Poke Poke Poke

I backtracked, re-made the change I'd un-done yesterday, and I feel like I'm making forward progress again even though I had a net loss of words.

I'm tired. I think I will go to bed and poke this some more tomorrow.

Recipe: Rainy Day Tarts

This recipe is a work in progress. Notes for next time are included.

Pie Dough for one double-crust pie
2 cups flour
2/3 cup shortening
1 1/4 tsp salt
cold water

Apple filling
1 1/2 cups apples (peeled, finely sliced)
2 T white sugar
2 T brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 T butter, cut into tiny pieces
1 T flour

Blueberry filling
1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries (partially thawed)
2 T white sugar
2 T brown sugar
3 T flour
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 T butter, cut into tiny pieces
dash salt

Cherry filling
1 1/2 cups frozen cherries (partially thawed)
4 T white sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
dash allspice
dash salt
1/2 T butter, cut into tiny pieces
1 T flour

Equipment required: small pie tins (available in packs of eight at Lunds -- also, I recently bought a non-disposable one at Kitchen Window. They're not very expensive, either way.) I used a muffin tin to use up filling and crust, making two muffin pies. The recipe for a double-crust pie would easily make four small pies, but I lacked a fourth small pie tin. The muffin pies used up the blueberry filling (I had a bit too much) and the apple filling (I used two apples and had a fair amount too much. Next time, use one larger apple, if available, rather than two small apples. Or plan on one blueberry-apple pie.)

Mental state required: a Zen detachment from any desire to keep the dining room table or floor clean; no pressing need to be anywhere or do anything other than make mini-pies. It took about an hour and a half to get them in the oven, and then another half hour to bake.

Process:

Measure flour and salt into bowl, and blend. Measure shortening (shortening sticks are totally worth the extra money, especially since we're already springing for the non-hydrogenated kind), and blend with pastry blender and knife until it looks like coarse meal. Molly can measure flour (with a little help) and salt (with a bit more help). She enjoys using the pastry blender, though she required my help to get the flour and shortening off the pastry blender. I had to finish up. Kiera was asleep for this part, fortunately. She always wants to be in the thick of things during baking projects.

Add cold water, a tablespoon at a time, sprinkling over the mixture and stirring in lightly with a fork. Molly can do the sprinkling. I insisted on helping her because I didn't trust her not to just dump it in. Actually, she kind of gets the concept, but also, she doesn't get a full tablespoon of water when she tries, so even if she dumps it straight in, it's okay. It just takes a long time.

When pie crust is wet enough to stick together in balls, make eight small balls. (I made six. It could've made eight.)

Dust table and rolling pin with flour, then roll out the crust. Molly was really good at rolling. I squashed it down for her, then let her roll a bit, then had her wait while I picked up the pie dough, re-floured, flipped, and turned it so that it formed a circle rather than a very long oval. I usually finished off the rolling to get it thin and round enough. She did require monitoring for this but did generally an excellent job.

I have let Molly do a "Molly pie" (re-rolling the excess crust) whenever I make a pie, and have for ages. (Hence our depleted stock of mini pie pans.) She really enjoys this. I think it's easier for her than rolling out the full pie crust, and also the whole thing feels less high-stakes. The twice-rolled crust of the Molly pie is less flaky than the main pie, but not half bad. Pie crust is a little finicky but not as hard as the makers of Pillsbury Pre-Made Refrigerated Crusts would like us to believe.

Anyway. Roll out three bottom crusts, then make fillings.

This could almost certainly be made with whatever fruits someone had around. We had Braeburn apples in a bag, plus three different kinds of frozen fruit: blueberries, cherries, and strawberries. (The girls really like to snack on berries, and Ed makes them into smoothies. You can buy almost anything as a frozen fruit these days -- peaches, raspberries, whatever.) Of course, since you're making individual pies, you can let people choose their filling. I wanted an apple pie. Actually, part of the point of this entire exercise was that I have a craving for apple pie, but making a whole big apple pie would use up our apples and I also don't want to go to the store. Ed requested blueberry, and Molly chose cherry. When Kiera woke up I asked her what kind she wanted, and she said, very decisively, "Foom!" or something similarly puzzling. Since we had excess crust and filling, I made two pies in the muffin tin. One is apple, and one is blueberry-apple. Molly had already offered to share her cherry pie with Kiera, anyway.

As a general formula, I would propose: 1 1/2 cups fruit, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 T flour, 1/2 T butter (or margarine -- everywhere I mention butter, it's actually Earth Balance margarine), a dash of salt, and a sprinkling of whatever spices are recommended for that kind of pie.

When Kiera woke, we had finished the apple pie, and rolled out the bottom crusts for the blueberry and cherry pies. We finished those fillings, rolled out the top crusts, and put together the pies (Molly sealed the crust for her pie) while Kiera played with flour in the mixing bowl, along with some scraps of crust I gave her to mess with.

I heated the oven to 400, put in the pies, turned it down to 375 about ten minutes later, and baked until brown. Next time, make sure there is something to catch the runoff under EVERY blueberry pie, including the tiny one in the muffin tin, if applicable. It took about twenty or thirty minutes for the muffin pies, and thirty or forty for the mini pies.

We have not eaten them yet, so I may be back later to confess that they were terrible. Honestly, though, if it involves fruit and sugar and pie crust, it can't be THAT bad. Unless you knead the pie dough. Ken Golden apparently once kneaded the pie dough like bread, and apparently, that pie was a miserable failure. The filling still tasted good, at least.