I did not grow up in a household where dessert was a regular thing. More often than not, when we asked about a sweet treat after dinner, we were pointed to the fruit bowl or a jar of applesauce. However, once or twice a year, there would be pie.
The pie happened on no particular schedule. My mom baked in response to her own cravings and could not be hurried or begging into producing pie. We learned early that it was better to leave her alone and accept the serendipitous pie than try to wheedle it into being. And accept it, we did. Her pies were always sturdy, not-too-sweet creations that piled mountains of fruit into a nutty, half whole wheat crust. My favorite thing was being allowed a slice for breakfast the next day.
Thanks to this early conditioning, pie will be forever feel like a way create a special occasion out of a Wednesday evening. It’s one of the things I hope to do with my kids someday (of course, I have to have them first).
You may be asking yourself, why is Marisa waxing poetic about her childhood pie memories? I recently got a review copy of Ashley English’s new book, A Year of Pies, and now I can’t stop thinking about tucking food, both sweet and savory, between layers of crust.
Some of you probably know Ashley from her blog, Small Measure, or from her other four (!) books on all manner homesteady topics like Keeping Bees and Canning and Preserving. This book is similar in organization to her previous ones in that it offers an extensive section towards the front of the book that walks you through the equipment, the different kinds of crusts (and what each is best for), tips on rolling and the various techniques you can employ to achieve gorgeous crusts, before moving on to the recipes.
Once through that grounding section, the rest of the book is arranged by season, proving unequivocally that pie isn’t just a summer and fall dessert. Any winter day would be made better by the Maple Orange Walnut Pie on page 55 on the Carrot Pie on page 77.
The book contains sweet pies, savory pies (like the homey Chicken Pot Pie pictured below), tarts, galettes, crostada and hand pies. There are both bake and no-bake options and even a pie version of Polish-style stuffed cabbage. Ashley also invited a few of her blogging friends to contribute recipes, including a Gluten-Free Streusel Apple Pie from Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking author Kate Payne.
For those of us who are working our way through baskets of berries and armloads of peaches this time of year, I think it’s important to put a little of that fruit aside and make something that allows us to enjoy the bounty now, as well as later. Pie is on my to-do list for later this week.
What a yummy looking book! Must have. Must have.
Perhaps my still most favorite pie in all the world was peach pie from summers long ago. Made by grandmotherly types using no recipe. Wonderful stuff, with sugar crystals on top. Crust probably made with lard.
Have had great pies since then, but nothing quite as good as eating some of that peach pie in a church food tent at the fairgrounds on a summer day. Uhmmmmm.
The only pie stories I have a disasters. Like the time I made my wife to be an apple pie, her favorite. The recipe called for lard but I figured, “Well, bacon comes from a pig, so bacon grease should be a good substitute.” It is not. Or the time I made a cherry pie and the dog ate it. And then threw it up. In the kitchen. In short, I desperately need the help this book would provide!
When I was little my dad about SO MANY bushels of apples one fall. A guy from work lived on an old family orchard, and the crop was excellent that year. My family made 12 pies in one weekend! By the end of the weekend our freezer was full of pie, and every friend of the family had a pie of their own!
It is not a Christmas celebration in our family without grasshopper pie. As kids we fought over the rolling pin to smash Oreo cookies for the crust, and we were completely convinced real live grasshoppers were somehow incorporated into the pie. That’s why the filling was green, wasn’t it? I still love grasshopper pie. It is like a great big after-dinner mint!
At a family reunion last summer, an aunt showed us how to make a double-crust gooseberry pie. The demo was a hit! And, of course, we sampled the delicious results.
My favorite pie is actually my mom’s Fudge Sundae pie. The crust is whole vanilla wafers and the filling is softened vanilla ice cream layered with fudge (chocolate melted with marshmallows). Halved maraschino cherries are placed on top. The whole thing is in the freezer until serving. If I found one in the freezer when I was a kid I always got in trouble, hours later when my mom found my finger indentations in the pie.
Pies are a family thing in my family, but my wife’s family aren’t big pie people — or so they thought.
I just took a peach-blueberry pie to my new in-laws last week, and I think we have a new family pie tradition starting. My father-in-law had a kidney transplant two years ago (after seven years of dialysis), and we get together to celebrate his kidney-versary every summer. Bringing him a pie (all the way from Delaware to Ohio) was a big hit — and will definitely be a part of every kidney-versary from here out.
I would love to find a good recipe for baked strawberry pie — not the kind where you dump glaze over strawberries in a pre-baked shell, the kind where you bake the whole shebang at once, berries and all. I’ve been trying for a few years now, but it always comes out a bit runny.
My friends and I always celebrate Pi Day (March 14) by making and eating only pies all day. We usually make quiche for breakfast, pizza pie for lunch, and pot pie for dinner, with fruit pies for dessert all day. It’s a beautiful day.
