Cherry Peach Galette with Cornmeal Crust

I’ve been on a bit of a purge lately. Cleaning out closets, gathering bags of stuff to donate-- I’ve been attempting to rid myself of some of the clutter I’ve amassed. After weeks of putting it off, I finally talked myself into tackling the kitchen.

Oh, my tiny little kitchen.. A kitchen so small, I can touch both sides of it at the same time. Without stretching. I can mop the whole tile floor without ever stepping foot on it. And don’t even try to open the fridge and the dishwasher at the same time. With a tiny little kitchen, space is at a premium. The majority of my cabinets measure less than 12 inches across and my counterspace is almost nonexistent. Most of my appliances (with the exception of my KitchenAid mixer) live in the space between the top of my cabinets and the ceiling. Not quite ideal for someone who’s only 5’2”.

Although I have minimal space to store things, I find myself acquiring more and more stuff every time I turn around. Utensils, gadgets, appliances. I have more stuff than I know what to do with, and way more stuff than I have room for. So I sucked it up and tackled the clutter, throwing out or donating everything I didn’t use or really need. And it was kind of liberating.

No matter how many cookies I make, I’m sure I don’t need 8 spatulas. Gone. The electric carving knife that’s only been out of the box once? Gone. The unmatching, lidless plastic lunchmeat containers that tumble out whenever I open the cabinet? Trash. The two bamboo steamers that have never been down from the top of my fridge in the entire 5+ years I’ve lived here? Gifted to Boyfriend. I felt so accomplished in my cleaning, I shifted my attention from the top of the fridge to inside.

Leftovers + veggies that need to be used NOW = Another round of Chicken Ropa Vieja. Boom. Dinner for 3 days and no more half used things hanging out in the back of the fridge. But wait. What’s this bag of cherries still doing in here? Huh. Kind of forgot about them. Guess it’s time to take a break from cleaning to preheat the oven. We’re making pie.

Or a galette to be more specific. A rustic free-form pie baked on a baking sheet rather than a pie plate. It’s pie for people who are intimidated by pie. No double crusts, no crimping, no fuss. You can get into this pie game, I promise.

Pair the cherries up with some juicy peaches and toss them around in some sugar and vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract). They play very well together. Wrap them up in some amazing cornmeal pie crust. It's flaky, tender, and has just a touch of texture and crunch. Sprinkle it all over with sugar and let it all get golden and bubbly. Serve it up with some sweetened whipped cream or ice cream and you won't be disappointed.

Leftovers should always be this good.

**Note: I'm not sure how readily available fresh cherries and peaches are anymore. I kind of got into vacation mode very early, and sorta forgot to put this post up when I made it.. almost a month ago.. My bad. Feel free to substitute frozen for fresh. Or throw some delicious apples in it instead!

Blackberry Pie

An open letter to Pie:

I think I need to apologize to you. For years I’ve been acting under the notion that I hate any and all kinds of baked fruit. Because of it, I’ve turned away from you, ignored you, shunned you. I’ve passed you over in favor of things like cake and cupcakes, lured in by their swirls of sweet sugary frosting.

In my constant search for recipes, you were always the last on the list, if you even made it to the list at all. Cookies were always my top choice. Macarons even beat you out. I’d cite my abhorrence to squishy fruit and my fear of pie crust as reasons for my avoidance. The few feeble attempts I made at conquering you over the years were of the cream and custard variety, with graham cracker or store bought crust, and did very little to sway me from my firm prejudice against you.

That is until I made handpies. With real pie crust. From that moment on, I was hooked. Enrobed in flaky, buttery dough, my hatred of baked fruit began to wane. You broke down my defenses and made me realize how wrong I had been this whole time. And I’ve been so, so very wrong. This Blackberry Pie proves it.

The filling is almost jam-like sweet and I can’t get enough of the crust. I’ve eaten piece after piece, unwilling to share with anyone else. I can’t believe I went this long without you, Pie. With just a few simple ingredients, you turn into something incredible. You’ve certainly changed my mind, and for that I’m grateful. And I’m truly sorry I ever doubted you.

Signed,
A new pie lover

PS- I'm on my way today to the Ohio State Fair, where I find out whether my 7 entries this year won any ribbons! *Crossing fingers*

Strawberry Galette

I spy some green outside my door! The past week has brought warmer temperatures (finally!) and the first buds of spring popped up seemingly overnight. Hooray! Spring has finally sprung!

