I pie with my little eye

Something sweet.
Yes. More pies. I think I have nailed my pie crust recipe down. For those of you who want to know, it is as follows:

1 ¼ cup butter (cold and cubed)
¼ cup of margarine
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
5 Tbsp ice water + 2 tsp vinegar (I use rice wine vinegar – you could use lemon juice too – acid helps cut down on gluten formation. Gluten = tough crust.)

Place four and salt in food processor and spin a few times.

Add margarine and spin processor until the fat is longer visible. Then add the cold cubed butter is 3 installments, spinning the processor after each installment. Add the next installment after the previous one disappears. The final result should have pea sized particles of butter-flour…

Remove mixture to a bowl and add approx. 1/3 of water/vinegar mixture, mix with fork. If you have non-latex gloves, use your hands to mix in the water – so much easier.

Continue to add water until it comes together (no other way to describe it, sorry!). Depending on the humidity, some days you may need less water, other days more…

Place dough ball in fridge for 30 min to 1 hr.
Remove from fridge and divide in half.

Roll with roller to desired thickness, try to do this rather quickly as the butter will start to soften and make rolling a pain…. – should make about 2 crusts, though I can stretch it to 3 crusts if I am feeling thrifty.

I usually place them in their own individual pie tin, bag ‘em, tag ‘em, and freeze ‘em until I need ‘em.

Why I don’t use lard? 1. Lard isn’t so easy to come by in smaller quantities. 2. Lard has more fat (205 grams) per cup than butter (184 grams), (even though butter tends to have more saturated fat). 3. People who are Muslim wont eat my pies (one person in my lab at work).
4. Butter tastes good.

The pies…

An apple pear pie

4 cups of sliced apples
2 cups of sliced pears
¾ cup of sugar
¼ cup of tapioca granules ("Minute" variety) or 3 TbSP of tapioca flour

Place above in bowl and let macerate (i.e. let sit) for about 20 min.
Place in pie crust.
Top with crumb topping.

Simple Crumb topping:
1/2 cup stick butter (room temp)
½ cup sugar
½ cup flour
Mix until combined.
I usually don’t like another pie crust on top – too much dough in my opinion… hence why I go for the crumb topping.

Bake in 375 oven for 60 - 70 minutes.
Let it set for at least 90 minutes – or you will have an apple/pear cobbler, not a pie.
It needs to set up…

Blueberry/Red raspberry/Marionberry pie.

(got above frozen berries at Costco)

Place 5 cups of frozen berries in bowl.
Add ¾ cup of sugar (I went a smidge less – trying to cut back).
Add ¼ cup of tapioca granules or 3 TbSP of tapioca flour

Let sit for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Place in pie crust with crumb topping and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.
Let cool for about an hour before serving with…

Ice cream

Or…

Berry Whipped Cream

So I had some berries left over (about 5 oz.)
Let them thaw and placed them in a food processor with ¼ cup of sugar.
Pulverized them and them strained the juice through a strainer.
Took 1 ½ cups of heavy whipping cream and added about 4 tsp of the juice and whipped to stiff peaks.

A great, not too sweet compliment to the pie…

Hopefully my wife has updated our other blog and posted pics of our daughter’s first ski trip! (if not i'll post some)

She did VERY well! (In her words - "better than you were Daddy!" Can't argue with that.)
Perfect North is in Indiana, in case you're wondering where we went.