After I read my girlfriend Cherish's blog about the blueberry pie they had, I decided to kick my strawberry pie plan into action. I was going to wait until this weekend, but Tuesday ended up to be such a sunny day and it just seemed so perfect to have some grilled chicken, a salad and of course, strawberry pie. I didn't get the thought until nap time, which was my first mistake. I thought I had just about everything to get started on at least my crust while Dylan was napping though, but I ended up only having margarine sticks instead of butter sticks. I was a woman on a mission though and it wasn't going to deter me. Trav gets home from work around 240, so it wasn't a big deal. I ran up to the store for my few missing ingredients and then decided to run to the BX for a rolling pin. I've made one pie before and one tart before and remember thinking how nice a rolling pin would be the next time I made one or the other. While I was there, I saw a mini food processor for $20. I've always considered food processors to be just another kitchen gadget yeah, I'm sure would be nice, but not necessary. My friend Cherish and her husband on the other hand, swear by theirs. We've had this debate on a few occasions but I swore I'd never need one. Theirs I'm sure is some big fancy processor, but I saw this mini one and the price was right, so I figured I'd give it a shot and if I LOVED it, I may consider upgrading later on.
As soon as I got home, I quickly got started on the crust. I put my dry ingredients into the processor and then immediately realized that this was not going to work. It was WAY too small. I pressed on though. I mixed up the dry ingredients as best I could and then two by two I started adding my chilled butter cubes. I figured that once the butter and dry ingredients started forming together, it would shrink down but after adding about six to eight cubes I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. I even tried taking half of the mix out with the the thought that I could mix half of it up and then slowly add the rest, but I still had a ton of butter cubes to add and as much as I hated admitting it, it just wasn't gonna happen! UGH! I was so disappointed. I kind of knew when I bought it that it was a little small, but I figured I could get it to work.
After I finally threw in the towel on my processor, I decided to move on to my blender that has a pulse option on it, but after scraping all of the ingredients into it I pressed the low pulse button and....nothing! I scraped around the blender, mashed up the dough, etc. but again, nothing. It wasn't moving even a little bit. This is when things started getting frustrating. I just wanted to make a simple little pie for my husband, but absolutely nothing was going right. After snapping at my poor hubby for who knows what (I'm pretty sure I was just making things up to snap at him about because I wanted someone to feel my pain with me!), I asked him (my handyman of a husband- luckily I married a man that can just about anything that is broken) and after only looking at it for about thirty seconds he said, "It's too full and there's no liquid in it to help it move around). I didn't want to believe him. I made my tart crust in this very same blender and had no problems (the big difference is, the tart crust was a single crust AND the butter didn't need to be frozen like this recipe called for, so it created more liquid to help move my crust around). Anyway, I had decided in my mind that it was broken and he just didn't want to help me fix it because I was being such a brat by this point.
So out of total desperation I grabbed my Oster drink blender. Scraped all of the dough into it, pressed the high speed button and.....nothing! Again, wasn't budging even a little bit!
At this point I told Travis that I was just going to throw the stupid crust away and start all over again another day. I figured my crust by this point had to have been ruined with all of the mashing around it had been through, so what was the point?
He began to tell me, "Well, my Grandma Tressa made pies all the time and never had any of these fancy kitchen gadgets." I knew what he was saying was true, but for arguments sake, I chose not to believe him and said, "Well she had to have used something!"
I took about a minute to just breath and realized that I was getting extremely worked up about a pie that was just meant for me and Travis. It wasn't being entered into the National Pie Competition (if there is one?) so who was I trying to impress? This is when I realized that as long as it tasted good, who cares what it looked like. So I scraped all of the dough onto the counter and after three kitchen gadgets, high blood pressure, and a lot of griping at my very innocent husband, I finished my pie crust by hand, the way I probably should've just done from the start!
So the crust is DONE....well, sort of. It now has to chill for at least an hour, set out at room temp for ten minutes, get rolled out, placed, filled, etc....and by this time it's almost 530.
I made up my pie filling which was thankfully farely simple, ate a sandwich (Yup, a sandwich. Travis decided since I was being a little less than friendly, it was best to stay out of the kitchen, which meant he couldn't get started on seasoning and marinading the chicken......that was a whole other argument. During my fiasco, realizing that not only was my crust not going as planned, we weren't going to be having the grilled chicken salads (that I had worked up in my mind as a good summer meal to compliment our dessert) before our strawberry pie, was just one more thing to make the ol blood pressure rise! He's a smart man though and as soon as I came down from my tantrum, I realized that he did the best thing possible- stayed out of my way!
