217. Pecan Pumpkin Pie (p. 768)

Sometimes, when you try to do two things at once, you end up doing neither very well.

The Book calls this recipe "the ideal solution for people who can't decide whether to bake pecan pie or pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving." The result, however, was less than impressive, I'm sorry to say.

This pie is basically the turducken of pies. It starts out with a single-crust pie shell, which has been blind-baked. Then there is a thin layer of pumpkin pie filling, which is a bit thicker than the traditional filling recipe. Finally, it's topped off with a layer of pecan pie filling, spooned over the pumpkin. The finished pie was, as I said, a bit of a disappointment. The flavor of the pumpkin pie filling was a little bland. Maybe not enough salt, or not enough spices. The textures of the two fillings didn't work that well together, either.

Next year, I'm going to make a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie, and have a slice of each. It's Thanksgiving after all, a day when there's no such thing as too much dessert.

Date Cooked: November 24, 2010
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: C

198. Lattice-Crust Peach Pie (p. 762)

The one good thing about having a backlog of recipes to write about is that it lets me pretend that it's still summer, and not cold and rainy out like it actually is.

I made this recipe* to bring to a pot-luck picnic at a co-worker's farm back in August. It came out pretty well, and that's not just me boasting. Someone at the picnic, who didn't know what I brought, told me that I should save some room for dessert because "someone brought a great-looking peach pie." I just smiled.

A lot of pies in The Book call for the standard Basic Pastry Dough for the crust. This recipe, however, has its own special crust recipe. What's so special about it, you ask? Well, that would be the lard, which makes the crust extra tender and flaky. It really makes a difference compared to a butter or vegetable shortening crust.

To make the crust, I blended together (using my fingertips) some flour, a little bit of salt and a half-pound of cold lard cut into bits until it started to look like beach sand. Then I mixed in a little bit of lemon juice and some cold water. I turned the dough out onto a floured pastry mat and did a little firsage action to fully incorporate the fat into the dough. I divided up the dough into two pieces (one slightly larger than the other), wrapped them in wax paper and put them in the 'fridge.

Meanwhile I peeled some fresh peaches by cutting a small "x" in the bottom of each peach and plunging them in boiling water for a few seconds and then into ice water. That loosens the peels just enough that they come off pretty easily. I pitted and sliced the peaches and tossed them with some lemon juice, flour, sugar, salt and a pinch of ground mace. What is mace, anyway? It turns out that it's the lacy, outer covering of the nutmeg seed. It's removed, dried and turned into a powder and used a lot like nutmeg, but some say that it's flavor more delicate and less sweet.

To assemble the pie, I rolled out the larger piece of dough into a 12-inch circle, and put it into a 10-inch disposable pie plate (since I was bringing it to a pot luck picnic, I didn't want to have to worry about getting my pie plate back). I put the shell in the 'fridge while I worked on the dough strips for the pie top. I rolled out the smaller piece of dough into an 11-inch circle. By the way, my flexible, non-stick pastry mat (from Target of all places!) is printed with a handy one-inch grid that makes it easy to roll dough out to any size you want. I put the dough circle on a wax-paper-lined baking sheet and put it in the 'fridge for a few minutes to firm up a bit. Meanwhile, I took the shell out of the 'fridge, filled it up with the peach mixture and dotted it with some butter. I took out the dough circle and cut it into strips (about 3/4 inch wide. Then I arranged half of the strips on top of the pie in one direction and then I arranged the remaining strips in the other direction. I interlaced them in a basketweave pattern. Not as hard as it sounds. The Book says to crimp the edges of the crust "decoratively." I used the end of a wooden spoon to create a fluted edge. Finally, I brushed the top of the pie with an egg wash made from an egg beaten with a tablespoon of water.

I baked the pie at a high temperature for about twenty minutes, and then lowered the heat and baked it for another forty-five minutes or so. When the edges of the crust started to brown a bit too much, I put my foil pie shields on the pie to keep the edges from burning.

