Florida {Lemon + Coconut} Pie

Being a Florida girl (you can read a post of my memories of Miami as a child here), Florida pie is Key lime pie. I am a true Key lime snob (I won't bore you with another Key lime rant). I'm fresh out of limes (our little tree wasn't very productive this year) but I did have a ton of Meyer lemons, so I used the last of them on this pie, which is a cross between coconut cream and lime (or lemon in my case).

I haven't been a huge fan of the other combination pies in Baking from My Home to Yours, so I was hoping this one would be different. The coconut cream (a combination of heavy cream and shredded coconut that is boiled until it reduces by half) looked and smelled heavenly.

The finished pie is good, though because I used lemon (and low acidity lemons at that), it wasn't quite tart enough for my taste. I liked the coconut layer, but I would chop the coconut next time rather than using it out of the bag. I think it would make it less stringy to eat that way. The recipe calls for a meringue topping, but I skipped it. I thought the pie would appeal to my tasters (and us) without it, and it did.

And speaking of tasters, I had every intention taking this one to work, but it kept getting whittled away until it was obvious it wasn't going anywhere. Since it's stored in the freezer, it's an excellent keeper. If you'd like to give it a try, you can find the recipe here.

Easy All-Butter Pie Crust

I've been cooking and baking since I was 10 years old. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (her second time) and it was up to me to feed my stepfather and his two sons. It wasn't pretty, but I learned to cook, more trial by fire than anything, and not even my abysmal failures discouraged me from going back in the kitchen and trying again.

My mother recovered but I kept cooking and baking. Still with mixed results but heck, I was a self taught ten year-old, so they cut me a lot of slack. My mom hated to cook and was thrilled that I liked to. I cooked mostly by trial and error at that age. The years passed and I became a decent cook, but there were certain things I couldn't master, and pie crust was at the top of the list. Until one day, thumbing through cookbooks at the Doubleday bookstore at Bal Harbour Shops in Miami Beach, I found this book:

In it was the pie crust recipe, nay, technique, that would change my life. And that's what I have for you today, a recipe with a technique that will give you the flakiest all-butter pie crust you've ever dreamed of.

Here's how it works (recipe and tips below):

Put the flour in a mixing bowl and freeze for 15 minutes.

Add chunks of butter (just toss them in) and freeze for an additional 15 minutes.

Toss the whole mess on your (clean) counter.

Roll over the mess with your rolling pin, scraping the pile of flour and chunks to the center and roll over it.

Do this until a lot of the butter is in thin flat sheets.

Gather it up and toss it back in the bowl, then pour over a mixture of cold water, cider vinegar and kosher salt.

Lightly flour your counter. Toss the mixture on the counter and roll out (the dough will be a mess so don't worry!)

Gather into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap, roll your rolling pin over it a couple of times and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough in half and roll out the two halves. Congratulations, you've just made pie crust!

When I'm making pie crust for Thanksgiving, I have two mixing bowls going at the same time, one goes in the freezer when the other one comes out, so I can mass produce multiple batches of dough in less time. I find that it makes sense to make extra batches (if I'm messing up my counter, I might as well put some extra batches in the freezer.)

Here are a few tips:

• Always clean your counter first. Even though your crust will bake and the oven's heat will kill any cooties, crumbs from your morning toast or an errant raisin aren't nice additions to your pristine pie crust.
• If you own pets, change your shirt. Nobody loves cat hair in their pie. Not even the cat's owner.
• If the butter chunks seem easy to roll into the flour, your dough is too warm. Gather it back up and put it in the freezer until it firms up a bit.
• Pie crust scraps can be saved to make decorative embellishments for the top. I usually re-roll mine and make jam tarts. Or sometimes I toss them on a sheet pan, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake until lightly browned. Nobody needs to know you have this little treat...it will be our secret!
• If you leave the flour/butter in the freezer too long and your butter chunks are solid, leave the bowl out on the counter for a few minutes.
• When rolling your pie crust, roll from the center to the edge, then rotate. I prefer flouring the counter and rolling on that, but you can sandwich the crust between two pieces of plastic wrap, just be careful to reposition the plastic wrap so it doesn't become embedded in the dough.

Easy All-Butter Pie Crust (adapted from Baking with Jim Dodge)

Printable Recipe

Makes one 9" double crust or two 9" single crusts

2 cups/280 grams all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

14 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 tablespoons cold water

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Put the 2 cups of flour in a mixing bowl and place in the freezer. After 15 minutes, cut butter into 1" chunks and toss into bowl with flour. Combine the water, salt and vinegar, stirring until the salt is dissolved, and put mixture in the fridge.

