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pear pie with crème fraà che caramel

My freshman year of college, I remember sitting in the room of a good friend at the time. She was one of the first girls I had met on campus, and we were brought together by the fact that we'd signed up for the same ambitious rafting/climbing orientation trip and lived in the same block of dorms. She and I were gossiping about our peers, predicting which friendships would falter given the highly dramatic and volatile social dynamic of of our small dorm (because I guess that's what happens when you get stick a group of 18-year-old guys and gals in a small, enclosed space — people stop being polite and start getting real — SEE WHAT I DID THERE).

She turned to me and confidently said, "I'm pretty sure that you and I are probably going to be friends for the long haul."

And of course, by the end of the year, we weren't speaking to each other at all.


I wish I could say that story makes me sad, but honestly, I've seen a LOT of friendships come and go. Often times, the decline of what seemed like a long-lasting friendship corresponded with the end of a significant chapter like school or work. Because as whatever initially brought us together came to end, we realized that without that common ground, we didn't actually have much else in common at all. So at this point in my life, what surprises me more are the friendships that do stick around.

The friends who are closest to me now are no longer defined by parameters like school, work, or even proximity. Instead these are the friendships so deeply founded that trying to write about each so generally would do all a great disservice. Alternatively, there are also the folks with whom I have actual genuine shared interests with. I don't say that lightly — it's kind of amazing that this blog has brought me so many people that I turn to for friendship and support! Because even if we've only met each other a few times in real life (if at all!), I trust some of my fellow blogger friends' opinions more than some of the people I know in real life.


One of the blogger friends I'm talking about is Yossy from Apt 2B Baking Co. Although Yossy and I have only hung out a few times, I can tell you that she's the real deal. Not only do I wholeheartedly trust her baking skills, I also trust her advice on blogging and making things work in the kitchen and outside of it.

Yossy's new cookbook, Sweeter Off the Vine, is coming out in a few weeks and it's a keeper. When her book arrived, she'd slipped in a sweet little note telling me that she hoped one of her recipes could be one of my pie-a-month pies. I very happily obliged. This pie is one of her cookbook's recipes and the all-butter crust, the crème fraîche caramel sauce, and its use of pears as opposed to more traditional apple all come together beautifully. It is genuinely one of the best pies I've ever had.

Congrats on the new cookbook, Yossy!



Some baker's notes:

• Yossy's pie crust recipe uses all-butter, which is not necessarily the most forgiving crust — it shrinks, it's hard to work with, it makes me cry. If you're not confident in your pie baking skills, be sure to check out this recipe for salty honey pie as a primer — it's got all my best pie baking tips! Yossy's method also deviates slightly from what I'm used to. While I usually use a pastry cutter to cut my butter into the flour, she flattens the butter into the flour with nothing but her hands! It's a really cool trick that leads to a super flaky crust, but you have to work quickly and make sure your ingredients are cold at all times. 


• Due to a slight personal crisis that needed to keep me distracted for a few hours, I went a little crazy with the pie crust. Inspired by this Instagram account and this Food52 post on unexpected pie crust lattices, I opted for a "leaf relief" pie crust border with a random lattice. It's beautiful (but does it looks better before it was baked?), but I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it took. Also, all that fancy work ended up requiring almost twice as much pie dough than what her recipe calls for. So if you're going all fancypants like me, make sure to double the pie crust quantities provided below! And yes, you can get those awesome leaf cutters online.


• You can make the crème fraîche caramel up to one week ahead of time and store it in an airtight jar with a lid in the refrigerator. When you pull the pie out of the oven, it'll look like the pie has leaked and exploded all over the place, but don't panic like I did and frantically text Yossy. That's just the caramel bubbling. It settles back down as it cools, I promise. Your pie is okay.

get the recipe »

Available link for download

passionfruit curd pie

Guys, I got cocky.

After the triumph that was last month's epic #pieamonth pear and creme fraiche caramel pie, I thought I had it.

