Fiesta Almond Peach Pie

Such a pretty pie, such a lot of work!

My very favorite pie in the world is a fresh peach pie that my mother makes. It is a pretty simple pie that is mostly elevated by using really fresh, ripe, local peaches. Which means it is a fleeting pleasure of late summer days, and is more appreciated for it. So I was pretty excited to try another peach pie!

As a vintage recipe, and one from the other side of the pond, this required some interpretations. Here is the original recipe:

  

I'm not used to recipes quite so vintage, so I translated it as best I could. 

Fiesta Almond Peach Pie

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Ingredients

Crust 

• •  6 oz dark chocolate chopped
  • 2 tbs butter
  • 2 tbs castor sugar
  • 1/2 milk
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1/2 c crushed almonds
  • 2 c shortbread biscuit crumbs
  • dash of lemon juice

  Filling:

  • 10 peach halves
  • cognac
  • almond marzipan meal
  • 1 dessertspoon butter
  • 2 tbs brown sugar
  • 3 tbs peach juice
  • 1 tbs lemon zest
  • 1 egg divided
  • 2 tbs gelatine
  • 1/2 pint cream
  • almond extract

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Instructions

• 1. Melt chocolate, butter, and sugar in bowl over saucepan, Mix in egg yolk and milk and remove from heat. Stir in crushed almonds and shortbread crumbs and lemon juice. Press into bottom and sides of 9 inch springform tin. Chill until set.
  2. Take peach halves and sprinkle with cognac, fill each half with almond marzipan meal then arrange on the bottom of chilled crust.
  3. In a saucepan, mix butter, brown sugar, peach juice, lemon juice. Heat until sugar is dissolved, then cool and stir in yolk and gelatine softened in a little water. Stir until dissolved. Fold in stiffly beaten egg white until fully mixed, then fold in stiffly beaten whipped cream flavored with almond extract. Spread on top of peaches. Chill until set, decorate with melted dark chocolate swirls.

 Initially, my biggest question on reading this recipe was what is marzipan meal and how do I get it. Google is not your friend in answering this question, since marzipan is made with almond meal, so most of the results are about that. I figured it was either almond meal or marzipan ground up, so I split the difference and used both!

First up is the crust. I made shortbread cookies last week for this--a very simple vegan recipe with white and brown sugar and margarine. For this part of the pie, the food processor is your friend. First I blitzed the granulated sugar to make caster sugar, then I used it on the almonds, then the chocolate, then the shortbread. I love that machine!

The chocolate, butter, and sugar go in a double boiler (bowl over saucepan is more like it!) until they melt and combine. The egg is divided and the yolk and milk are combined (I used soy milk--almond milk may have been more almond appropriate, but soy is higher in fat and I find it better for baking substitutes like this.) This is added slowly to the chocolate mixture, while still on the heat. This makes a thick mousse like mixture, to which the crumbs and almonds are added. It was not as thick as I would have liked--I used all the cookies I made (cough that I didn't eat cough), or I would have added more.

It slumped in the pan, so I used wax paper and my pie beans to chill it and then try to wrest it back into shape. It took several hours to get cooled enough, and part of that was in the freezer. While that cooled I made dark chocolate shapes--I'm not very creative so they are mostly loops--and mowed my lawn. Today is the hottest day of the year so far--almost 90 degrees, no wonder none of the chocolate wanted to set outside of the freezer.



Lawn mowing done and crust chilled, I turned to the filling. Besides the dairy substitutions I made one really big substitution--I used fresh peaches. They were on sale! Apparently it is peach season in Argentina, so they were really ripe and smelled so good! The canned peaches were so tinny--they smelled metalic. I did buy a can--I used the juice along with some peach nectar to make the juice the recipe calls for. Using a method I learned from some cookbook I read once--I cooked it down in the microwave to make a syrup.


I pealed the peaches--they were delicious and ripe, but they were the kind that cling to the pit, which required them to be sliced and wrenched from the pits. So no peach halves! So juicy and ripe I may have eaten more than a few slices. I poured on some of the peach syrup (I don't do booze) and tossed them with marzipan and almonds blitzed in the food processor. They then go into the cooled crust.