After 15 minutes, dump flour mixture on your counter and roll over it with a rolling pin. Keep sweeping the pile into the center with a bench scraper or your hand. Keep rolling until all of the butter is in large flakes two to three inches long (or longer). The dough will stick to your rolling pin so scrape it back onto your board and keep rolling. 

Once your butter is in large flakes, gather the whole mess and put it back in the mixing bowl. Pour the water mixture over it, and press it together lightly with a spatula. Lightly flour your counter and turn the dough out onto it. Flour your rolling pin and roll the dough out, then using your bench scraper, fold it in half and roll it out to approximately a 9x14" rectangle, fold the two sides in like a letter, and roll out to approximately 8x9". Fold dough in half (it will be crumbly). Carefully wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling out for your pie.

Divide dough in half and keep the other half wrapped in plastic while you roll the first half. On a well floured counter or board, sprinkle a little flour in the top of the dough and on your rolling pin. Shape the dough into a roundish, 6" patty with your hands before you start rolling (you can roll the crust between pieces of plastic wrap if you like-you won't need to add additional flour this way). Roll from the middle of the dough out to the edge, turn the dough 90 degrees, roll from the center of the dough to the edge, and repeat the turning and rolling until your dough measures approximately 12" across (or about an inch larger for the top crust of a double crust pie). If the dough sticks to the counter while you're rolling it out, sprinkle a little flour underneath. The goal is to use just enough flour to roll it out without sticking. Don't add flour unless you're sticking.

Measure if you've rolled the dough out enough by holding the pie pan over it - it should be a couple inches larger than the pie pan

Brush off any excess flour, gently fold the dough in half, then in half again, and lay it in a buttered 9" pie pan. Unfold the dough and fit it into the pie pan, easing it into the corners gently, trim the excess hanging over the edge of the rim (or fluting the rim if you're so inclined; I'm not a fluter-sorry).

If you're making a two crust pie, you can seal the two crusts together by applying an egg wash to the rim of the bottom crust before you top with the top crust.

I used a glass pie plate here, and flipped pie plate with dough inside over a buttered second pie plate before blind (pre-) baking

To partially bake the crust, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Butter the OUTSIDE of another pan of the same size. Invert the empty pan on a baking sheet, and put the pan with the pie crust face down on the inverted pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then press down on the pan to force out any air pockets that may have formed. Bake for another 10 minutes, flip over both pie pans and remove the one you placed inside your pie crust. Continue to bake for another 10-15 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Cool on a rack and precede with your pie recipe.

I hope you'll conquer your pie crust fears as I did. Nothing beats a freshly-made pie.

BTW, I'm having a giveaway - you can win a $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer. You can find it here.

North Fork Peach Raspberry Pie

Sometimes, I'm not very smart. Take this pie. I waited until today to make it even though the forecast high was 90, and we don't have air conditioning. Not very smart.

Rebecca of Beurrista picked the recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays this week. I intended to make it as written, truly I did, but when I saw the crust wasn't all butter, I decided to give Melissa's all butter crust one more try. I made it here and it was a disaster. If I was a pie newbie, I would have sworn off of pie making forever. But lots of SMS bakers were successful with it, so I gave it another go.

After reading Tracey's post, I decided a mini pie was the way to go (check hers out...it's adorable!) I tweeted her...did she use the pie crust from the book? She hadn't but still I stuck to my plan. Inspired by Tracey's mini deep dish pie pan, I went with my heart-shaped pie plate.

The peaches on our tree are finally ripe so I used those with some raspberries I had frozen a few weeks ago. Our peaches are white Babcocks, delicious and juicy but very fragile. I was concerned they would lose their beautiful white color after I peeled and cut them, but the pie was still lovely. I also blew off the tapioca and used very little sugar (resulting in less juice to jell) and just 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch. I also skipped the egg wash, and instead slathered on some heavy cream with my finger and then lightly dusted with sugar. I baked my little pie for 1 hour and 15 minutes and forced myself to not cut into it while it was hot. I had to go to work for a few hours so it worked out well.

Instead of cutting the pie into wedges, we shared it with a single spoon. It seemed appropriate for a heart shaped pie, don't you agree? The raspberries gave the white peaches a pink hue that was lovely, and the peaches were wonderful and sweet. I was glad I cut way back on the sugar and let the flavor of the fruit come through. In the end, the crust was fine. Not as good as my regular crust, but definitely less fussy and easier to make. It makes a perfectly fine fast all butter crust.

