People of the Pie

Sweet potato custard pie. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I came to pie later in life. My people were cake people you see, skilled in the language of layer cake pans, 10X sugar and sprinkles. My first cake was carrot cake, made from a recipe in the venerable, verdant  Farm Journal cookbook. There were forays into pound cakes, with detours through sour cream, chocolate and lemon before deciding on my standard shattery-crust cream cheese pound cake. Rich cheesecakes would follow, chock full of candy, eggs and dairy goodness. But pies eluded me until marriage, when my husband presented me with a set of hand-turned walnut rolling pins. An angled pastry pin, perfect for rounding out a disk of pie dough. The too-pretty-to-use decorative pin with the lovely rounded ends. And my favorite, the Clydesdale of the kitchen, ideal for thwopping a resistant pizza dough or pounding out super-chilly puff pastry.

Rolling pins. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The gift of the rolling pins, seen here in their display case in my kitchen along with grandma's red-handled rolling pin (perfect for Kitty's Beaten Biscuits) and Little Bit's pint-sized pin, gave me the encouragement I needed to tackle pastry crust. At my husband's suggestion, I made a buttermilk chess pie from Southern Living magazine, and have been turning out pies ever since. Apple pies, peach pies, blueberry pies. Lemon meringue, French silk, and the pie my family looks most forward to each January, Bellwether's Kumquat Pie.

So what pie should I bake for my friends, the monthly #LetsLunch crowd? I intended to bake up a Southern peach pie with the late season fruit I bought at an interstate off-ramp vegetable stand. Those peaches became roasted peach jam instead, so I turned to my second favorite pie, sweet potato pie. Truth is, every Thanksgiving, I'd rather have sweet potato pie than pumpkin or pecan pie. This recipe is adapted from Damon Lee Fowler's charming and reliable cookbook "Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches."

Sweet Potato Custard Pie. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

Pie Crust

These are instructions for making pie crust in a food processor, my favorite way to blend the fat into the flour. I keep a small can of Crisco in the bottom drawer of my refrigerator, so it’s always well-chilled for pie crust making. No excuse not to make pie, right?

2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

½ cup vegetable shortening, very cold

About 1/3 cup ice water

1.     1.   Place the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of the food processor. Pulse five times to mix the dry ingredients. Add the shortening, pulsing until the flour resembles coarse meal or grits. Add a few tablespoons of ice water and pulse. Continue adding ice water until dough comes together.

2.      2.  Lightly flour a clean counter top and remove dough from bowl of food processor. Using a light touch, press dough into a round disk, wrap in plastic and chill for at least an hour or overnight. After chilling, the pie crust is ready for rockin’ and rollin.’

 

Sweet Potato Custard Pie

About five or six medium sweet potatoes

1 cup sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 large eggs

A pinch of salt

1 generous tablespoon vanilla

1.       To roast sweet potatoes: rinse off tubers, place them on a foil-lined baking sheet and prick the tops with a fork. Roast in a 400 degree oven for about an hour. Let the sweet potatoes cool, then remove the pulp from their jackets. Mash the pulp.

2.       Stir together the sweet potato pulp, sugar and softened butter in a bowl. Add the eggs, salt and vanilla, stirring well. Pour into a pastry-lined pan and bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 40 minutes. Let cool, then slice and serve. 

#LetsLunch is a fine group of food bloggers who post monthly on a given subject. I'm hosting this month and I chose the theme of pie. There is power in pie and here are the stories to prove it:

