We went blueberry picking and came home with 10 pounds of plump, sweet berries.  After the initial gorge, the natives started rumbling about blueberry pie.  My family knows that baking is not my specialty.  I always assume the “your results may vary” disclaimer when I attempt to bake. 

I have had great success in the past with Country Blueberry Pie.  It uses 2 pounds of berries.  If I’m going through all the effort, I’m going to have a big pie.

I made the filling according to the recipe, and filled the crust.  I know you are wondering about the pie crust. Let's just skip right over that, shall we?  Because I'd have to say something like "sorry, it's a Meal Mixer trade secret" and you'd say "What?  How can a blog about cooking not share a recipe?" And then I'd mumble something about Pillsbury and there'd be this awkward silence... 

ANYHOW…  Here’s a shot of my pie, ready to go in the oven.  You can see how plentiful the filling is, and admire the rustic look of the lattice work.  When I roll out pie crust, I do it with powdered sugar and not flour.  Flour is not tasty.  I opted not to brush this with egg white, since the recipe does not call for egg and I was not feeling inclined to deal with unused yolk.

Now…I know that not every pie will come out the same.  I know that berries, being a natural product, vary in sweetness and juiciness.  I know that there are other thickeners besides cornstarch, but I don’t bake enough to go in search of arrowroot, and I’ve never had any luck with tapioca.  

My pie came out of the oven very, very jiggly.  I was unhappy.   THIS is why I don't like to make pies.  It's just so arbitrary.  But there are steps to be taken… Step 1 is to email your friends and whine.  Someone is bound to tell you that your pie is SUPPOSED to be a bit runny.  Step 2 is to google failed pies and read all the things you could have done instead.  You can do all sorts of things, just don’t touch the pie.  The last step...the very last step, is to cut into the pie.  You have to  let it cool and solidify.  I mean cool enough that you could set it on a stick of butter and walk away for 20 minutes and come back to unmelted butter cool.  All of the pectin and starch need time to do their thing, and that takes time. 

When I cut the pie for dessert, it did  not keep its shape.  It wasn’t tragic, but, it wasn’t perfect.  Apparently the taste was spot on though because the men folk were quiet.

The next morning, was a different story..the pie had set.  Isn’t it lovely?  Maybe I just need to have a little more patience.

The moral of the story?  Pies take time, a lot of time.  They may take extra thickener, and a little more talent/patience than I have.  If I can make a pie, you can make a pie.  Add Country Blueberry Pie to your meal plan this week, or as soon as blueberries go on sale!

Have I ever mentioned that pie dough and I are not friends?  Because of this fact, I usually stick to pies that use graham cracker crust.  Yes, I know that I can buy a package of perfect pie crust.  Have you ever tasted one?  Blech.  I'd rather make one.

I found myself in a South Carolina kitchen on Thanksgiving, tasked with making a pumpkin pie.   I have made pumpkin pie with gingersnap cookie crust, and it’s tasty.  However, this was the perfect time to test the recipe for No Roll Pie Crust!   The hardest thing about the recipe was grating the frozen butter.   Things just got tossed in a bowl, then patted into a pie plate, and frozen until needed.  Granted, it’s not identical to regular pie crust, but it works, and quite nicely, but not for a top crust.

If you need a pie – give this a try!

I promised the boys a cake to celebrate the first day of school.  Not just any cake, a spectacular cake.  Chocolate Malt Cake seemed to fit the bill.  Maybe I mentioned before that I’m not a baker?  Here’s how (probably not) to do it.

Step 1:  Check to make sure that the malted milk balls purchased for garnish when they were on sale are still safe in their hiding place.  Hmmm, must remember that vegetables are a natural camouflage.

Step 2:  Need to buy eggs.  Check fridge and pantry.  Decide may as well print out weekly menu and get it all done.  Remember have not posted weekly menu.   The printer is out of blue ink, and thus will not print at all (whose brilliant idea was that?).  Handwrite list.

Step 3:  Wait for pouring rain to stop, and go to store, which is full of college students buying awful foodstuffs and clogging up the aisles.  Splurge on whole milk for the cake (will need it for the éclairs anyhow).

Step 4:  Realize that the children are in school and thus are not around to haul groceries.  Put away groceries.  Curse because bought 2 whole chickens and a ham which are not going to fit w/o some serious reconfiguration of the refrigerator.

Step 5:  Start making cake.  Figure out that this will make quite a mess.  Give stink eye to sugar and oil mixture that does not cream like sugar and butter.  Add eggs and keep going.   Now it calls for 1 tsp. of kosher salt.  Kosher salt?  I’m already not getting the warm and fuzzies about sugar and oil.  It gets regular salt – 1/2 tsp feels about right.   Get to the part where it says to sift.  I already sifted once this year – skip that.

Step 6:  Finally get the batter together and decide that it doesn’t look right.  Probably didn’t add enough flour as the recipe called for 1 2/3 cup, which is odd, and probably distracted me.  Add more flour.   Grease and flour the pans generously.  Extra tip:  don’t use Wondra for this.  Although the shaker top seems convenient, the flour is too grainy to do the job. 

Step 7:  Fill the pans.  That’s a lot of batter, more than half full.  The cake bakes for 40ish minutes at 325, - here’s hoping.  20 minutes in decide to do the right thing and turn the pans.  They look very nice – not flowing over lava-like as expected.  Smells good in here.

Step 8:  Cake is done, but has domed.  Hate that.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove and cut off domed part, which will speed up cooling process.  Eat domed part for quality control.

Step 9:  Frosting.  It looks good until the addition of milk and malt powder.  It’s wrong, I know it is, but, crumb coat the cake as directed.  And when I pick up the cake to refrigerate it for 15 minutes again?  It almost slid off the plate.  And of course have to reconfigure the ‘fridge yet again to make space for the cake and the rest of the frosting.  The whole mess will chill while I figure out how to fix this.  Could be the heat or the humidity, could be the recipe, or it could be that the cake gods find my baking practices heretical.  There is no way the crushed malted milk balls are going to stick to the side…

Step 10:  So done now.  It is an unmeasured quantity of powered sugar (in frosting, hair, and on floor) later.  Things are looking better, but that might just be my sugar buzz.  Oh Look!  At the end of the recipe it says this cake is stored in the refrigerator.  And why is that?  Is it because the frosting is such a pain???!!  AAAARGH!

Lucky it tastes good…