More Pie!

It seems that recently, what I make more than anything else, is pie. Since Pi day, I just haven't been able to get enough of this beautiful substance.
The other night, I whipped one together on a whim in the twenty five minutes after discovering my uncle hadn't prepared anything for desert at my grandparent's house and before his delicious roast and things came out of the oven, using odds and ends about the house. It was pretty tasty.

Though I've made a good few recently, this entry will just be about 6.28.

Strawberry-Apple-Lime pie:
This pie came into being when I wanted to use the strawberries I'd bought a week prior. It involved a layer of softly cooked apples with lime juice and a layer of cooked-till-almost jelly strawberries. I remembered to take notes while making it, so I can actually give the real numbers I used and not approximates made after the fact! I didn't take times, though, so that's a bit iffy.

Apple Stuffs

four medium apples, suitable for baking

juice of one moderately wimpy lemon

juice of one significantly juicy lime because the lemon was so lame

three tablespoons of sugar

Peel, core, and chop the apples to a size of about maybe the same as the biggest segment of my index finger, and toss in a bowl with the juices and sugar. Let sit, covered, for a little while (maybe fifteen minutes to half an hour? At least as long as it takes to get the strawberries on the stove).



That's what apples look like when you put them in a bowl with some other things.

Heat some vegetable oil or butter in a broad sauté pan/frying, and get it up to a medium-low heat, then add the apples. Cook, mixing from time to time (but not too much or they'll break up and turn to sauce!), until they're soft. I'd gander that it was maybe five or ten minutes, but I'm not really sure. Look at the picture later when they go into the pie tin.

Strawberry Stuffs

3 cups strawberries

a little bit of water

something else to make this list a little longer

Slice the strawberries to somewhere between a half and a third of the width of the thickest point of my thumb. Throw them in a pot (ideally wide enough so that they're no more than doubled up) with just a bit of water, and apply medium to medium-low heat until they're done. Let's just say done is somewhere past the point where there's a decent amount of syrupy goodness in the pot, and near-ish to the point where it's becoming jelly.



Something like that.

Tasty Crusts

flakey cream-cheese pie crust for two crust pie

Look, I don't feel like typing out that recipe right now, it's from a book, and I'm tired. Any two crust pie crust will do.
Roll out half the crust when you've got the fruits started on the stove, to fit a pie tin/cake pan. Since using one due to necessity at Colin's place, I kind of like the thicker pie you get out of a cake pan. The first slice is even harder to remove, though, so be wary.
Line the tin with the crust, then roll out and cut a top for the pie.
This is probably a convenient time to pre-heat your oven to 350ºF.
And don't forget to make sure your fruits aren't burning!

The Assembling

Do this:



Then this:



and spread it around even-like. Then:



and



There was a complaint about pictures, so there we go.

It took somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour to be done, I usually wait till the crust is looking nice if the fruit has already been cooked somewhat.

So, the pie turned out well. It wasn't really supposed to be a lime flavoured pie, I just figured there wasn't enough lemon juice in the lemon, so I threw in the full lime's worth when I probably shouldn't have. On the bright side, though, it kind of simulated the rhubarb that I wanted but could not find, so it all worked out anyways.
The one thing I learned, though, was to cut larger steam vents when dealing with goopy stuffing. The syrup just kind of gummed the works up and made the top rise too high, the started escaping from the corners. Not too bad though.




Brownie Pie:
This was another adventure in "what can we make at Colin's place with limited resources", and I think it might be better than the last time.
We had on hand a tub of classy margarine that had partially melted in his car, a pack of brownie mix, an egg, flour, and an overpriced convenience store nearby from which we bought chocolate chips and pecans. Results were better than expected.

Dough:

two cups pastry flour

one cup margarine

half cup finely chopped walnuts

sprinkling of water

Put the flour in the bowl, and then try to cut the margarine throughout, but realize it's not working like you hoped and is forming a dough instead of resembling coarse meal. Sprinkle some water on and feel less than optimistic about your future, then realize you forgot to add the walnuts, so mix those into the dough while doing your best not to ruin it all with too much kneading.
Roll out half the dough and line a cake pan with it, then prepare the rest in lattice strips.

Brownie Batter

brownie mix

one egg

cooking oil or margarine

Combine in bowl.

Assembly

Pour the batter into the pie crust, and remember that you wanted to mix pecans and chocolate chips in the batter. Sprinkle them on to instead, then put the lattice strips on top.
Bake at 350ºF for forty minutes, then remove from the oven and drizzle (splatter) with sauce of chocolate chips melted with margarine.




Ridiculously rich, the fudgy brownie texture contrasted wonderfully with the flaky crust, which didn't turn out nearly as poorly as I thought it would.
Also, you can't eat anywhere near as much brownie as you could pie or cake, this was too much to eat.