In life there are two sides to everything. The yin and yang of the universe. There are those that twist their Oreos apart, lick the frosting off the cookie and then eat each cookie (seems kind of silly to me) versus those that absolutely never take Oreos apart but eat the cookie and frosting together. Or how about vanilla or chocolate? Coke or Pepsi?
Crust or filling? ……….CRUST OF COURSE, DUH.
So, what does one do with the scraps of dough left from the pie that’s baking in the oven? It would be a shame to let it go to waste. Not quite enough for another pie but enough to make you feel guilty if you toss all that buttery, flaky goodness out.
Tasties to the rescue. One of the many delightful recipes from The Art of the Pie by Kate McDermott. This is my new bible on pie. Detailed instructions on everything you ever wanted to know about pie crusts and fillings written in a warm easy style. The majority of recipes are fruit based and pretty classic, apple, blueberry, strawberry rhubarb. A small section on hand pies, mini pies and savory pies. Photos are gorgeous. As a bonus, stories by the author add a very personal feel to the book. Plus…she has a blog The Art of the Pie, definitely worth checking out.
Back to the Tasties. The dough is formed into a rectangle and sprinkled with generous amounts of cinnamon & sugar. It is then rolled into a log and sliced into 1 inch thick segments. Sprinkled with more sugar and baked. So simple, why didn’t I think of that? I’m already dreaming of the next time I have leftover dough, maybe I’ll add nuts or use jam instead.
Sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar, add nuts if you like.
Parchment underneath pastry makes rolling into a log much easier.
I admit this is a misnomer. It’s really not mom’s apple pie, at least not my mom. My mom was not a baker. In fact, I cannot remember a single baked good made by her…nada, zilch. That’s not to say we didn’t have desserts or baked goods, they just happen to come from a bakery or restaurant or somewhere else, just not our kitchen. There were plenty of bakeries in the city and in Chinatown. My parent’s after-work excursions for dinner ingredients often included a sweet treat from one of the Chinatown bakeries.
We snacked on almond cookies from Eastern Bakery. Swooned over the best damn sugar doughnuts in town (providing you ate them in the first 5 minutes after they were made) from Sun Wah Kue. Hiked up the hill to the Fortune Cookie Factory. For special occasions, we walked over to Victoria’s Bakery in North Beach, a stone’s throw away from Chinatown, and picked up a St. Honore. Imagine a cake with layers of rum-laced pastry cream, covered with billows of whipped cream, and then wait for it…little cream puffs perched around the edge. My mom’s absolute favorite cake.
Our favorite desserts came from a deli-restaurant we went to all the time, Ping Yuen Bakery Cafe. Their Apple Pie was an American-Chinese mash-up. Strictly sweet apples layered in a crust made with lard and painted with an egg wash that gave it a crackly pattern on top. This was the apple pie of my childhood.
All About the Pie
Whoops, lost in nostalgia. My first attempt at pie-making was an apple pie and it remains my favorite pie to make. The crust is made with butter and a little bit of shortening, double F-bombs, flavor, and flaky (gotcha). My current fav is Dorie Greenspan’s pie crust which you can find here. For the filling, I opted for mace instead of nutmeg, substituted brown sugar for granulated sugar (caramel overtones), and added a squeeze of lemon (cuts the sweetness). You could call this my lifelong project-perfect pie. When apple season rolls around I head to my favorite purveyor of apples Prevedelli Farm. My favorites include Mutsu, Jonagolds, Pippens and Granny Smiths. I combine 2 or 3 different varieties of apples to hit sweet, tart, crisp, and soft all in one bite. Experiment, that’s my mantra.
This is a good old-fashioned all-American apple pie, packed with apples, a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg surrounded by a flaky, buttery crust! YUM. Now go make one!
My go-to Apple Pie recipe, been using this for years. Tried and true.
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword Apple Pie, apples, Cinnamon Bun, Pie crust
Prep Time 45 minutesminutes
Cook Time 45 minutesminutes
Ingredients
My current favorite pie crust recipe is from Dorie Greenspan. It makes a generous amount of dough so you will have excess that you can use for hand pies or small pie.
Pastry for 9-inch Two-Crust PieLink in notes
3/4cupsugar1/2 cup granulated sugar + 1/4 c dark brown sugar
1/4cupall-purpose flour*
1/2teaspoonground mace
1/2teaspoonground cinnamon
Dash of salt
6cupsthinly sliced pared tart applesabout 6 medium
2tablespoonsbutter
1tablespoonKA Boiled Cider (secret apple booster)optional
Instructions
Prepare pie crust. Place in fridge to chill while making filling.
Heat oven to 425 degrees.
Mix sugar, flour, mace, cinnamon and salt.
Stir in apples. Turn into pastry-lined pie plate; dot with butter.
Cover with top crust that has slits cut in it; seal and flute.
Make a 3 inch aluminum foil ring. Set aside to use if crust browns too much
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 375 degrees, bake until crust is golden brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, 40 to 50 minutes. Cover edge with ring if necessary.
