French Peach Pie

I am in grave danger of doing it again. Here I am after another couple of weeks with no pie production and no blogging either.

I did make a pie a few weeks ago. It seems as though ever since, at least one of us has been sick (and me nearly the entire time). That is my excuse, and I am sticking with it!

The last pie... French Peach. It was quite good, although sadly, it was not made with fresh peaches, and included some less than homemade elements. Ah well, it was still pie. It could have been worse. It could have been a lesser dessert.

The obligatory picture...

Hoping for this weekend to get back on track. I would never let a minor distraction like a Super Bowl dissuade me from baking, that is for certain.

Only four left now.

Banoffee Pie

A strange name, with a simple explanation. Apparently, this is the pie in England. And with the reputation of British cuisine, I knew it had to be good. Anyway, back to that name. Once you see the ingredients list... bananas and what we here call caramel, apparently toffee across the pond (wow, am I culturally illiterate). Banana+Toffee = Banoffee. Some eaters of this pie were partial to Toffanana. Spelled either way, this one was a pretty universal success.

This pie, as much as any I recall, was a true amalgamation of multiple, multiple recipes. In the end, this one is probably the closest to what I actually made. Boiling sweetened, condensed milk was an interesting, albeit somewhere south of thrilling experience. Somewhere deep, deep in the recesses of my feeble mind, I recall hearing of that as a mechanism for producing caramel, but I don't recall where. I am not exactly sure if I should have kept it going for another hour, or if that portion of the pie was supposed to be pretty runny. It did not quite set up as I may have expected (you can see that in the picture below), but that flaw was definitely not catastrophic.

Other thoughts:

• I am a week late making this pie. It happens.
• I have not made a no-bake graham cracker crust before. I was concerned (change is difficult for some of us), but it turned out just fine
• I was floored by the recipe calling for a cup of butter in the crust. I could not bring myself to do it and so I didn't. A 1/2 cup worked out just fine.
• I love ginger and in this case it went extremely well with the other flavors in the pie. It has to be fresh grated, though (Does that make me a foodie, or just a snob? Do these jeans make me look fat?). Several other recipes that I looked at used ginger snaps for the crust. I doubt they have the same effect.
• I did not get to try the fully constructed pie. The work crowd managed to consume all of it, so this pie's rating will be based on their feedback. That feedback was good enough, however, that I think there is a great chance that I will be making this one for familial consumption very soon.
• If and when I make it again, I am really leaning towards making "toffee" from scratch rather than what feels more than a little bit like cheating with the milk boiling. I cannot imagine that going well (remember rule #1: I am an idiot). Should be a blast!

What is next? I have a few listener suggestions in the hopper, and there are only five more to go. I may actually make it; the finish line is in sight.

Christmas: Almond-Amaretto Pumpkin Chiffon

I cannot really say what my pie baking inspiration was this week. But, I was inspired. And, while there were some bumps in the road, the final product was, for me at least, worth it. I made two pies for our family's Christmas meal. Egg Nog, due to its popularity a couple of Christmas's ago, and a pumpkin variation, based on a couple of recipes that I found particularly inviting. There were some tense moments (one might assume that I would know what I am doing by now, but no... apparently not), and the pumpkin turned out somewhat less than perfect, but despite the difficulties and minor snafus, I really liked both constructing and eating the pie.

I don't remember making many pies where the solidifying agent was gelatin. There must have been at least one because otherwise I do not know why we would have plain gelatin packets around -- and we do.

You may already be able to tell where this is going.

There are steps in the recipe(s) -- and therefore in my bastardization of those recipes as well -- where you have to heat and stir (heat and stir!) until slightly thickened. What does slightly thickened mean? A little bit thicker than I went with is my new and improved answer.

There I was on Christmas, slightly thickening, cooling, adding other ingredients, allowing to set up... and it just did not appear to be happening. Perhaps the fact that several hours of set up time were in a styrofoam cooler in the back of an SUV did not help matters?

Once the pie was mercifully allowed to rest in an honest-to-goodness refrigerator things improved, but were still a bit on the shaky side (both figuratively and literally in this case). Nearly 24 hours later, it at least resembled an edible dish, and actually looked kind of nice. Topped with some toasted almonds and amaretto whipped cream it was not too bad.

If I had to do it all over again (I believe we have firmly established that I do not), I would make a couple of adjustments.

1. Slightly more thickened
2. Reduce the sugar in the pie (the Amaretto is soooo sweet, with the sugar it is a bit much)
3. I would not sweeten the whipped cream at all, but would just infuse it with a little Amaretto (same reason)

Even with some adjustments to be made, I still liked it a lot, particularly the toasted almonds as a nice texture change.

I am not making a pie this week due to the holidays and corresponding lack of people around to eat whatever I concoct. I expect that I will compile something over the weekend for the work crowd next week.