Not only was the pie beautiful (the picture doesn't really do it justice, it was state-fair-blue-ribbon pretty), but it was really delicious. As I said, the crust was tender and flaky. The filling was sweet and tart, and just thick enough so that it wasn't runny or gelatinous.

The picnic at the farm was one of the best days we had this past summer. It was my son's first time seeing horses and cows. I didn't know how he'd react to big animals. He wasn't a bit afraid. He petted the horses, and called out to the cows until they came over to see him. Lots of fun.

Date Cooked: August 29, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A

* This recipe isn't on epicurious.com.

176. Sour Cherry Crostata (p. 779)

Nothing says Fourth of July better than cherry pie. I decided to make this recipe for our family's Fourth cookout with some sour cherries I had kicking around in my freezer since last summer. But this isn't your usual cherry pie. In fact, it isn't a pie at all. It's a crostata, a tart made with Italian pasta frolla, a shortbread-like dough that's sweeter, and more cookie-like than regular pie crust.

First, I made the pasta frolla. I beat some softened butter and sugar in my Kitchen Aid for a few minutes. Using a fork, I lightly beat an egg and put all but one tablespoon of it into the batter (the reserved tablespoon is for an egg wash on the top of the crust after the pie is assembled). Then I beat in some vanilla extract, flour, salt and lemon zest. I stopped beating once it formed a crumbly dough. I gathered it up into a ball, divided it up into two pieces, flattened them into discs and put them in the refrigerator to firm up.

Next, I made the filling. I heated some butter in a deep skillet and added the frozen cherries and some sugar. (The Book calls for either fresh cherries or frozen ones that are not thawed.) I cooked the cherries until they were soft but still intact, and had exuded a lot of their juices. Then, I mixed together some cornstarch and water and stirred it into the hot cherries and brought it to a boil. The cornstarch had the desired effect of thickening the filling, but it also had an undesired effect of making some big congealed chunks of cornstarch. (Maybe I didn't stir it enough or fast enough while it boiled?) Anyway, I was able to pick out most of the clumps, so it turned out OK. I spread the filling into a shallow dish and put it in the refrigerator to cool while I rolled out the dough.

I took one of the dough disks out of the fridge and put it between two pieces of wax paper and rolled it out into about a 12-inch circle. I really liked rolling the dough out this way. I didn't have to mess with flouring the board or rolling pin. It didn't stick to the work surface, and it didn't crack or break. I don't see why you couldn't roll out regular pie crust this way, too. I'm going to give it a try next time. After I rolled out the dough, I peeled off the top layer of wax paper and inverted the dough into a removable-bottomed tart pan. I folded the overhand over and pressed it into the sides of the tart pan to reinforce the edge. I put the tart shell back in the fridge and took out the other dough disk. I rolled it out the same as the first, cut it into ten one-inch wide strips, and put it back in the fridge for a few minutes to get them nice and firm.

Meanwhile, I put a foil-lined baking sheet into the oven and pre-heated it. I filled the chilled tart shell with the cherry filling and arranged the pasta frolla strips in a diagonal lattice. I brushed the lattice with the reserved egg and sprinkled the top of the tart with sugar. I baked the tart for about an hour. The long cooking time meant that there was a little over-browning on the edges of the crust (hello pie shields!) and some bubbling over of the filling (hence to baking sheet).

The Book says that this crostata tastes best the day it's made, but I made it the day before our Fourth of July cookout, and it was great. The crust was sweet and crisp and light. The little bit of lemon zest in the crust gave it an unexpected zip. The filling was excellent. Sweet and thick and full of delicious cherry flavor. And it looked great. It was a real hit at the cookout. Even my nephews, who never eat dessert (kids who don't like dessert? go figure), were all over it.

Date Cooked: July 4, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

169. Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Raspberries (p. 778)

It's strawberry season, and my go-to source for locally-grown produce, Mann Orchards, has been carrying beautiful fresh strawberries lately (the smallish, vibrantly red ones, not those humongous white-fleshed genetically-altered monstrosities that they sell at the mega-mart). I bought a few pints and went straight to The Book to find a good strawberry dessert and decided on this recipe.

