Mini S'mores Pie

Hello and Happy Pi Day!

I’ve never actually ever celebrated Pi day, but for some reason, this year I was motivated! I even made a pie to celebrate. Well, I guess you could call it a pie or a tort… or you can call it what I call it: “good”.

Yes, I saw this s’mores pie on The Pastry Affair and it looked delicious, and plus it’s a s’more… in a pan… need I say more? No? Good.

So, onwards. My family is not a big pie family. Well my parents like fruit pies, and I like the creamy/custard/anything-but-fruit pies, and my sister… I think the closest she gets to a pie is a Poptart. So when these little s’more pies were gone within a day, I knew something was right.

The filling was definitely the best part in my opinion. It was like mousse; creamy, soft, delicate, and any other adjective that describes a good mousse. It was just perfect. But I think next time I may opt for a milk chocolate, instead of semi-sweet, just for a little more sweetness.

The crust I used was unorthodox. I know when you think “s’mores” a picture of melty milk chocolate pressed next to a toasted gooey marshmallow and sandwiched between two honey graham crackers comes to mind. The thing is though, I wanted mini pies, and I couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate a graham cracker crust into the recipe. Sure I could have used store-bough mini graham cracker pie crusts, but I felt that those were way too big. So instead I opted for a flaky pie crust. And you know what? It actually worked well, I thought. This crust is delectably flaky, one of the best pie crusts I’ve come across.

And I can’t forget about the toasted marshmallow tops. I had about 1/5 of a bag of mini marshmallows in the pantry, so I used scissors to cut them in half and placed them all around the baked chocolate filling, set the pies under the broiler, and voilà! S’mores pie is served.

So celebrate, have a slice of some 3.141592…(that’s all I have memorized).

Mini S’mores Pie
Adapted from The Pastry Affair 
Crust from Adora’s Box    
Makes 6 mini pies (muffin sized)

Crust
Ingredients
½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
4 tbsp cold butter, cubed
2 oz soft cream cheese

Directions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or you can use a food processor) beat the flour and butter until coarse crumbs form. Add in the cream cheese and beat until dough forms a ball, about 2 minutes. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Place dough between two sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper, and roll as thin as you can get it. Use some kind or round object (4-4.5 in diameter) to cut out crusts. Re-roll dough and repeat until all the dough has been used up (there will be no scraps). You may need to re-refrigerate the dough between rolling sessions.
3. Place dough rounds into standard muffin tins. Set in the fridge to chill while you make the filling.  

Chocolate Filling
Ingredients
¼ cup + 2 tbsp whipping cream
¼ cup + 2 tbsp milk
5 oz semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
Pinch of salt
1 egg, room temperature and beaten
¼ - ½ cup mini marshmallows cut in half

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Take the pie crusts out of the fridge.
2. Whisk the whipping cream and the milk in a medium sauce pan. Warm the liquid over medium-low heat. When the milk mixture has heated, stir in the chocolate. Keep stirring until all of the chocolate has completely melted and the mixture is velvety smooth. Throw in a pinch of salt. Add in the beaten egg and whisk until mixture becomes smooth again. Be careful not to scramble the egg.
3. Pour chocolate mixture into a jug or something with a spout for easy pouring. Carefully fill the pie crusts with the chocolate filling, leaving a little room (about 1/3 inch) on top. Place on the middle rack and bake for about 15-17 minutes, or until the filling has set and does not giggle in the center.
4. Take mini pies out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes. Once cool, set the pies in the fridge for a few hours to finish setting. Once set, cover the tops of the pies with halved mini marshmallows and set under to broiler for 30seconds – 1 minute or until the marshmallows have been nicely toasted. Serve warm or cold, but I preferred mine warm. To warm, stick in the microwave for 20-30 seconds.  

My, My, Oatmeal Pie

I love oatmeal. It is probably the most delicious thing on the planet. I believe I have Quaker Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal at least five out of the seven days of the week. My hands are always cold and in the morning it’s nice to just hold that nice warm bowl of hot oatmeal and then slowly eat it, which in turn makes my body feel all cozy. Now, I love oatmeal in many forms: as breakfast, as dinner, sometimes lunch, streusel, especially as a cookie, but what about pie?

