So tomorrow is pi day (March 14th, get it? celebrate at 1:59?), and, not being the imaginative sort, I like to celebrate pi day with pie. Last year I made pie for every meal, but I am just not feeling that ambitious this year, so I settled on making two pies and bringing them into work. I decided on an old school mixed berry pie (read: I couldn't pick between cherry and blueberry, so I just threw both in there, and some blackberries to make it seem intentional), cornstarch thickened, and crust from scratch (of course, adoxograph would never forgive me if I did otherwise. For that matter, I would never forgive myself if I did otherwise, so it kind of works out).
That pie happened like this:
First came crust assembly, following a recipe adoxograph gave me about a gazillion months ago. I always have trouble with pie crusts because I have hot hands, and the butter wants to go all melty. It probably doesn't help that I am impatient.
While I was letting the dough rest (have to give the starches time to hydrate, man!), I prepped the filling, which was just frozen fruit, a little butter, a little salt, about a quarter cup of sugar, almond extract, and that corn starch I mentioned earlier.
Oh yeah. And there's a graham cracker crust back there. Ignore that for now.
Once the filling was prepped, I rolled out and blind baked the bottom crust. While the blind baking happened, I rolled out the top crust. Then the blind baking was done, and I filled the pie...
...then placed the top crust and cut the thematically appropriate vent. SYMBOLIC!
That went into the oven, allowing me to focus on the other pie.
Oh, the other pie!
See, a few weeks ago, I had an idea, which is always a dangerous thing. And not just any idea, mind. A pie idea. Or piedea, I suppose. And it was a majestic piedea. See, it's Easter, and Easter means Peeps. Peeps are marshmallows, right? And if you'll recall from my thingaday posts, I'd been making toaster oven s'mores. Do you see where I am going with this?
Yeah, that's right. It's an Easter S'more Peep Massacre pie.
So you already saw the graham cracker crust resting idly alongside the berry filling, but here's another shot of that, for fun.
I also made a chocolate custard while the dough for the other pie hydrated (no action shots on that; haven't yet worked out how to stir constantly and take a photo simultaneously). That cooled while the berry pie was baking, and then I proceeded to fill the graham cracker crust with the custard. Then came the Peeps. I bought four colors, and arranged them on top of the custard in the pie (oh, and check the completed berry pie. NICE).
They look so innocent.
I started wondering whether they knew what was about to happen next. It was about at this point when I started laughing hysterically.
See, here's the thing: it's not a s'more if the marshmallow isn't toasted.
Thank goodness my dear friend was willing to loan me his kitchen torch.
Note: Peeps do catch fire, just as you'd expect. Also those freaky brown dot eyeballs are not nearly as sturdy as I thought they would be.
I have to say, I feel a little bad for melting their tiny faces off. But it had to be done. For science.
I'm starting to think that we've officially jumped the shark owing to the fact that we're all trying to be clever and make references to our own songs in the lyrics of our own songs.
