Bake Some Pies with Fannie Farmer - Apricots Galore and Heritage Pies with Nana

I've got a bit of a backlog of pies to share with you.  I have still been making them, I just haven't got around to writing about it!  These first two I made for our life group - one straight up apricot pie, the other a yogurt custard with mixed fruit.  I found the apricot to be just slightly more tart than I would have wanted it, but others thought it was exactly right.  My personal favourite was the yogurt custard.  I used the most amazing vanilla bean yogurt from Tree Island, as well as duck eggs from a neighbour, and a mix of apricots, cherries, and raspberries for the fruit.  This was a lovely little pie and a super easy process.  Chop fruit.  Mix custard.  Pour over the fruit in the prepared pie shell and bake!

This month we had our holidays, and I took this opportunity to make some heritage pies with my Nana.  We took a break from the regular basic pie crust recipe since of course we had to use my Nana's secret recipe!  So far I have never had anyone be able to guess the secret ingredient!

The first pie was a very interesting vinegar pie.  The main flavouring is apple cider vinegar and I was not sure how it was going to come out.  The few reviews I could find online suggested it was a unique flavour that not everyone appreciated, but a few people absolutely loved.

As a side note, I have such beautiful grandmothers (inside and out).  I hope to grow up to be just like both of them.

This pie looked super weird when it was cooking.  Like really incredibly strange.  The custard was boiling in the oven, and I was wondering what kind of texture it would have when it finished.  The bubble that the top photo shows was twice as large when I opened the oven door!  In the end the custard was so perfect.  When we cut the slices the edges were sharp - almost like jello!

The flavour was very interesting and seemed to change over time.  The vinegar was much stronger tasting in the leftovers we had in the next day or so.  What was really interesting was how much the apple flavour came through.  I would like to try this pie with different vinegars like the fruit scrap vinegars I am making right now.  No time to try things twice right now, but this is one from the overall list that I would definitely come back to again once I am done with this pie challenge I have set for myself!

The other pie we tried was a raisin pie.  I am no fan of raisins in baking and I purposefully decided to do this one when there were lots of raisin lovers around me.  However it turns out I needn't have worried.  Something about this recipe elevated the humble raisins into something even I could appreciate!

The recipe called for golden and dark raisins and that made a rather pretty pie filling.  The sauce they were cooked in to make the filling made the raisins so juicy and accentuated their flavour.  A little bit of lemon zest is not always called for (and often overused) but it truly does help the overall flavour profile here.

I had a lot of fun making these pies with my Nana.  Not pictured here was the deep dish apricot and pineapple pie we also made.  It was incredibly tart, but when paired with vanilla ice cream it was perfect!  Some pies just aren't complete without ice cream!

Bake Some Pies With Fannie Farmer - Cherry Pie Attempt #3

I am in pursuit of the perfect cherry pie.  Every one I have ever had was too sweet or too runny.  Some have been mostly good but felt like some flavour was missing.  

I had great hopes for this deep dish pie, but sadly it was not to be.  I used a mixture of sweet and sour cherries for this one, and I think the flavour profile there was good, but it seemed to cook oddly.  The recipe said to cook it at 425 degrees for an hour, but I think it would have benefited from a blast of high heat and then being turned down to cook lower for longer.  The result here was cherries that were not quite broken down enough - they almost had a mushroomy texture.  Yes.  Pretty weird when eating cherries.  The flavour profile of the mix of cherries was good, but I added almond extract which I think it did not need.

This was the only pie I had time to make this week, but here are the rankings:

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PIE RANKINGS SO FAR

1. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
2. Strawberries and Lemon Custard in Meringue
3. Almost Rhubarb Pie
4. Marlborough Pie
5. Apricot Turnovers
6. Deep Dish Cherry Pie
7. Fresh Cherry Pie
8. Entire Rhubarb Pie
9. Cherry Turnovers
10. Ricotta Pie

Bake Some Pies With Fannie Farmer - Cherries and Cheese Edition

This week's pies contained some interesting ones and a lot of surprises!  One of which was the 'Almost Rhubarb Pie' - basically a rhubarb custard pie - that I would make and happily eat every day for the rest of my life.  Seriously it was amazing.

Essentially you follow the same process as for the 'Entire Rhubarb Pie' but you only add three cups of rhubarb and then you cover it all with some eggs and milk.  Pop the pie crust on and then bake as usual.  I did not expect it to be as fantastic as it was!  I am seriously debating making it again even though there are still a crazy amount of pies still to attempt!

For the next pie I actually had to make some cheese.  Ok.  I didn't have to make it, but store bought ricotta is so disappointing and quite expensive.  Making ricotta was something I have always wanted to try so I took this as an opportunity to learn.

It was so simple!  Heat milk.  Add lemon juice.  Wait until curds separate (you can see the stages of separation in the photo above).  Scoop them out and strain it through a cheesecloth.

Boom.  That's it.

Unfortunately that was the best part of the pie right there.  You make a custard from the ricotta and then pour it into a graham cracker crust (not my favourite) over some raisins (gross), and serve with raspberry sauce (weird).

I would have rather just have the custard in the graham cracker crust and forget about the raisins or raspberry sauce.  That would have been good.  I also thought about drizzling it with maple syrup but forgot to try it.  That would have been good.

Oh well.  Not all the pies can be amazing, I guess!  To be honest Mr. Forager actual liked this one but agreed that the raspberry sauce was a weird choice to pair with it.