I absolutely love pie. Apple pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Pecan Pie, Peach Pie and BANANA CREAM PIE. Yum. My favorite part is the crust, all that buttery goodness in tender flaky sheets. My favorite pie crust recipe is from Dorie Greenspan (ok, I might still be starstruck) and it’s really good. A combination of butter for flavor and shortening for flakiness. The recipe calls for up to one-half cup of water. Start with 6 tablespoons. I usually don’t use more than 8 tablespoons which is well short of one-half cup.
I like starting with a food processor and finishing by hand, the best of both worlds. The food processor makes short work of cutting the fats into the dry ingredients while finishing the dough by hand prevents overworking the dough and ending up with a tough crust. By all means, try each method to see what gives you the best crust possible without having you tear your hair out. Use the food processor throughout or make it completely by hand. Directions for both are in the recipe.
Just remember the golden rules, keep your ingredients COLD. If your dough gets too soft at any point put it back in the fridge to chill. Don’t overwork your dough. This link is to Food52’s (a great website-check it out) article on what “overwork” means…it’s spot on and now I don’t have to explain it!
And…..EAT. PIE.
Food52 has a great article on blind-baking their curst
My favorite pie crust is from Dorie Greenspan. It's buttery, flaky and makes enough crust for some cute handpies
Course Pie, Pie crust, Pie dough
Cuisine American
Keyword buttery, Flaky, Pie crust, tender
Prep Time 30 minutesminutes
Servings 1double crust pie + extra
Ingredients
For a 9 inch Double Crust
3cupsall purpose flour408gms of KA flour
1/4cupsugar
1-1 ½tspsaltfine sea salt
2 ½sticks very cold unsalted buttercut into tbsp size pieces
1/3cupvery cold vegetable shortening (10 ounces)cut into 4 pieces
1/2cupice wateryou should not need all of it
Instructions
Food Processor
Put the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse just to combine the ingredients. Drop in the butter and shortening and PULSE only until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour. Don’t overdo the mixing- what you’re aiming for is to have some pieces the size of fat green peas and others the size of barley.*
Pulsing the machine on and off, gradually add about 6-8 tbsps of the water- add a little water and pulse once, add some more water, pulse again and keep going that way. Then use a few long pulses to get the water into the flour. If, after a dozen or so pulses, the dough doesn’t look evenly moistened or form soft curds, pulse in as much of the remaining water as necessary, or even a few drops more, to get a dough that will stick together when pinched. Big pieces of butter are fine. Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a work surface.
Hand Method: (My preferred method it allows for more control)
Pour dough into a large mixing bowl. Drizzle water onto dough and mix with fork to bring dough together. The dough will look a little dry but when pinched should hold together. Try not to add too much water. Pour dough onto a lightly floured flat surface and knead lightly to bring dough together.
Divide the dough in half. Gather each half into a ball, flatten each ball into a 1"disk and wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate the dough for 30 min - 1 hour before rolling (if your ingredients were very cold and you worked quickly, though, you might be able to roll the dough immediately: the dough should be as cold as if it had just come out of the fridge).
To Roll Out Dough:
Have a 9 inch pie plate ready to go.
You can roll the dough out onto a floured surface or between sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap. If you’re working on a counter, turn the dough over frequently and keep the counter floured. If you are rolling between paper, plastic or in a slipcover, make sure to turn the dough over often and to lift the paper, plastic, or cover frequently so that it doesn’t roll into the dough and form creases.
Little tricks of the trade
Roll from the center of the dough ball out (away from you. Rotate a quarter turn and repeat. Constantly moving dough ensures it doesn't stick. I cheat, hubby got me plastic strips approximately 16 inches long and 2 inches wide in varying thickness, 1/8", 3/8", 1/4", 1/2". The ends of my rolling pin sit on the plastic strips so I roll evenly and to the right thickness.
If you have time, slide the rolled out dough into the fridge for about 20 minutes to rest and firm up.
When baking lower the rack to the lowest position in the oven. This helps crisp up the bottom crust.
I am going to miss Jamie’s and my weekly forays to the farmer’s market. Not that the season is ending, but Jamie heads back to Houston this coming week so there goes my kitchen buddy for a while. We found some luscious peaches at the market (it’s been a good summer for peaches) and coincidentallySmitten Kitchen posted a recipe for peach pie. As Jamie perused the recipe she said “Is it hard to make pie crust?” Well, what kind of mom would I be if I didn’t lay a little pie crust wisdom on my kid before she heads back to college? Kind of like a lovely parting gift.
Though the Smitten Kitchen peach pie served as our inspiration, we decided to make peach hand pies instead. Fingers over forks is our mantra so hand pies are the perfect ending for our final summer happy hour gathering. Luckily, Smitten Kitchen also has a recipe for Bourbon Peach Hand Pies.
We turned to a favorite pie crust recipe from Julia and Jaques Cooking at Home. It’s a great recipe to teach pie crust 101 making. It has a high proportion of butter so it’s yummy and flaky and it is easy to work with.
COLD, COLD, COLD. Did I say to keep things cold? Butter and shortening. I cut my butter and shortening or lard into pieces and put them back in the fridge while I measure out my flour.
