"The Original Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes" (Betty's Pies is located in Two Harbors, MN) - Lemon Angel Pie for "Pi" Day 2016

Date I made this recipe:  3/14/2016 – "Pi"  (Pie) Day

The Original Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes by Betty Lessard

Published by:  Lake Superior Port Cities, Inc.

ISBN: 0-942235-50-9; © 2011

Purchased at Arc's Value Village Thrift Stores

Recipe:  Lemon Angel Pie – p. 43

Betty, Betty, Betty...Betty.  Sigh.  And no, I don't mean Betty Crocker, I mean Betty Lessard, she of the venerable Betty's Pies, located just north of Two Harbors, MN on Minnesota's famed "North Shore."

Betty is a legend in this state and no trip up the North Shore is complete without a stop at Betty's.  Factoid:  to drive along Minnesota's North Shore is to drive Highway 61 and yes, it's the same Highway 61 from the Hibbing, MN native Bob Dylan's song of the same name.

Now, this will likely shock and appall many of you but I was never a huge fan of Betty's Pies.

I know, right?  What am I saying? 

It's just that Betty's pies are okay, but not great.  I'm pretty sure though, that half the people who stop at Betty's do so because it breaks up the long-haul trip to Grand Marais, MN, which in turn is practically in O, Canada!

According to Betty's Pies website – www.bettyspies.com – Betty started making baked goods to sell at her dad's fish shack in 1956 and by 1958, she converted the shack to Betty's Cafe.  In 1974, Betty changed the name to Betty's Pies and in 1984, she wisely sold the restaurant and retired.  Smart move, Betty!  (PS—Betty passed away in 2015 at age 90.)  Betty's Pies is still in business and still continues to crank out her pies which are now available online!

Another smart move was sharing her recipes in the form of this cookbook – The Original Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes – because as lovely as the drive up Highway 61 is, it's still a long haul and one I'm not making just to get my hands on a slice of blueberry heaven.  Estimated drive time is 2 hours to Duluth, turn right (!) and then drive about another hour or so until you get to Two Harbors.  If your final destination is the picturesque Grand Marais (a/k/a the best town along the "Scandinavian Riviera"), then tack on another hour and thirty minutes.

Now then, when this year's "Pi" (Pie) Day came along, I perused Betty's recipes and then quickly settled on the Lemon Angel Pie because it sounded refreshing during a somewhat harsh weather week (We went from 70 and sunny to 30 and freezing overnight.  Welcome, spring?).  Plus it was easy to make.  Or was it?

Betty (Betty, Betty, Betty...Betty), I appreciate the simplicity of this pie, I really do.  But I feel like you left a few things out.  Let's parse this recipe:

Step one is to beat the 4 egg whites well, add cream of tarter, then sugar and the "spread" this into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie pan.

If this concoction should have resembled something fluffy, ala meringue, this was a fail.  And I even had my egg whites warmed up to room temp just like a good baker should!  Oh, the humanity!  Anyway, I have a feeling that there was more to the "beat the 4 egg whites well" story than Betty let on.  My mixture never fluffed up to meringue consistency and I will never know if that was a good thing, a bad thing or the expected thing.

And I wouldn't go so far as to say that the concoction I got was "spreadable."  More like "pourable."

So I baked the crust as directed but the result, just so you know, was more like a Pavlova, i.e. a meringue cloud, rather than a tradition pie crust.  And apparently this is the result we wanted because as the book explains, "Lemon Angel Pie" is the name Betty gave to this dish that is traditionally referred to as "On a Cloud Pie."

And listen kids, it mattered not to me if I got a Pavlova rather than a pie crust but Betty's directions tell you ultimately to pour the lemon filling into a meringue "shell."  You will not get a "shell" by following the directions.  (And fair warning: when you don't get a "shell," it makes it all the harder to pour the lemon filling onto or into this thing.  Talk about a mess!)

The next set of directions to make the lemon filling also gave me pause:  "Beat the four egg yolks, add sugar and lemon juice, then cook over low heat until thick."

Well, okay, except that the mixture was already somewhat thick when I put in on the stove top.  And nowhere in the directions did it say how long to cook this mixture and what kind of "thick" consistency we were looking for so I spent a good deal of time stirring and stirring until – and this always seems to happen to me – it almost became too thick which is to say almost scrambled – blech!

