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:

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

Buffalo Chicken Pot Pie

While I've discovered a love of cooking since the first of the year, I still haven't figured out a way to fit in cooking more than one or two days a week. I'm the worlds slowest cook, and have no energy after a long day of work to throw things together, plus I work two nights until 9:15. So every Sunday I cook one big meal for the rest of the week. This week I knew it would be pie of some sort--since it is pie month! I had two recipes in mine, and the one that won is a pot pie from a Rachel Ray cookbook I bought at goodwill. Buffalo chicken pot pie--with extra veggies!

The recipe is posted all over the internet--it was on TV after all. I used my book and made some changes.
Ingredients:
Filling
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
1 large onion, chopped into bite sized pieces4 carrots, peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces
8 oz mushrooms chopped
half a head of cauliflower, chopped into fine florets5  stalks celery, chopped into bite sized pieces
3 roasted garlic clovesSAUCE4 tablespoons light butter4 tablespoons flour2 1/2 cups chicken stock1/2 cup hot sauce
Topping:
Cornbread (the original calls for 2 boxes, but I made two batches of Cooks Illustrated Southern Cornbread)
blue cheese


First you cook the chicken in a pan, if you follow the original recipe you use a lot of olive oil to do so, and then once it is cooked, take it out and then cook the veggies. While the veggies cook you make a roux and then add the broth and hot sauce and let it cook until thick. I used the last bag of frozen stock--3 cups, but didn't end up using it all. Once the veggies are softened, the chicken is added back, and then the sauce poured on. I made so much that I put it in a pie pan and a 9x13 inch pan. Then covered it with the cornbread with the blue cheese mixed in. That goes in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes or until the cornbread cooks through.

It turned out pretty good--I used part buffalo sauce and part another hot sauce because I ran out of the buffalo sauce. It has some heat, but with so many veggies and the corn bread it is tamed. The one challenge I had was that the cornbread cooked all the way through in the pie pan, but was under done in the 9x13 pan. I didn't realize this until I went to dish it out for work lunches. Well, it will be more polenta like! I am looking forward to a good week's worth of meals.

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.