This is where the real fun begins--haha! Actually this is where the really crazy stuff starts. Basically you make a marshmallow--with more gelatin than any single person should put in any dish. I've made marshmallows and they were easier than this.  Anyway, make syrup, add to beaten egg whites, fold in whipped cream. At this point the gelatin has set so it curdles and is hard to fold in either--it would be better if you used the method for making marshmallows where the hot syrup is poured over whites being beaten in the mixer. To try to rescue this I stuck the whole gloopy mix in the standmixer and whipped it until somewhat smooth. This nasty textured mixture is spread over the delicious peaches, and the whole concoction is chilled.

 So at this point I had mixed thoughts on this pie--all of the elements tasted good, though the topping had a funky texture. I was invited over for dinner and offered to bring this pie--I should have made a back up dessert, but I figured folks could eat the delicious crust and yummy peaches. This probably was the biggest mistake I made. My family may never forgive me for making them eat this. NEVER FORGET and NEVER forgive!

So I should have realized this was going to be a problem when in trying to take the pie out of the pan the shell stuck to the pan to the point that the pan broke. Yes, this crust was so strong and sticky that it broke my brand new springform pan! I managed to get it together enough to snap a pretty picture, but cutting it was a nightmare because the crust also stuck to the bottom of the pan. The topping had so much gelatin that it could be dropped out of a plane and land in the same shape, can you say boing!

Verdict: Somewhere between hot mess and train wreck--my family actually had an extensive discussion about the difference between the two, including references to Urban Dictionary as I tried to portion it out. Personally, I lean more towards train wreck--it is too chilled to be a hot mess!

I actually liked the taste well enough, but I was the only person to finish my piece. My sister said the chocolate swirls on top were nice--so that is one positive bit of feedback.There are a lot of issues with this pie--ironically the only thing I would probably do again in this dish is the one thing I was most concerned with--the marzipan. I thought the peaches tossed with ground up marzipan and almonds and peach syrup were delicious, but the crust and topping were epic FAILS. I actually was sad about the shortbread cookies and chocolate who gave their lives for this pie.

Hopefully I will come up with something great to win back their trust so I can bring dessert again! Suggestions for a crowd pleaser dessert are welcome.

 I'm looking forward to all of the other Vintage pies in the Second Annual Pieathalon--particularly how the person who got the recipe I selected turned out! Check out the other posts below:

Second Annual Pieathon

One would need to be adventurous to cook from a book with this cover!

My sister tells me I am an adventurous cook, which isn't to say a good cook. I think she means that I'm willing to try anything, to venture outside of my comfort zone and explore a strange veggie or a pie that involves gelatin, canned peaches, marzipan, and raw eggs. Honestly, I get excited at the idea of trying something new--a recipe I've not made before, or even better a food I've never made. 

So I was thrilled to hear about the second annual Pieathon. I enjoyed last year's pie, and volunteered right away to participate--even though my blog has been dormant for a long time. Selecting a recipe to send was a perfect excuse to hit up the thrift store for an ideal pie--I may have bought more than one book, just in case I changed my mind!

Since I've gone vegetarian I requested pie with no meat--apparently loads of pies sent in involved various animal products. The pie I received was vegetarian--not vegan. I made some substitutions and used some local pasture raised eggs. I'm very excited to see all of the other pies--and see how my submission turned out!

Simone's Pet Strawberry Pie

At last, after a month of cooking a variety of pies, here is the long awaited Pieathalon Pie swap pie recipe! I was assigned Simone's Strawberry Pie, which was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment. Having read through the archives of many a recipe swap I'd looked forward to a crazy vintage recipe combining strange ingredients in never before thought of ways. Of course, I hadn't looked forward to eating it, and this recipe produced a lovely pie that I've been happy to eat most of myself!

I will say that for a recipe that calls for Jello and a prepared pie crust this was remarkably tricky and I even used a shortcut not available when Simone wrote this recipe. Out of general squeamishness I used pasteurized egg whites since they aren't cooked in this recipe, and I had to whip up two batches to get them airy enough to fold into the egg yolk custard. I did make another change--because I'm bad at following directions, and jazzed up the pureed strawberries with some lemon zest. 

