BanBerPudPie

Our friend Erin’s birthday happened to fall on Week 15, so I let Erin’s preference guide the pie for this week.  I had already made her all-time favorite pie, Banana Cream Pie, during Week 3 and since part of my pie adventure is to not repeat pies, I started flipping through my cookbooks to find a pie with banana in it that might serve as a suitable replacement.  I came up with two that I was very interested in trying and Erin opted for the Banana Blueberry Pudding Pie.

Erin's birthday pie

The recipe for Banana Blueberry Pudding Pie comes from the Cutie Pies cookbook, a resource for pies that I love more and more.

How it all begins

The crust on this pie was unique.  Rather than a pastry crust or some form of crushed cookie with melted butter, this recipe called for crumbled vanilla wafers left unmarred by other ingredients or baking.  Just crumbled vanilla wafers.  This was topped with sliced bananas and blueberries that had been dipped in fresh lemon juice.  So far putting this pie together was very simple, and not having to use the oven would make this a perfect pie to make during the hot summer when turning the oven on means raising the temperature of your home from miserable to standing at the fiery gates of Hades.

First vanilla wafers (just vanilla wafers)

Then come the bananas

Add some blueberries and we're almost done

On top of the vanilla wafers and fruit, I mixed together a filling of cream cheese, condensed milk, vanilla pudding, and whipped cream.  Chilled it in the refrigerator for a few hours and voila!  A simple pie, perfect for those hot summer nights.  But was it good?

Whipping up some memorable filling

The simple vanilla wafer “crust” was a pleasant complement to the pudding and fruit.  Another aspect of this pie that made an impression on me was the subtle tanginess achieved by the lemon dipped bananas and blueberries.  It may have been intended to keep the bananas from browning too quickly, but the effect on my taste buds was delightful.  With each bite of this pie, I felt like a kid again, eating pie at Grandma’s dining room table.  Banana Blueberry Pudding Pie is yet another pie I will be putting in my growing list of pies I will be making again in the future. 

View of the layers

Now, I’m sure all of you are dying to know if Erin enjoyed her birthday pie and I am pleased to announce that she loved it and took a slice home for later.  The rest of my family enjoyed the pie immensely; in fact it was given a nickname: BanBerPud Pie. 

Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie

Four layers of heavenly goodness: buttery pastry crust, filled with a layer of chocolate, topped with four kinds of berries, and finished off with crumb topping.  The Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie I made for Week 14 was sensational.  The recipe comes from Dani Cone’s Cutie Pies cookbook. 

For the crust I opted to stick with the All-Butter Crust recipe used in the Cutie Pies cookbook.  It is a tasty crust, but seems to lack stability when I fold and crimp the edges.  It may be stable before I place it in the oven, but by the end of baking one side has inevitably slumped into the pie pan or flopped over the edge of the pie pan.  As I work through this crust recipe in the future, I will have to see if I can tweak the recipe a bit to make the edge of the crust more durable.   

The filling was put together very quickly, scattering chocolate chips on the bottom of the crust topping with a layer of sweetened and spiced berries.  The pie could be left open or finished with a crumb topping, but who can resist a crumb topping?  “Not I,” said the avid pie-baker. 

   

The chocolatey base

Four kinds of berries

Sweetening up the deal

Feeling crumby, anyone?

Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie oven-ready!

Our Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie was the finale to an already grand meal with our friend Eric.  It is hard to believe that so many good things could come together so perfectly for a small dinner party, but this was one meal that hit the spot from the first bite into our French dip sandwiches to our last taste of pie licked off our forks.  Perfection.   

At the top of my list of favorites...

I am often asked if I have a top list of pies from my year-long adventure.  Usually my response is indefinite with a pie or two listed between a lot of hemming and hawing because, let’s be honest here, I have made a lot of very tasty pies so far.  However, if I were asked today, Bountiful Berry Black-Bottom Pie is most certainly at the top of that list.  Enough said?

                                                                                                                                             

Mouth-Watering Mid-Winter Pot Pie

Since it is mid-winter, I felt that the pie for Week 13 might be most suited as a savory pie.  It was time to try a pot pie and the New Best Recipe Cookbook had just the one to try: Chicken Pot Pie with Bacon and Corn.  My mouth was watering just reading the title. 

This recipe gave the option of using a savory pie dough topping or fluffy buttermilk biscuit topping.  Well, when I am given the choice between a traditional crust for a pot pie or homemade fluffy, buttery biscuit topping… I can tell you that I will always choose buttermilk biscuits!

Buttermilk biscuits begin with butter...

Rather than a traditional pot pie with carrots and peas, I opted for a recipe with bacon and corn, which turned out to be an excellent decision. 

Pot pie vegetables, with the exception of the corn to come later

Bacon, perhaps the most important ingredient!

Chicken simmering

Having never made a pot pie before, the process seemed a bit lengthy for a midweek dinner for the family, although the end result was incredible.  The recipe does offer some options for making this more manageable, allowing one to make both the biscuits and the filling in advance, so it certainly could be doable if one uses the advanced preparation options.   

Also as a family with young children, an 8 x 13 –inch pan was going to be more than we could eat, so I used two 8 x 8-inch pans for the recipe and froze one for a dinner later on.  This worked well, and made the second meal incredibly fast and easy. 

One Chicken Pot Pie ready to be baked

The consensus from my family was unanimous: AMAZING!  The bacon and corn were a nice spin from a traditional pot pie and a huge hit with my 3 ½ year-old son.  The biscuits were to die for.  Again, this Chicken Pot Pie with Bacon and Corn recipe was AMAZING and my family will be enjoying this one time and time again for years to come.

Final product before it was devoured

Gooey Brownie in a Flaky Pastry Crust... Um, Sure, I Can Eat That...

If you have ever wondered what a brownie wrapped in a pie shell was like, make a Tarheel Pie.  This recipe was presented to me by my husband’s Aunt Monica.  Two Christmases ago, she baked this pie and I did not get to try it because the fruit side of me won over the chocolate side.  Instead of trying the Tarheel Pie, I opted for Aunt Monica’s Apple Pie (absolutely divine!).  Since that day, however, I have thought about the pie I had missed.  So during Week 12, I decided to discover for myself the joy of a Tarheel Pie.

For the crust, I used Grandma’s oil crust.  I had read the directions for the pie earlier in the week and since they seemed simple enough, I thought I would not over-complicate it by making a crust that would require refrigeration or freezing.  On top of that, I had run a half-marathon the day before I made the pie and any amount of work was sounding like too much work.  

Chocolate goodness coming up! 

The crust was ready and in the pie pan in about five minutes and the filling took about the same amount of time.  Easy!  My only complaint with this pie was that I probably over-baked it.  The recipe calls for 30-40 minutes of bake time and I was wanting my crust to brown a little more, so I left it in for the full 40 minutes.  The pie was still very tasty, but not as gooey as it could have been had I heeded the warning to not over-bake it! 

Chocolate and melted butter... a great way to start!

Mixing the rest of the ingredients

Ready to bake

Tar Heel Pie

That said, if you need a chocolaty dessert with little prep time, this pie may just fit the bill.  In fact, I pretty well finished this pie on my own… yikes….  Be warned!