Summer Pies

Summer has arrived and gardening has taken priority over just about everything in my life. Watering my plants to keep them alive is a daily activity, along with keeping weeds at bay and deadheading the withered blooms.  But my garden obsession has not kept me from pursuing my other obsession: making pies! Recently, I saw a local book about pies that I decided to add to my collection. It is called A Year of Pies:  A Seasonal Tour of Home Baked Pies, and written by Ashley English. Ashley English lives in Candler, N.C. and I had seen some of her articles in local publications. I particularly remember one in which she talked about her love of pie making. At the time that I read it, I thought it sounded like something that I would enjoy, even though I did not get into pie making until several years later. But I always wanted to try some of Ms. English's pies and have begun to prepare some of her treats..

I started out with the Strawberry Crumble Pie with Lemon Verbena Whipped Cream. This sounded fascinating to me, as I have never used fresh lemon verbena in a recipe. Fresh strawberries are great this time of the year. The filling consisted of strawberries, sugar, and cornstarch. The crust was a basic butter crust on the bottom, but a crumble topping of flour, salt, brown sugar, and butter. The chopped lemon verbena is used in the whipped topping of heavy cream, and powdered sugar. The lemon verbena is mixed with the cream, and allowed to steep in the refrigerator for 4 hours. It is then strained and whipped with the powdered sugar. This pie was very easy, and a very different version of a fresh strawberry pie. The whipped topping was flavorful with the strawberries and slight lemon flavor.

The second recipe was my altered version of the the Lattice Top Triple Berry Pie. The original recipe calls for blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Since my husband doesn't particularly care for blackberries, I used only the blueberries and raspberries. Ginger and cinnamon gave the pie a nice and unique flavor. This pie was slightly too tart by itself, in my opinion, but a dollop of ice cream was just what was needed! The berries were very fresh and in season. Were I were to make this pie again, I would add just a little more sugar, and this would be perfect even without the ice cream.

My most recent pie discovery was the Minty Chocolate Cream Pie. This pie is like an old fashioned pudding chocolate pie, with sweetened chocolate, sugar, milk, eggs, and cornstarch. The whipped topping called for peppermint extract to give the pie a twist on the original chocolate pie. When I made this pie, I was not in a peppermint mood, and used vanilla extract instead of the peppermint. The pie was light, creamy, and very refreshing. The prebaked pie crust in this pie book was very good, with a nice flaky texture. This was a really delicious, light pie for summer, and I will definitely make it again. It is my favorite pie from the book thus far.

So, I will continue to explore new pie recipes in my growing collection of pie cook books. (I own three different ones now). Pie making is a great hobby, and I have learned that other people love pies almost as much as I do. With the hot, sticky weather right now, I think I will stay inside and bake pies instead of spending all of my free time in the garden! Or I will make my pie and then enjoy eating it in my garden!