Tag Archives: pie

Cranberry Crumb Pie

Salted Butterscotch Pie

Did y’all watch the World Series? I did–I always do. I don’t care who’s playing (unless it’s the Texas Rangers), I just love baseball. Over the last month, I have watched nearly every single game that was broadcast. I’ve politely turned down invitations, ducked out early, and informed friends that I’d be back up for socializing just as soon as the World Champions were crowned. That’s not to say that I have been a hermit. My friend, Jody, and I have a running text chat for the duration of every postseason (check out his web comic here). And my pal, VJ, was brave enough to watch the last game of the NLDS with me. While I experienced the full range of human emotion over the first few innings, she said “Betsy,* watching you watch baseball is way more interesting than actual baseball.” Perhaps it’s a good thing that the postseason is over now 😬

*Yes, she calls me Betsy. Read the story on that here.

I’ve been a little slow to blog these past few weeks, but can you blame me? The Chicago Cubs were playing. And they WON after 108 years! I couldn’t miss that.

Now that all the baseball is suddenly over, I’ve got a bit of a postseason hangover: I kind of don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not watching a high-stakes game! Rest assured, it’ll pass. I’ve got plenty to do to distract myself–Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks! Here on E2 Bakes, that means it’s pie season. I’ll be sharing three new pie recipes leading up to Turkey Day.

First up? This Salted Butterscotch Pie. You read that right. Salted. Butterscotch. Pie. YUM!

This pie, y’all. It’s going to be a new favorite. Not only is it bursting with the buttery brown sugar flavor of butterscotch–it’s quick and easy to assemble and slices like a dream! The crust is my go-to Cream Cheese Pie Dough. It’s my favorite pie dough ever: there’s no guess work with the liquid, it never tears, and it is seriously flaky and delicious. Try it sometime!

Anyway, roll out your crust, fit it in a pie plate, and crimp it. Then throw it in the freezer. Freezing the shaped dough will help keep your pie crust from shrinking while baking. Since this pie’s filling is just liquid (and liquid moves when heated), there’s not a whole lot keeping it in place. Don’t skip this step!

The butterscotch filling is super easy to make. It’s mostly just whisking. Start with two cups of dark brown sugar and a bunch of eggs. There are four eggs and two egg yolks in this pie. That may seem like a lot, but they are a powerhouse in this filling. The eggs, along with the brown sugar, provide the smooth texture as well as richness and structure!

Once the dark brown sugar and eggs are combined, mix in milk, apple cider vinegar, vanilla, and melted butter. Lastly comes a little flour to thicken the filling, some cinnamon and nutmeg for depth, and salt. The filling will be soupy going into the oven, but once it bakes, it will become dense and custardy.

When the pie comes out of the oven, sprinkle it with finishing salt. I am partial to Trader Joe’s Cypriot Pyramid Salt because of the big crunchy flakes, but use whatever salt you like. Gray salt and Fleur de Sel are good choices, but if you have some specialty salt in the back of your spice cabinet, feel free to use that. As the pie cools, the salt will adhere itself to the top, adding a little salty punch to every sweet butterscotch bite.

And speaking of cooling, this Salted Butterscotch Pie doesn’t require a long rest between baking and eating. The pie pictured was sliced just one hour after baking! It’s super structurally sound at any temperature and can be served warm, room temperature, or cold. It’s the dream. And if you have vanilla ice cream to go with it, all the better.

Looking for more Thanksgiving pie inspiration? Check out this Black Bottom Pear & Almond Pie and this light and fluffy Pumpkin Pie!

Salted Butterscotch Pie
makes one 9-inch standard pie

1/2 recipe Cream Cheese Pie Dough or other good crust
2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
4 large eggs + 2 large egg yolks, room temperature
1/2 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
1/2-1 teaspoon finishing salt, for topping
vanilla ice cream, for serving (optional)

Roll out pie crust to a 12-inch diameter and fit it in a 9-inch standard pie plate. Trim the excess to 1/2-inch and crimp as desired. Freeze prepared crust for 15 minutes while you make the filling.

Position oven racks to the top and bottom positions. Preheat oven to 350F. Place dark brown sugar in a large mixing bowl. Whisk in eggs and yolks one at a time until completely combined. Stir in milk, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla. While whisking constantly, drizzle in the melted butter until combined. Stir in flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Let filling sit five minutes for any large bubbles to dissipate. Remove crust from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet. Pour filling into prepared crust (you may have a few tablespoons leftover).

