Well, I can't resist the charm of baking pies, and I finally made a blackberry pie! I went blackberry picking on Tuesday with a friend, and we found a great spot in an industrial area parking lot. It's amazing to me how these berries are an invasive species here, and crawling over the entire city.
For the pie, I used this recipe from Allrecipes. It's an extremely simple and easy recipe.
I decided I want to get better at making pie crusts, so I watched a few videos before trying my crust (I'm still using the same Crisco crust recipe). I really want to achieve that light and flaky crust.
Unfortunately, I didn't add enough water or something, because it was really hard to roll out again, and I had to kind of patch the bottom crust together...although TJ commented the crust did seem lighter.
I followed the reviewer's suggestions to add lemon juice and dot with butter.
I also followed the reviewer's suggestions to coat the bottom of the crust in egg, so that the berries don't make it soggy (which seemed to work!). And then, my first attempt at lattice crust. It probably wasn't the best time to try, considering my crust was falling apart, but I love the look of it. I got some great instructions from here.
Random story: I insisted on having coffee with the pie last night, and ended up not being able to fall asleep later. I finally got up and googled how to sleep after drinking coffee. I did some running on the spot while I heated a cup of warm milk in the microwave, ate a crust of bread, and did some progressive relaxation. Worked well...until we were woken up by a cat fight outside our window, that is. It would have been fine, except that this cat kept moaning and moaning. TJ and I were concerned it might be badly hurt, so we decided to get up and try and find it. What kept running through my head was that we needed to find a cardboard box, in case it was injured, so we could keep it in that.
Sure enough, there were two cats on the other side of the fence by our window. There was a black cat that belongs to our neighbor, but the one that was moaning was a big orange tabby. It didn't appear to be hurt, and when TJ shone the flashlight on it, it just moaned and looked at us. I think the two cats were still fighting. I remember laughing when we went back inside and TJ said that it was kind of anti-climactic. He was worried that we would find a hurt or mangled cat, but all we ended up finding was this big orange cat that just stared at us! Strange night!
August has been a pie-month, actually. In addition to the berry pie, my sister and I tried out a lemon-meringue! My sis did the meringue, and I did the pudding part - I must say it turned out pretty tasty!
After the lemon meringue, I had a spare crust to deal with, so I made a chocolate mocha chiffon from the company's coming pie book that Lori gave me. It turned out okay, but I let one part of the pudding sit too long in the fridge, and it got stiff and hard to mix with the rest of the ingredients, so the smooth chiffon-esque appeal was kind of lost. Ah well.
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