The eggs were the hardest part of the whole thing--cooking the yolks over the water bath without them curdling, then getting the whites beaten up enough to fold in. I used less sugar  in the whites, because the first time I added the sugar it deflated the whites. So the second time I added half as much sugar--which was plenty.





I was a big worried about the jello--the recipe called for strawberry gelatin, but no indication of the size of packet. The package I used was pretty small, so I worried it would not set up properly. This turned out not to be a concern, as the whole thing came together very well. In fact there was extra filling, more than could fit in the graham cracker crust. I figure that maybe the crust Simone used was bigger.

             

The filled pie goes in the fridge to set up. I left mine in there overnight because I wasn't ready to eat it after I made it, but it set up after a couple of hours. I topped it with sliced strawberries as directed, and served it with strawberry puree and whipped cream from a can. You can probably see the texture in the picture--it was super light and airy, with a good strawberry flavor.

One thing I really liked about this recipe was that the pie held onto the water and didn't leak liquid like other pies I've made. So it was good for several days after it was made, which is nice when it is just me to eat it over the week.

I was pretty lucky with this recipe from Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers--if you want to check out some other lucky bakers trying their hands at pie construction I listed the links at the end of the post!

Brian of Caker Cooking – Chess Pie

Mimi of The Retro WW Experiment – Nesselrode Pie

Erica of Retro Recipe Attempts – Curried Egg Pie

Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers –Mile-High Lemon Chiffon Pie

S.S. of A Book of Cookrye — Upside Down Chicken Pie

Sarah of Directionally Challenged Cooking –Simone’s Pet Strawberry Pie

Kelli of Kelli’s Kitchen –Butterscotch Pie

Ashley of A Pinch of Vintage –Schoolteacher Pie

Poppy of Granny Pantries –Black Bottom Pie

Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl –Chocolate “Pie”

Emily of Dinner is Served 1972 –Seafoam Cantaloupe Pie

Moroccan Chicken Pie

I love, love, LOVE the flavors of this dish--similar to the Chicken Tagine I made a while back. In fact, I made it even more like that dish by adding the olives and preserved lemon. This is out of one of the books I bought at the thrift store, and I was happy that I could find a savory pie dish that wasn't the same old thing.

Ingredients:

• 
  • 2 tbs butter
  • 3 lbs chicken breasts and thighs
  • 1 lrg onion chopped fine
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne or to taste
  • 1 tsp ras al hanaut
  • pinch saffon soaked in 2 tbs warm water
  • 1/2 c chicken stock
  • 1 c egg substitute
  • 1/2 c cilantro
  • 1/4 c chopped parsley
  • 1/3 c chopped olives
  • 1/2 chopped preserved lemon
  • 16 sheets filo pastry

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Melt the butter in a dutch oven, add chicken, onion, spices, and the stock. Add salt and pepper and cook until chicken is cooked through. Add the eggs and cook, stirring constantly until the mixture is quite dry. Stir in cilantro, parsley, olives, and preserved lemon.
2. Place first filo sheet on parchment sheet, and spray with cooking spray. Place another and another in a pinwheel pattern, spraying in between, until you've used half the sheets. Then add the mixture (it should be pretty dry, otherwise the liquid will ruin the dough) Fold the dough up around it, and top with more sheets spraying in between, tucking the edges under until you have a round pie. Spray the top with cooking oil.
3. Bake in pre-heated 350 oven for 40-45 minutes or until cooked through and brown. I cooked it on a pizza stone, moving it on a parchment sling.
• 
  

Baked Alaska Pie

This recipe comes from the same cookbook that I found the pie recipe for the Pieathalon exchange--the Lion House Cookbook. I found this vintage 1980 cookbook in the Deseret Industries so I feel all local pride to make this dish. Though I have to admit I only have one memory of going to the Lion House and not any of eating there, though I must have. Certainly if I did eat there, I never had this dish--I would remember something as distinctive as this pie! I followed this more in spirit than the letter.

Ingredients:
Prepared graham cracker crust
ice cream
dessert sauce
egg whites
1/3 c sugar
cream of tartar
vanilla
salt

Put ice cream into crust, top with sauce (I used blueberry), and return to freezer. I did this a week or so ago, and then today I pulled it out and topped it with egg whites beaten into meringue, with the sugar, vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt. That went into a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes. It got a little burnt on top and didn't really cooked through.