Bake pie for 25 minutes on the bottom rack of the oven. Move pie to the top rack of the oven and tent loosely with foil. Bake 25-35 minutes, until filling is puffy. When the filling is done, it should jiggle just slightly when the pan is jostled and a toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean. Once the filling deflates, sprinkle the pie with finishing salt. Let pie cool on a rack until it reaches room temperature. Serve in small slices with ice cream, if desired.

Pie will keep covered at room temperature for up to three days, or in the refrigerator for up to five.

Chocolate Cream Pie

1 Reply

Oof. Re-entry has been rough.

After a week on Swans Island, Maine, with three of my nearest and dearest, I thought I was ready to get back to my life in NYC. Boy, was I wrong.

We hit absolutely no traffic on the drive home…until we crossed into the Bronx. By that time, we’d been in a hot car for twelve hours and even though we’d had a great time together, we were all ready to be in our respective apartments with the air conditioning going full-blast. When I finally got home at 10:30pm, I was ecstatic to be back. A week in the middle of nowhere had calmed my usual crazy, and I was feeling refreshed and ready to return to work and blogging.

But life has a way of bringing you back down to earth, and this week has been nothing short of insanity. It’s the end-of-the-month cake rush, so I have had my oven on near-constantly. We are in the midst of a heatwave and the kitchen is the only un-air conditioned room in my apartment, so I have been overheated for days. Getting back to my day job is hard only because I had gotten accustomed to spending my afternoons laying on the beach and going to the general store. This blog has gone completely silent–something that has rarely happened in its nine-month existence. I’ve thrown myself into bed unusually early every night since I’ve been home, wishing I could still be up there in our little house, sleeping with the windows open so I could hear the ocean.

So what do I do when everything seems hard? Make Chocolate Cream Pie. Cold, creamy, and chocolaty with a crumbly graham cracker crust and a ton of whipped cream, it’s the answer to all my problems right now. It’s near-impossible to worry about your to-do list when you’re eating pie, right?!

This recipe is an adaptation of the Chocolate Cream Pie recipe found in the original 1952 Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book. On my trip to Maine last year, I was lucky enough to find a second-edition copy at a used bookstore in Bath for $6. It’s held together with tape and most of the pages fall out when I open the thing, but I love it so much that I don’t care. It’s a book full of classics (and a few weird things involving gelatin). If you come across a copy, I highly recommend scooping it up while you have the chance. You’ll use it way more than you might imagine.

While I love mixing flavors and textures, some things just shouldn’t be messed with, and Chocolate Cream Pie is one of them. The only changes I have made to this recipe are using a graham cracker crust instead of pastry, adding an extra egg yolk and a bit more vanilla, and topping it with freshly whipped cream instead of meringue. There’s no need to mess with it any further. This classic pie is perfect just the way it is.

Chocolate Cream Pie
adapted from Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book
makes one 9-inch pie

Graham Cracker Crust:
9 full-sheet honey graham crackers
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/4 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
3 cups whole milk
4 large egg yolks, room temperature
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Whipped Cream:
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For Topping:
chocolate curls (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Make the crust. Place graham crackers in the bowl of a food processor and process until no large pieces remain. Add dark brown sugar, salt, and melted butter. Process until the mixture resembles wet sand, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Transfer the mixture to a 9-inch standard pie plate and use clean hands to evenly press the mixture onto the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Bake crust for 10 minutes. Cool crust on a rack while you prepare the filling.

In a large saucepan, whisk together sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder, and salt. Place the pan over medium-high heat. Whisking constantly, pour the milk into the dry ingredients. Continue to whisk until the mixture boils for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to low.

In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk egg yolks. Remove 1/3 cup of the warm chocolate mixture from the pot. Whisking constantly, slowly pour chocolate mixture into the egg yolks until completely combined. Add egg yolk mixture to the pot and turn heat back up to medium-high. Continue to whisk until mixture boils for 2 minutes. Remove pot from the heat and whisk in butter and vanilla extract. Pour filling into prepared crust. Press plastic wrap onto the top of the pie and chill for at least four hours or overnight.

Make the whipped cream. In a medium-large mixing bowl, combine heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. Use an electric mixer to whip cream until stiff peaks form.

