Today was our annual pie day. Pie day is usually a marathon pie making extravaganza in my mother’s kitchen, but COVID forced us to bake separately this year. Nevertheless, numerous pies still came into being today. My siblings and I all shared pics of our pies and my mom kept a running tally, just like she always does. Our contribution was eight pies-apple, raspberry, banana cream, lemon, lemon meringue, cranberry orange custard and two pumpkin. And only one of those pies was not safe for Matthew. More on that later.
Each of kids selected their favorite flavor of pie. Malia chose raspberry and except for some advice and help transferring the pie crust to the pie pan, she made the entire thing herself. My role was supervisory. I am so pleased that she has a desire to learn to cook and is becoming proficient. I admit that I’ve been a bit slow to teach her, but a lot of that is because her interest has been limited of late and I’m not willing to fight with her about it. But her desire to learn has started to reemerge and I’m really glad. Her pie is beautiful, and I’ll bet it tastes good too. 😉
While the creation of Malia’s pie was drama free, not so for the apple pie. I’m generally a careful cook, but I was a bit off my game where the apple pie is concerned. I made my own pie filling back in the fall, so once the crust was ready to go, I dumped in the filling. Unfortunately, I forgot to drain off the liquid so I could thicken it. I didn’t want to pour it out of the crust once it was in because that would make the crust on that edge more likely to scorch in the oven, so I called the turkey baster into action a day early and sucked the liquid out. I thickened it and then proceeded to assemble my pie. I got my top crust in place, perfectly vented and creatively crimped…and then looked over and realized that I had forgotten to put the thickened liquid back in. I didn’t want to destroy my beautiful crust by pulling it off to add the liquid, so I reached for the turkey baster’s smaller brother and used a medicine dropper to squirt it back in through the vent holes. I was as gentle as possible and tried to distribute the liquid as evenly as I could. At the end of the day, the pie looks pretty darn good despite all the trauma involved in its creation.
Daniel asked for lemon meringue pie, thinking that would be impossible to do Matthew friendly. But I’ve been cooking egg and dairy free for over a decade and in that time, I’ve seen a lot of different things. One of the egg substitutions that has started making its way around the internet in the past few years is using aquafaba, or the liquid from a can of beans, generally garbanzo beans (chickpeas). It’s something I’ve been wanting to try, but I’ve been holding off because Matthew can’t eat chickpeas. Because he is allergic to peas, there is a high risk of cross reactivity with chickpeas. And I couldn’t find any info on whether or not aquafaba from other varieties of beans would work the same. But I decided it was high time I just tried it out to see what would happen. I used the liquid from a can of great northern beans since they are light colored and mild in flavor, hoping it would work out the same. And guess what? It whips up just like egg whites. It’s so cool! It looks exactly the same, has the same gloss from the sugar and the same stiff peaks! The only thing I did differently was add a bit of zantham gum to help stabilize the meringue. Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long to get the meringue on the pie, so it lost some loft and doesn’t look as pretty as it did when it was freshly whipped. But still, egg free meringue is a reality in our lives! I can hardly wait to taste the pie tomorrow.
Now, about that one pie that is not safe for Matthew. The one he can’t eat is the cranberry orange custard. Egg free custard simply doesn’t have the same silky texture as an egg custard and this particular pie is Nathan’s favorite (one of my favorites too), so we used real dairy and eggs. Since Matthew has his favorite dairy free banana cream pie to look forward to, he doesn’t care a bit about the custard. And as always, Kev is a pumpkin pie man through and through.
I can hardly wait to cut into all these delights tomorrow. It will be a challenge to choose which one to taste first!
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