Anyway, I got the pie crust rolled out without too many hitches. The only thing that I'd say really went wrong could be blamed on my complete impatience. I didn't want to wait the ten minutes for my crust to sit out, so I started rolling out the first one and since it was still too stiff, it wasn't rolling very well. Once again I ended up asking myself, "Who am I impressing? No one." So I balled it all back up rolled it out just enough to get it thinned out a little and then just manually pressed it into my pie plate as opposed to just laying it down already rolled out.
I filled the pie and got the top crust on fairly easy and then popped it in the oven!
I could finally relax......until fifty minutes later that is. As I was finishing cleaning up my pie fiasco of a mess in the kitchen, I started smelling a very strong strawberry smell and thought, "Man, that smells so good!" but then it was immediately followed by a very strong smoke smell. Not so good! There was one side of the pie that I wasn't able to pinch together very well, so it cracked and the pie filling ran over to the bottom of the oven and created quite the mess! The entire house filled up with smoke. I'm actually quite surprised the detectors didn't go off. I opened all of the windows though and turned the fan on and just let it air out. Dylan thought it was funny. Pretty sure we're going to need to start fire safety training soon so if he's ever (God forbid) in a fire, he doesn't see the smoke and start laughing!
Anyway, the pie was pretty much done so I just took it out and turned off the oven.
And the final product?
I mean, would it win the judges over by its appearance? No, most likely not. But it tasted so good! When it was finally pulled out of the oven and cooled just enough for me to touch the side of the pie dish, I sliced myself a piece. It was still extremely hot, so the filling ran all over the place and I ended up with more of a pile of mush on my plate, but I didn't care. I wanted to see what my blood, sweat, and tears tasted like and I wasn't about to wait until the next morning to do so!
These were Trav's initial observations- it didn't have the lattice design like Grandma Tress used to do, hers was a bit more congealed, and they taste a lot better once cooled, but it was still pretty good.
He ended up bringing a piece to work for breakfast the next morning though and called me later saying, "Your strawberry pie was so GOOD!" That probably made the entire fiasco, worth it. He ended up enjoying it so much that he had a piece for dessert when he came home that night, a piece for dessert last night, and brought the final piece to work for breakfast this morning! He never, ever, eats my desserts for that many days in a row! He usually gets 'desserted out' after the first helping.
Another critic I was hoping to to please by taste (not appearance!)
He's a tough one to please, so I was holding my breath.
Not sure if that's a satisfied look or a look of disgust...
There we go! There's the reaction I was hoping for! He definitely enjoyed his pie. You know when he approves of something because after he takes the first bite or two, as he's got a mouthful of whatever it is you are trying out on him, his eyes kind of light up and then he does this up and down approval head shake. It's cute.
A piece that I cut for myself for lunch the day after it was made, when it wasn't so runny! I used the filling that ran out as topping though and it was good! Last night I also made some homemade strawberry whipped topping, using whipping cream, vanilla, strawberry jam, and sugar. It called for heavy whipping cream and confectioners sugar, but I made do with what I had and although I'm sure it wasn't as thick as it would've been had I had the correct ingredients, it tasted SO good and I was sad that I didn't make it for the other two pieces I had already eaten!
Well there we go, a blog all about my strawberry pie experience! Looking back at it (after I calmed down) I laughed at myself and thought, my friends who also enjoy cooking and baking would probably also laugh hard at my disaster, so I wanted to share.
The lessons I learned from this experience are as follows;
1. Don't ever start a pie at 4:00pm at night. That is unless you are a night person and 4:00pm is your 10:00am.
2. If you are going to use a food processor for your double crusted pie, make sure it's not a mini
3. Let your crust come to room temp for the amount of time it calls for
4. Make sure all edges have been pinched together appropriately so you don't have spillage like I did
5. Just remember that you are not entering into a pie baking competition, so have fun with it and don't stress!
I will be posting a short (mostly pictures) blog about how the last few days have been for us. It's not all been about strawberry pie, I swear! I've got the exterminators coming in a little to take care of my bug problem though, so right now I need to get ready for them.
Hope you enjoyed reading!
Oh and Grandma Tressa, R.I.P. Although I know that someday will get the opportunity to see you, I truly wish with all of my heart that I could've met you during your time here on earth. You mean so much to the entire Ramey family and you sound like such a wonderful, wonderful person. Someone I probably could've learned a lot from. I love hearing stories about you. I know my pie(s) will never hail in comparison to the ones you made, but I will always try to make you proud :) Travis and I have actually decided to make baking pies a weekly occurrence once I get back from my visit to Alaska. Next up, is apple.
Love,
Travis, Cindy, & Dylan Ramey
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