Remove plastic wrap from pie. If serving the entire pie at once, spread whipped cream over the entire surface of the pie immediately before slicing and serving. If serving at multiple intervals, top each slice with whipped cream as it is served. Top with chocolate curls, if desired.
Pie will keep covered in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Blue-Razz Pie

6 Replies

If, hypothetically speaking, I ever wanted to leave New York City for good, I know exactly where I would go. I’d pack my life into a moving truck, drive ten hours north, hop a ferry, and set up camp on Swans Island, Maine. There would be an initial shock, leaving a city of 8 million people and taking residence in a town of 300, but I’m sure I’d adjust quickly.

As I doubt I have any talent for lobstering (the primary profession among citizens of Swans Island), I think I’d build a little pie shop next door to the general store and live out my days wearing cute aprons, rolling dough, and serving warm slices of local berry pie a la mode. Oh yes, that’s the dream. Or at least it is today.

I’m currently vacationing on Swans Island with my dear friends VJ, Shira, and Liz. As there are two Lizzes here, I have been dubbed Betsy for the purposes of this trip. There’s not much to do here–there’s one store, no restaurants, no TV. Wi-Fi is available only from the porch of the public library and the vestibule in the post office. We’re completely out of our normal routines, instead filling our days with reading, relaxing, building fires, and making meals together. It’s absolutely glorious, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we are not terribly thrilled that we’ll have to drive back to Brooklyn on Saturday.

Liz and I have spent several hours walking down the side of the main road foraging for berries. When I was here last year, I found tons and tons of wild blackberries, but they’re not quite ripe yet. Instead, we’ve done some light trespassing in the name of blueberries and worried about ticks while picking raspberries in a ditch. We have not been arrested or had any ticks, thank goodness, but we have managed to collect just enough berries for pie.

When Liz and I met a year ago, we bonded over our mutual love of pie. She is a filling person, while I prefer the crust–a perfect balance, if you ask me. We have made at least fifteen pies since, including one November evening where we baked three apple pies before virtually passing out during the final game of the World Series. Every single one has been an enjoyable (and delicious) collaboration, but I think the Blue-Razz Pie we made today is my very favorite.

And how couldn’t it be? We worked as a team, scouring every bit of woods up and down North Road in an effort to make this happen. On our first visit to the WiFi porch at the public library, we each rushed through checking our email and social media so that we could squat in a ditch and pick blueberries. Yesterday, we took a six hour sojourn to the mainland for provisions and even though we were exhausted when we got back to the island, we put on long pants and went out to gather raspberries near the Back Cove. Our foraging was cut short by rain, but when we got home, Liz cut together a batch of Cream Cheese Pie Dough and we planned to get up the next morning and make pie first thing.

She stirred together the filling while I rolled and cut dough. We cut out hearts with an ancient cookie cutter we found in the back of a cabinet full of mismatched pots and pans. Everything got a brush of egg wash and a sprinkling of sugar before being popped into the oven. And forty-five minutes later, we pulled out the most beautifully browned pie, full of bits of wild raspberries and blueberries and smelling like magic.

There’s something really amazing about biting into something you made with someone you adore. This pie captures what I love about my friendship with Liz: the teamwork, the creativity, and the sweetness. I can’t wait to make another one.

Blue-Razz Pie
makes one standard 9-inch pie

1 recipe Cream Cheese Pie Dough
3 cups fresh blueberries
1 cup fresh raspberries
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch of Kosher or sea salt
juice of 1/2 lime

Egg Wash
1 egg
1 teaspoon water

On a floured surface, roll out one disc of pie dough to a 12-inch diameter and fit it in the pan. Trim the edges to 1/2-inch of overhang. Refrigerate while you prepare the filling.

In a large mixing bowl, combine blueberries, raspberries, 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, salt, and lime. Fold with a wooden spoon until everything is evenly coated. Transfer filling to prepared crust. Refrigerate.

On a floured surface, roll out the other disc of pie dough to a 12-inch diameter. You may use a cookie cutter to cut shapes in the dough before laying it over the top of the filling. If you want a full top crust, lay the rolled-out dough on top of the filling and cut a few vents. Trim the edges to 1/2-inch of overhang, and crimp the top and bottom crust edges together. Refrigerate.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Make the egg wash. In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk together egg and water. Use a pastry brush to brush the entire exposed crust with egg wash. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 45-55 minutes, tenting with foil at the 20 minute mark.

Let pie cool completely on a rack. Slice and serve with ice cream, if desired.