Thanks, Rebecca for choosing this delicious pie for us. I really enjoyed making it, even if I did go a little rogue. Rebecca has the recipe for you here; and if you'd like to see how it's supposed to be made, she has it for you.

REAL Key Lime Pie

I can't take it anymore, so I'm going to rant, lecture, wave my arms and generally make a fool of myself. But you'll get a recipe before it's over.

If you're not from Florida:

Key lime juice is not the same thing as lime juice. Key limes are yellow. If you see a "Key" lime pie that's green, it's not the real thing.

When you make a recipe for Key Lime Pie, please don't call it Key Lime Pie unless it contains Key lime juice. Call it a lime pie, people won't think less of it. They'll still enjoy it. It's not like Buffalo chicken wings, which are made in the style of those from the city of Buffalo...there isn't any buffalo in the chicken wings.

When I was growing up in Miami, everyone had a Key lime tree. To make Key lime pie, you had to juice a lot of little Key limes to get enough juice to make a pie, but it was so puckeringly tart that it complimented the sweetened condensed milk and made a delightful sweet/tart creamy dreamy pie. You would never think of using the rind of the lime to make it more limey because with Key limes there is no doubt what your dessert is.

I'm not a complete Neanderthal, so now that I live in California, I do buy Key lime juice in a bottle, but it comes from actual Key limes so I'm OK with it.

My grandmother would have made her Key lime pie with a pastry crust as that is traditional, but I like mine in a graham cracker crust. This brings me to my recipe for Key lime pie. It's not for the faint of heart as it has a bazillion calories, a whole cup of Key lime juice, six uncooked egg yolks and two cans of sweetened condensed milk. But you'll have a killer Key lime pie.

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Lethally Delicious is on vacation, so responses to comments will be delayed. This post (and others) was squirreled away for a rainy day. Enjoy!

Key Lime Pie - makes one 9" pie
Printable Recipe

Note:  I never use graham cracker crumbs for my graham cracker pie crusts. To me, the flavor and texture just aren't the same, but you can use them to make this easier. You can crush your graham crackers in the food processor or blender.

For the crust:
6 ounces graham crackers
6 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons sugar

For the filling:
6 very fresh large egg yolks, at room temperature
2 14 ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
1 cup Key lime juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To make the crust:  Pulverize the graham crackers in a food processor or blender. Place in a medium mixing bowl, stir in the sugar and pour the melted butter over the crumbs. Mix well with a fork or your hand. Transfer to a 9" pie plate, patting well until you have a uniform crust. Bake crust for 8 minutes, or until fragrant or lightly browned. Cool completely on a wire rack.

To make the filling:  Beat egg yolks in a mixing bowl with the whisk attachment until pale yellow and ribbon-like, about 8 minutes. Add sweetened condensed milk and beat until combined. Turn mixer to low and add Key lime juice in a slow stream and mix until combined. Pour into pie shell. Refrigerate 4-6 hours or until set.

Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

Serves 10

SMS - Double Crust Apple Pie Epic Fail

For me, failing at pie is like forgetting how to brush my teeth--it just can't happen. Wake me at 3 AM, and I could make a slammin' apple pie without a recipe.

This fail is no reflection on the recipe because plenty of other bakers got beautiful pies. I've gone over and over it in my head and I think I followed the recipe exactly but obviously not when you look at this:

No, something obviously went very wrong. First, the pie crust. I have a tried and true all butter pie crust I've been making for 20 years. This wasn't it. I must have measured the flour wrong because I know I used 2 sticks of butter. It was impossible to work, with little pebbles of butter spread throughout that didn't have enough flour to hold them together. Then there was the filling. I mistakenly thought the caramel was served on top of the pie after it baked. I read the recipe repeatedly and never saw the part where you combine the caramel with the apples. My Granny Smith apples were huge so I only used 6, and the filling of the pie towered over the pan. I almost added cinnamon (apple pie without cinnamon just seems wrong to me) but didn't. After 10 minutes in the oven, the pie crust was dripping butter and the crimped edge fell off in places. But I still baked my pie for the full amount of time (1 hour and 45 minutes) that the recipe called for. It wasn't until after this epic fail that I reread the P&Q and saw that one hour was sufficient. Really, 45 minutes less would not have changed the outcome because at one hour, there was a layer of butter on the sheet pan and the pie still looked awful, just less brown. Perhaps the inside wouldn't have been mush:

Where did the enormous mound of apples go? Obviously, I was making applesauce pie.