I'm a pie expert now! I thought to myself a few weeks ago, as I woke up early to create my next #pieamonth pie. This is going to be a breeze. It doesn't even have a lattice! I'm just going to do as I do — roll out my pie, stick it in the freezer, prep the filling — and go grab a pastry with Jessica. By the time I'm back, it'll be ready for the oven.

One chocolate ganache kouign amann and crazy delicious violet cheesecake later, I stuck the beautifully rolled and perfectly crimped frozen crust to pre-bake in the oven.


Pre-baking is often required when baking a custard or curd pie — the moisture in the filling can make the crust soggy before it has time to actually bake. The point of pre-baking it beforehand without any filling is to give the crust a head start to bake and ultimately solidify before the filling, helping the crust stay firm and prevent soggy bottomed crusts. However, you can't just bake the pie shell without weight to hold it down in the middle — as the crust bakes, pockets of steam get created within the pastry that cause it to puff up and ultimately sag around the edges. You need that weight to hold it down, which is why most pre-baking recipes instruct you to line your shell with aluminum foil or parchment paper filled with pie weights.

So I was placing my beautifully rolled, crimped, lined, and weighted pie in the oven, the parchment paper holding my pie weights gently brushed my countertop oven's heat source and burst into flame.


Have you ever seen parchment paper catch on fire? Especially the cheap kind you can buy in bulk on Amazon that's so thin and tissue papery that you often need to use two or three sheets at a time?

Well, it burns up like gangbusters.

My cat watched in judgement as I screamed, dropped the pan containing the pie, and hastily picked up the flaming inferno formerly known as my parchment paper and lobbed it into my sink. Hundreds of ceramic pie weights flew across the kitchen, making a racket as they bounced across the kitchen floor and rolled to irretrievable places underneath the oven and refrigerator.

I turned to see if my beautifully prepared shell was salvageable. NOPE. I found it lying face down on the ground in a pretty sorry state: half-melted on one side, covered in bits of ash and floor lint.

And that, my friends, is what happens when you get cocky when making pie.




Some baker's notes:

• You can use either fresh passionfruit juice (with the seeds strained out) or frozen passionfruit puree in this recipe. Fresh passionfruit was a little hard for me to source, but I would occasionally (and rather randomly) see it at major supermarkets like Whole Foods and even Safeway. You can also use passionfruit puree, which can be found in the frozen section of Latin American markets or even online (but for a much steeper price). Whatever you do though, don't use artificial/shelf-stable passionfruit juice. They put a ton of extra sweetener and artificial preservatives in there that'll just ruin your curd.
  


• I've already explained pre-baking science, so I won't repeat myself here. One word of advice though — if you have a small oven similar to mine, perhaps use a non flammable material like aluminum foil to line your pie instead. You also don't need to use fancy ceramic pie weights — you can use rice, beans, or even coins! Just make sure you use a generous amount of weight; if you don't use enough, the crust sags in the middle and destroys your beautiful crimp. Which is what happened to me the second time I made this pie. 

get the recipe »

Available link for download

pineapple and peach pie with a coconut oil crust

Sometimes I get ideas stuck in my head. Song lyrics, cravings, and recipes are the worst offenders. It's an itch that can only be scratched by listening to the same song over and over and over, or until I finally sink my teeth into whatever food I've been daydreaming about for days.

This time, it was pineapple, peach, and paprika pie.

This one was divisive. There were haters. A lot of people just didn't get it. Even my mom (on Twitter, none the less) chimed in and was like, "paprika? weird!" Harsh, mom, real harsh.

Well, let me try and explain my train of thought for those who are gonna hate, hate, hate:


It was time to bake my pie of the month. I knew it was going to be some sort stone fruit; California is insane, and we'd blown through rhubarb and most of berry season earlier in the year without me knowing (fruit here comes into season so much faster!). As I flipped through the Four & Twenty Blackbirds' Pie Book for stone fruit pie inspiration, one stuck out to me: peach and paprika. The book described the combination of sweetness from the peaches and the slight spicy, smoky flavor from the paprika as delicious.

