Sweet Potato Pie

November 10, 2019

I (Matt) had a hard time choosing a pie this week. The year is running out, and there are still several pies I’d like to choose. But I reached out to my ally, Ellie, and made a pact. If she will make another pie I wanted for Thanksgiving, I’ll make this pie that should make her happy now. So sweet potato pie it is.

I’ve never tried a sweet potato pie, but have always been intrigued by it. I like sweet potatoes. They say it’s a lot like pumpkin pie and I like pumpkin pie. But without the Pie Project behind me, there’s always something that I’d rather choose. I think I just grabbed the recipe from Allrecipes.com, and turns out it’s exactly like pumpkin pie, except you’ve swapped out one mooshy orange vegetable for another.

Just look at that firm filling and that flaky crust

I’ve got to say, I think my execution on this pie was as good as it’s ever been this year. I used the shortening/butter crust recipe we’ve been using a lot this year, but switched the shortening to butter-flavored shortening. The crust was out of this world. flaky, flavorful, and thick. If nothing else comes out of the Pie Project, we’ve learned to make good crust. And the filling turned out perfectly – it was just the right firm consistency, not a bit over- or under-baked.

It tasted like a fantastic pumpkin pie. If you really strained and paid close attention, you could taste a bit of potatoey flavor. But it mostly tasted like “pumpkin spice” (that is, cinnamon and nutmeg). We even gave some to unsuspecting guests, who said “This is great pumpkin pie.” They were none the wiser. I’m not sure there’s a reason to choose sweet potato pie over pumpkin pie or vice-versa. They’re interchangeable. (Unless the great texture was the fault of the potatoes.)

Maple Bacon Cream Pie with Waffle Crust

November 3, 2019

Shelly has been excited to make a maple bacon pie for a while. In keeping with her efforts to try out weird crusts, this one had a crust made from ready-made frozen waffles (though there weren’t quite enough waffles, so a bit of the crust was filled in with French toast). The filling was a mixture of Cool Whip and vanilla pudding and maple syrup, with bacon bits mixed in and spread on top.

Shelly loved her pie. She loved the ground of the waffles contrasting with the creaminess of the filling, and the salty kick of the bacon. Other members of the family weren’t quite as big of fans. The girls had a hard time detecting the maple flavor, and the fact that the main body of the pie was basically bacon covered in Cool Whip wasn’t everyone’s favorite. But the waffle crust was cool and well received. It certainly gets points for originality!

Apple Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll Streusel Pie

October 27, 2019

As we have established, Ellie loves cinnamon and other fall-centric flavors. She was thinking of some normal or perhaps Halloween-themed pie, but when we were invited to some friends’ house for a pie party, she wanted to go epic. So she searched for and found a recipe for apple-pumpkin pie. Then she paired that with a cinnamon roll crust (normal pie dough spread with a cinnamon-sugar mixture, rolled, sliced, and formed into a crust). Here’s the result of just the crust.

The filling was a pretty standard apple pie filling (only two apples, though) with pumpkin filling poured over the top of it. Then the top was a streusel layer that gave it some crunch.

This was taken at the end of the pie party. Note the fairly whole pie that someone else brought, in the background.

The result was a really popular, great tasting fall pie. It was definitely much more of a pumpkin pie than it was an apple pie. The apples kind of got lost in the pumpkin, and the suspicion among the eaters was that pumpkin is boss of apple, so side-by-side, pumpkin wins. The cinnamon roll crust was surprisingly tasty, providing an unexpected kick of cinnamony sweetness every now and then, but it was also surprisingly undercooked. We cooked the pie (tented and covered) for about a half hour longer than our recipe called for, because the pumpkin filling was still jiggly. The consistency of the pumpkin turned out great, but perhaps there was just a bit too much liquid in the pie to really cook the crust. Blind-baking before filling would have been a wise choice.

Ghost Chocolate Pudding Pie

October 20, 2019

It’s Halloween time, so Annie’s variation on her constant chocolate theme was a ghosts-in-the-graveyard pie. She made it up herself. It had an Oreo crust, a filling made of chocolate pudding mixed with whipped cream, and then more crushed Oreos on top (to look like the dirt of a graveyard) and marshmallows on toothpicks to represent ghosts. They might or might not have looked more like snowmen than ghosts, but the effect was there.

With all those Oreos, it couldn’t possibly be bad, right? Annie believes that it was one of her best pies this year, even if it was one of the simplest. She also thinks that the so-called snowmen look like ghosts and they were the best she could do. Mom wouldn’t let her use the big marshmallows.

Nutella Pie

October 13, 2019

Leah insisted that she only does “weird pies.” She rejected the idea of something fairly normal, and instead pointed to her successes like the Lucky Charms Pie as her signature style. So this week was Nutella Pie. The crust was a batch of separately cooked brownies, pulled out of the brownie pan and pressed into a springform pan. The filling was Nutella, cream cheese, and heavy whipping cream. In between was a thin layer of melted chocolate chips. When her friend Kennedy, who was at our house for a playdate on Saturday, heard what was going down, she insisted that her family invite us over for dinner on Sunday so she could have some. And so it was.

It was loved by all, though different parts of it were loved differently. Some people loved the hard chocolate layer between the crust and the filling. Others (kids in particular) found that it made it difficult to break a piece off with a plastic fork. The brownie crust was a surprising success, though it was rather soft. The filling was a bit soft as well, though whether that was a feature or a bug was debatable. Some thought that it could have used some stronger hazenut (Nutella) flavor – it was a bit overpowering with the chocolate. Maybe it wasn’t quite as weird as Lucky Charms Pie, but it will go down as a big success.