Pie will keep covered in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Blueberry Hand Pies

1 Reply

How was your long weekend? Mine wasn’t really a weekend–I worked all but one day. Sunday, the one day I had completely off, my friend (also named Liz) came over and we made two pies for some Fourth of July barbecues she attended.

Liz and I rolled chilled dough and sliced fruit for fillings. We used a star cookie cutter to make the pies a little patriotic. We had a great time baking together, but at the end of the day we both came to the same conclusion: pie is a labor of love. You can’t just make pie on the fly. Nope. It takes about eight hours from the time you start making the dough to the time the finished product is cool enough to slice.

I’m always up to make pie when I have the time, but it’s a little less fun when I know I’m not going to get to have any when the whole process is through. It’s especially disappointing when I’m making blueberry pie. Juicy blueberries spiked with cinnamon and lime and baked into a flaky crust–it’s the stuff of summertime dreams! But I am just one person. I do not need a whole pie sitting around. And so, after I put Liz and her pies into a cab, I set to work making these Blueberry Hand Pies. They’re classic blueberry pie, but in cute, convenient single servings 😊

Blueberry Hand Pies start with my Cream Cheese Pie Dough. It’s super simple to put together and is flexible and easy with which to work. I’ve never had it tear, and that structural soundness is pretty important since it has to be cut, folded, and crimped! As with any pie dough, the key to working with this one is keeping it cold from the time you are cutting the butter and cream cheese into the flour to the minute it goes in the oven. If the dough becomes soft or sticky and any point in the hand pie-making process, refrigerate it for fifteen minutes before continuing. Taking the time to do this extra chilling will ensure super flaky crust.
The dough is cut into 4 1/2-inch circles before being being filled with a combination of blueberries, a bit of sugar, cinnamon, salt, cornstarch, and lime. Then the edge of the dough is painted with a a semi-circle of egg wash before being folded in half and crimped with a fork. The hand pies are chilled while the oven heats up, then vented and painted with more egg wash before baking for 35-40 minutes, until glossy and golden.
Where regular pies have to cool completely to room temperature before they can be sliced and served, these little Blueberry Hand Pies can be enjoyed just minutes after they come out of the oven! They’re fantastic by themselves, but I highly recommend enjoying one warm with vanilla ice cream!

Blueberry Hand Pies
makes 18 hand pies

1 recipe Cream Cheese Pie Dough,* chilled

Filling:
12 ounces fresh blueberries
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch or arrowroot powder
pinch of Kosher or sea salt
juice of one lime

Egg Wash:
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water

On a floured surface, roll chilled dough out to 1/4-inch thickness. Use a floured 4 1/2-inch round cutter* to cut circles out of the dough. Re-roll scraps as necessary to cut more circles. If dough gets too warm or sticky, place it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Place cut circles on a plate and refrigerate at least ten minutes.

Prepare the filling. Place blueberries in a large mixing bowl. Fold in sugar, cinnamon, cornstarch, and salt, followed by lime juice. Filling may seem dry. Set aside.

Make egg wash. In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk together egg and water. Set aside.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Assemble the hand pies. Lay a circle of dough on a floured surface. Place one tablespoon of the blueberry filling in the middle. Use a pastry brush to paint a semi-circle of egg wash on one half of the outer edge. Fold the unpainted half to meet the painted half, and press down lightly to seal. Crimp with a fork. Lay hand pie on prepared baking sheet. Continue making hand pies until all circles have been used. If anything gets too warm or sticky, refrigerate for at least fifteen minutes.

Once all pies are made, chill the baking pans in the refrigerator or freezer. Preheat oven to 375F. Once oven reaches temperature, remove full pans from refrigerator or freezer. Cut a small vent in each one* before painting with more egg wash. Bake for 35-40 minutes, tenting with foil at the 20 minute mark. Let hand pies cool on pans for fifteen minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

Hand pies may be served warm or room temperature. They are best the day they are made, but will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days or in the refrigerator for up to four days.

Notes:

1. You may use an pie dough recipe you like, or purchased refrigerated pie dough. This recipe requires enough dough for a double crust pie.
2. I use this 4 1/2-inch round cutter. If you do not have one, you may slice the dough into 5-inch squares, although you may get fewer total hand pies.
3. Pies may be frozen after they are vented. Lay them on parchment-lined pans and freeze until solid. Put them in a labeled freezer bag or container for up to two months. When you are ready to bake them, paint the pies with egg wash and bake them for an extra minute or two. No need to thaw.

e2 bakes brooklyn

sweets & sass from a baking brooklynite.