There is nothing better than the first apple pie of the fall. We live near an apple farm, and every year we go and pick our own. I bake a lot of pies every year, but that first apple one is always the gateway pie.
The worst pie I ever made was when I was in college and we tried to make a pumpkin pie out of a jack-0-latern. We scraped off the sooty bits and chopped up the pumpkin (didn’t bother to cook it!) and followed some recipe we had. Inedible but memorable. I think there’s a picture out there somewhere.
To celebrate the inauguration of President Obama, my son and I made an “All American” meal including an apple pie. I love the memory of us baking together!
Fav pie? Too hard! But right now I’m loving making sour cherry pie, as this is the only kind of cherry that grows locally. Sour cherry tart with pistachio frangipan is pretty deadly too. I’m loving your book Marisa- I made the homemade Nutella-divine!
I love making pie, in particular with homegrown fruit (I canned apple pie filling last summer – as an experienced canner I can say that it’s a pretty tricky process). I’ve also spent years trying to perfect the crust: about two years ago I rendered lard from leaf fat an organic wild boer farmer gave me and that did the trick! I keep the lard in the freezer and I’ve found that, when combined with butter, and the Joy of Cooking piecrust recipe it makes the best crusts for both savoury and sweet pies. (On a side note, I was all set for rendering lard to be a really gross & stinky process, and it was not smelly at all. Perhaps because the fat was organic and really fresh.)
My husband is a pie-guy, but I’m so much more comfortable with cakes and other baked goods! I would love this book!
My mother has never really enjoyed cooking and baking, and even less as she has gotten older. When I was a child, it always seemed like we were having a lot of fun while cooking anyway (there is probably some profound psychological explanation why I, on the other hand, find deep satisfaction in cooking for as many people as possible, as often as possible…but that is for some other time). My favorite pie memories were of using mom’s cookie cutters on dough scraps, sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar, and baking the “dough cookies” in recycled aluminum pie pans.
Pi Day is March 14th
My dad’s favorite pie is a caramel pecan pie and I’ve never found anything quite like it. When I think of his favorite desserts…caramel pecan pie and marachino cherry cake. Love my dad.
My favorite pie is a toss up between apple and my mother’s peach cobbler. Given a choice side by side, I’d probably go with the peach.
We often have pie instead of cake for special occasions like birthdays.
Once when we were visiting my grandfather in the nursing home he was recovering in, I had asked him if there was ANYTHING we could bring that he would eat since he had no appetite and would soon need a feeding tube. His only request was apple pie. “Mile high” apple pie, to be specific. I got right to work making him individual pies in 4″ tins and delivered them warm! I’m sure they weren’t the best he had ever had but he acted like they were and it was a start to his eating well again.
So excited for this book!
I love pie so much that, as a kid, I used to ask for blueberry pie every year on my birthday instead of cake. Yum!
I have lots & lots of pie memories. I grew up in a household where dessert was a standard after dinner event. My dad loves pie, and my mom is excellent at making it, so I learned about pie making early on. My mom would have me sift the flour and count the tablespoons of water as she added it. I love making pie & this cookbook looks excellent!
This book really appeals to me. In my house, pies replace cake for birthday celebrations. And my mom used to literally scold us if we considered buying apple pie at a store/restaurant rather than waiting for hers.
Pi day is March 14 (3.14) and each year my husband’s office celebrates with pie of all sort. Pizza pie, fruit pies, quiches (which are sort of like egg pie) and various other round things on crust. They also have a contest to see who has memorized the most digits of this inexhaustable number.
This is how geeks have fun!
A couple of years ago I baked some pies to take to the cousins’ house for Thanksgiving. I must have been multitasking because I forgot to add sugar to the pumpkin pie! When I realized what I had done, I told everyone that it was a sugar-free pumpkin pie. ALL of the girls loved it! That pie went fast!!!
My parents made Juneberry pies out of, yes, Juneberries, incorrectly named, perhaps, because they ripen in July. Those pies were amazing!!
When I was seven we lived in Australia for six months. More than 30 years later I still remember the individual-serving meat pies my mom would buy for an easy dinner every once in a while — tender ground lamb meat, a thick gravy, flaky crust. Mmm. I’d love to find a good recipe to make them myself.
My dad always loved lemon merangue pie, and every once and a while my mom would make him one entirely from scratch. I’ve never had anything else as good as that. I bet this cookbook has a recipe for something along those lines, and I’d love to give it a whirl.
My mom and grandma always used store-bought frozen pie crusts. They instilled in me the idea that pie crusts were scary and difficult to make, and also that they didn’t taste very good. Making my first all-butter crust was a revelation! Easy and delicious. I’m a super pie snob now, no store-bought for me.
mmm pie. I love key lime pie and chocolate pie with graham cracker crust but I’m not crazy about fruit pies. Maybe the book could change my mind.
