Posts tagged ‘dessert’

10.11.2011

Plum One-Crust Pie

by marilynk

October was a big month for pies. I volunteered to make our family’s Thanksgiving pies (one pumpkin and one chocolate), I made another g-free apple for a pot luck you’ll hear about in a future post, but this one gets to be the October pie: a single-top-crust pie full of juicy and delicious plums.

October 2011 Pie #3: Plum One-Crust Pie (modified from Foodland Ontario)

  • 6 cups plums pitted and cut into eighths (I used a combination of prune plums and round red ones – not sure what the varietal is called)
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch (*Note: I would toss the fruit with flour in a future pie, but not this much. Maybe 1/8 cup?)
  • 1 tsp anise seed
  • 2 Tbs maple syrup
  • 1/2 recipe of Smitten Kitchen’s Pie Crust 102

Beautiful ripe plums!

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06.11.2011

Adventures in G-Free Baking

by marilynk

I have a dear friend who has Celiac Disease, which means she went to a bunch of pot-lucks in August and September where beautiful fruit pies were on offer, but she couldn’t partake. I usually bake gifts for people’s birthday’s so I asked Sarah what kind of pie she would like and she requested apple. I have never explored gluten-free baking before, so I did a lot of internet searching. There were a number of recipes that called for mixtures of flours that I don’t usually keep on hand and some included ingredients, like xanthan gum, that I would have to track down.

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28.09.2011

My Commitment to Pie

by marilynk

I’ve always preferred cake to pie. These are shocking, and sometimes argument-inducing, words to many that I know and love. To me, cake has everything: yummy crumbly cake, delicious and varied fillings (if you want), and an infinite variety of icings (although I am picky about my icings). Pie has great fillings, sure, but I would often leave the crust uneaten – again, sacrilege to the pie-devout.

See, the crust is the crux of the issue. I’ve never made a pie crust that I really liked. The pastry was hard to work with, the rolled dough broke when I tried to move it to the pie plate, and the taste…was never all that good. For a while I used pre-baked pie shells or the unbaked rounds from the grocery store, but the taste still wasn’t great. Better, but nothing that was going to rival a homemade cake.

In July, my friend Nicole gave me this sage piece of advice:

Know when to take good advice...it's a life skill.

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