Pies!

Yesterday was our monthly bean supper at my church. Since I am the chief bean maker (in-charge), I am down at church for about 12 hours – from 7:00 am until 6:45 pm or so. I try to get the beans in the roasting pans and cooking no later than 9:30 am. Since that requires boiling the beans and letting them rest for an hour, cooking bacon, onions, garlic and my special sauce, I need to get started no later than 7:30. Which is fine. Doing the job I am currently working at, making donuts, muffins, etc. at a grocery store, I am used to being up very early in the morning.

Of course, yesterday, I was able to sleep in. Instead of getting up at 3:00 am, I slept in until 5:00 am! Yippee!!!

From 9:30 am, when the beans are finally cooking in the roasting pans, until 2:30, when the other volunteers arrive to set up, serve and then clean up, I have a great deal of time to kill. So I bake pies.

Every month, I bake an apple pie. Have for years…which adds up to a huge number of apple pies. I have my own recipe which involves three to four different types of apples (always granny smith and golden delicious but the third or fourth type varies depending on what looks good – oh…but never red delicious…they just melt down to nothing when cooked), lemon juice (keeps the apples from turning brown), sugar, flour, butter and, usually, cinnamon and nutmeg.

I decided last month that I really am tired of nutmeg. It’s ok in the fall and winter but this time of year it just reminds me of fall and winter. So this month I used just cinnamon. Granted it was Vietnamese cinnamon, which is the best on the market and very rich and strong, but that is the only spice I used.

This is how it turned out –

Now, as far as other pies are concerned, I usually do two others (three but only rarely). Usually I do a lemon meringue and then some kind of cream pie – chocolate or coconut or something like that. But it is summer and cream pies don’t do well in the heat. Last month my chocolate cream pretty much melted down to a very soft mass…not very attractive. And I didn’t even attempt a meringue because of the heat and humidity. I just served whipped cream on the lemon pie.

Well, since it is still summer and, in the interest of doing something different, I looked for something different to bake for my other two pies. I found two recipes that intrigued me.

The first was for a peach almond pie. Since jersey peaches were on sale this past week, it seemed like a good choice. It was made with 6-7 cups of fresh peaches, sugar, corn starch, ground almonds (after they were toasted), salt, lemon juice, butter and fresh ginger. I used less ginger than the recipe called for…it said one tablespoon. But as I was grating it, it seemed very overpowering. So I used about a third of a tablespoon. Still was gingery but not overwhelmingly so.

This is how this pie turned out –

The second recipe I found was for chess pie. What is chess pie? Well, it is just a pie. Which is where the name came from. It is made from ingredient that most people would have had in their pantries in the 19^th century and is easy to make. So it was called jus’ pie. Which evolved to chess pie.

It consists of eggs, sugar, cider vinegar, corn meal, salt, vanilla and melted butter. This mixture is baked in a pie shell for 30 minutes and then topped with a mixture of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon. Then baked for 10 minutes or until the brown sugar mixture is melted.

I was a little wary of this pie just because of the whole vinegar/corn meal business. But it was so very good!! Custardy with a crunch of brown sugar/cinnamon! Yum!!!

This is how this pie turned out –

I’m kind of liking this trying new recipes. Granted I will always bake the apple pie each month but I am thinking of trying other pie recipes. It’s fun but a little nerve wracking. After all, I am baking pies that I have never tried before and serving them to the public. So far it has worked out well. Both the peach and chess pies went over very well. I hope my experimentations continue to be a success! I’ll keep you posted!!