Southern Peach Skillet Pie
Marvelous smelling peaches beckoned at the grocery store the other day, so I came home with a heavy bagful. I was going to make a pie with them, just your basic standard pie. But then I came across a recipe in my Betty Crocker cookbook (originally posted about here) that I just had to try. And it was a rousing success. We are talking major OM NOM NOM.
The recipe called for six peaches. I decided to use seven. In the end, I actually used 10 and felt like
I could have used even a few more. It seemed like it would have been a pretty miserly pie if I'd
only used six.
For easier skin removal, score an x on the bottom of the peaches and drop in boiling water for several
minutes, then immediately plunge in ice water to stop the cooking, and take them out & peel.
I'd never made shortcake before. Since I don't have a pastry blender, I used two knives to cut in the butter (which I used as
the shortening).
In keeping with the whole vintage cooking theme, I used this vintage rolling pin to roll out the dough.
Actually, this is the only rolling pin I have, so it was pretty much my only choice. I love using it. I
like to imagine how many crusts it has rolled out over the years, how many delicious desserts it's helped
create.
Also in keeping with the vintage theme, I'm using this vintage 1950s cast iron skillet. Which is also the only 8"
heavy skillet I have, so it was pretty much going to be used whether the recipe was vintage or not. At
this point, I'm hoping this is how I'm supposed to be folding over the crust, as I've never made this
recipe before. It seems like the whole point is for this to look very homespun and this looks very rustic indeed.
Yum! Bubbling hot out of the oven. It looks and smells amazing.
Plated on one of my grandmother's vintage pink glass plates, with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. I couldn't eat it fast enough. The crust is definitely different than regular pie crust and I almost think I like regular flaky buttery crust better, but this was definitely good. Light, a bit of chew but also tender. It was a good accompinament to the peaches. I was wondering how they'd come out without any kind of thickening agent usually used in fruit pies (flour, tapioca, etc), but it didn't seem to be needed.