One of my favorite bloggers, Susan of Baking with Susan picked this week's recipe. I'm working so much that I probably should have skipped it but I wanted to make her pick. Sorry, Susan, for mangling your pick!

Make sure you visit Susan and see her pie. She'll also have the recipe. And check out the other Sweet Melissa Sundays bakers...you can find them here.

TWD - My Favorite Pecan Pie

There are pecan pies, and there are transcendent, life changing, mood lifting, swoon-worthy pecan pies.

This one is one of the latter. Universally LLLLOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVEEEEDDDD by the gang at Thanksgiving dinner. Not all of them are pecan pie lovers (or even likers), but virtually all 15 people present had some and proclaimed it the sleeper hit of Pie Day Thanksgiving 2009. And that's not surprising as this one, with its notes of cinnamon, coffee and secret sweet pockets of chocolate, is sublime on a plate.

Me? I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I've been making the same pecan pie for over 20 years (yes, I started making pies when I was 6...not). So my pecan pie is obviously the best.

Uh, no. Dorie's is. By miles. So much so that I can't bring myself to consider cheating on it by making another pecan pie.

This pie was SO popular that the only piece left was a crumpled up sliver that I couldn't bring myself to show at the top of this post. So I made it again for yesterday's potluck for our last day in the office until January 5th. Since I was also bringing Dorie's Tall and Creamy Cheesecake, after much angst, I broke down and bought a pre-made pie crust from Trader Joe's. Butter was listed before palm oil, but it was just OK. Since I used a smallish pie plate, I had extra filling left over, which I poured in a buttered ramekin and baked along side the pie.

We have Beth at Someone's in the Kitchen with Brina to thank for picking this one. She went through Dorie Greenspan's book Baking from My Home to Yours and picked out this recipe for us to make this week.

The woman is brilliant. And Dorie? I already *heart* Dorie. Now only more so.

A tale of two pies

When I make pies, I usually make an extra batch (enough for a double crust pie) just in case. I just never know if one of the pies won't make the cut, so I anticipate disaster.

No disasters this year (yay!) so what to do with the extra crust? I debated making another cherry pie, but decided on pecan (easy) and nutmeg maple (mmm... maple). I found the nutmeg maple pie on Smitten Kitchen (if you aren't already addicted to Deb's blog, what are you waiting for?)

I normally make my pecan pie with maple syrup but didn't have enough for both pies, so I reverted to the classic (and oh-so-sweet) dark corn syrup. Then I made the nutmeg maple pie. The recipe made more custard than I had room for in the pie shell, so I made three custard cups of maple-y goodness. I forgot to mention I made a chocolate hand pie with the pie crust scraps. I rolled the scraps into somewhat of a circle, tucked three bittersweet feves in there and sealed the edges with water before crimping with the tip of the paring knife.

Things were going really well for the maple pie, until I realized (30 minutes later) that I had put it in the oven that I'd shut off. Sigh. But it must have baked some from the residual heat in the oven before I moved it, because it only took a half an hour to bake. The crust was a little undercooked and I went a little crazy with the nutmeg, so the maple flavor wasn't dominant, but it was still OK. If you like nutmeg.

It's all about the pie

Alan managed to get the appliances hooked up, the lights working, the plumbing...plumbed, and when I came home on Wednesday, he had cleared away the cardboard and drop cloths, vacuumed, cleaned the floors and hooked up an extension cord so I had outlets for the food processor, etc. With all visible signs of construction cleared away, the kitchen was breathtaking:

Unlike past years, I had done zero prep for my pie baking, because I wasn't sure it would happen. I got up early Thanksgiving morning and started  prepping:

The past few years, I have cut down on the number of pies I bake (I used to bake "extras" in case anyone wanted to take some home), so I was planning on four pies: apple, cherry, pecan and pumpkin. I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie, though I love pumpkin in other things, but I have grown to accept that others equate pumpkin pie with Thanksgiving to such an extent they may walk out if one isn't on the dessert table. 

I discovered that even though I had a special box labeled "PIES," it didn't hold nearly everything I needed for the pie process. So I made repeated visits to the pile of boxes in the living room to look for sauce pans, saute pans, my favorite rolling pin, etc. It was kinda like a treasure hunt, but one where the prize was something you already owned.