The last strawberry tart I made, from Julia Child's MtAoFC, had a sweet, sugar-cookie-like crust and was filled with pastry cream. This tart, however has a Basic Pastry Dough crust and a frangipane filling. Frangipane, an almond-flavored pastry filling, is named after a 16th century Italian nobleman, the Marquis Muzio Frangipani, who was famous for his almond-scented glove purfume. Glove purfume? Really?

First, I made the tart shell. I rolled out the dough, fit it into a removable-bottomed fluted tart pan, and ran the rolling pin over the pan's rim to make a nice edge. (I actualy had to roll out the dough twice. For some reason, it fell apart the first time. I decided to ball the dough up and start over again. Worked out much better on the second try.) The Book says to put the tart shell in the refrigerator for an hour to chill it. I was in a hurry, so I put it in the freezer for ten minutes (same thing, right?). I pricked the tart shell with a fork, put some foil over it and filled the foil with some dried kidney beans that I use (and reuse) as pie weights. I baked it for a while, removed the foil and weights and baked it for a bit longer. I set the tart shell aside to cool for a bit and made the frangipane.

I beat together some sugar and softened butter in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. That's right, folks, my wife gave me a 5-quart Artisan Series mixer as a tenth-anniversary gift. Sure, she got a diamond ring, but I still think that I made out pretty well. I've wanted a stand mixer for a long time, and I know that I'm going to give it a real workout. Once the butter and sugar were creamed, I added an egg, some almonds that I'd ground up in the food processor, a bit of almond extract, and some flour and salt. (I didn't have any amaretto on hand, so I skipped this optional ingredient.) Once the frangipane was all nicely blended, I spread it in the tart shell. I put the filled tart in the oven and baked it for a while until the frangipane was golden and a little puffy.

Once the tart was cool, I sliced my strawberries and arranged them in concentric circles on top of the frangipane. Finally, I melted some seedless strawberry jam and brushed it on top of the tart. Now, you're probably saying, "this recipe is called Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Raspberries. Where are the raspberries?" I left them out. You got a problem with that? I'm sure that they would have been delicious, but I really wanted to let my fresh, ripe strawberries be the star of this dessert.

This was a delicious tart. The crust was crisp, flaky and buttery. I was a little concerned that the rolling and re-rolling was going to make it less flaky, but no worries. The frangipane was sweet, rich and almond-y. And the strawberries? Perfect. Nothing better than fresh, local fruit in season.

Date Cooked: June 21, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

122. Key Lime Pie (p. 766)

These days you can get just about any kind of produce at any time of year. There's no such thing as "strawberry season" or "peach season" any more. You can find these things in your local megamart just as easily in February as you could in August. But there are still a few things that really are "seasonal." One of those things is the key lime.

So when I happened to see key limes at the store a few weeks ago, I grabbed a few pounds and threw them in my shopping cart. I'd figure out what to do with them later. When I got home, I looked up "key lime" in The Book's index and I found this recipe for the classic Key Lime Pie, and I decided to make it because it looked easy, and it's always been a favorite of mine. (The other key lime recipe in The Book is for a Key Lime Cheesecake with Mango Ribbons. It looks delicious, but much more labor-intensive. I froze my leftover key lime juice, and I'll make the cheesecake just as soon as I get the chance.)

The first step in making this pie is to make the crust. It's just graham cracker crumbs, sugar and melted butter, stirred together, pressed into a buttered pie plate and baked for a little while. To make the crumbs, I took some graham crackers, put them in a large zip top bag and crushed them with a rolling pin. You could also do it in the food processor, but my way has no clean-up.

The filling is a can of sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks and a healthy amount of key lime juice. Just whisk it all together, bake for a while, and then chill for at least eight hours. The Book says that you can use bottled key lime juice, but I'm a purist ... I wouldn't have made this recipe unless I had real, fresh key limes. Juicing these limes is a bit of a project. They're tiny, so it takes a lot of them to get a little bit of juice. It took almost a whole pound of limes to get the six tablespoons of juice I needed for the pie. To finish off the pie, I whipped up some unsweetened heavy cream and spread it over the top of the pie.