The first taste of warmer weather makes me excited for what's to come. I can't wait to rock my dresses again. I live for days I can throw open the doors and windows and let the breeze blow in. I long for evenings spent on the patio, book in hand, surrounded by green leaves and the beginning bursts of colorful flowers. (Until they inevitably succumb to the negligence of my black thumb...) I yearn for dinners on the grill and big bowls full of ripe, juicy, sweet berries. Oh, sweet delicious summer fruit, how I’ve missed you in the cold winter months.

Strawberries are by far one of my favorite fruits. I generally eat them sliced up and sprinkled with an ungodly amount of sugar. Lately, however, I’ve been enjoying them with just a drizzle of honey to enhance their natural sweetness. A bit healthier and a lot cleaner than my usual snack, and every bit as delicious.

And it makes the perfect base for a simple, rustic, no fuss dessert.

Think of a galette as pie for people who are scared of pie crust. No messing with pie plates or double crusts or crimping. Just roll the crust out flat and relatively round, throw some fruit in the middle and fold it up. No need for perfection here. It’s as easy as… pie. Or rather, pie’s calm, laid back brother.

The honey bumps up the strawberries’ natural sweetness, while balsamic vinegar adds a subtle layer of extra flavor. Wrapped in a flaky crust and drizzled with a little extra honey, it’s a heavenly way to welcome in spring.

Apple Hand Pies

I may have found the remedy to my baked fruit aversion. Tuck it into a tiny little pie. Then smother it with whipped cream or ice cream. Suddenly, what once was only somewhat tolerable turns into something I’ll downright eat the crap out of. I totally get the whole “a la mode” deal now.

With 8 pounds of apples left after my Apple Braid, and some apple pie spice I found hanging out in the back of the spice cabinet, I decided to get some use out of my new toy and give hand pies another shot.

I found this contraption at Target for about $5. You just roll out your pie crust, open the press up and use the back (non-textured) side to cut out your rounds. Place the round on the textured side, fill with pie filling, then fold over and press to crimp them shut! (Rub a little water around the edge of one side before you fold to help seal.) It seriously cut my pie making time in half! So incredibly easy!

And so incredibly tasty too. Warm from the oven and smothered with the can of whipped cream I’ve had hanging out in the back of my fridge-- oh man. I never thought I’d say that about an apple pie, but seriously. This won me over. The recipe only made 8, and I’m not ashamed to say I ate 2 of them myself, and contemplated eating the two I saved for pictures that I promised to give to Boyfriend, since he seemed to like them a lot. After snagging one in the car from the container of still-warm-from-the-oven pies I was taking to my parents while I went back inside to grab something, he declared them to be “pretty kick-@$$”.

My only warning—don’t overfill your pies. I learned this after my one casualty sort of exploded in the oven. But it still tasted amazing.

My other word of advice—check the expiration dates on things in your pantry every now and then. When I pulled my apple cider vinegar out, I noticed there were some gross random floaties in it. Then I realized it had expired about a year ago. Oops. (Also, feel free to substitute regular vinegar instead, so you don’t end up going to the store to buy 1 thing and walk out with $70 worth of groceries you probably didn’t really need.. Not that I’d know anything about that. And don’t forget to take the water you have chilling out of the freezer if you go to the store, because you’ll come home to an ice cube rather than ice water.. But I wouldn’t know that either.)

Peach Hand Pies

I think I have the power to change the world. Like, seriously. I don’t believe in most of that new age stuff, but I think maybe that “law of attraction” thing might have something going for it. You know, that “think it and it’ll be true” theory. Lately, I keep thinking about something, and bam! There it is. Like the sweltering heat. During Ice Cream Week, I said how much I hated it and how done I was with it. The very next day, it was a comfortable 80 degrees, with not one single 90 degree day since. While baking for the fair, my initial vanilla cupcakes didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I thought to myself, “I’m going to need a new recipe.” Oh look, My Baking Addiction just put up a recipe for vanilla cupcakes. So I baked them. And they won. 1st place. And most recently, I somehow convinced Joy the Baker, unbeknownst to her, that I needed a recipe to use up the gorgeous peaches my mom brought over from a local farm. The next morning I turn on my computer, and boom. She’s got a recipe for Peach Blueberry Pie.

Watch out world. I’ve apparently got some superpowers.

Because I can’t do anything full-sized, I decided to make them into mini-pies instead (without the blueberries). I’d made strawberry hand pies about a week before for a (not-my-own) family cookout, which I was in too much of a hurry to snap more than 1 picture of. So I thought I’d give peach a try as well, using Joy the Baker’s recipe instead. Searching around for a reference of how much filling to use for a hand pie brought me to Smitten Kitchen's Bourbon Peach Hand Pies. Mmm. I loved the bourbon in my Peach Cobbler, and this is an adaptation I know Joy would approve of.

