Pie #3: Honeypie

So it's been an embarrassingly long time since I've made an actual apple pie. I'll have to catch up before summer fruit season comes along and tempts me into making lots of fresh peach pies etc. Back on the apple pie track, I've been planning for ages now to start experimenting with sweeteners. I just told Susan that over the phone and she asked in a horrified tone: "you don't mean artificial sweetener, do you?" No. I mean it's time to move into the honey and maple world instead of white or brown sugar. Today it's an apple pie with honey.

This recipe is one Julie gave me; it's a WWII era recipe that calls for honey, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg (recipe source: Harriet H. Hester, 300 Sugar Saving Recipes [1942]). The spice combination and amounts are pretty similar to other pies I've made for the odyssey. The crust is a basic butter crust from my Cuisinart manual. I used a mix of Granny Smith, McIntosh and Golden Delicious apples cut into slices. I arranged the slices much like those in the tart pictured in previous post (whoops, forgot to take a picture before putting the top crust on) and it looked lovely. I made an effort to mix the different varieties of apples evenly. The only problem is I packed the slices in very tightly and then realized that the honey and spices might not be able to work their way down to the bottom. We shall see. I'm mainly curious about how great the difference in flavor is between sugar and honey. It certainly smells nice coming out of the oven....

Yet another local pastry

I just had a tasty apple tart in Gordonsville, Virginia. It had a nice, fruity glaze. It also got me thinking about presentation - wouldn't an open apple pie with slices arranged like this look lovely? My pie making philosophy is generally that taste is much more important than appearance, but if I submit a tasty but homely pie to a competition, it might not do so well. Although with this tart, the quality of the presentation also had a lot to do with the presidential place mat underneath it.

Local Pie Report

I'm pleased to report that recent findings suggest that there is indeed a lot of fabulous pie hiding in central Virginia. Here are some local pies I recommend:

1. Peanut butter chocolate pie from the Dogwood Restaurant at Lake Monticello in Fluvanna County. Susan (coworker, not sister) brought this in to work, and it was so good. It's like a giant peanut butter cup, and is rich enough to constitute a meal in and of itself. Thanks Susan!


2. Apple cranberry tart from Foods of All Nations in Cville. Lovely and light - a fabulous flavor combination. The cranberries complement the apples without overpowering them. When I move into my mixed fruit and apple phase, this is going to be my inspiration. Thanks to Deb for bringing this in to share!


3. Spinach cheese pie from the Charlottesville Farmer's Market. It's been a while since I've been to the Farmer's Market because I get most of my seasonal produce through a CSA, but I went yesterday and found that there is so much pie! I bought a slice of spinach cheese pie from an eastern European woman who told me to reheat it and put some sour cream or buttermilk on it. It may look like spanakopita, but the cheese was a bit more solid than feta and the filling had a slight egginess to it. Really yummy. Looks like I'll be spending more time at the Farmer's Market.

Piebrary: New Acquisitions

So I've been a little distracted from the pie odyssey lately. That's about to change. To keep you occupied while I catch up in the kitchen, I thought I'd share some of the newest acquisitions to the piebrary. If you want to inspect any of the handwritten recipes or pie clippings we have received, you'll have to come to the piebrary during regular business hours. We have recently acquired the following:

• Lee Bailey, Southern Food & Plantation Houses
• Marion Cunningham, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
• Ken Haedrich, Pie
• Pascale Le Draoulec, American Pie
• Carole Walter, Great Pies & Tarts
• Linda Everett, Retro Pies
• Mealtime Marvels, Lard in 133 Recipes
• Martha Logan, Prize Winning Pies with Swift's Silverleaf Pure Lard
• Good Housekeeping's Party Pie Book
• Aunt Jenny's 12 Pies Husbands Like Best Recipe Book
  

Big thanks to Mom and Dad, Aunt Nancy, Aunt Susie, Anna, Julie, Susan and Carly!

April Fool's Pie

The previous post was a red herring. What Jeff and I made were actually mock apple pies, in honor of April Fool's Day. Instead of apples, Jeff's filling was made of Saltines, and mine was made of Ritz crackers. We then brought them to work under the guise of a contest to determine the best variety of pie apples, and forced our colleagues to vote on them in a blind taste test. I think we managed to fool a few people, although some of our co-workers commented that the pies were lemony, or had an interesting consistency.

I don't know all the details of Jeff's recipe, but the one I followed (courtesy of Julie) called for a simple syrup flavored with lemon juice and peel and then poured over a pie pan full of coarsely broken Ritz crackers. I then sprinkled this heaping mess with cinnamon, nutmeg and butter and put on a top crust. Sadly though, I did not seal it well enough and lemon goo scorched on the inside of my oven. It also seeped under the crust and made it very difficult to remove from the pan. My crust applying technique needs work. The good news is that the crust itself seemed to be an improvement over all previous. Hooray for Cuisinart!

So was it convincing as an apple pie? I'm not sure. When I was making the syrup, it smelled a lot like Seven Up and I thought there was no way anyone would mistake it for an apple pie. It also looked weird (read: revolting) as I was composing it. I include pictures of crackers in pie shell before and after the application of goo. When it came out of the oven though, it really smelled like apple pie. I include a profile of a slice of each of ours (my pie is on the left). Looking at a slice, it pretty much looked like apple pie, although if you looked closely enough you could see the lovely crimped edge of the crackers. I think Jeff's had a more convincingly apple flavor - mine was rather too lemony, seeing as how I doubled the amount of lemon peel called for. As an apple pie, they were fair, but as a pie in general, they were super. I would definitely make and eat this again. Which is good, because I have two more rolls of Ritz. My experience is different than most eaters though, since I knew going in that the pies were not made of apples. I wonder if the pie tastes more or less like apples if you think that's what it is?

All I can say is that it is a rare pleasure to work for someone who not only appreciates pie, but who appreciates the delight that is fake pie as well. Oh, and in case you're interested, the building voted Ritz crackers as the best variety of "apple" to use in pie. Sorry Saltines.