This pie was excellent. It was fresh, sweet and nicely tart. The cream topping was just the right thing. The crust was crisp and buttery. And it was a good thing that it was so delicious, because I ate the whole thing by myself ... over the course of a week, but just the same, I suppose that's a lot of pie for one person to eat. It's one of the hazards of cooking on impulse. I made this pie because I happened to find an unusual ingredient at the store, but I didn't have any guests coming over for dinner, and I didn't have any place to bring my pie, so I ate it all myself.

Date Cooked: March 1, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-

106. Raspberry Jam Tart with Almond Crumble (p. 787)

If you're looking for a delicious, impressive-looking dessert for your next dinner party, but your short on time, this recipe is the one for you.

It really is very easy. All you do is grind some sliced almonds, sugar, butter, flour and salt in the food processor until it resembles beach sand. Reserve about a cup of this "sand" for the topping. Then pulse two tablespoons of beaten egg into the remaining almond-sugar-flour mixture until it comes together. You need to beat the egg, measure out two tablespoons and discard the rest. I can only imagine the amount of trial and error it took the Gourmet test kitchen cooks to figure out that you need exactly two tablespoons of egg.

Then you take the mixture and press it evenly into a removable-bottom tart pan and bake it for a little while. Then, take it out of the oven and spread some raspberry jam over the tart shell. I used jam made by the Trappist Monks. Finally, you mix some more sliced almonds in with the reserved "sand," sprinkle it over the jam and bake for a little while longer.

This was a great dessert. The tart crust was sweet and tender with a nice almond flavor. The jam was sweet and tangy and the almond-crumble topping gave the tart a nice crunch. The Book suggests serving the tart with vanilla ice cream. This is not optional in my opinion. The ice cream is the perfect compliment to this dessert, and I think that it would be missing "something" if you had it without.

This recipe marks my first project-related injury. As I was trying to remove the tart from the pan, my finger got pinched between the removable bottom and the sharp edge of the pan's rim. There was some pain, and yes, there was some blood, but none on the tart, thankfully). It healed pretty quickly, and I'm back in fighting form and ready to cook some more.

Date Cooked: January 31, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-

103. Sauteed Dessert Crêpes (p. 791)

It was Candlemas the other day. What's that, you say? In the Christian tradition, it's the celebration of the presentation of the baby Jesus at the temple forty days after Christmas. In other traditions, it's observed as the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox (a.k.a. Groundhog Day). In France, people eat crêpes on Candlemas. Tradition says that if the cook can flip a crêpe while holding a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.

I've never made crêpes before, so I thought that I'd give them a try. I didn't try the coin trick, because this way my first time, and I figured that I'd need both hands, but just the same, I think it's a pretty auspicious sign for a prosperous new year that the crêpes came out all right.

The batter was pretty easy to make. It's just a couple of eggs, some flour, milk, a little bit of Cognac, and a pinch of salt. The Book says to put about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the batter in a hot crêpe pan or skillet. Because I didn't read the recipe carefully enough, I used a 10" skillet instead of the 7-8" skillet The Book says to use. As a result, it took about 3 to 4 tablespoons of batter to coat the bottom of the pan. It only took a couple of seconds to cook each of the crêpes, and they slid right out of the pan with the help of a rubber spatula. I was pretty impressed.

As each of the crêpes cooked, I folded it in quarters and put them on a plate. When they were all done, I melted some butter in the skillet and arranged the crapes in the pan and sauteed them for a little while until they were nice and golden on the bottom. I served them, as The Book suggested, sprinkled with some sugar and topped with some sliced fresh strawberries.

These crêpes were pretty good. They were light and tender and buttery. The sprinkling of sugar gave them a little bit of sweetness, and the sliced fresh strawberries were a necessary touch (although The Book says that they're optional).