Now, I used to drag out a large piece of marble I bought for $40 twenty years ago at Williams-Sonoma (they now sell for $129!) With the granite countertops, this is no longer necessary. I rolled out the pie crusts (I'm partial to all butter, better flavor and not hard to work with) really quickly and with no sticking or tearing (thanks to Deb at Smitten Kitchen for her Pie Crust 103 post!) I use a technique from the cookbook "Baking with Jim Dodge." It calls for freezing the flour for 15 minutes, then adding the butter in large chunks and freezing for another 15 minutes. Then you roll the butter and flour together, creating long, wide layers of butter in the flour that create steam in the oven. It's that steam that makes the pie crust flaky. 

After the crusts were rolled out, I turned to the fillings, starting with the apple pie. I use a technique the New York Times ran a couple of years ago, namely, sautéing and caramelizing the apples with butter and sugar before they go in the pie crust. It does away with the domed crust with the cooked down apples, and the resulting need for thickeners to absorb the excess juice. I was going to link to the recipe but it isn't working. Sorry! After that one was in the oven, I quickly made the pecan pie (I replace the dark corn syrup with maple syrup, an idea from the same NYT article) and put it in the oven. The apple came out of the oven. That first pie coming out of the oven makes me so happy. Pies really don't take a super baker and they taste so much better than store bought.

The pecan smells amazing in the oven, which just makes me happier. After that one, I worked on the pumpkin and cherry at the same time.  Both are Cook's Illustrated recipes (the pumpkin can be found on their website and it and the cherry are in the New Best Recipe cookbook). The pumpkin calls for a little planning since you pour the filling into the hot (blind baked) pie crust. My pie crust shrank like crazy (I wonder if I shouldn't be baking this one in my favorite Pyrex pie plates??) The filling kinda ran over under the crust and burned on the bottom. Not a yummy smell (but fortunately it didn't set off the smoke detectors).

I wanted to give the cherry pie a lattice crust (not very practical when the day has practically evaporated and you're due, with pies, at your friend's house in 90 minutes). But I figured I could miss the appetizers and would be forgiven as long as I brought pie. So I made the lattice crust, tucked the cherry filling in the pie plate and sealed it up. It baked in about 55 minutes, but was VERY runny when I pulled it out of the oven. I took a couple of rushed photos before the trip to my friend Susan's house.

Susan LOVES LOVES LOVES Thanksgiving. She'll be the first to admit cooking is not her number one hobby, but for years she has cooked Thanksgiving dinner for all her friends and as many family members as she can convince to come to California. She had 16 for Thanksgiving this year, and her home is smallish. She plans carefully to accommodate the crowd, and she cooks this huge dinner in a microscopic kitchen. She allows others to bring side dishes, but she does the turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, and she does a great job. My thing, in case you dozed off during my rambling account, is the pies, and I love not having to take my focus off of them to make an actual meal. I love that people try different ones, some have their favorites, and we have leftovers for a snack the next day. M loves pie, too, and every year he tells me this year's pies were the best ever, no really. So sweet.

The star of the pie evening was cherry, and the filling had firmed up and wasn't runny. It was a struggle to save a slice for the next day's snack. M doesn't like pumpkin pie either, so we snarfed down pecan, apple and cherry for dinner last night. Maybe my diet starts again on Monday...

If you've never made a pie, it's a skill worth learning. Find a recipe that speaks to you. That's how I felt about the Jim Dodge method. It made sense to me, and it's near impossible to overwork it (like I always did in the food processor or Kitchen Aid). And then buy a lot of unsalted butter, and start experimenting. Do it till you get it right. Practice rolling it out (you can do it on a wooden cutting board, or even a glass table). When you have a crust you feel good about, bake a flavor of pie you really like (if blueberry is your thing, do it!) You'll be more likely to do the trial and error if it's something you want to eat. Then get ready to wow your coworkers (or whoever you choose to share with), because a home made pie is like nothing you've ever tried.

On Friday, the kitchen reverted to being a construction zone. They repaired the area where there was no hardwood, and put the first layer of varnish on it. I can still use the oven and cooktop until Monday; after that, the whole kitchen will again be off limits. They'll be putting layers of varnish on the whole floor and it takes time to dry. I'm OK with it. I got to test drive it and loved how it worked and how it felt. I can be patient until it's done. My worst fears were unfounded: it bakes well and the layout works, so I can wait for it to be ready for its close up.