually I hacked together a crust (actually, the one I laid in the pie dish was very nice, albeit a smidge too small).
The top crust was supposed to be a latticed deal, but i just filled the bottom shell and had to throw the second crust right on top and do some patchwork.
The results, though, were worth every moment of frustration.
I'm sure the recipe's homogenous 5 cups of raspberries would have let the balsamic sing a bit more smoothly. However, the mixed berry approach was really effective. It had all the zing and pucker-up, and I was able to finally do something with the bag of cranberries I bought around Thanksgiving.
Plating may not be my best here, actually it's terrible the slices look runnier than they were since they got microwaved (should have eaten cold or baked it); but the pie wasn't out of the oven until 12:45am last night, and we didn't get to cut into it until 6:50 am.
Still, coffee and pie for breakfast is a good way to start the day
Crust: 2.5 c flour, sifted with 1/4t salt; 1/2 cup solid olive oil cut in, mixed with a solution of 4:1T Ice Water:Apple Cidar Vinegar.
Filling: 2c raspberries (frozen), 2 c blueberries (frozen), 1c cranberries (fresh), 1/2 c cane sugar, 1/4 c maple stirrups, 2T turbinado sugar, 3T tapioca flour, 3/4 t salt, 2 T balsamic.
So I made a pumpkin pie (the Vegan Pie in the Sky adaptation of the Myra Kornfeld pie) with a single crust and a bunch of cookies. Had some leftover dough and made a pyrex-potpie of thanksgiving leftovers (stuffing+green-bean-casserole+gravy+tomato-paste=FTW).
This four-day holiday weekend was the bestest good times. Also, I'm hard at work pulling together an entry or three for the VegNews Holiday Cooking contest (mfg needs a KitchenAid!).
Okay, so actually, I'm hard at work at going to work. I might make some more refinements to the recipe I tried over the weekend; these include subbing one ingredient (fresh for canned), swapping one ingredient for another (root the squash), and doing both with some earthbalance alchemy. I also need to do a write-up on the other recipes from the vegan x-butter cookie-thon. Recipes to follow.
I have paid my dues; so, let the tacit riffing begin.
So the recipe is not intended to turn out like this. The plate above is riffing on the Banana Toffee Pudding Pie. What I did was incorporate a chocolate-banana rad un-whip layer beneath the banoffee layer on a choco-graham-cracker crust. Basically, assuming you already have the recipe and book Vegan Pie in the Sky by Isa Chandra Moskovitz and Terri Hope Romero, it goes like this;
make the graham cracker crust, fold in some cocoa powder; press into the bottom of a springform pan and pre-bake for ten minutes
while it is baking make rad whip, in the process of blending together the ingredients add some melted chocolate chips and a frozen banana and puree until smooth
pour rad un-whip into springform on top of choco-graham cracker crust
begin making butterscotch/pudding layer per instructions in Vegan Pie in the Sky, replace dark brown sugar with turbinado sugar
chop three ripe bananas
once you've finished pudding steps, add it and the bananas per instructions, sprinkle the top with a 1/4 cup chocolate chips
plate with finely chopped chocolate on top
Prettier plating can be had by not using a springform and pressing into a pie pan. If you wish to pretty up the springform version I would recommend 1/4 additional agar and cornstarch.
Friday night, after one day of marinating over the book, and another day getting excited about cooking things from it, and a lunch of ear-marking my copy with post-it flags, we sat down with my copy of Vegan Pie in the Sky: 75 Out-of-This-World Recipes for Pies, Tarts, Cobblers, and Moreby Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terri Hope Romero, and pounded out some Tasty.
I had done much of the pre-shopping Thursday night, but by the time I got home, and realized that I didn't have a rolling pin (yes, this was my big debbie-downer), I panned off cracking open the book and baking. That said, I did read Ghost World instead while Thursday night NBC murmured on in the background; not a bad way to go to get along.
Out of the gate, the book itself is a great package. Beautiful layout, organized flow, great pictures of everything. Simply, utterly edible in and of its CMYK self. I can't wait to bust the binding and have a handy dandy friend to lay and coax me back to the task at hand.