The idea came to me in the beginning of the week as I was having my daily bowl of oatmeal. I am not your typical fruit pie find of gal, in fact, I hate chunks (well fruit chunks that it) and I just don’t like fruit either, so I like the idea of cream pies, pumpkin pies, cinnamon pies, etc. Oatmeal is very versatile, I think, and so I Googled oatmeal pie and low and behold, I found a few recipes for oatmeal pie. However, some I just didn’t get the right feeling about and usually when I find a recipe I like, I favorite it and then go searching, only to come back to the first one I liked. That’s why I stuck with this recipe for Maple Oatmeal Pie.

I liked the ingredients, but it lacked directions and I’m one of those people that need everything written out for them step by step (yay visual learners!). So I kinda of had to improvise with the directions, but this recipe also called for a heck of a lot of honey, and not a whole bunch of maple and I’ll choose maple over honey any day, so I decreased the amount of honey and increased the amount of maple syrup. I also had to decrease the amount of butter by a tablespoon, because I was short on it. Now, this pie GREW! I was expecting it to just kinda sit there with about an inch of crust peaking out, but noooo. This thing grew as if I had put some kind of extra strength leavening in it.

I planned on having this pie for lunch, but as it was cooking, the minutes were going by and I was getting so hungry, that I decided to eat some lunch and instead of having a few granola bars to compliment my usual sandwich, I would have the pie. This was a pretty good pie, I must admit. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t not make some changes. First change, is add some more flavor to the crust. I wonder if it’s ok to add some vanilla to crust to make it taste better. Second thing is, I think I would use quick cooking oats instead of old fashioned oats, it might make the pie a little more tender. Third, not that the honey didn’t add a nice touch, it did, but maybe I would switch out the honey with some brown sugar, you can’t go wrong with brown sugar!

Below you will also find the recipe I used for the crust, but you can buy store bought crust. I was just getting frustrated because pie crusts don't come in single packages, but the 2 pie crust package. Stupid :P

At this point, I was thinking that maybe I needed more oats because there were some problems with the liquid to oat ratio.

However, it turned out just fine and looked lovely. Even my sister said she might think about maybe trying it, and she hates pie.

 

Yummy yummy pie.

Maple Oatmeal Pie
slightly adapted from A Cozy Kitchen
serves 8

Ingredients
1 unbaked pie shell
3 tbsp butter
½ cup honey
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
2 eggs
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
1 cup uncooked oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line pie pan with uncooked pie crust and set aside
2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter. Slowly add in the honey and then the maple syrup until well incorporated. Add in the eggs one at a time, making sure that one is fulled mixed in before adding the second. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, salt and stir in the oats.
3. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes so the oats have a chance to absorb the liquid mixture. In the mean time, if you are obsessed with having the kitchen clean like I am, you can take advantage of this and clean up the mess.
4. Pour into pie plate and bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until the pie is set.
5. Cool on a wire rack for 10-20 minutes and once it's cool, you can cut into the pie and serve.

Pie Crust
halved from Land O Lakes
makes 1 9 inch pie crust

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
5 tbsp unsalted butter
4-5 tbsp cold water

Directions

1. Combine the flour and salt. Cut out small chunks of butter into the flour and, using your hands (or food processor) mix in the butter until the flour looks like coarse crumbs. Add in the water by tablespoons until the dough forms a nice bowl.
2. No need to refrigerate this dough, it works better if it is slightly cold, but not far off from room temp. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out into a 12 inch circle. I can never get it looking right, or have the correct size, so I just roll until it can't be rolled no more.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/8 pie
Calories 299.1 Total Fat 13.0 g Saturated Fat 0.5 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.8 g Cholesterol 76.3 mg Sodium 135.5 mg Potassium 38.6 mg Total Carbohydrate 34.9 g 1.6 g Sugars 25.5 g Protein 13.3 g

I´m not just a Cinnamon enthusiast, I´m also a Psychic

Just kidding about the Psychic part...but today while I was driving I randomly got the song F*** You by Cee Lo Green (by the way Gwyneth Platrow did a better job on Glee) in my head. And when I got home I started humming it and my sister was like, “I was singing that in my head while you were driving”. So, I guess we had some sister telepathy going on. Cool, eh?

Well let’s get onto the subject of pie. But before I do, did anyone recodnize the quote I used for the title? No? Yes? Well it’s from Psych, a.k.a. the best TV show EVER! I’m totally in love with James Roday (Shawn Spencer). Well in the episode Dual Spires, Shawn and Gus go to a cinnamon festival and basically everything in the town has cinnamon in it and Shawn and Gus try a cinnamon pie and the way they went on and on about it I knew I had to make it too, but I just didn’t have time. However, the idea for a cinnamon pie has been in my head since that episode aired and I could get it out. Well today I finally did it! I made a cinnamon pie! Granted it’s not the prettiest thing in the world and this is only my second pie and I think, even though it is unfortunate looking, it is one dang good tasting pie! I don’t want to say it was fudgey because it isn’t chocolate, but that’s the consistency it had and mmm I had to stop myself from eating more of it by eating ice cream instead haha. But it is now my goal to perfect this pie because I think it could turn out to be something great. Maybe that could be my new years resolution.

