Inspired By Summer: Basil Cream and Strawberry Pie

Yes, I've been a little lazy about getting this post up. I blame summer. And to be fair, summer inspired it so it deserves a little reward.

I think I was first inspired to try this idea by the farmers market. The perfectly delicious strawberries and fragrant basil spoke to me. In fact, it may have been their idea. And it really is a perfect summer pie. It is light and refreshing while the basil custard surprises those who don't expect it and has won over those who were skeptical of the idea before they tried it.


I truly love this pie and am so proud of this creation. Even if the strawberries and basil ARE responsible for the idea, I'm going to take all the credit for this pie.

Basil Cream and Strawberry Pie

Pre-baked 9” Pie Shell

1 lb. Strawberries

For the custard:

2/3 cup Sugar

3 Tbsp Cornstarch

3 cups Milk

½ cup loosely packed Fresh Basil leaves

4 beaten Egg Yolks

2 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces

To pre-bake pie shell:

Line pie dish with rolled out pastry.

Line with aluminum foil and fill with beans or pie weights. I find it works best to fill the entire pie shell to the top with your weights.

Bake on the bottom shelf at 400° for 20 minutes.

Decrease oven temp to 375°.

Remove foil and weights. Poke holes all around the shell with a fork, twisting the fork slightly as you go.

Continue baking at 375° until the inside is golden brown and the shell is fully baked. Check at five and ten minutes, using the back of a spoon to press down any spots that puff up.

Cool shell before filling.

For the pie:

Wash and quarter the strawberries. (Reserve a couple of the prettiest ones if you would like to use them for garnishing.)

Separate ½ cup of the cut up strawberries. Mash slightly. Mix with remaining cut up strawberries and set aside.

In a medium bowl, slightly beat the egg yolks and set aside until needed.

In a medium saucepan, stir together sugar and cornstarch. And milk and whisk to combine with the dry ingredients.

Add basil leaves.

Heat over medium, stirring constantly, until thick.

Once thickened, whisk about a half a cup of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks, tempering them to prevent scrambled eggs from forming in your custard.

Add egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan while whisking, continue heating about 1 more minute while continuing to whisk the mixture.

Remove from heat and add butter, stir until melted completely into mixture.

Pour mixture thru a fine strainer to remove clumps and basil leaves.

Spread strawberries in an even layer across the bottom of the baked pie shell. Top with basil custard. Refrigerate until set, probably 4 hours is sufficient but I refrigerate overnight.

Garnish as desired with additional strawberries, bail leaves, and/or whipped cream.

Who Knew: I Love Banana Cream Pie!

I've never really been drawn to banana cream pie. I'm not sure why but I guess I was just so uninterested in it that I assumed I didn't like it.

So then why did I make one, you might wonder. I think I just wanted to make the custard. Because I got a flat whisk and I wanted to use it. What can I say, shiny new kitchen utensils inspire me that way.

There are a bunch of slightly different ways to make custard. I pieced together a couple of different recipes to get one I likes. (It seems that in my pie studies I have gotten really opinionated about my thickeners.)

And lo and behold, I LOVED IT!

 Banana Cream Pie

9” or larger pre-baked pie shell*

2/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

3 cups milk

4 beaten egg yolks

2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ripe bananas

Whipped Cream

In a large saucepan combine milk, sugar, and cornstarch.

Heat over medium, stirring constantly, until thickeners

Stir a small amount of hot mixture into egg yolks

Stir yolks into hot mixture and cook 1 more minute

Remove from heat and blend in butter and vanilla, let it cool a bit

Slice bananas unto the bottom of pre-baked pie shell.

Pour cooled custard over bananas

Top with whipped cream. I whipped 2 cups of cream but 1 probably would have been enough.

*I used a 9” pie, and there was quite a bit of leftover custard and whipped cream so next time I will use my 9 ½” pyrex,but I am not sure if it is enough to fill a deep dish. Of course, you could ways fill in with more bananas if needed.

Like I mentioned, I had quite a bit of extra custard and whipped cream, so I bought some of those packaged dessert cups and had a couple more days of desserts topping them with sliced banana, custard, and whipped cream.

A Lemon Pie, Keys Style

After missing the season last year, I am really trying to take advantage of meyer lemons while they are around. I made the Shaker Lemon Pie I had been waiting for so long to try but had a couple lemons left over when I was done. My first idea was to take a key lime pie recipe, and replace the key limes with meyer lemons.

Although I liked both of the Key Lime Pie's I made this summer, I decided to go with the egg yolk recipe because I didn't have any sour cream around.

I had 4 average sized meyer lemons on hand when I made this. They left me a little short on juice. I supplemented with some regular bottled lemon juice from my fridge and it was just a little so I don't think it made much difference but I would recommend having 5 or 6 on hand for this recipe.