It was pretty hard to cut, and while it tasted good, it was a less than impressive presentation on the plate. It was fun to do the meringue though, so I might have to do a lemon meringue pie soon!

Blueberry Cream Pie

When I was younger, my mom used to make a no-bake cheesecake that she served with cherry pie topping. It was so rich that you could only have a small slice. I believe it had sweetened condensed milk along with the cream cheese, but I don't recall exactly. This pie is something like it, though less rich. I found this recipe in a Farmer's Market cookbook from my time living in Ohio. It has everything one could hope to find in a cookbook put together by neighbors--convenience foods that can be tossed together at the last minute to make a dessert for any church supper or potluck. I did find it somewhat ironic that a cookbook celebrating the bounty of the Farmer's Market had so many recipes calling for not fresh ingredients. To celebrate the spirit, if not the letter of this cookbook, I made the blue berry topping from scratch with fresh berries!

Ingredients:

1 pkg softened cream cheese (I used Greek yogurt cheese)

1 c powdered sugar (I used abt 3/4 of a cup and might use less if I made this again)

1 tsp vanilla

lemon zest, lemon juice

1 container cool whip

1 prepared pie crust

blueberry pie filling

Mix cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest, and a squeeze of the juice, until smooth. Fold in one cup of cool whip. Spoon into prepared pie crust. Spoon pie filling on top and add more cool whip to cover pie. Chill.

Berry Parfait Pie--Family Recipe

Years ago, when my Mom was clearing out her cookbooks, I snagged a cookbook that had been compiled by my Father's mother's family. It is one of those self published cookbooks, similar to those put out by churches and other civic groups. It has the typical types of mostly 1950's type convenience recipes. I've not made anything from it--the only family recipes I have are my Mom's gazpacho and my Dad's Grandma's cheese sandwiches (not sadly, in this book). So for my Pie Month celebration, I decided to make a pie from the collection. I selected one called "Strawberry Parfait Pie," only since I didn't have strawberries I used raspberries.

Ingredients:
1 3 oz pkg raspberry jello
1 1/4 cup hot water
2 c vanilla ice cream
1 1/2 c raspberries
1 9 inch baked pie shell

Dissolve jello in hot water, add ice cream, and stir until blended/melted. Chill until thick, but not set. Add fruit, and pour into pie shell. Garnish with whipped cream and more fruit.

I made half batch, in a 5 inch pie, because I wasn't sure how this would turn out and didn't want to waste the ice cream. I used sugar free ice cream and jello, and a home made vanilla wafer crust.

Surprisingly it didn't taste that bad, though it moved in an alarming way and the crust got a little soggy as liquid came out of the fruit. I liked that it was lighter than other pies I made so it was more like eating a fruit salad than pie. Plus I ate it with some fruit and a dash of whipped cream! I'm not saying I'd make it again, but I'm not tossing it out.

Impossible Leftover Pie

This past week I made a massive batch of sloppy joes for work. I thought they were delicious, with great flavor and loads of veggies. I based them off of this recipe and received some compliments, though they were apparently not to everyone's taste. Regardless, there were leftovers. So I brought some home and since it is Pie month, decided to use them to make a pie. Sound impossible? Ha! Just kidding--I'm using them to make a pie in the style of Bisquick's many Impossible Pies. I based it loosely off of a recipe from a cookbook for a broccoli pie. I just added spinach, the sloppy joe mix, ricotta, shredded cheese, and poured the bisquick/egg/milk mix on top.

Having just finished off a bunch of it, I can tell you there are two real impossible things about this pie--one is figuring out how long it needs to bake, and the other is eating just one piece! The recipe I used said to bake it for 30-35 minutes, but it ended up taking more like 50 minutes and even then it was a little on the soft side. As a leftover pie, this is a really loose concoction--more an outline than a recipe.

