PiePalooza

It's not every day that I make six pies; two is more the norm. But the party following last weekend's black belt exam in Myo Sim Karate and Kendo called for potluck pies. There is also the tradition of presenting one of the master instructors with his own pumpkin pie to take home. I planned on four for the party and one for the master and ended up with those plus one for the family. I started with key lime since the crust

and the whole pie

each only bake for short periods of time. The meringue topping comes later.

After the key lime, it was on to the two pumpkin pies. Unfortunately, I got distracted and forgot to turn the oven temperature down after the first 15 minutes. This resulted in two slightly overdone pies.

Since I didn't think an overdone pie was a fitting gift for a master instructor, especially the one who was getting it, I made a third one.

Fortunately, I had made extra dough for the crust and had extra ingredients (chiefly pumpkin, condensed milk, and eggs), so whipping up one more was not at all difficult.The wife of the karate master names apple pie as her favorite, so I did that for her and the other fruit-filled pie lovers.

I actually may have over-filled this, but the more, the merrier, eh?

I did the mocha pie last because it requires no cooking at all. Unfortunately, with no into and out of the oven, I forgot to take any photos of the mocha in progress. I did get a shot of all six, though the key lime still lacked its meringue and the mocha lacked its espresso whipped cream topping.

I added those right before leaving for the party.

The pies were a huge hit at the party; the key lime was particularly praised. One person added some of the hostess' extra-jalapeno guacamole to the mocha pie and suggested we combine the two and go into business. Another person added the guacamole to the dregs left in the pie plate and agreed that the two went quite well together. We brought home empty pie plates and just a small portion of pumpkin. The husband has been doing his best to get rid of that and the slightly overdone pumpkin pie I kept for the family. Older son and I are doing a 90-day nutrition challenge, under which we stopped eating processed sugar the day after the exam and party. Yeah, somewhat sucks to be us right now on National Donut Day, but there are some benefits. Perhaps I'll blog about those elsewhere.

More Mocha

Older son had asked for a mocha pie and would have gotten the most recent one had our karate instructor not been there to get the one I made earlier in the week. So I made another one on Saturday. It didn't last very long, only until Sunday night. Coming soon to a kitchen near me will be a citrus pie with a saltine cracker crust. A friend heard it mentioned in an NPR broadcast and sent me the link to the recipe. A saltine cracker crust ... intriguing.

Gifting Pies

It's much easier to gift a pie using a pie carrier. The pie inside the carrier shown above was a mocha pie taken to one of our karate master instructors. I normally give him a pumpkin pie, but when I learned he might like a mocha pie, did one of those instead. I'll find out tomorrow what he thought of it.

A Just Reward

Younger son came to town this past weekend to run the annual Ten Miler. I asked if he wanted a pie. He replied that he wanted a pie laden with calories to offset those he would burn in the race. I suggested Mocha Pie from a recipe I got in the Art of Pie class I took a couple years ago. The crust is chocolate wafers, pretzels, butter, and sugar. The filling contains, among other things, cream cheese, eggs and more butter. The topping is coffee-flavored whipped cream. Here's the pie without it.
And here is it with the topping.
What more could one ask for than energy from fat and sugar as well as caffeine? Younger son's opinion when asked if it met his expectations? Success! By the way, he didn't do badly in the Ten Miler, finishing it in 85 minutes.