Ingredients:

2 cans Sweetened Condensed Milk (14 oz each)

1 cup Meyer Lemon Juice

4 whole Egg Yolks (discard Whites)

1 teaspoon Lemon Zest

Prepared Graham Cracker Crust

1 Cup Whipped Cream (use stabilized whipped cream if you need to top it before serving)

Method:

Preheat oven to 350º. Beat egg yolk together with lemon juice and zest

Add the entire two cans of sweetened condensed milk and combine completely.

Fill prepared graham cracker shell. Note: I used my 9 ½ inch pie plate and it was pretty full, so you will probably have excess filling in a standard 9 inch plate.

Bake for about 5-10 minutes, until small bubbles appear in the custard. The top should not brown.

Serve alongside or top with whipped cream if desired.

This pie came out really well. It is not too tart and not too sweet, the kind of pie that can really be a crowd-pleaser. Since the recipe uses 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk it would probably doesn't require meyer lemons, and is worth giving a try with regular lemons.

But don't hold me to that yet. I will have to try it another time.

My First Failure, Second Success Story : Peach Crème Fraîche Pie

WARNING: I made this pie a long time ago, therefor errors in my memory of this experience may exist. However, to the best of my knowledge, this is my peach and crème fraîche pie story.

I first saw this pie way back in July. I knew immediately I would make it. I had not made a peach pie yet (remember my issues with peaches) AND it was written by my favorite food blogger, Deb of Smitten Kitchen, who got the recipe from one of the most credible recipe sources on earth herself: Martha Stewart.

Sidenote: Martha is, in my mind, the epitome of evil genius and although I am pretty opposed that much of what her genius represents I also have this weird respect for it. I even did a college research paper on her. I believe she is a ruthless business women. She understood brand identity before it was conceptualized as an overt marketing philosophy. She also marketed and sold “women's work”. It turns out it's worth a billion dollars. Thats what I call feminism.

Anyway, back to the pie...with this kind of endorsement it was a shoe in.

But of course it took awhile. (To be fair I just did not do a lot of pie baking this summer, there was simply no time because I was too busy playing.)

August was coming to a close and I still had not made it. And I was starting to get worried about peach season coming to an end. And we were having a bit of a heat wave. And I have no air conditioning. And I decided to make it anyway. With whole wheat pastry flour.

My thought process when making these decisions was simply flawed. Maybe it was the heat. But I just thought: “How

hard can it really be to roll out pie dough in a 90° kitchen?” Answer: VERY HARD!

And I had gotten this whole wheat pastry four awhile back because it was on sale, I am super cheap, and I though it might be interesting to play around with some different flours. I used it once and it was a bit of a disaster, but I OWED the flour and myself a second shot. Since this recipe only requires a bottom crust it seemed like a good time to try again (½ the trouble if it's difficult again.) FYI: Most people don't really use this kind of flour for pie crust and when they do- totally different recipe! Something about wheat gluten levels and moisture absorption...

And so I made this pie:

Rolling it out was so difficult I had resorted to breaking off pieces of dough, flattening them in my hand, and pressing them together into the pie plate. Which, yes, did lead to some sticking if that what you were thinking might happen. And overworked dough.

And see how the top of the crust is missing. Yeah, it burned and shrunk and I decided it was best to just break it off, especially since the overall pie plate I used was too big anyway so this still left a crust rim sized edge sticking up above the filling.

To top it all off, my crème fraîche was...not right. Runny, like a heavy c

ream instead of the sour cream consistency it should be. I thought it should be thicker, but having never used this stuff before in my life, I didn't really know.

So, to sum it up: This pie sucked. I knew it sucked. And it was mostly my own fault.

I don't really know what there is for others to learn from my stubborn insistence on making this pie that day. Crème fraîche should be thick? And don't even TRY rolling out a crust in this kind of heat? I realize these are lessons unnecessary for most reasonable people.

After this failure I was not very interested in making this pie again (at least not this peach season.) But then I was blog browsing and I saw it again. Another baker who had successfully produced an eatable pie from this recipe.

It mocked me.

So round two. The weather had cooled. I used a smaller pie dish. I bought a different brand of crème fraîche – see how it is all thick, like it is supposed to be.

The pie I baked this time?

Eatable! Not embarrassingly ugly! Success! (It's really not even a hard one to put together.)

It is not overly sweet. I was expecting it to be more custardy, so that was a little disappointing. The way you can see the reds of the yellow peaches poking out amongst the lite crumble topping is very pretty- so presentation points. And it has a good lightness for a summer dessert on warm days.

Like maybe you can make this on one of those freak rainy chilly summer days and eat it on the next day when summer has returned and it is warm again. That would be a good plan.

To Make This Pie Follow These Directions:

Pastry for bottom crust

Crumble:

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1/4 cup cold (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Peach Filling:

1 1/2 pounds ripe (4 to 5 medium) yellow peaches, pitted and quartered

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

5 tablespoons crème fraîche

Roll out bottom crust. Line with foil and fill with pie weights. Bake at 400° for 10min. Remove weights and foil, bake for another 5-8 min until crust begins to turn golden. Turn over temp down to 375°.

