Catching up! Pie-Wise!

First up: my pie making adventure! This thing was frigging delish, I'm not going to lie. I got this recipe from the tomb that is The Joy of Cooking!

I did the basic pie/pastry dough:

Blueburries!

Basic Pie/Pastry Dough for one 9 inch or 10 inch double crust pie (page 665)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp salt

3/4 chilled veggie shortening

3 tbs cold unsalted butter

6 tbs ice water

THE MIXTURE.

Bottom shell.

Sift together flour and salt - add half the shortening and the butter, work lightly with fingers until it has the consistency of cornmeal. Add the other half of the shortening and work until it forms pea sized bits. Sprinkle with the ice water! Work it gently into the dough until it all holds together, add a little more if it's not working together yet. Divide dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap.

THEN, pie time!!

Blueberry Pie - One 9 inch double crust pie (page 677)

The lattice.

Puking pie.

5 cups blueberries

3/4 to 1 cup sugar

3 1/2 to 4 tbs cornstarch

1 tbs fresh lemon juice

1/8 tsp salt

1 to 2 tbs unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 425 F and position a rack in the lower third of the oven.First, combine blueberries, sugar, cornstarch (use the larger amount if you're planning on doing a lattice top like I did) lemon juice and salt in a bowl and let stand for 15 minutes or so. Pour the mixture into the bottom crust and dot with the little bits of butter before covering the top!

BAKE.

My only supreme mishap with this was the fact that, about 10 minutes before being done, my pie decided to throw up all over the inside of my oven. I opened the door and smoke comes billowing out, sets off my idiot fire alarm and fills my low-ceilinged basement right up with smoke. I'm really glad the people upstairs weren't home, because they probably would have kicked open my door and blasted the place with a fire extinguisher - shooting first, asking questions later. A couple weeks a pork chop I was pan frying caught a little and they came downstairs and made sure I wasn't going to burn down their house, haha.

In other baking news, as apparently I've been doing a lot lately, I made my first red velvet cake, which was pretty delicious. I got that recipe out of Joy of Cooking as well. My plan with this two layer cake was to fill it with buttercream icing and cover it with fondant. Fondant is horrifying. I'm never making it again. I ended up filling the cake with it, just so it wouldn't go to waste, then icing it with basic butter and confectioners sugar icing. Because the butter cream icing didn't ever become anything but a runny liquid in a pan. I call this cake the 'Diabetes Cake'.

Also, made more booze cupcakes for my boss' birthday. They're always a huge hit whenever I bring them anywhere - here's the recipe again if you're behind the times! Unfortunately, I ended up slightly undercooking them, and in my haste, the gnache was still super runny while I was filling and the icing was also slightly runny and they got slightly rained on, so I got there holding a box of cupcake sludge, but they still turned out pretty tasty.

Made banana bread last night, mostly to use up bananas in the old freezer and to warm up my fricking house.

This post is getting a little lengthy, so I think I'll just post more things later!!