Halloween Candy Cookie Pie

October 6, 2019

Last week there was this whole controversy over whether or not cheesecake is pie. (That’s silly; of course it is.) This week, however, the question is: If it doesn’t have a crust, can it be pie? Since it’s now October, Kate, who has been planning her Halloween costume for weeks, decided she wanted a Halloween candy pie. She didn’t seem to care that it would be a lot easier to do a Halloween candy pie after Halloween, when we have all the candy. We considered a few possibilities, including just throwing a bunch of candy into a pie shell and baking/melting it all together.

Ultimately, she settled on a Halloween candy cookie pie, which basically consisted of making a bunch of chocolate chip cookie dough and throwing all the candy into it, and then baking it in a pie pan. There was no crust – it was just a big cookie with crazy mix-ins, with some chocolate frosting dollops around the edge. And Kate showed no discrimination in what she threw in. M&Ms are practically normal. Reese’s peanut butter cups make sense. Kit Kats would be fine. But she also put in Skittles, Nerds, and Starbursts. It tasted just like you would expect a large cookie with Reese’s, Nerds, and Skittles to taste. Some of us liked it, others didn’t care for it at all. But it’s not entirely certain that it was pie.

Maple Walnut Cheesecake

September 29, 2019

As we established a couple of weeks ago with Annie’s Thin Mint Brownie Cheesecake, cheesecake is a kind of pie. It has a crust, a filling, and it’s served in wedges. Cheesecake is just a kind of custard, really, and we’ve had a lot of custard pies this year.

To celebrate the arrival of fall, it’s time to go maple (despite the fact that maple syrup is collected in the springtime). So Matt went with a Maple Walnut Cheesecake. It’s a pretty straightforward cheesecake: lots of cream cheese and eggs in a graham cracker crust, just with a bit of maple syrup thrown in. We added a tiny bit of maple extract as well, and while we were a little afraid that would over-maple it, it actually turned out with a rather light maple flavor. Without it, it might not have been very mapley at all. On top, there are candied walnuts – covered in maple syrup/corn starch. Ellie threw in some cinnamon on some of them because Matt let her.

We probably should have tented the pie with foil and left it in the oven quite a bit longer. The top was getting well done, but the middle was pretty goopy and undercooked. With all those eggs, it probably isn’t a good idea to eat the point part of each slice. But the part that was cooked was smooth and delicate and luscious. The hint of maple and the very sweet and crunchy walnuts (this is the second pie in a row with nuts, after a whole year without any!) were great and perfect for a sort of chilly fall evening.

Texas Flood Pie

September 22, 2019

A Mississippi Mud Pie is a traditional Southern pie with a creamy chocolate filling on a chocolate crust, topped with whipped cream and pecans. Shelly probably would totally choose that, but she found a recipe for something even more Shelly-like: a “Texas Flood Pie.” This one featured peanut butter as well as chocolate. Surprisingly, Shelly (who often doesn’t care for nuts) left the pecans in, though she left half of the pie pecan-less for the kids. Marshmallows too.

But the special aspect of this pie was the crust. It was made from Ritz crackers. We’ve done saltines before in Atlantic Beach Pie, but Shelly has been excited for a Ritz crust for some time, due to their butteriness and saltiness. The recipe called for a little extra salt thrown into the crust, though, and we all kind of agreed that’s a little too much. The salt in the crackers would have been plenty. The rest of the pie was nutty and chocolatey and smooth – especially the layer of chocolate ganache at the bottom of the pie.

Cinna-Bacon Apple Pie

September 15, 2019

Now that it’s September, that means that Ellie’s cinnamon/pumpkin/maple obsession can have free rein. She had a hard time deciding which of many autumn-themed pies she could choose from, but ended up with a choice that made it the first pie of the year to feature meat: the Cinna-Bacon Apple Pie.

We found this recipe months ago as a video clip on the Good Morning America website – a lady came on and made it on the air. But by the time we got around to making it, the content had been removed and we had to rely on someone else’s copycat website where they only listed the ingredients, without any instructions. It turned out pretty well, despite it all.

The crust had bits of bacon it it:

On top of that, there was a layer of apples – we used Garanny Smith and a new breed called Autumn Glory, which is supposed to taste like cinnamon. Bacon bits mixed in. Then a layer of pie dough rolled up with cinnamon-sugar mxture and more bacon bits, to form a sort of cinnamon roll on top. then glaze and more bacon.

There was a lot of pie dough in the crust and the cinnamon rolls, and the glaze made it pretty sweet. The bacon was salty and crunchy and was a nice contrast. Those who are willing to eat fruit pies really loved this one.

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Pie

September 8, 2019

It’s kind of amazing it’s taken Annie this long to choose a chocolate mint ice cream pie. It’s a variation on her theme of chocolate at all costs, she loves mint chip ice cream, and summer is now over so ice cream pies are on the way out. We used Tillamook mint chip ice cream, which is the best – they actually make it taste better by refusing to dye it some unnatural green color. Oreo crust, hot fudge layer on top of the ice cream, whipped cream on top of that, and chopped mint chips (appropriately green) to make it look awesome. Everyone wished their piece was a little bigger.