Pi Day 2016

Happy Pi Day!

This year for my pi pies, I made the Jammie Dodger Pie with a pi crust (though it is hard to read, the numbers around the edge are 3.141592653589) and the Chocolate Truffle Tart with the chocolate wafer crust and used my new pi cutter to dust the symbol onto the top.

I also ran the Illinois Science Council's Pi Day Pi K Fun Run while wearing my Pi Day shirt from last year and a hat shaped like a slice of pumpkin pie.  I ran it 34 minutes and 36 seconds.  I also submitted this time for the Pi Day 5K Virtual Run, for which I should receive my swag in a couple weeks.

Since the start of this blog, one year ago today, it has been a big year for me and pie.  I won four ribbons at county and state fairs.  I won an apron in a pie contest at school.  I baked pies for local police officers for National Pie Day.  And as the whipped cream on top of it all, I ran a personal best for the Pi K.  I'm looking forward to what the coming year will bring!

Piece out!

Justin

Classic Plum Pie

I went to make a Jammie Dodger Pie to bring to a friend's house for dinner, and the grocery store was out of raspberries.  So, I figured I would follow the original recipe for plum pie that I based the Jammie Dodger Pie on.

Ingredients:

8 plums, pitted and cut into eighths

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 tablespoon of ground cloves

2 tablespoons of King Arthur Flour's Signature Secrets

Directions:
Mix ingredients together and cook over low heat until the plums release their juice and it comes to a boil.  Then spoon into a crust, cover with another crust cut with vents.  Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle with a handful of sugar.  Bake for 10 minutes at 425oF, then reduce the heat to 375oF and bake for another 35 minutes.  Let cool completely before serving.

I thought that using a tablespoon of ground cloves was a lot, since for a pumpkin pie I only use 1/4 teaspoon.  While the filling was cooking and while it was baking, it smelled like the summer of 1999.  It smelled like I had a dozen 18 year-olds smoking Djarum Specials in my kitchen and I thought "Oh shit, I am going to have to throw this out."

However, once it came out of the oven, the smell mellowed.

The pie, served with Vanilla Bean ice cream, was a huge it.  You could taste the clove but it was not as overwhelming as I had originally feared.  My husband ate a whole piece, which I take as huge complement.  Even a little boy, who I think would live off of white rice and soy sauce if he could, ate almost an entire adult-sized serving.  This is a fantastic pie, and I think I may enter it into fair contests next summer.  I am just wondering if I need to find a way to incorporate a vanilla custard layer to keep the excellent balance that it had with the ice cream.  Well, I have eleven months to figure that out.

Piece out!
Justin

Jammie Dodger Pie

Since plums are in season, I wanted to make a plum pie.  Almost all of the recipes that I found called for clove.  But it is August, and I tend to think of clove as an autumn flavor.  Since plums have very little identifiable flavor of their own, I wanted to combine them with a summer flavor.  

I decided to turn to the flavor found in Jammie Dodgers.  A Jammie Dodger is a British shortbread sandwich cookie.  The filling is a raspberry flavored plum jam.  Jammie Dodgers were featured heavily on Doctor Who during the run of Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor.

To recreate the flavor in a pie form, I used the following recipe.

Ingredients:

4 black plums

4 red plums

6 oz of raspberries

1 cup of sugar

3 tablespoons of King Arthur Flour's Signature Secrets

2 pie crusts

Directions:

Pit and cut the plums into 8ths.  Combine the plums, raspberries, sugar and Signature Secrets in a large sauce pan over medium heat.  Cook the filling until the juices start to bubble and thicken.  Pour the filling into a pie crust.  Cut a heart into the center of the other pie crust and lay it over the filling.  Crimp the edges.  Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle with a handful of sugar.  Bake at 425oF for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375oF and bake for another 35 minutes, or until the crust is a golden brown.  Let cool before serving.

The pie is fantastic.  The Signature Secrets makes a great filling: juicy, not gluey.  The raspberry flavor kind of dominates, probably due to the raspberries breaking down while the filling was being made.  The plums were cooked perfectly; which, in turn, gave the pie a great texture.  I would gladly make this pie again.

Piece out!

Justin