LESS IS MORE, DON’T OVER-PROCESS OR OVERWORK YOUR PIE CRUST
Place your flour, sugar, and salt in the food processor and pulse a couple of times to mix. Scatter your COLD butter and shortening or lard on top and PULSE mixture until the butter is approximately the size of peas. At this point, you can pour your flour mixture into a bowl or you can continue using your processor.
Add ICE-COLD Water
to your flour mixture and pulse until it just begins to clump then STOP. Do not overdo it, especially if using the food processor or you end up with tough pie crust, yuck.
If you are not using the processor. Sprinkle water on the flour mixture and stir with a fork until mixture begins to clump and come together.
Reserve one tablespoon of water, if the dough still seems dry or does not hold together add the remaining one tablespoon water.
At this point for either method, gather the dough into a disc on a sheet of plastic wrap. Using the palm of your hand gently push a portion of the dough away from you. This flattens out the butter lumps into sheaths and incorporates the butter and flour evenly. This creates a flaky, tender crust. This is called fraisage ‘(yep, more French lingo) Repeat until you have pushed all of the dough. Gather it into a ball, flatten into a disc and place it in the fridge to rest for approximately 30 minutes.
How Easy is That?!
As the dough chills start on your peaches. We adapted Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Bourbon Peach hand pies for the filling. We added a bit of brown sugar and a pinch of salt. Omit the cinnamon if you like. Although delicious the hand pies have less filling and would have benefitted from a flavor boost. I think I would add a bit of peach jam to the fresh peaches to try to intensify the flavor next time. We had quite a bit of filling left and Jamie BRILLIANTLY (shameless parent plug) grabbed some ramekins and made peach crisps with the extra. YUM!
Back to the pie crust dough…
On a lightly floured board or surface, pat your dough into a rectangle. Divide in half and roll each piece into a 7×11 rectangle, approximately 1/8 inch thick. You may need to trim the edges to make a pretty rectangle. Divide the dough into 4 pieces 7x 2.75”.
Hint– Roll it out on parchment paper on a flat cookie sheet, makes it easy to transfer to the fridge. Once you have cut it into four pieces chill for 30 minutes. While it is chilling, roll out 2nd disc of dough.
Hint-Use a ruler and a pizza cutter to cut out your rectangles.
Or if you like use a 4.5” round cookie cutter for half-moon-shaped pies.
Pearls of Pie-Making Wisdom
If at any time the dough gets too soft, throw it back in the fridge to chill.
Peche a Trois’ (Peach Hand Pies, Crisp, Unadulterated)
Really, does this need an intro? Handpies of buttery, flakey crust filled with summer sweet peaches
Course Dessert, Pie
Cuisine American
Keyword Peach handpies
Prep Time 1 hourhour30 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Ingredients
Peach Hand Pies
Pie or Galette Crust from Julia Childs
2cupsAP flour
7ouncescold unsalted buttercut into 1/2 pieces
1tablespooncold shortening or lardcut into 1/2 inch pieces
1tspsalt
1/2tspsugar
1/3cupice cold waterreserve 1 tablespoon to finish dough
Filling
2poundsfresh peaches
1/4cupflour
1/4cupgranulated sugar + 1 T light brown sugar
Pinchof salt
1teaspoonbourbon
1teaspoonvanilla extract
1/4tspcinnamonomit if you like
One egg yolk beaten with 2 tablespoons waterfor egg wash or cream
Coarse sanding sugarfor decoration
Instructions
See above for directions for making pie dough!
Filling
Make the filling. Peel and dice peaches into 1/2 inch pieces. Add remaining ingredients, mix gently and set aside. If you wish, add 1-2 tablespoons peach preserves.
Remove chilled dough from fridge, let stand a couple of minutes until pliable. Spoon 1.5 tablespoons filling onto one half of each rectangle or circle of dough. Brush a little water on the edge and fold in half. Seal and crimp edge with a fork. Repeat with remaining dough. Transfer to fridge and chill for 30 minutes. We used cream on our pies and sprinkled some sugar on top, you could use an egg wash if you like.
You can make these hand pies bigger or smaller as you want. The key is to keep the dough’s thickness at approximately 1/8 inch.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Remove pies from fridge and place on parchment lined baking sheet. Cut a small slit in each pie and brush with wash. Sprinkle with sugar and place in oven to bake.
Bake approximately 20 minutes until edges are golden brown. Remove and let cool slightly before serving.
Peach Crisp
We had quite a bit of peach filling left so we made crisp using our apple crisp crumble topping recipe. So this is probably more crumble then you will need. Cut the recipe in half if you want. Fill lightly buttered ramekins with extra peach filling. Sprinkle crumble on top and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until crisp bubbles and top is golden brown.
Crumble topping
Mix topping ingredients, except for oats and nuts, with pastry blender or fingers until crumbly.
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
Add oatmeal and nuts and stir to combine
1/2 cup old fashioned oatmeal (not instant or quick cook)
Add 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Take excess filling and spoon into selected-size buttered ramekins. I like 3/4-1 cup ramekins. Top with crumble.
Finishing the Crisp
And to complete our trio....
Fresh ripe peaches, sliced, leave them whole, your choice. Take a bite, let the juice drip down your chin, hand or both. Yum!
