National Pie Day: Eat a Piece of Pie

For the past three years, I have been obsessed with making and writing about pies. It all started when a friend sent me a book for my birthday called  The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, by Emily and Melissa Elsen. I have always loved pies, and decided that it might be a fun experiment to study the delicious looking recipes in the book, and try to make as many of them as I could. It has been a sweet adventure so far, as I eat my way through the pie world.

Making a pie crust is a satisfying task to me. For years, I would simply buy a pre-made crust when I made a pie. But the Elsen sisters insist in their book that one should at least try to make a basic butter crust, because, they argued, it would make a tasty pie even better. I remembered how much I enjoyed the pies of my Grandma Dukes, who made a delectable pie crust. She didn't use a recipe, as I recall. After I started to make my own, I realized how much better the homemade version tastes, and it is worth the extra trouble. And I actually enjoy working with the dough - it is therapeutic in a strange way.

I have been making my way through the pie book, but have not yet made all of them. The problem is that I want to repeat making the pies that are my favorites, so I am not always motivated to make a new one! And after all, there are only 7 days in a week, and I simply cannot make a pie every day. (although it is sometimes tempting).

 This is probably my all time favorite pie, The Salted Caramel Apple Pie from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie book. Just a perfect pie, and almost everyone's favorite.

Lavender Honey Custard Pie

Malted Chocolate Pecan Pie

Maple Orange Walnut Pie

Key Lime Gingersnap Crust Pie

All of these pies are from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, except for the Maple Orange Walnut and the Gingersnap Key Lime, that are both from A Year in Pies, by Ashley English.

For National Pie Day, I am making the Lemon Chess Pie pictured below. Happy Pie Day! Remember to eat a piece of pie, and enjoy every bite. Don't worry about the New Year's resolution you may have made about not eating sweets. It is just one day - and there is always tomorrow to exercise it off!

Happy Pie New Year: Chocolate, Coffee, and Orange Marmalade Tart

It has been quite some time since I tried making a new pie. One of the purposes of this blog has been to experiment with different pie recipes, and I decided to start the New Year with with a resolution to make a pie that I had been wanting to make for a long time. The pie is "Chocolate, Coffee, and Orange Marmalade Tart", and is a recipe by Ashley English in her book A Year of Pies. The pics of this pie were awesome, and I knew that I wanted to taste this tart. But the thing that was making me hesitate was the complexity of the preparation, particularly of the orange marmalade filling. After looking at that pie picture this weekend, however, I knew that it was now or never!

The marmalade is actually the first step to this recipe. It calls for oranges, orange peel, vanilla bean, sugar, lemon, and water. The oranges and orange peel are cut into very small pieces. The seeds are removed, but then added to a cloth tea bag to help with thickening. (Apparently, unbeknownst to me until making this pie, citrus seeds contain pectin that is a thickening agent needed in jams and jellies). I learned this fact because I realized that the naval oranges I bought had few if any seeds. I made a trip to the store to get regular old oranges full of seeds. To my dismay, my regular store only had naval oranges. So I headed to another store, and another, all with the same conclusion: people prefer seedless oranges so much that stores cater to their customers' desires and now only sell naval oranges! Upon reading that all citrus seeds contain pectin, I then decided that I could use my lemon seeds, which I did. I cooked this orange mixture, and then had to let in sit covered in the pot overnight, per instructions.

The next step was the chocolate cookie crust, which the author described as delicious and much better than the store bought crusts. The recipe consisted of chocolate water cookies and butter, which sounded easy enough, although I had personally never heard of water cookies. I assumed it was a misprint, and that the author meant to say "wafer" cookies, so I looked for them at my usual grocer. Again I struck out with several groceries, none of which carried either wafer or water cookies. My patience was beginning to wear at this point, so I made the decision to compromise: I would make a chocolate graham cracker crust, that I had made before.

The last part of the recipe was the piece de resistance, the chocolate ganache. This part looked pretty simple, with bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and coffee combined to make the ganache. But I first decided to taste my orange marmalade, which had been cooling for a while now. I tasted, and unfortunately could not get over the tartness. Tartness can be great combined with sweetness, but I knew that this was too tart for me. So I again headed to my usual store to purchase store bought orange marmalade, which I would compare with my homemade batch. This time, my usual store had a lovely looking organic version, which I purchased. I decided to combine a little of the store bought marmalade with my homemade. This was a sweeter, but still nicely tart mixture, so I decided to do half and half store bought/homemade marmalade for the filing.Finally, I made the ganache, which looked heavenly, and I constructed the tart: orange marmalade over chocolate crust, then ganache on top. I cooled for several hours as per the recipe.

I must say that after all of that work, I had pretty high expectations for this tart. It looked like a masterpiece when I removed the tart from the springform pan. I was excited as I tasted the first bite, which did not disappoint, I am happy to say! The ganache was rich and and luscious, and would make a great pie by itself. The marmalade was just tart enough to make a nice contrast with the ganache and chocolate crust. We each had 2 slices, so this is also a testament to its flavor.

So the question is: would I make this pie again? The answer is "yes", with a few changes. First, I would buy the store bought marmalade and probably not make the author's homemade recipe. The preparation time for the homemade was not worth it, considering there was an excellent store bought option. Secondly, I would consider making the "water" cookies, which I found online as an easy looking recipe. (basically, the recipe does not contain eggs, like most cookies). I will say that my first New Year's resolution,, making this pie, was more difficult than I had imagined. Hopefully, my other resolutions will not be so hard to keep. Happy New Year's and Happy Pie Making and Eating!