Annabelle‘s Chocolate Pie at Glass of Fancy
Anne Marie‘s Apple Pie Sandwiches at Sandwich Surprise
Betty Ann‘s Calamansi Pie at Asian In America
Grace‘s Easy Apple Pie with Lard Crust at HapaMama
Jill‘s Guava and Cream Cheese Empanadas at Eating My Words
Lisa G‘s Sweet Ricotta Noodle Pie at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lisa K‘s Great-Grandmama’s Chocolate Pie at The Little Good Ride
Linda‘s Biscoff Banana & Pear Galette at Spicebox Travels
Lucy‘s Sweet Potato Custard Pie at A Cook and Her Books 
Mai‘s Caramel Apple Pie Sundae at Cooking in the Fruit Bowl
Margaret‘s Cushaw (Squash) Pie at Tea and Scones, Too
Nancie‘s Edna Lewis’s Tyler Pie at Nancie McDermott
Naomi‘s Huckleberry Pie Ice-Cream at The Gastro Gnome
Rebecca‘s Summer-Fall Hand Pies at GrongarBlog
Sara‘s Herb Pie from Ottolenghi and Tamimi’s “Jerusalem” at Three Clever Sisters
~~~

It's pie time

Research for #LetsLunch pie. Lucy Mercer. A Cook and Her Books.

I need to bake a pie. Not a bad prospect for a rainy Labor Day afternoon. This morning, over coffee, I'm poring over my favorite baking cookbooks for inspiration. Savannah writer Damon Lee Fowler's glossy "New Southern Baking," a pair of pamphlets from Pleasant Hill's Shaker community "We Make You Kindly Welcome" and "Welcome Back to Pleasant Hill," and a classic from my Harvest Gold youth, "Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook." 

Should I bake a buttermilk chess pie, the most-pinned recipe from A Cook and Her Books? Or a sweet potato custard pie, a recipe adapted from another much-loved book, "A Treasury of Southern Baking," by Prudence Hilburn? In these last days of summer, I keep going back to my first pie love, peach pie.

Zinnia with grasshopper. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 And peach it may well be. On the return drive from visiting family in middle Georgia, we pulled off at a roadside fruit stand and bought a case of plump, late season peaches. I intended to buy a basket for $10, but the fella offered me a case for $25. I told him that was more than I needed. He said "$20, then." When I hesitated, not a bargaining stance, I promise you, I was really pondering what I would do with a case of peaches ripening on my countertop with only the Labor Day holiday to deal with them before they turned to overripe mush. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm making a deal for you," he said, and I ran back to the car for an extra five-spot.

Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 I may have been snookered, these late-season peaches are plumped up from the excess rain we've had in the South this summer. The sweetest fruit is in June, but sometimes late season peaches will surprise you. The first I picked up and bit into was mealy and bland, unfinishable. My daughter couldn't keep her mitts off of the fruit, and grabbed a good one, finishing it in six bites. These may be good pie peaches, with a bit of coaxing and cooking, more sugar, some lemon juice, maybe a turn in the roasting pan. With a bit of advice from my baking gurus, we'll see how this turns out.

South Carolina Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Peach stand, middle of nowhere, Georgia. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Peaches. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 And, of course, if the peaches don't turn out, there's always sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The pie is for September's installment of #LetsLunch, a global food blogging party. The theme of pie is open to wide interpretation here ~ pretty much any combination of fruit and batter or dough will do. And why limit the theme to sweet concoctions? Savory versions like chicken pot pie fit the theme, too. We'll post stories on Friday, September 13. Check out the #LetsLunch page on Facebook and follow on Twitter #LetsLunch. Hope to see you there.

Can she bake an apple pie? Of course!



Pair of apples. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 It's Apple time here at A Cook and Her Books, where I'm celebrating one of the most valuable crops to my home state of Georgia - apples. What dish could express your cooking ability more than pie, and what is the ultimate expression of pie? Apple pie, of course!

I've made this apple cheddar pie several times this year - it came to me from PieLab, the home of pie goodness in Hale County, Alabama. It's even a prize-winning pie - I entered it into the North Georgia State Fair baking competition and it garnered a red ribbon - second place. (It should have won first place, but that's a story for another day). Not that I'm bitter or anything, it's just such a great pie, with a buttery crust flecked with shredded Cheddar cheese, and filled with sweet and cinnamon-y Granny Smith apples.

