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pie

Tiny Frozen Things

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So I’ll admit, I’ve become a little jar-obsessed. The apple pies in little jars were fun, but let’s face it – I’m not gifted at making pies. Plus it’s getting hot outside and pretty soon it’ll even be too hot to bake bread.

Frozen. Frozen is where it’s at.

I found a recipe for Mudslide Pie, and with a little adaption and some bad math, these were sent to the freezer last month:

Rich like Richie Rich.

Cute, but too rich. They have a sour cream/melted chocolate layer on top of the crust, and next time I think I’d skip that part and just put the chocolate whipped cream in and call it good.

These were the latest creation: strawberry ‘cheesecakes’. No recipe, I just mashed half a block of cream cheese with some sugar and lemon juice until it tasted right and added some sweetened whipped cream. The topping is diced strawberries, sugar, and some of Lloyd’s mom strawberry jam.

Ready for eating!

The best part? No baking! Just eat straight from the freezer! The next best part? These jars are even smaller than the pie jars! Four ounces instead of eight. When I want something dessert-y I just want a little bit, so this works out pretty well. The worst part? My twenty year high school reunion is coming up and my eating habits are slowly declining. Maybe I should take up jogging.

That’s the pie jar on the left.

Heaven help me if I find a two-ounce jar.

UPDATE: Dang it, Applebee’s! Quit stealing my ideas! (This just came in the mail – these are tiny desserts called ‘shooters’.)

Where’s the lid, huh?

SECOND UPDATE: A faster way to make frozen cheesecake, sandwich-style – HERE.

Simple Simon (pie in a jar)

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The idea of ‘how clean is your house’ has been making the rounds on the sites, and Deanne commented that her house is her playpen – clean but not neat. Beth’s is her castle – tidy, but not overly clean. My house is my lab – always in a state of disarray. It’s not that I don’t clean, it’s that a clean room invites some sort of project to take place.

Case in point. Beth, Tara and Tim stopped by for a bit this afternoon and the house was in semi-disaster mode. After they left, I spent some dedicated time doing house work. All the snowmen stuff came down, I dusted a bit, put away stuff in the living room and dining room, and tackled the kitchen counters. You may have remembered from the colander post that I had some apples sitting on the counter. I stupidly bought a bag that had bruises on every single apple. They sat on the counter for over a week because I couldn’t bear just throwing them away. So….. after the kitchen was clean and shiny…..

He looks mad at my apples.

(Don’t fret – I cut off the yucky parts.)

Tough to fit in the jars.

Ready for filling.

Ready to freeze

So, lids on and in the freezer. WAY more work than I thought it would be, and the kitchen is a disaster again. But, I made six tiny little pies and stashed them in the freezer. Today after church, I baked up:

Tiny Pie! (one hour at 375 or so, put a ring of foil around edge for first part.)

Fully cooled and out!

I love you, tiny pie in a jar! I’m a crust lover, so this has the perfect crust-to-filling ratio for me. With a bit more tinkering and some other fruit fillings, we may be able to eat a different kind of pie each day! It will be good to cook something else in that oven when I’m baking bread.

UPDATE: For Deanne (I wish I had a giant quarter, because that would be so funny!):

unbaked quarter pie

On the off chance that anyone is reading this anymore, let me answer a few questions that came up in the comments.

I can’t remember the recipe for this dough – it had shortening, water, flour, salt and I subbed out some vinegar and vodka for the water. It was drier than a butter dough. (I’ve made that since and didn’t like it as well.)

I tried several ways of rolling out dough and trying to piece it in, but it actually worked best to just put chunks of dough in the jar and smash it around inside.

A drier filling won’t boil over as much as a juicy one.

Once it’s assembled, just screw the lid on the jar and put it in the freezer. I think it should keep well for at least a month. (I’m totally making that up, but hey – they sell frozen pies at the grocery store and they aren’t flying off the shelves.)

I bake these at about 375 – 400. Take the jar out of the freezer when you turn the oven on to preheat it. Take off the lid and put the frozen jar on a plate or baking vessel so you’ll have less thermal shock when it goes in the oven. (Read: Your jar shouldn’t crack. I’ve never had one crack.) Put a ring of foil around the edge of the pie for the first 45 minutes, take it off for 15.

Let it cool and either eat it out of the jar or run a knife around the edge to get it out. I said it’s a good crust-to-filling ratio, but it’s really a lot of crust. Cute, though!

A 2-crust recipe should work for about 6 jars.

Let me finish by saying that it’s really funny that so many people read this post. I am constantly bemoaning how I can’t make a good pie crust. If I had a show on Food Network it would be called, “Can’t Make Crust” and I’d visit sweet little grandmas around the country and make them teach me their skilz.

These are wide-mouthed 8-ounce jars (think small-cereal-bowl-sized), not tall skinny jars. I apparently caused a bit of confusion. Sorry, everyone!

SUMMER UPDATE: The obsession continues with “eat-’em-frozen” jarred desserts.

Free-form pies

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I wanted to talk about the pies. I tried a new crust recipe, one that called for vodka – woo-hoo! The reasoning was that since alcohol evaporates quickly at high heat, you could use more liquid in the recipe without the crust being tough. It worked out ok, despite my writing down the recipe wrong. It made enough dough for one two-crust pie, but I wanted to make two small pies. I have one fairly small pie pan, but not two. This problem was solved by using our Corelle salad (?) bowls for pie plates. Nothing fancy here, I just rolled out the dough to a giant circle, put it in bowl, dumped in the fruit, then folded all the extra dough artlessly over the top. I freaked out about it over-browning, which resulted in under-browning. Oh well, whatchagonnado? (I admit that the blackberry one looks pretty sad. Good thing Lloyd will eat anything.)
Simple Simon met a pieman

I do love our Corelle dishes. They’re light, pretty and practically indestructible. We use them to store leftovers in the fridge – just a bowl with a plate over it. And, they’re awesome for re-heating some dinner in the microwave!

Pile 'em on!

A weird need for pie.

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Crusty, fruity goodness

Last weekend when I didn’t feel so good, I dozed through a pie contest on Food Network show.  Ever since then, I’ve had a compulsion to make a pie.  It’s funny, because I don’t really like pie, but I’ve always wanted to make a kick-butt pie crust.  In my Martha-Stewart-worship days, I tried to make the purist flour/butter/ice water kind, but would freak out about not adding too much water (lest it be tough) and wound up with a pile of dust.  Then Alton Brown had to come along a few years later and make crust with flour/lard (yuck)/shortening/and ice water sprayed onto the dough with a dinosaur spray bottle.  I’d try – again using too little water – and would end up with a pile of unrollable dust.  You’re a big fat liar, Alton Brown, but I still love you.

My mom makes awesome pie crust, and though I’ve asked her for the recipe a dozen times, I never actually made it.  So, being too embarrassed to ask her yet again, I looked on the internet for one with egg and vinegar.  This turned out pretty good, but Mom – if you’re reading this – please post your recipe.  Thanks!  I promise I’ll never ask again!

3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups of shortening, 1/2 tsp. salt.  Cut shortening into flour & salt.  In a cup, mix 1 egg, 1 Tbsp vinegar, 5 Tbsp of cool water.   Mix, chill a while, roll.   (Looking back, I think I would have added a little sugar.)