Week #8 October 18 - 24

This week I made two pies because it was my last week at my current office after being there for nine months. An advantage or some would say disadvantage of my job is that I travel through rotations in different areas of the country. I'm currently in Milwaukee, WI. It's a real great city, but I've been missing my Sandy a lot.

Back to the story, I made a cinnamon chocolate angel food pie as my new pie of the week. I was looking for a pie with cinnamon and chocolate. Here is the recipe.

What made this different from other pies that I had made was that there was a layer of meringue on the bottom. I'm yet to make a pie with meringue on top, so needless to say I wasn't exactly thrilled about trying this out. I couldn't get it thick enough, but decided to try baking it in the oven for the time it called for. It basically exploded. But, it did go down. Then I added the other layers.



I actually didn't get a piece, because it went too quickly. But, all of my coworkers really enjoyed it. The other pie I made was the spiced apple and pear. Another hit. Made me feel good that people appreciate it so much.

Week #7 October 11 - 17

There has been a few weeks break in the blog. However, I have still been making my pies. I tried to switch it up during week 7 and make a savory pie. I decided on a tomato pie. Overall, it was pretty decent, but I felt like it was lacking something. Here is the recipe.




This picture is before the cheese/mayo mixture is put on top. The bacon gives it some body and flavor. But I think that in general, this pie needs to be eaten with something, perhaps a soup or salad.



More to come soon.

Week #6 October 4 - October 10

Where I work, we have a weekly potluck lunch each Thursday. People that are interested sign up to make lunch for others that take part. This past week it was my turn. I made two soups: apple, cheddar, onion (veg) and pasta, chickpea, and sausage. Both turned out great. I also made two pies: the chocolate peanut butter and mixed berry.

Holding true to my promise to myself, I made the crusts for both pies. I found a recipe on chow.com, which is a great resource for recipes and food topics on the web.



The dough was easy enough to make. And I blind baked the crust. Because I was already making a custard/chocolate style pie, I wanted to make a fruit pie. I decided on mixed berry, because I was in Aldi, and saw some frozen mixed berries.



Overall, a success. Everyone enjoyed. I served it with fresh whipped cream. I'll post the recipe when I find it. One thing that I noticed was that the filling was more liquidy than I would have liked.

Week #5 September 27 - October 3

I have a co-worker that recently put in his two week notice. A good guy, that will be missed from my department. I believed him when he said it was the hardest decision he had to make in a while. Regardless, I asked him what his favorite pie was that I could make for his last day. He gave me a few options, and the best one for me to make was a key lime.

Normally, I would wait until next spring to make a key lime. It is easily one of my favorite pies. I've made it before, but always the easy cool whip version. Not this time. My first time making the true egg yolk, real whip cream version. The one thing I couldn't get was true key limes. I intend to make this pie again with true key limes. Here is the recipe I used.

But it was my first attempt at a homemade crust. For this pie, I made a graham cracker crust.



Instead of fresh key lime juice, I used bottled lime juice. Not ideal. But it's the way it is. True key lime pies are actually a custardy yellow, due to the egg yolks that get beaten with the sweetened condensed milk. What is nice with this version is the fact that there are layers of key lime goodness, with whip cream on top. With the cool whip version, it is all combined into one.

So I made the pie on Thursday night, which has become the typical night I make pies. But my co-worker wasn't to be at work on Friday. I'm not sure the whole story, because I was away recruiting on Wednesday and Thursday. All I know if that his last day ended up being Tuesday. So as silly as it sounds, I wasn't as excited to make it, knowing that he wouldn't be able to try it. My co-workers all enjoyed it. Here is a picture of the finished product.