Bill Smith Makes a Mean Pie

A friend sent me the link to an NPR story, "A North Carolina Pie That Elicits an 'Oh My God' Response" that included the recipe for Bill Smith's Atlantic Beach Pie. I don't know who this Bill Smith is, but he has a mean pie recipe that starts with, interestingly enough, a crust made of saltine crackers.

The filling is made with lemon juice, lime juice, or a mixture of the two. I used a mixture. The filling also contains condensed milk. In my opinion, it is hard to go wrong with condensed milk unless you consider the 14-ounce can to be the single serving size.
The amount of filling that the recipe yielded actually looked a bit skimpy when added to the saltine crust. A top layer of whipped cream solved that problem. Younger son, he of the New Year's resolution to "eat pie" judged it to be a winner.

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.

It's Pronounced "Ka-Pike" and Spelled "Capieke"

Several years ago, I made what might have been a mistake, asking younger son if he wanted a cake or a pie for his birthday. He asked for a pie baked inside of a cake, and it's become something of a tradition. I've done several different pies inside several different cakes. Some have worked better than others. This year's is above; it was a raspberry pie inside a chocolate cake.

Here it is as a work-in-progress. As you can see, the pie is not necessarily pie-shaped. I did it that way the first couple of years, using frozen pie crusts. They don't work as well as homemade crust in terms of actually baking inside the cake, but it's hard to shape the homemade crust around the pie filling and have it really be pie-shaped. When it comes right down to it, though, shape doesn't matter. With the cake baked around it,  you don't really see a pie shape in the cut slices. Even if it doesn't look like a pie inside a cake when it's sliced into pieces, it tastes like both pie and cake.

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.

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.

New Year, New Look

My blog, my rules. The pies have it, at least for now. Before the advent of the new year, I made my first lemon meringue pie, to mark younger son's being home for the holidays. I also made the usual two pumpkin pies for Christmas and was somewhat dismayed that it took almost a week for both of them to be consumed. Older son offered the excuse that Christmas morning's homemade cinnamon rolls were too filling and satisfied his appetite for sweets.

The first pies of 2013 will be served at tonight's dinner party. I am not good at hostessing such things, despite the fact that they offer a handy reason to clean that portion of the house the guests will see. Tonight's gathering is a sukiyaki dinner. Our senior kendo master instructor will do the cooking at the table. I'm doing appetizers (a vegetable tray and a cheese and cracker tray), rice in the rice cooker, and desserts. Thinking of a pie to go with Japanese food was a disaster, so I settled on key lime since it is at least a bit exotic and apple, for an American  contrast.

Here's the key lime (meringue tips highlighted by older son using a blowtorch).

 And here's the apple.

I will admit to having cheated on these in that I did not prepare the crusts for either. What with the picking up and cleaning, I opted for store-bought graham cracker and frozen crusts. The reason that the top of the apple pie looks so ghastly is that I followed the directions on the crust packaging rather than followed my instincts. The directions said to cut off the fluted edges of the top crust before putting it atop the filled bottom crust. I did despite thinking there wouldn't be enough crust there, and guess what. I was right. It was quite difficult to get the edges sealed which explains the rather large cracks. Live and learn. Next time, I will trust my instincts or make my own crust.