And I'll admit — like you guys, I wasn't a believer. But then I remembered those bags of pineapple and cayenne pepper they sell down the hill in the Mission District. Also, Molly was a supporter and reminded me of the dried chili pineapple from Trader Joe's. There was something about the contrast between those two flavors that made both these things an utterly addicting snack. I wondered if pineapple could also work with paprika, since pineapple and peach worked pretty well together just by themselves.

And that's how this idea for pineapple, peach, and paprika pie got stuck in my head.


In the end though, I got talked out of it. Snapchat rained its judgement down on me and I buckled at the knees. One anonymous Snapchatter snarled at me: "pineapple and peach are fine on their own; you're trying too hard!"

Ouch.

But hey! At the end of the day, these recipes are for you guys. So I'm taking your advice and backing far, far away from the paprika. Nothing fancy or special in this pie, folks — just pineapple, peach, and brown sugar. Oh, and some coconut oil in the crust ti give it a little bit of a tropical flavor.

And you know what? You all were right.

It's delicious as it is.

Thank you to Life and Home for sponsoring this post by providing the compensation and pretty flour sack towels that you see in this post! The towels are Life and Home's first product from their own line, designed in Brooklyn, and made in the U.S.A with all American materials. If you haven't checked out Life and Home yet, head on over — they have almost everything you could possibly need and want for a pretty and functional home. In addition to these floral towels, I'm in love with this coffee grinder, this ceramic KitchenAid mixing bowl, and this wooden muddler set for cocktails. I want it all! As always, thank you for supporting Hummingbird High and my awesome sponsors.


Some baker's notes:

• I started my #pieamonth project to get better at making different types of pie; so far I've experimented with different methods for making pie crust (by blind-baking, by hand, by pastry blender, by food processor, etc) as well as different ingredients (all-butter, half-lard, etc). This time, I've decided to try using oil in the crust. This coconut oil pie crust was inspired by this vegan pie crust recipe from Food52; however, I threw in some butter for stability (I was worried that if I used all oil, the crust wouldn't hold its shape). The result was a dough that was as easy to work with as a lard pie crust, but with the richness of a butter crust and a little tropical flavor from the coconut oil. The only issue is that coconut oil tends to get melty fast when handled too much — be sure to keep the ingredients as cold as possible at all times for best results. Check out this recipe for salty honey pie for even more pie baking tips!


• For the leaf crust design, I used these large leaf cookie cutter plungers (check them out in this pretty pear pie) and these smaller ones. Can't recommend them enough!

get the recipe »

Available link for download

Pie in the Sky Make Way for the Fred Bus!

"On your left."

Again with this shit, seriously?

Yes.  Once again there I was, riding slowly on the right-hand side of of that same empty suburban bike path, when those three annoying words jabbed me from behind like an open safety pin in the small of the back.  I jumped a bit in my saddle.

Only this time it was not a Fred who uttered the phrase; rather, it was a casually-attired gentleman riding an old ten speed.  As he passed, I noticed his frame was badly out of alignment--so badly that his front wheel was about four or five inches to the right of his rear wheel.  In fact, it appeared that this was causing his bike to pull to the right, so every few feet he had to correct for it and veer left again.

In a way this made me feel a bit better, because I suppose if youre constantly drifting right you really have no choice but to warn people.  I also couldnt help wondering if perhaps a good wheel counterbalance kit might help address his bikes handling problems, though from the state of things I imagine it would take a metric fuckload of "tungsten slugs" to correct the tracking on that piece of crap.

