Project Pie: An update
I was in Honors Home Ec in middle school. Not everyone knows that about me. (Honors Home Ec just meant I went to the Home Ec room during extra periods to work on projects, not that it was a harder curriculum or anything. But still! Also, I won blue ribbons at the county fair. So there.)
Anyway. Project Pie is ongoing, and thus far (since Jan. of this year) I've made multiple raspberry pies (hands-down winner of Project Pie, and one of these days I'll write down the recipe), several other berry pies (blueberry, raspberry-blackberry, and blackberry; blackberry was Not A Success, likely due to the size of the frozen blackberries used), peach-raspberry, key lime (delicious but disagreeable with my digestion), apple, coconut custard, and coconut cream. The coconut cream was also excellent -- the filling was the Martha Stuart recipe, which uses coconut milk instead of shredded coconut or coconut flavoring, and except for not setting up properly, it turned out well. Apparently when Martha tells you to wait for one to two blorps from the cooking cream filling before declaring it done, you should listen to her. Learn from my sad example!
I tend to do this sort of thing. I did it a few years back with pizza dough/foccacia, and then again with scones. The nice thing about cooking a certain type of food that many times in a row is that it becomes automatic, almost; you learn the failure modes, and the warning signs that tell you something isn't going together right. You also learn the variations. (For example: scones are an excellent one to start with, because learning a proper scone will also teach you biscuits, and either is an impressive but quick bread/snack.)
Next up on Project Pie: some sort of meat pie, cherry pie, another cream pie to get the filling thing down (maybe chocolate this time?), and Schadenfreude pie.
Anyway. Project Pie is ongoing, and thus far (since Jan. of this year) I've made multiple raspberry pies (hands-down winner of Project Pie, and one of these days I'll write down the recipe), several other berry pies (blueberry, raspberry-blackberry, and blackberry; blackberry was Not A Success, likely due to the size of the frozen blackberries used), peach-raspberry, key lime (delicious but disagreeable with my digestion), apple, coconut custard, and coconut cream. The coconut cream was also excellent -- the filling was the Martha Stuart recipe, which uses coconut milk instead of shredded coconut or coconut flavoring, and except for not setting up properly, it turned out well. Apparently when Martha tells you to wait for one to two blorps from the cooking cream filling before declaring it done, you should listen to her. Learn from my sad example!
I tend to do this sort of thing. I did it a few years back with pizza dough/foccacia, and then again with scones. The nice thing about cooking a certain type of food that many times in a row is that it becomes automatic, almost; you learn the failure modes, and the warning signs that tell you something isn't going together right. You also learn the variations. (For example: scones are an excellent one to start with, because learning a proper scone will also teach you biscuits, and either is an impressive but quick bread/snack.)
Next up on Project Pie: some sort of meat pie, cherry pie, another cream pie to get the filling thing down (maybe chocolate this time?), and Schadenfreude pie.