Awhile back, I asked my fellow Facebookers how they made their pie crusts. It seemed like almost everyone did something different! Some used all butter, some nothing but shortening, some used lard, some did a more than 1. Well that didn’t solve my first time pie baking dilemma! I had no idea which to use! So I turned to Google to figure out what the difference was. Here’s what I found out from a very good explanation from Baking Bites:

*Butter is made up of mostly fat with a bit of water (about 1/5th of it). When the butter melts in the oven, it releases that water as steam, which creates a little pocket of air. All these little pockets of air create the layers in your crust that make it flaky. The butter also contributes to the overall flavor of the crust.

*Shortening is all fat, no water. When the shortening melts in the oven, it makes the crust even more tender than butter does, because you’re not losing any of it to steam, so every bit of the fat is soaking into the crust. However, without the steam, you don’t get the quite the flakiness you would with butter, nor are you getting much flavor.

*Lard is a bit of both worlds. It’s got most of the properties of shortening, being 100% fat, with the bonus of added flavor.

Well, I don’t generally keep lard on hand, so that option was out. I decided to adapt Joy’s to use a combo with a 3:1 butter to shortening ratio. I wanted the flavor and flakiness of butter without sacrificing some of the tenderness of the shortening. And it came out beautifully. Can I say how absolutely in love I am with making pie crust now? Seriously. I’m going to turn into a pie making machine soon! That 30x30 goal is going to be smashed! And I may have to change my stance on baked fruit. Cause between the peach cobbler, the strawberry pies, and these peach hand pies, I couldn’t stop myself from devouring them. These are sweet with a little hint of spice, and the perfect little hand-held size to grab a couple on every pass through the kitchen. (Which is exactly how the strawberry version disappeared. At the cookout, every time we saw Stacey’s husband, Bryan, he had a pie in his mouth and 2 in his hand.)

I realized with the strawberry version that 1 slit in the top is sufficient. 2 looks like a vampire attacked them.

I’m already envisioning an apple and a pumpkin version of these coming soon. And I’m excited to try out my new toy I found at Target the other day. (Yet another mind suggestion example?) I can’t wait for fall!

Black Bottom Pie for National Pi Day!

National Pi Day! 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 … Oh who am I kidding. I had to look that up on Wikipedia. It’s been YEARS since I’ve done any higher level math, and I barely remembered up to 3.1415. But today, March 14th (3/14), is the day when math nerds celebrate the circle. For those of us not so mathematically inclined, luckily there’s a different kind of circle to enjoy today as well. The baking enthusiasts have deemed today National Pi(e) Day! So let’s celebrate with a slice.

The only kind of pies I’ve ever made involve graham cracker crust and pudding. But when Kiesha challenged me to bake a pie today, I couldn’t just back down. It was time to overcome my irrational pie fears and start baking. I put it off as long as possible, so I woke up early this morning ready to suck it up and bake. First stop—actual pie crust.

Flour, sugar, butter, a pinch of salt, and some cold water. Totally easy. Easy as pie even. Yeah.. It’s easy to mix. But I messed up the first time I rolled it out. And the baking? Well.. This is what happened.

Needless to say, I went straight to Plan B—throwing on my coat over the shirt I wore to sleep in and my flour covered jeans and heading straight for the frozen foods section of the grocery store to pick up one of those premade crusts. I’m not ashamed. I don’t feel the least bit guilty. That little Dough Boy makes them so much better than I do.

Next up—the filling. Chocolate custard on the bottom, a rum spiked airy custard on the top. Easy peasy. Except my rum custard tasted distinctly like eggs. I forgot to strain the mixture after I cooked it… Luckily once everything was layered up, it disappeared, and left a light, silky, delicious chocolaty-vanilla cream in its place. I had no need to be worried. This pie is definitely high on the YUM scale. And it looks gorgeous with the chocolate shavings sprinkled over the top. Once you cut into it… Well…

Not the easiest pie to plate, but it tastes darn good all mixed up like that. Hope you enjoy Pi(e) Day with a little slice of something!

Lemon Ice Box Pie

Have you ever come across a recipe that you had to try immediately? Not just one of those, “Oh, I’ll put it on my list to make” recipes, but one that, as soon as you see it, you grab your keys and head to the store kind? The ones that practically beg to be made? This Lemon Ice Box Pie was one of those. From the second I saw it, I knew I would be making it as soon as I could.