Decoy Pie

The pie below is a decoy, a stand-in for the real pie that will be given on Sunday. Sunday is the 50th birthday of one of our karate master instructors. Because we don't want him to know that we're doing anything for the true birthday, I'm giving him this pie today along with a card. Another pie, with Cool Whip and chocolate ice cream, will be given on Sunday, along with a larger, musical card.

I will follow this up by making three more pumpkin pies tomorrow, two for the people who come to the Sunday morning class, and one for the instructor to take home. I realize that this will mean he gets two pies in three days. As he would tell you, one can never have too much pie or too many pies.

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.

And So, This Pie Has No Photo

One of our Myo Sim karate master instructors who is also an entire information technology department has been doing more IT and less karate, so I made him a pie of the pumpkin variety. Because there were numerous other things going on in my life on the day I made the pie (which is the date of this post thanks to the ability to backdate things), I did not think to photograph said pie. I made it, though, and delivered it, and I expect that at least some of it was consumed that same evening.

Pi=3.14, Pie=3 (at least today)

Younger son has moved back to Virginia from Washington (the state), and I promised to make him a welcoming pie. As things turned out, I ended up flying to Denver and driving him back from Rawlins, Wyoming through something that the Weather Channel called Winter Storm Q. I do believe I may be in the running for Mother of the Year this year, though there's plenty of time left in which I can backslide.

I did make the welcoming pie, yesterday, when younger son arrived to leave his dog here while he went skiing with friends. It's a butterscotch cream pie, with walnuts added.


The cream filling is a bit creamier than I had anticipated, and I did not do either of the suggested toppings, meringue or whipped cream. It was pronounced a success and will not go to waste at the same time it goes to waist.

I also made two pumpkin pies, one for us and one for one of our karate master instructors whose favorite pie is, what else, pumpkin.
He got the one on the right, while I kept the one on the left for us. I expect it to be gone before the weekend is out.