The crust was a tad bit burnt on the top, but that didn't harm

the taste factor of this pie.

 Mmmm cinnamon pie.

Cinnamon Pie
recipe from DVO Recipes 
makes one 9-in pie
serves 8

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 heaping Tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten slightly
2 tablespoons oleo, melted (Had no clue what this was, so I used butter)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk (used 2%)

Directions

1. Mix the dry ingredients together (sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt). Add the egg, oleo, and vanilla. Mix well and add the milk. While stirring, pour into the unbaked pie crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees. Bake for 45 minutes more. Top will seem loose, but will set up.

Crust
adapted from Nabisco World

Ingredients
8 whole HONEY MAID Honey Grahams, finely crushed (about 1-1/4 cups crumbs)

1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/3 tsp cinnamon

Directions

1. Combine ingredients until well mixed.
2. Place crumbs into prepared pie shell (maybe greese it with some PAM beforehand?) and press firmly.
3. Cool in the fridge for about 1 hour.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/8 pie

Calories 301.9 Total Fat 12.7 g Saturated Fat 0.8 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.5 g Cholesterol 56.5 mg Sodium 196.3 mg Potassium 30.3 mg Total Carbohydrate 45.1 g Dietary Fiber 0.7 g Sugars 36.2 g Protein 3.4 g

Classic Pumpkin Pie

I was never a fan of pie, unless it were a chocolate pie then I was happy. But the chocolate pies I always got were the prepackaged stuff and now that I think about it, they weren’t that good anyways. However, last year I decided to try pumpkin pie for maybe the second time in my life? I don’t really know, all I know is that I really liked it, but it too was store bought. This year I wanted to attempt in making my own pumpkin pie and I had heard some horror stories about making homemade pies so I was very cautious. I think I rounded up about 5 pumpkin pie recipes before I chose this one, but only because it was the classic kind of pumpkin pie, maybe next year I’ll make that maple pumpkin pie that sounded to good. Well, enough of my babbling, this pie was actually really, really delicious! It was creamy, and it had a nice flavor, it was like Thanksgiving in a pie plate. The crust, however; left something to be desired, I had trouble with it in the first place and when I tasted it, it was okish, but what do I know about pie crusts, I’ve only ever had 2 maybe 3 slices of pie my entire life! Either way, this pie was very, very yummy and I’m pretty sure I’ll be making it again next fall!

Happy Thanksgiving!

before going into the oven, and yes, I was nervous

 in order to check if the pie was done I insertest a metal stick,

 now that I think about it I should have just used a toothpick,

or maybe just eyeballed it...

perfect pumpkin pie!

Classic Pumpkin Pie

from the Taste of Home

8 servings per pie

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon butter, melted
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water (I needed closer to 4 or 5 tbsp)

Filling
1 egg
1 egg white
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each ground allspice, nutmeg and cloves
1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin
1 cup fat-free evaporated milk

Directions

1. In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Using a fork, stir in oil and butter until dough is crumbly. Gradually add enough water until dough holds together. Roll out between sheets of plastic wrap into an 11-in. circle. Freeze for 10 minutes.
2. Remove top sheet of plastic wrap; invert pastry into a 9-in. pie plate. Remove remaining plastic wrap. Trim and flute edges. Chill.
3. Roll pastry scraps to 1/8-in. thickness. Cut with a 1-in. leaf-shaped cookie cutter. Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 375° for 6-8 minutes or until edges are very lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack.
4. In a large bowl, beat the egg, egg white, sugars, salt and spices until smooth. Beat in pumpkin. Gradually beat in milk. Pour into pastry shell. Bake at 375° for 45-50 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Garnish with leaf cutouts. Refrigerate leftovers.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/8 pie
Calories 237.9 Total Fat 7.5 g Saturated Fat 0.6 g Polyunsaturated Fat 1.6 g Monounsaturated Fat 3.3 g Cholesterol 30.3 mg Sodium 266.2 mg Potassium 125.6 mg Total Carbohydrate 38.2 g Dietary Fiber 2.8 g Sugars 24.8 g Protein 5.8 g