Now, this recipe* is in The Book's Pies, Tarts and Pastries chapter, but I made it for breakfast last Sunday. Dessert for breakfast? Well, first of all what are crêpes but thin pancakes? And what are pancakes but a breakfast food? And anyway, I'm a grown-up, and if I want to eat dessert for breakfast, I can. So there! But, if I had made this for dessert, I would have been pretty dissapointed. These were a bit too light and not sweet enough for a dessert. Also, the fresh strawberries were nice, but if this is really going to be a dessert, they need some kind of sauce. Finally, I'm not sure what the purpose of adding the Congnac is, but if you ask me, Grand Marnier would hav been a better choice because it would have given the crêpes a nice orange flavor.

Date Cooked: February 1, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easier than I thought it would be!
Rating: C+

*This recipe isn't on epicurious.com.

39. Apricot Raspberry Pie (p. 763)

On Saturday, we had dinner with our good friends Tricia and Kenny, and their adorable, thirteen-month-old son, Jack. We ate at Amrhein' s, an upscale neighborhood joint in South Boston where they serve comfort food on crack. My wife had a an outrageous chicken pot pie and a rich clam chowder garnished with a clam fritter. I had macaroni and cheese with ... wait for it ... lobster! The food was excellent, and it almost made up for the huge piece of broken glass at the bottom of Tricia's beer glass (Eeek!). After dinner, we went back to Tricia and Kenny's place to enjoy pie and good conversation on their deck.

I wanted to make this recipe while apricots and raspberries were still in season. I went to my local mega-mart to pick up the fruit I needed for the pie, but much to my dismay, they didn't have a single apricot. Not even one. But, you'll never guess what they did have ... the sour cherries I was looking for last week for my cherry pie. How's that for timing? But now that I know how hard they are to come by, I decided to buy all that they had, three pints. Here, I have to make a little aside about my glorious cherries.

I took the cherries home, washed them, pitted them, and froze them. So, I was going to tell you how much I love my cherry pitter. This seriously is the best kitchen invention ever. I've never used a kitchen gadget that was so perfectly suited to its task. There are lots of kitchen tools that don't work that great, or that do something that you just don't need a separate tool to do. But pitting an cherry or olive without one of these babies would be an impossibly frustrating job. Even if you only pit cherries once in your life, it's well worth it to have a pitter. As I worked my way through my three pints of cherries, I developed a nice rhythm, and it was a pretty pleasant and zen-like chore. In the end, I had over nine cups of frozen sour cherries packed away full of promise and possibility.

OK, back to the pie. I went to another grocery store in search of apricots, and ... success! Eight juicy apricots wrapped in that uniquely velvety skin. The filling for this pie is made up of apricot wedges, raspberries, sugar, cornstarch and just a bit of salt.


I put it into a pie plate with a rolled-out round of The Book's Basic Pastry Dough. This is the second time I've made pastry dough in just as many weeks, and you know what they say about practice making perfect. Well, I wouldn't say that it was perfect, but it was better, and easier to make and roll. I topped the pie with an egg wash and a generous sprinkling of sugar and popped it in the oven. Even though the oven temperature gets turned down after the first few minutes, the edges of the crust were still browning too fast. To keep them from burning, I pulled out my trusty pie shields. These little wonders have been knocking around in our kitchen junk drawer for a few years. I'm not even sure where they came from, and I only just recently learned what they were for.

As you can see from the photo at the beginning of this post, the finished pie wasn't going to win any beauty contests. The filling oozed out onto the top crust, and I was a couple of minutes late in putting the pie shields on, so the crust was a little dark around the edges. But what it lacked in good looks, the pie made up in taste. The crust was flaky and delicious. The sprinkling of sugar gave the crust a nice sweetness and just a little bit of crispiness. The flavor of the filling was an intense combination of sweet and tart, and it had a beautiful magenta color. It reminded me of the strawberry rhubarb pie that my grandmother made when I was a kid with rhubarb from her garden. This was an excellent and unusual celebration of some of summer's best fruits. A real treat.