Ingredients:

3/4 c heart smart bisquick
3/4 c milk
1 cup egg substitute
1/2 c ricotta
1/2 c shredded reduced fat cheese, plus more for sprinkling on top
8 oz frozen spinach defrosted and drained
8 oz shredded broccoli stems
3/4 c leftover sloppy joe mix
salt and pepper
steak seasoning

Basically the pan is sprayed with oil and then the ingredients mixed--I'd mix the bisquick first with the egg and milk to get out the lumps, and then add the rest. That goes in the pan, and cheese sprinkled on top, then it goes in the oven until it is done--at least 50 minutes. It needs to set in the middle and a crust forms on top. It was delicious--eggy, cheesy, with a good amount of veggies. I was surprised how little I could taste the sloppy joe meat. It probably could have used a little more of the steak seasoning and salt. Still a fun way to use up some leftovers!

Beet Galette

This was my most successful galette--with a good balance of filling and crust. I've not cooked with beets myself, so this was a new experience. I found the basic outline for this recipe here and made some changes. I used regular beets, and added some roasted new potatoes to extend it out. The dough was the best--I modified a recipe from Martha Stewart, using half butter and half Greek yogurt. I brushed it with egg white and sprinkled herbs and salt over it. It browned up very nicely!

Here is the recipe for the crust as I modified it. I found that putting it in the freezer after rolling it out, really helped to solidify the fats. I'm hoping to try the crust out this month with a different filling in a proper pie pan. I think reducing the salt would be called for if this was for a sweet application, and of course no herbs!

• • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1/4 c toasted oat bran
  • 1 teaspoon coarse salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 4 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
  • 1/4 c greek yogurt, whey drained
  • 1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk

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INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a food processor pulse together all-purpose flour, toasted wheat germ, salt, and baking powder. Add cold, unsalted butter, and process until largest pieces are the size of small peas.
2. With machine running, add low-fat buttermilk until dough just holds together.
3. Pat into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour (or overnight).
4. After rolling out, roll up in parchment and stick in the freezer for 5-10 minutes

Feeling Blue--A Blueberry Galette

For my first week of pie month, have mostly galettes. My second attempt at almost pie, I made a blueberry galette. I didn't really have a recipe--which is typical for me. I've been making blueberry sauce and thought I'd use some of that and some frozen blueberries with a crust made with a light butter. I added some Greek yogurt cream cheese, sweetened and thickened with some egg to the bottom. The blueberries released a lot more liquid than I anticipated, and it was sort of a soggy mess. It tasted good--particularly with a good amount of ice cream and blueberry sauce.

I hope I have better success with my upcoming fruit pies!

Galette--A Pie by Any Other Name

Galette was the Home Cooking Dish of the Month at the Chowhound website, and I thought I'd give it a try. I have to admit that before I saw it on there I didn't know what it was, I thought it was a cake! Turns out it is a free form tart/pie that can be savory or sweet. 

While I was intimidated by the pastry dough, I found a fun recipe at Smitten Kitchen I wanted to try. I didn't use her crust recipe, since the amount of fat in it was daunting to me. Instead I found a quick olive oil whole wheat recipe that promised to be low fat. It was ok, but not something I'll be repeating. The filling was amazing, though! I will for sure repeat the combination of zucchini, herbs, ricotta, feta, and mozzarella. 

I cooked it on my pizza stone, which gave a nice crunch. The only big changes I made to the filling was using more herbs--thyme and rosemary instead of basil. One thing I liked a lot was that it was good hot or room temp, and reheated well. 

June is Pie Month!

So I've gotten a little lost lately from the blog--I've been stepping up my physical therapy to try to fix my knees, and haven't had the energy to post. I have been cooking up a storm, lots of complicated projects and fun dishes. I may go back and post some, but I've been drawn back to the blog this June by pie!

A bunch of bloggers are participating in a vintage pie recipe swap--Pieathalon! I found a fun recipe in the Lion House Cookbook to send--Four-step Black Bottom Pie, which uses gelatin, which to my mind makes it plenty vintage! I'll be baking a strawberry pie of some sort and posting on June 30th along with a bunch of other bloggers. To get in the mood, I thought I'd declare June Pie Month. I thought about celebrating actual PI day on March 14th, but didn't make it. So this month I'll be featuring a variety of pies, leading up to the reveal of my contribution to the Pieathalon!

I should probably admit that I've only ever made one pie, besides pot-pie, and it involved a pre-made graham cracker crust and fresh peaches. This should be an interesting month of pastry making!