Since I was about 16, I have been in charge of making the pies for our holidays. Mastering the classics ties me to my family and our history!
I love pie way more than any other dessert. I always request it for my birthday instead of cake. And since my birthday is in March, it’s always strawberry pie with real whip cream topping. My birthday always evokes images of strawberry pie!
My Godmother, Aunt Thelma, was a fabulous cook who was known for her delicious & flakey pie crust. She was also a chain smoker. As kids, we always joked that her “secret ingredient” was cigarette ash. Even still we devoured her tasty pies. Perhaps she was on to something. 😉
I remember going to my grandparents house in Pasadena, Texas every year for the week of Thanksgiving. My grandmother would always have several cherry pies witing for us because she knew it was my favorite. I sure do miss eating those pies, now that she is gone. I would love to win a copy of this book so I could learn to make some pies of my own. Thanks for offering such a wonderful prize.
I used to spend part of each summer with my grandparents. They had a u-pick strawberry farm and lot of apple trees, raspberries and wild blackberries, so pies were a frequent dessert option. My Nana lost all but peripheral vision in her late 70’s but continued to bake by feel, with wonderful results– except for the one time she “sweetened” a strawberry-rhubarb pie with salt instead of sugar. I will never forget sitting at the dinner table with my cousin Brian, choking down a few bites of that pie while my aunt sent us warnings with her eyes not to let on. Nana never knew!
So I love Pecan Pie of pretty much all types. Yes, it is overly sweet and sticky and so not good for you, but I think I love it so much because the only time I had it growing up was at one of my grandmother’s houses and she lived 9 hours away. It was a rarity and something made by my amazing cook of a grandmother and often came with ice cream too (as she does with all her pies) and I so want a piece right now! It would mean I was sitting with her and that she made it (she rarely cooks these days) and oh, would I love, love, love it!
Heather
My husband does most of the pie cooking at our house, while I do the bread baking. He used to be very afraid of experimentation, especially with family recipies, but this year we took on his mother’s “infamous” black berry pie. His changes were fantastic! (even though his mother will never agree)
When I first met my girlfriend’s family, it was to go to their Thanksgiving party. I asked what I could bring, and was told, “oh anything”. So I decided to bring pumpkin pi. That’s a regular pumpkin pie with the greek letter pi cut out of scrap dough and laid on top to get browned in the oven. I think it was a good introduction to my sense of humor, and it was nice for me to have something on the table that was really mine.
We didn’t have dessert normally when I was little either–and pie was relegated to Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was a really big deal. The pie I remember most fondly is my grandma’s pumpkin chiffon pie. No ordinary pumpkin pie ever, ever graced our Thanksgiving table–always pumpkin chiffon. I need to get over my egg white apprehension and make one for our next Thanksgiving!
I’ve never been good at making crust and have never made it often enough to perfect my technique so…my favorite pie is peach cobbler.
My Favorite dinner? A savory hand pie, fresh salad, and a dessert of any kind of pie (apple, banana cream, strawberry, you name it). Double pie whammy!
Pies have been used in our family as gifts during trying times… the warmth and love from a homemade pie can hold people in hard times.
isn’t everything better with pie? my own personal fave is the all from scratch pumpkin i make every month…cook the pumpkin, add the spices, let sit..add the egg and butter milk..leave over night..butter milk needs this trust me!…home made crust..of course next morning when the sun rises pop in oven and voila..”breakfast pie”..totally ok in the morning and with great tea or coffee..this is best served with home made lemon infused whipped cream and jam.. mm mmm pie!
My mother and I make a peach pie every summer. It’s become our way of marking the beginning of the season. We all ways cut up the extra crust into strips, sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon, and bake them as ‘cookies’ to munch on. The crust is my favorite part!
We are big pie fans here. I always make a few to pop in the freezer to have on hand ready to go during the winter. Sometimes I make pie just for breakfast.
After pickling peaches for the first time this summer, my daughter suggested I make a pie with them. Seriously good. I highly recommend pickled peach pie.
Deep fried pecan pie. On a stick.
Hot and cold, sweet and salty.
I can’t wait for the State Fair!
I’m a recent convert to fruit pies (not sure why I wasted all those years bemoaning my dislike of cooked fruit! crazy), but I have long loved chocolate pudding pie. My Mom and her mom are famous for their chocolate pudding pies. Every Thanksgiving my Mom would combine a graham cracker crust, a box of pudding and some whipped cream. Heaven!
In search of interesting recipes for Thanksgiving I came across mini pumpkin pies from Baked Bree. You know how you choose a recipe without realizing it has the potential to become one of your trademark dishes, but then suddenly everyone expects it each year? That’s these pies. Plus it introduced me to my favorite crust recipe.
One of the first impressive feats of baking I saw from my now wife was an apple pie she made just for fun 🙂