If you're hankering for an apple pie, give this version a try. The cheddar cheese in the crust gives it a rustic, hearty taste and texture. A slice of this treat and a cup of coffee (or juice for the kiddos) is a first-rate breakfast.

Apple Cheddar Pie. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Apple Cheddar Pie from Pie Lab


3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, chilled
1/2 pound shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup ice water
1/4 cup white vinegar

7 large Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cubed
1 egg white, beaten
1 tablespoon white sugar

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cheese. Combine water and vinegar, and gradually stir in until mixture forms a ball. Divide dough in half and shape into balls. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C.) Roll one ball out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place bottom crust in pie plate. Roll out top crust and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, toss apples in lemon juice to prevent discoloration. Drain and discard any excess juice. Stir in sugar and cinnamon. Arrange rows of overlapping apple slices, working from outer rim in. Dot with butter. Cover with top pie crust. Seal and crimp edges with fork, then trim excess dough. Cut a few slashes in top crust to allow steam to escape.

4. Bake on cookie sheet in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C), and continue baking for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven, brush lightly with beaten egg, and sprinkle liberally with sugar. Bake 5 to 10 minutes more until sugar forms a crisp glaze. Remove pie from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

More apple recipes:

Apple crisp

French thin-crust apple tart

Classic apple dumplings

Short-cut apple dumplings

Applesauce

Apple blondie

My blue ribbon Morning Glory muffins include an apple for extra nutrition and flavor.

Two savory recipes on the site are made better with use apples: Mulligatawny soup and Easy Kid "Sushi."

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

A peanut butter pie for Mikey



Peanut butter pie with Reese's Pieces for Mikey by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


This may not be one of the prettiest pies I’ve ever made, but it may be one of the most important. This Peanut Butter Pie is for Mikey and all those little “I’ll do it tomorrow’s” I say to my family as I try to get done just what I need to get done today.

I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime after “I do” and “It’s a girl!” and “Honey, it’s another girl!” I became a big believer in tomorrow. Today was for whittling down the to-do list. Get up, get breakfast, get out the door, pick up, drive home, finish homework. Cook. Eat. Clean. Launder. Way too much laundry. Tomorrow was for baking cakes, making milkshakes, splashing in the rain and making mud pies.

But, guess what? We don’t always have tomorrow. I was reminded of this recently by a woman whom I’ve never met, Jennifer Perillo, who is a recipe developer and blogger at In Jennie’s Kitchen. She lost her husband suddenly last week when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He left behind Jennie and their two young daughters. Last Monday, I checked in on Twitter and began reading the emotional words and shreds of news about the sudden end to this beloved father and husband’s life.

Blogging’s a funny thing. You can keep your audience at a distance, posting words and pictures, just pretending that every day is the same in a magical land that’s untouched by unemployment, illness, loss. Or you can open up the doors and windows and let the world see what life is all about. That’s what Jennifer chose to do, posting “ One Last Dance” the day after her husband passed away. The home video of her husband dancing with her little girl just about breaks my heart to watch. It’s someone’s husband. It’s a little girl’s daddy.

Back to tomorrows: On the day of Mikey’s memorial service, Jennie asked for fellow bloggers to bake her husband’s favorite pie, a luscious chocolate and peanut butter cream pie. She said she’d been meaning to bake it for him for awhile, but kept putting it off to "tomorrow." Jennie asked that readers bake the pie for the Mikeys in their lives, the family and friends that we nourish.

I could have put off making the pie – I didn't have all of the ingredients and I really didn't want to go to the store. I did have the cream and the peanut butter. I didn’t have chocolate wafers, but remembered that I had a pre-made chocolate crust. I didn’t have peanuts, but for some reason had a bag of Reese’s Pieces, the mini-me version of nature's most perfect food, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I was also out of dark chocolate. But a pie could be pulled together out of what I had on hand, so I asked Lindsey, who is five, to help and together we made our version of Mikey’s Peanut Butter Pie.