Other pies I made but forgot to photograph were the 'Fresh Cherry Pie', 'Cherry Turnovers', and 'Apricot Turnovers'.  None were all that special.  I am still looking for the perfect cherry pie recipe.  They all seem a little one dimensional and/or cloying.  I received some sour cherries from a neighbour so I have great hopes for the pie I make with them.  Maybe I can find the secret with them!

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PIE RANKINGS SO FAR

1. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
2. Strawberries and Lemon Custard in Meringue
3. Almost Rhubarb Pie
4. Marlborough Pie
5. Apricot Turnovers
6. Fresh Cherry Pie
7. Entire Rhubarb Pie
8. Cherry Turnovers
9. Ricotta Pie

Bake Some Pies With Fannie Farmer - Four More Pies

This week's roster of pies contained some unusual and some conventional, but regardless of the pie there was a challenge or something unexpected in each.  The pies I made were: "Entire Rhubarb Pie", "Strawberry Rhubarb Pie", "Strawberries and Lemon Custard in Meringue", and "Marlborough Pie".

Pictured above is most of the process for making "Strawberries and Lemon Custard in Meringue".  It was a bit of a finicky pie, but in the end it was worth all the steps.  First you separate four eggs.  Save the yolks and beat the whites with sugar and cream of tartar.  Spread the meringue into a pie plate and bake.  While that is happening, you make a curd with the yolks.  Allow them both to cool, and while that is happening whip some cream.  After the curd is cool, fold it into the whipped cream, and then spread that into the meringue.  At that point you have to chill it all for at least six hours.  When you are ready to serve the pie you whip some more cream, stir some sugar in with your sliced strawberries.  The strawberries go on the custard, and then the whipped cream goes on top.

Wow.

So involved, right?  But look at the photo below.  This is most definitely one of the best pies I have ever eaten.  I would make this again and again with different combinations of fruits and curds.  I am imagining this with stewed rhubarb, cherry compote, or fresh blueberries.  Seriously.  I can't stress how unbelievable this one was.

The "Strawberry Rhubarb" and "Entire Rhubarb" were the more conventional pies, but they were not without their challenges.  My friend and I made the rhubarb one together and we had some issues with it being too runny and too sweet, but the overall flavour was good.  I didn't actually remember to take a photo of it!

The strawberry rhubarb was again a huge hit.  I served it at a gathering at my home and everyone agreed it was fantastic.  I think one of the things that made it so great was the addition of vanilla extract in the filling.  It lingered underneath the bright fruit flavours and married it all together beautifully.  The main challenge I had with it was that I decided to do a coiled, braided lattice crust.  At the beginning it was no problem, but after a while when the dough warmed up a bit my braids started falling apart!  Moral of the story: work quickly!

The "Marlborough Pie" was better on the second day.  I burnt the crust edge pretty badly!  Oops!  The instructions said to serve it warm, so that is what I did, but I think I would serve it chilled in future, or even make it the night before I wanted it.  In my opinion it was really tasty for breakfast (and not very unhealthy: applesauce, milk, eggs, flour, butter, cheese, and a little bit of sugar).  The next morning the flavours had melded together into something really delicious.  If you are not familiar with this type of pie (I wasn't before making it), it is apparently a historical American pie made when fresh apples were not in season, but canned applesauce was available.  It is basically an apple custard.  I took up Marion Cunningham's recommendation to make it with a cheddar cheese crust and that turned out to be an excellent idea.  Next time I would put a piece of foil around the edge so that it wouldn't get so badly burnt.

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PIE RANKINGS SO FAR:

1. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
2. Strawberries and Lemon Custard in Meringue
3. Marlborough Pie
4. Entire Rhubarb Pie

Eating Foraged Food - Elderflower Cordial

I nearly missed the window for foraging for elderflowers entirely!  As you can also see the blossoms I did get are almost past their prime, but I'm going for it since elderflower is one of my favourite flavours!  Next year I will do better especially since I bought my own little black elder (Sambucus Nigra).

If you live in the Okanagan or the Thompson Nicola valley you should be able to find some elder growing wild (or you might have a neighbour with a shrub in their yard).  The two types native to BC are the blue (Sambucus Canadensis) and red (Sambucus Racemosa) elders.

In my hurry to make sure I got some flowers I forgot to take a photo of the elder I was foraging from, but they are easy to google to find out what you're looking for.  Blue and black elder have large flat umbels of tiny white flowers, but in red elder the flowers are arranged more like a lilac.  Have a care to discard as much of the stem as you can before using the flowers for culinary purposes since it is quite toxic.

There is some controversy about using red elder for food purposes.  It seems there are conflicting reports regarding whether or not the berries are poisonous.  I have read that Native American groups used them for food, but considered them inferior in taste and would mix them with other berries to make the tastier ones go further.  Do your due diligence and research the various sources before deciding if you want to eat red elderberries or flowers.  I could find very little evidence about whether or not the flowers were considered at all toxic, but that is probably because using elderflower is mostly foreign in concept in North America.

I am using the tiny amount of flowers I gathered in some elderflower cordial.  This is basically a thick syrup used for flavouring drinks.  I love to simply splash some in with my soda water or mineral water for a fizzy, refreshing drink.  There are many other uses including elderflower champagne and elderflower jelly which I fully intend to try out next year.  For now I made up my own cordial recipe based on some others I read.  The reason I didn't simply follow another recipe is that most of them are made for larger quantities of flowers.  All I did was make a few cups of a 1:1 simple syrup and while it was still boiling I poured it over all my flowers and one sliced lemon.  I let that hang out on my counter covered for a couple days, strained, boiled it again and put it in a bottle in my fridge.  Next year when I have some in greater quantities I am going to be looking into recipes that are safe for water bath canning.