Date Cooked: August 10, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

34. Basic Pastry Dough (p. 790)

My wife is a bit of a culinary non-conformist. As I've already mentioned (and much to my dismay), she doesn't eat beef, pork or lamb. Nor is she a big cake-and-frosting fan. She'll always pick a fruit dessert over cake, ice cream or chocolate. So, for her birthday last week, she told me that instead of a birthday cake, she wanted a birthday pie ... a cherry pie, no less. While I am a huge cake fan, I also love a good pie, so I was more than happy to oblige the birthday girl's quirky request.


Much to my surprise, however, The Book doesn't have a recipe for a good-old-fashioned cherry pie. Sure, there's the Cherry Almond Pie, and the Sour Cherry Crostata, both of which I'll make in good time, but what my wife had in mind was a classic cherry pie.


So, for the filling, I turned to my well worn 1975 edition of The Joy of Cooking (on permanent loan from my mother-in-law's kitchen library). But for the crust, I decided to try The Book's Basic Pastry Dough. For most of my cooking life, pie crust looked like this ...


But, in the spirit of trying new things and learning to become a better cook, I resolved to make my wife's birthday pie completely from scratch. The Book's pastry dough is easy enough to make, and it tasted great. As you know, I've already sworn off boxed brownie mix. And after making this pastry dough, I'm ready to say so long to the Doughboy for good. It's been good knowing you, man.


The Book says that this dough can be made either by hand or in the food processor. I used my trusty Kitchen Aid food processor and I was very happy with the results. Maybe I'll do it by hand one of these times, but for the first try with this recipe, I wanted to make it as easy as possible. You start by pulsing together some flour, butter and vegetable shortening (My wife's not going to be happy when she reads this ... butter's bad enough, but shortening? That's pure fat, right?) until it resembles coarse meal. Then you add some ice-cold water, a little bit at a time, until it just comes together.


The dough then gets turned out onto a surface, and divided into eight pieces. Then comes the frisage, the very chef-y sounding, but easy-to-do process of fully incorporating the fat into the dough by smearing each of the eight pieces across the work surface a couple of times with the heel of your hand. After that, the dough is formed into two five-inch disks, wrapped in plastic, and chilled for at least an hour.


After chilling, you can roll the dough. I could be better with a rolling pin, and with practice, I'll get there, but, nevertheless, the dough is easy to work with. It's not too sticky, and any tears or cracks are easily repaired.


I rolled out two large circles and placed one of them in the bottom of the pie plate. I filled it with the filling (more on that in just a second), and then I cut the second circle into strips and made a pretty lattice top. I brushed the pie with a lightly beaten egg, and cooked it according to Joy's cherry pie instructions.

The filling was not all I hoped and dreamed it would be. First, I didn't have the foresight to get enough sour cherries for an entire pie. A few weeks ago, I picked up a pint of beautiful sour cherries at the Downtown Manchester Farmers Market. I guess I never realized that pie cherries and the sweet cherries you get in the grocery store aren't the same thing, and I never knew that sour cherries had such a short season and are hard to come by once the season is over. Well, next year, I'll know better and I'll stock up when I get the chance. I was about two cups short, and I made up the difference with sweet cherries, and reduced the sugar a little bit. (Remind me to tell you sometime how much I love my new cherry pitter. What a great invention!) The filling's flavor was fine, but it was very liquidy. I'm sure it had something to do with the cherry substitution. That, and the fact that I used tapioca flour as a thickener rather than the quick-cooking tapioca called for by Joy. The bottom crust was a little soggy, but I'm not going to blame The Book for that ... it was all Joy's fault (and I suppose I bear some of the blame for my modifications to Joy's recipe).

The filling aside, the crust itself (and that's what this post is about, after all) was delicious. Crispy, flaky and buttery without being greasy. It's everything you want a pie crust to be.

The Book has lots of pie and tart recipes - many of which call for this dough - so I know that I'll get lots of practice making it as I work my way through the project. I wouldn't be surprised it I'm able to make it by memory before long.

Date Cooked: August 3, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: B+