It's a good weight in both the paper stock for being in the kitchen as well as for not being some cumbersome tome or flighty flit of pamphlet. If you're familiar with the prior two volumes (cookies and cupcakes), you will be at home here.
At last. Friday night rolled around, my cook book was inordinately flagged ("Why didn't you just flag the ones you don't want to make?"), and we stopped off at the coop to get some final ingredients (for one thing, Miss Kristin made it clear that it is imperative moving forward to use unbleached a/p flour; but also for coffee, silken, cookies, etc). While we were there, I told Beth she should come over for some baking and Miss Kristin gave her directions. This time I did not as much mean it when I said I would be massacring some pie crusts.
The Digs:
Crusts - (2) Buttery Double (pastry-style) Crust; (1) Oreo Crust (Variant of Graham Cracker crust)
I wanted to ensure a representative sample of both recipes and difficulties. As a complete n00b to baking pies, and making crusts, I wanted to knock out some standards, and have more than one go at the classic buttery double crust. So we did the BCG Cheesecake in the Oreo crust, the other two in buttery doubles (the cherry having a sugar-kissed lazy lattice top crust, the blueberry having a slotted vent whole crust).
The Banana-Chocolate Cheesecake filling was mad-easy, as was its oreo crust; with a food processor and a few minutes to pound out that crust, you will have a quick-setting, quicker-vanishing cheesecake. A key component of many of the cream based recipes is soaked cashew, so there is the required prescience of having a solid amount already soaked.
(Soak 2-3 cups ahead and yer gold)
Aside from that, everything about the Banana-Chocolate Cheesecake was rapidly made, chilled, and consumed with a gravity-defying ease.
The fillings for the other two pies were equally straightforward. The dough for the crust was the more intimidating aspect. I have made a handy amount of pizza dough in my time in a lot of shapes and styles. But pizza is so forgiving, almost to the point of apathy. ["You don't have yeast? You're going to make me chug Genny Cream Ale to get me all gassy? OK. Fine. Whatever. Yes. I will still taste great. Go to hell."]
So I mixed up a nice solid double batch of the buttery double crust dough. Miss Kristin recently got a pastry knife so this task was a bit easier than I was accustomed to (insofar as I cream butter and sugar, which takes a minute). I also sifted the flour something like three or four times. And we refrigerated everything to do with the dough.
We were excited and paranoid like a bunch of high school kids smoking weed in their dad's pot closet
But when I would start to take that paranoia and externalize it, to doubt and double-doubt myself, I just turned to the introductory sections of the book. A great cookbook has something that makes it more than an indexed collection of 3x5" cards in a fancy binding with shiny pictures. A great cookbook has not only a voice, anybody can have a voice (donkey!); but a voice that will talk you down from the ledge. Vegan Pie in the Sky, in line with the rest of the collection, has a great voice and uses every conceivable opportunity to exercise it.
Isa Chandra and Terri Hope(if it is commonplace to drop a first and a middle name for the one, why not the other with such a nice middle name as Hope?) not only lay out a terrific spread of a lexicon at the beginning of the book, but in each recipe there are waypoints to navigate you through the trip-ups of any recipe. This helps not just because you now know your craft a bit better, and you now know what to watch out for, but also you will know how to pick up the strings and mend what goes awry. It's more of a "don't stress over X, here's the nerd-skinny on it." So, if you're at all like me, basically, a lot of times when a recipe contains some archetypal form, and you are looking to master that form, often you can walk away better-informed by failure than by success. The authors do not let an opportunity slip where they can inform an action or step. They also don't burden the book with cumbersome, extraneous details.
They toe the line between giving you all-the-knowledge-you-ever-need-to-improvise-in-the-face-of-impending-doom AND maintaining a pragmatic focus on the steps at hand with an elegant, soft-touch that leaves you ready for anything.
So when it came time to do the crusts, the real crusts, the ones we had lined up for; once we were all exhaled and had drawn our measured breaths and chilled our hands, we were ready.
We [okay, me] were [was] scared but informed and prepared and eager.
After cutting in the fat to the flour, and mixing the wet ingredients, we made liberal use of the tip to incorporate apple cider vinegar into the crust while dividing the batch into two sets of two half batches (i.e. quartering into four crusts).