We began by melting white chocolate with a bit of vegetable oil and spreading it in the chocolate cookie crumb pie shell. A generous handful (or two) of Reese's Pieces were sprinkled over the chocolate. In a separate bowl, we whipped together cream cheese, peanut butter and a can of Eagle Brand. We poured the filling into the pie shell and decorated the top of the pie with more Reese's Pieces. The pie went into the fridge to set up for a few hours.

Clockwise from top left: melting chocolate, spreading it in the pie shell, folding in the cream, whipping the filling.
Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Little Bit is always willing to help mix. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Watching my little one in the kitchen, I'm amazed at how "in the moment" she is. No worries about school or friends or family. No thoughts for the future beyond whether she can have some Reese's Pieces and be able to lick the white chocolate off the spatula.

But sometimes, she surprises me. While she places the candies on the top of the filling, she starts talking about change.
"I'm almost six! Everything changes when you're six. I'm going to kindergarten, that's a

change. And summer's almost over, that's a change."

"That's right, sweetie."

I want to stop the time clock and freeze this frame forever.

Go to In Jennie's Kitchen and check out her recipe for Creamy Peanut Butter Pie. I'm not including the recipe here because I really tinkered with it - her original is a beautiful pie, mine was kind of cobbled together. I used a pre-made crust and reduced the sugar in the filling. I substituted Reese's Pieces for the peanuts and used more of the candy as a garnish instead of a chocolate drizzle. If you have a few minutes, take some time and read Jennifer's words and look at the pictures of her beautiful family.

Jennifer, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family during this sad time. Thank you for sharing Mike's life and your family moments - they are treasures.

The perks of hanging out in the kitchen with Mom. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

A Southern Favorite: Buttermilk Chess Pie

Buttermilk Chess Pie by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Pie is the new cupcake. Did you know that? That's why I've spent the last month turning out my favorite pies for my family -  from Pie Lab's Apple Cheddar Pie to my favorite Sweet Potato Custard Pie - it's so nice to be able to announce that there is pie for dessert. Here's a buttermilk chess pie that I love, and each time I make it, I think of that Southern tradition of drinking buttermilk, a drink I'm convinced you have to be raised on to appreciate.

My last quarter at the University of Georgia in Athens, I rented a room in an elderly woman's house. Mrs. Willson was a widow and her only daughter lived in Columbus. This was, sigh, more than a couple years ago, and only a few memories rise to the surface - her red brick ranch house with the laundry room off the carport, the old-fashioned medicine cabinet with a slot for dull razor blades, and the refrigerator that she allowed her boarders to share, giving us each our own corner of a shelf. She hid her beer in the back of the fridge, small baby bottles behind the mayonnaise and pickle jars. Mrs. Willson also liked buttermilk and cookies as an evening snack. I always accepted the Grandma's oatmeal cookies, but declined the buttermilk.

To this day, I keep buttermilk in the fridge, but never for drinking straight. It's the base for ranch dressing, with the fresh herbs from the CSA box; it makes a moist banana bread; superlative biscuits (if you use White Lily flour); and this thoroughly excellent Chess Pie.

This is one of the first pies I made. As a new bride, I subscribed to Southern Living magazine for the recipes and the decorating ideas. My husband picked up an issue and remarked that he always liked chess pie. He says nice things about this pie, so I've kept it in my tried and true file. I've cut the sugar by one-fourth, but it's still very sweet. Take your coffee black with a slice of this pie.

Buttermilk Chess Pie by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Buttermilk Chess Pie

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

5 large eggs, lightly beaten

2/3 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Combine sugar and flour in a large bowl. Add eggs and buttermilk, stirring until blended. Stir in melted butter and vanila and pour into unbaked pie crust.

3. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until set. Cool on a wire rack at least an hour before serving. Store leftovers, well-wrapped in refrigerator.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.