Toss peach slices with sugar and salt, set side.

Spread 2 Tbsp of crème fraîche on bottom of crust.

Mix dry ingredients for crumble. Cut in butter until it it is blended with pea size lumps of butter remaining.

Sprinkle 1/3 of crumble mixture over crème fraîche.

Arrange peaches in a layer, fanning out from the center. Dot remaining crème fraîche over the peaches (like pictured). Sprinkle remaining crumble mixture over the top of peaches and crème fraîche.

Bake about 45min until crème fraîche is bubbling and crumble is a light golden brown. Serve warm or chilled.

It's a Miracle! Microwaveable Milk Pie (Seriously, Microwaveable Pie!)

This is my first Tasty Kitchen pie recipe.

It made me think of some of my friends who, since staring this blog, have told me maybe I will inspire them to make a pie. And in particular one who said baking scares her. You can make this whole pie without ever turning on an oven. Or using the stove.

This Milk Pie was described by the person who posted it as being very light tasting, so I decided to put it in an Oreo cookie crust, and sprinkle some mini-chocolate-chips on top.

For the crust:

Mix 1 1/2 cups Oreo cookie crumbs and 4 Tbsp melted butter. Press into pan. Voila! You are finished! (I was actually a little nervous about this so I baked it for 5 min at 375. Alternatively, stick it in the freezer for 30 min before filling.)

For the filling:

2-1/4 cups Milk

1/2 cup Sugar

2 Eggs

1-1/4 Tbsp Flour

1-1/4 Tbsp Cornstarch

2-3 Tbsp mini-chocolate-chips, chilled in freezer.

Microwave milk 7 min.

Beat together sugar and eggs. Add flour and corntarch, beat until smooth and no lumps remain.

Add mixture to milk and beat until combined.

Microwave 1 min. Beat until smooth. Repeat until semi-thick. For me it took 5 more minutes.

Fill pie shell.

Sprinkle chips evenly across top of pie.

Chill in refrigerator until firm.

Warning: If you taste the milk mixture when filling pie shell, it will taste like warm milk. At this point I did not think it would make a very good pie filling. However, when it is all set it has a nice mild flavor and light custardy texture. I really like it and so did my co-workers.

Note: I am pretty sure this pie would turn out just fine made over the stove. I would suggest simply whisking together all ingredients until smooth and then heat over med heat until it is semi-thick, continuing to whisk constantly. And if anyone tries it this way, post a comment to let me know how it works out!

New Toy. New Recipe. Chocolate Pudding Pie.

I got a new toy.

I know it a simple little thing, but up to now I have been mostly working with nothing more then a pastry blender and a rolling pin. (I did have to buy a food mill for the grape pies but so far that hasn't actually been useful for anything else).

I have been wanting an electric blender for awhile; however I am also one of the cheapest people alive (except when buying jeans. You find a great pair of jeans and you better buy them, regardless of the price.) But it turns out you can get this set for under $10! So I went ahead and made the purchase.

In celebration, I had to make something that involved whipped cream. Homemade whipped cream was definitely my primary motivation for desiring the electric blender.

Lucky for me, the Smitten Kitchen blog recently posted a chocolate pudding pie that I really wanted to make.

When I previously stated that I had never been exposed to pie making, that was a BIT of a stretch. Chocolate pudding pie is the only kind of pie I have ever seen my mother "make". By "make" I mean dump some out of a Jell-O box chocolate pudding into a pre-made graham cracker crust.

In contrast, this pie is the from-scratch variety and I couldn't help but wonder how from scratch pudding compares to the box. I put it in a crust I made from pecan sandies. And then I topped it with homemade whipped cream.

Honestly, I can't remember how the Jell-O pudding pie tastes to compare. But this one was delicious. And really not that much more effort then the box kind, cuz lets be serious its constantly stirring the heating milk that takes the most effort and either way you still have to do that.

Do This To Make Your Own:


1/4 cup cornstarch

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided


3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder


1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk


4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (not more than 60% cacao), finely chopped


1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


1 cup chilled heavy cream

Prepared 9" crust, any kind that sounds good to you

Whisk together cornstarch, 1/3 cup sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, then gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly, then boil, whisking, two minutes (mixture will thicken). Remove from heat and whisk in chocolate and vanilla until smooth.

Pour filling into cooled shell and chill, its surface covered with wax paper or plastic wrap if you want to prevent a skin from forming, until cold, at least two hours. (I used plastic wrap and found I needed to re-situate it after about an hour, because it formed pockets of condensation when it was still hot hat I couldn't completely flatten. It still seemed to prevent the skin from forming though.)

Beat cream with remaining two tablespoons sugar until it just holds soft peaks. Now you have homemade whipped cream! Spread it across the top of the pie. (Bonus: this hid the imperfection in my crust edge and pudding top.)

One more pic. Look at those pretty layers.