The first go at dough (the first two crusts) came out less well than the second (the second two crusts). A few contributing factors to be considered;
I formed first dough (FAIL). Beth made second dough (WIN). Period.
------------------------------------------------
possibly more liquid (a.c.v. + aq.) for second half
nicer, caring-est hands for second half (I'm not saying I didn't care, I may have even over worked it, caring too much; just that Beth might have a better touch, she may have lingered a bit more thoughtful)
more resting time (in fridge) for second half
improper fat distribution with first over second half (i.e. second half had nice marbled fat content, first half appeared to be more homogeneous)
It is quite possible I am not thinking of other independent variables. It is also possible that after I am not on my first pie crust I will be all good anyway. My gut tells me, however, that ultimately, the catalyst or other culpable agent for the superiority of the one dough over was Beth's magic hands.
Pure and simple.
Let me qualify this with saying I am totally nit-picking because the end results was fantastic to eat and easy to make because the instructions were delivered in a way even I can understand, which is not to say in some condescending "dummies..." way but in a down to earth conversational, informational, and practical tone.
Yeah, so the first crust was just a bit less elastic, and a smidge more difficult to work with. These are just the factors which may have skewed the crusts, keep them in mind if you do a comparison. I rolled out a half from each set; the second went much better than the first, and was like a wet, stretchy paper towel in terms of durability and usefulness whereas the one I did was temperamental like a wet newspaper.
At the end of the day, the Buttery Double was not only a pleasure to make, bake, and partake; it was emboldening to feel the power to create crust flow through our fingertips.
So we had three pies, and a desire to double-down and crown each. Three batches of Rad Whip on the triple. Done. Miss Kristin has a knack for the cupcakes and frostings, and she totally hit a grand slam on this one. Not only successfully working a huge batch (which always creates marginal shifts in measurements, I don't care what anyone says), but getting each one to piffy puffy peaks and tasty sets. She was also wholly responsible for the amazing Oreo (Newman-O to be precise) crust, and the maintenance of all the inter-phase materials and serving drinks and watching the dog. (Mostly, I just changed songs on the mp3 player and played with the dog and ate food from Miss Kristin's fridge.)
So the modest $11 cover for Vegan Pie in the Sky is definitely worth it for all the vegan empowerment you can contain.
Each recipe and pie was as amazing to cook as it was to eat. The following night, at the pumpkin carving party, a great fun was had, at which all enjoyed the fruits of our collective labor; I would say it was in honor of the pies, but it was to mimic the massacre of orange faces. I'm guessing for the three of us though, there was a place of honor the pies.
There will be an awakening of personal gods you had not previously known or convened; and it will be good.
There is an archetype of the Great Giving Pie; a Crust for all Seasonings. It showers its blessings and gives us a reason for sweets and savories. If you have never touched this structure in your ego, and want to find that part of yourself come into being, then you need this cook book.
Dig in on a dark night with a sturdy crew. Plot a course (the digs above worked well for an introduction, but I get the impression any collection more suited to your palette will do equally well). Wake up not just the body and the mind, but be willing to awaken your primal, pie-baking Monster. Stock up in advance and be prepared, for here, there be dragons.
Also, made the Blueberry Lemon Corn Biscuit Cobbler (p.84). Super fun, super easy, super tasty. Like every other recipe so far. Planning on getting hot and heavy with the Boston Cream Pie (p.167) either tonight or tomorrow. I'm super glad to be consistently bringing the inner deity out in my kitchen. If you want a hitchhiker's guide for this, Pie in the Sky is your way to go.
The cobbler may seem like the easy way out of making a pie, but there is also the fact that, after cooking dinner and breakfast, sometimes you need a great pick me up for October-feels-like-November days. This recipe has the kind of pick me up that says, "you may not be in the warmest clime, but with me inside you have a kindling energy to last days."
(Note: if, like me, you opt for a 13x9" casserole dish, instead of the recommended 9" deep dish pie pan, I recommend either doublling the recipe, or doing at least the biscuits @ 150% quantity. You get the vibe from it being so spread out that it's less symmetrical than it was designed to be, though it still tastes great)
7:13AM in 
