Chocolate Pecan Pie

I am addicted to cookbooks.  Oftentimes, I like reading them and looking at the pictures, daydreaming about baking for hours.  I really love church cookbooks.  Man, those ladies (and gents) can bake.  Those spiral bound collections of everyone's family recipes are fantastic.

This chocolate pecan pie is from my mother in law's church cookbook.  I tweaked it a little bit, the original recipe only had pecans for garnish and I love pecans so I amped up the amount of pecans.

Chocolate Pecan Pie adapted from A Taste of Asbury
1 9 inch pie shell-honestly, I used Pillsbury's ready to use crust, I was in a time pinch
Filling:
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup pecan halves

Beat together the corn syrup, sugar, butter, vanilla, and eggs.  Mix in chocolate chips and pecans.  Pour into pie shell.  Bake for an hour at 325 degrees or until the filling is set.  Allow to cool because the combination of corn syrup and hot chocolate chips will burn your mouth like none other.

Peanut Butter Pie

Delicious, decadent, totally dreamy.  Once piece of this pie has probably more calories than are supposed to be consumed in a day, but soooo worth it!

Peanut Butter Pie adapted from Sugar Bitches
makes a single 10 inch pie

Crust
Graham cracker crust of your choice

Filling
12 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 8 ounce container of Cool Whip

Beat together the cream cheese, peanut butter, and sugar until smooth.  Fold the Cool Whip into the peanut butter mixture.  Smooth into pie crust.

Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used 70% cacao)
1/2 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix together the sugar and heavy cream into a small saucepan.  Stir until the mixture comes to a boil.  Simmer without stirring for 6 minutes.  Remove from heat and dump in the chocolate and butter.  Allow to sit for a minute and then stir until smooth.  Add the vanilla.

Add topping to pie and crushed peanuts if desired.  Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving or stick in the freezer.  If freezing, be sure to remove about an hour before serving so that the pie will be soft enough to cut.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Recently I got a new toy.  Kitchen torch!  I had been wanting one for awhile, not because I am a creme brulee addict, but because I like torched meringue so much better than baked meringue.  I have such issues with meringue under the broiler.  It shrinks and dries out and is just plain icky.  A friend of mine had even more trouble with the broiler.  Her meringue caught on fire!  So a kitchen torch it is.

I decided as my first dessert using my new toy to make lemon meringue pie, one of my husband's favorites.  I like to use lemon curd for my pie filling, I love how the tartness is offset by the sweet meringue.

LEMON MERINGUE PIE

Lemon Curd  (about 2 cups) adapted from Martha Stewart Cupcakes
8 egg yolks plus 2 whole eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract or zest from 1 lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a heavy pan mix the egg yolks and sugar together.  I read in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The Cake Bible that mixing the egg yolks and sugar together helps to keep your curd from curdling.  After mixing the egg yolks and sugar together, add the lemon juice and mix together.  Heat over medium heat until mixture thickens to where it coats the back of the spoon.  Do not let the mixture boil or really even almost boil or you will have curdling problems too.

Once the mixture thickens, remove from the heat. Add the butter and stir until melted.  If curdling occurred (i.e. there are little bits of scrambled egg in your curd) strain through a fine mesh strainer.

If you are concerned about calories and cholesterol, this version uses fewer eggs than the above version and is still tasty.  

Meringue
3-4 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tarter
1/2 cup sugar
1-2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat egg whites and cream of tarter with whisk attachment until foamy.  Add the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until all incorporated.  Beat until stiff peaks form.  Add vanilla and beat until incorporated.