Speaking of "On your left," I wonder how many times youll get to hear it during the New York City Century, which takes place this Saturday:



I may or may not do the Century, I still havent decided, because as an urban sophisticate my life is more complex than you can possibly imagine.  (Thats another way of saying it depends how late I stay up watching TV the night before.)  Either way, the organizers would like you to know that theyve added a second start site in Brooklyn, because Brooklyn is the new Manhattan and all that:

You talked, We listened.
Back by popular demand, Transportation Alternatives has added a second start site for the September 10th Century Bike Tour. While you are more than welcome to start at our new site in Manhattan, Pier 97 at 57th Street on the West Side Highway, we do understand the draw of starting an hour later so close to home.
Bib pick up & day of registration: Bicycle Habitat in Prospect Heights, 560 Vanderbilt (between Dean and Bergen streets)
Start Times: 7am for the 100-mile Century, 8am for the 62-mile Metric Century

When I lived in Brooklyn people acted like it was the other side of the planet if they even deigned to come visit you("How will I know which direction to walk when I get off the subway?!?"), now its the center of the universe and it gets its own Century start.

Go figure.

And in other passing etiquette-related news, the Team Sky bus almost flattened somebody:*

*[WARNING: Contains the sort of NSFW language youd expect from someone whos nearly been killed by a busload of dopers.]

Team skys bus almost taking me out, sorry about the language, but this needs to go viral for the safety of cyclists pic.twitter.com/nmojiJnoXf

— Andy Rolfe (@AndyRolfe65) September 8, 2016

Wow!  Makes this seem downright considerate in comparison:


Its ironic that pro road cycling is the most motor vehicle-intensive sport on the planet, and that includes actual car racing.  (Car racing is driving cars, bike racing is riding bikes fast while being followed by cars.)  Sure, the football douches may tweet about wanting to kill us, but at least they play their dumb game inside giant fortresses which they travel to by airplane.  Meanwhile, for some reason bike racing requires so many cars and trucks and buses and motorcycles that you can pretty much count on at least one rider getting run over at some point--and now it seems this extends to non-combatants as well.

Anyway, we can all relate to how infuriating it is when a driver nearly kills you just because theyre in a big hurry, and perhaps the most infuriating thing about it is that you always suspect theyre rushing for completely selfish reasons.  Well, in this case you know theyre rushing for completely selfish reasons, because its a fucking bike racing team, and the only way bike racers could contribute less to society would be to skip the racing altogether and just stay home and masturbate.  In fact staying home and wanking would probably be more of a contribution, since at least wed be safe from team buses and cries of "On your left!"

Pending that, if you want to feel safe you could always try wearing one of those "smart helmets," and heres yet another one:



Its got all the features youve come to expect from a head-mounted Volvo, such as blind spot detection:


As well as all the features drivers will completely ignore, such as turn signals:


And lets not forget navigation, because apparently the next generation of helmet designers assume people have no idea how to get around in their own cities:


Yes, you need this helmet like a hole in the head--which its also got:


Not convinced?  Me neither.  Nevertheless, theres a video:



I was particularly taken with the navigation feature, and I look forward to a future in which helmets guide riders around town by shining lights on their faces:


Just follow your nose.

Best of all, "you can also livestream your commute:"


Which you should never do.  I mean sure, by all means you should feel free to record your commute just in case Team Skys bus driver runs you over, but until that happens please spare the world your unedited adventures.

Anyway, based on my own experience with a "smart helmet" I remain skeptical.  Indeed, Im not sure why people keep adding all these silly features to helmets when the biggest problem with them is what they do to your hair:

I wore my heme(n)t and look what happened!!! Who can I sue for my hair loss??? pic.twitter.com/od3S0ZLXZL

— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) August 25, 2016

Who needs a helmet with lights and cameras when you can just put them on your bike?  But if someone invents a helmet that will comb your hair while you wear it (and in my case also cure baldness) then I think well finally have a winner on our hands.

And heads.

Available link for download

Pie! Oh My! Challenge

Watch this video to get excited about a caring project for Character Counts week next week!  Do your part and give to others!!!

Available link for download