March 08, 2010

Perfect little personal pies

Suzanne is the “I love to bake” girl. Tracy is the “I love what Suzanne bakes” girl. Want to see why I love what she bakes?
 
Let me show you what she made last week when we had a little cousin/sister sleepover. No special occasion, except that the kids got to play and us girls got to visit. I don’t remember if we did anything productive except play…

But I’m still remembering these incredibly delicious and perfectly presented personal pies Suzanne created for us. (inspired by Our Best Bites.)
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Chocolate ice box pie with caramelized bananas. Let me tell you, the 24 hours we had to wait before eating these perfect pies was well worth it. The chocolate was incredible and airy. The bananas were so good they tasted like they were soaked in some kind of liquor. (I promise they were not.)

DSC00319And the best part was that they were so FUN to eat! Each of us got a ‘whole’ pie, which just made us feel so special. Cousins were delighted. Even the Cattleman dug in. DSC00321Cattleman agreed it was delicious, but said it was more of a ‘tea room-sized’ serving. Well, he was right about that! But look at the way he was delicately ‘digging in’. I think he’d be welcome in any tea room we might visit! Such an awesome pie, and so uniquely presented. 
In addition to the total cuteness of these personal pies is the very nifty idea of freezing them until ready to bake. So when you get that craving for a little pie but don’t want to make a whole one, just sneak out to your freezer and pop a couple of these in the oven. I’m thinking Saturday nights after the kids are in bed!

Over at Our Best Bites they have lots of ideas for these adorable pies. Any kind of filling will do, and you can get really creative with the crust on top. There are step by step instructions at Our Best Bites with great pictures to follow.


I kind of liked the idea that you didn’t have to roll out the crust for these jars. I never seem to get this part right, but with these, you don’t have to! You can just use the little pieces to press inside the jar. Pretty much what I have to do with most of my pie crusts anyway. You know, having to piece the sides together because it didn’t come out just right. Surely I’m not the only one?

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IMG_0257Well, I’m not at home in the kitchen like my sister Suzanne, but I do attempt a little sweetness every now and then.  My littlest one helped me make and roll out the crust for these little guys. We made three mini pies out of one regular pie crust recipe. (Mini pie tins come in three packs at Wal-Mart). No secret for this filling…it came out of the can. But they were made with love by sweet little fingers and they turned out to be perfect little pies for us, too. I forgot to take a picture of our whipped cream topping, but that always gets a little out of hand and white stuff goes flying. So I had my camera put away in a safe place for this part.

Suzanne’s pies were adorable, delicious and time consuming. The chocolate had to be whipped for 30 minutes before refrigerating for 24 hours! (this was torture!) The bananas had to be caramelized. This was a rather gourmet style pie. My pies were cute and took little time. We cut in the butter and shortening, dribbled on the ice-cold water, and made three little crusts. The hardest part of the filling was trying to get the can opener to click down on the can of cherry pie filling!

I can promise you we all appreciated our perfect little personal pies – regardless of the time spent preparing. So we’re wondering…are you pie eaters out there? Do you buy them or do you make them? Do you make your crusts or do you use pre-made crusts? (Tracy usually likes the kind that come rolled up ready to go.) Leave us some comments and we’ll have fun getting to know you better. What is your perfect pie?

Tracy

to get an idea of how different we really are,  CLICK HERE

7 comments:

  1. What a "sweet" photo of the girls! The pies sound delicious.

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  2. @Melissa You are always the quickest to respond! Thank you.I hope Allyson's German Chocolate Cake turned out good this weekend.

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  3. Anonymous3/11/2010

    Ya'll are making me hungry!!!

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  4. YUM! Those look great.

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  5. Oh Yummy!
    What a cute blog. I just thought that I would say HOWDY.
    -amy

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  6. Where is mine?? I am hungry now!

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