Crust (This recipe makes a lot of crust.  You can cut it down or wrap it well and freeze the leftover)
1 pound 4 ounces pastry flour (I use 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 cake flour. Pastry flour has a slightly lower percentage of gluten then all purpose, but higher than cake.  The combination leads to a lighter crust.)
13 ounces lard (you can use shortening if you are afraid of lard or are vegan or just plain don't like it, but the taste is different
5 ounces cold water
.4 ounces (2 1/2 teaspoons) salt
1 ounce (1/8 cup) sugar, optional (I use it in sweet pies like this one but I ditch it for savory pies)

I like to make my pie crust in my food processor.  It helps me not to over agitate the gluten and I find it tedious to cut the lard into the flour.  My friend who is a pastry chef and who gave me this recipe told me to rub the lard into the flour with my fingers until the mixture resembles cornmeal.  She does make a mean pie crust, but I am lazy and the food processor is faster.

Put flour, sugar, and salt into food processor.  Pulse for a few seconds to get everything mixed up and aerated.  Add the lard to the food processor.  Pulse until mixture resembles cornmeal.  Add just enough cold water so that it comes together.  The dough should not be wet, it should just stay together when you squeeze it.

Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface.  Roll out and place into pie pan.  Dock (poke) dough with fork to keep from puffing during baking.  You can also fill the middle of the dough with parchment and beans, however, I find this a delicate dough that rips easily and just docking usually does the job.  Bake crust at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes.

Allow to cool completely.  Fill with lemon curd and pile the meringue on top.  Take kitchen torch and brown the top of the meringue.  Alternately, place pie under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the top.  Watch carefully!  

Blueberry Dessert

When I was a kid, my parents did a major remodeling job on our house.  Every spare moment, my father was reconstructing our rundown farmhouse into their dream.  They did all of the work themselves, with the assistance from various family members.  As a thank you to whomever was helping us that weekend, my mom would always fix a delicious lunch.  However, because she was helping my dad work, the lunch needed to be prepared ahead of time. This blueberry dessert was fast, easy, and tasty.  It also could be made the day before and ended up being one of my uncle's favorite desserts.

This is also the dessert that taught me what confectioner's sugar was.  I had never seen that particular nomenclature for powdered sugar when I was younger and so I assumed it meant granulated sugar.  It did not.  It was the grittiest pie my family had ever tasted!  But they are good people and ate it anyway.

The other day my grandmother called all of us together for a work day at her house.  She needed some painting, window washing, and general repairs done on her house.  My mom made lunch and I was asked to bring dessert.  I chose the blueberry dessert because it fast, tasty, and could be made the day ahead of time so that no time would be taken from work to prepare food.

Blueberry Dessert

1 10 inch Graham Cracker Pie Crust (this time I cheated and bought one, however I typically make them)

Filling:
2 Cups Confectioner's sugar
8 ounces cream cheese room temperature
1 package Dream Whip already made up (Dream Whip is a whipped non-dairy topping that is made from a powder and milk.  You can probably substitute whipped cream or Cool Whip with good results)

1 Can Blueberry Pie Filling (or pie filling of your choice, my dad prefers cherry)

Mix together ingredients for filling.  Pour into pie shell.  Pour pie filling over the top.  Refrigerate.

Toll House Pie

In my family, each person get to choose the kind of cake they want for their birthday.  This year, my mother asked for pie instead of her usual German Chocolate cake.  Specifically Toll House pie.  For those of you who have never had Toll House pie, it is essentially a chocolate chip cookie in a pie shell.  This is not a pie for the weak.  It is extremely rich and gooey, made more delicious by warming it for a few seconds and adding a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream. 

Toll House Pie:
   adapted from verybestbaking.com

• 1 unbaked pie crust (9 inch)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 cup (6 oz.) chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chips, however the original recipe calls for semi-sweet)
• 1 cup chopped nuts ( I used pecans, however, my mom always used walnuts)
• Sweetened whipped cream or ice cream (I used Cool Whip)

1. Beat the eggs until they are foamy.
2. Beat in flour, sugar, and brown sugar.
3. Beat in the butter.
4. Fold in chocolate chips and chopped nuts of your choice and pour into pie crust.
5. Bake at 325 degrees for about 1 hour (or as a pastry chef friend of mine once said "until its done")