Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Really Big Apple Pie

My roommate Devin requested an apple pie for his going-away dinner (which he's had about 10 of in the past week). I've tried several different styles of apple pie, but I've generally settled on lattice/crumb top pie as my go to.

General technique:

- Crust - Standard crust with lattice top
- Apples - I generally prefer honeycrisp apples, sliced flat (not wedge)
- Filling - There are countless methods for prepping apple pie filling. apples collapse while cooking and various oven temperatures/cooking times affect the finished pie. i do all my baking in a rental apartment stove, so i find using a filling of sliced apples, applesauce and some spice is more forgiving and you get a consistent quality pie.
- top with a mash of flour and butter



The first pie I ever made was an apple pie that Devin, Sebastian and I ate in one sitting. It was unholy and delicious. This pie wasn't quite as good, I sorta over did it shoving apples into this thing, and it all came out looking pretty ugly. But there was nothing wrong with it that a scoop of ice cream couldn't cure.

Cons-It was ugly

Pros-It was delicious



(in this picture you can see devin's blood pressure meds next to the pie, awesome )

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Thin Ice-Cream Mint Pie

I wanted to make a pie crust out of thin mint cookies (cause why not right?), so i made this creature in honor of St Patricks day, sorta a mint/cream/ice cream/girl scout cookie pie.




Actually, that's exactly what it is. I put oreo ice-cream (i had intended to use vanilla and add mint extra, but i apparently blacked out while at the grocery store and grabbed the wrong stuff) on top of a thin-mint girl scout cookie crust and topped with chocolate fudge topping and cool-whip dyed green mixed with above mentioned mind extract. (I had intended to whip up real cream, but Ben had used up all our cream by dipping oreos in it. apparently he prefers heavy cream to milk. ya)

Pros - Thin Mints make killer pie crust.

Cons - The fudge topping was melted chocolate, butter and brown sugar. It got ROCK SOLID in the freezer and was pretty much inedible. I also (1) didn't wait long enough for it to cool so it melted the ice-cream as i spread it, impatientence is a common theme, and (2) didn't spread it evenly so the weight pushed the half melted ice cream, see item (1), around the pie so there were pockets of pure fudge and pockets of pure ice cream.

additional pros - it was fucking delicious.

additional cons - i chipped all my teeth