The last step was to add whipped cream to the lemon mixture but again, Betty, how "whipped" did this cream need to be?

In conclusion:  the simplest set of instructions and ingredients proved to be a challenge.  Perhaps this is what Betty intended?:  "Oh sure, I'll give you the recipe but I'll fix it so you can't quite duplicate my masterpieces – bwahahahahahahahaha...."

Despite all these little cooking crises, the pie was great.  It was perhaps a tad too summery for a chilly March day, but Pi Day waits for no one. But if you want to wait to make it or eat it, the cookbook says that you can freeze this pie for another day.  Like maybe summer when it's hot and you just feel like having something refreshing. 

Last piece of advice:  the meringue will start to break down the longer it sits so if you and your loved ones cannot demolish this pie in one to two sittings, consider freezing it.

Lemon Angel Pie – makes 1 9-inch pie

Meringue Crust

4 egg whites

1 cup sugar

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Filling

4 egg yolks

½ cup sugar

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 cup heavy cream, whipped

Preheat oven to 275F.  Grease bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie plate.

Beat the 4 egg whites well.  Add cream of tarter.  Gradually add sugar in 2-tablespoon increments until the full cup (one cup) has been added.  Spread (or pour!) into bottom and up the sides of a greased 9-inch pie pan and bake at 275 for 1 hour.  Cool.

Beat the 4 egg yolks and stir in ½ cup sugar and 3 tablespoons lemon juice.  Cook over low heat until thick.  Cool.  Ann's Note:  this seemed to take longer than intended because I wasn't sure how "thick" was thick!  I'm thinking that my total elapsed time was 5-10 minutes but don't quote me on that!

Whip 1 cup cream and add to the above custard.  Pour into the meringue shell and chill at least 2 hours.

"The Artful Pie" - Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie for "Pi" Day 2015

Date I made this recipe:  March 14, 2015 (3/14/15—Pi Day!)

The Artful Pie – Unforgettable Recipes for Creative Cooks by Lisa Cherkasky and Renee Comet

Published by:  Chapters Publishing Ltd.

ISBN:  1-57630-022-6

Recipe:  Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie – p. 74-75 (Art: Doris Keil-Shamieh, Jefferson, Maryland.  Collograph print collage)

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy – it's Pi Day! "Pi," not to be confused with "pie," is the mathematical calculation of 3.14159 etc. etc. etc.  So last year, we all celebrated "Pi" day on 3/14/14.  This year, we get to do it again on 3/14/15.  I'll be curious to see if we round up next year so as to sneak in one more celebration on 3/14/16 (3.14159 rounded up to 3.1416).

So naturally, I had to make a pie, right?  And yet finding just "the right" pie was not, as the saying goes, as easy as pie.

For starters, I almost killed myself pulling Rose Levy Beranbaum's, The Pie and Pastry Bible, off my top shelf.  That was one heavy book that set the entire bunch of books next to it tumbling.  This book is signed by Rose, who I've met, and is a wonderful book but all my favorite pie recipes in this tome were more autumnal and so I made a mental note to check back in closer to Thanksgiving.

This left a few more books, one of which was this one – The Artful Pie.  This book is fun because various artists contributed the artwork that lines the pages (and serves as a very fun backdrop/placemat for the featured pies).  The art is very fun and definitely appealed to my husband who is both the "pie guy" in our house – both for eating and making the pies – and an art aficionado. (He also rocks at math so he's got a lock-n-load on the whole "pi" thing.).  Anyway, this time around, I thought I'd give my pie guy a break and make the pie myself.  Translated, this means "no complicated recipes, the likes of which my guy likes to tackle."  He may be the pie guy but I'm the one making it and posting it to my blog so it had to be good.

Okay, so now that I had selected the book, it was time to select the appropriate (read:  easy) recipe.  When I pulled this book off the shelf (without casualties), I noticed several post-it notes on various pages so either Andy or I or maybe both considered using this book in the past.  But this time through, none of the previously-selected recipes did anything for me.  So time to start over.

As with Beranbaum's book, several of the pies were either too summery (and while we're warming up, we're not there yet) or too wintry.  And so out of the list of 36 pies, I came up with four potential candidates, all of which were relatively simple to make:  "Maple Sugar and Cream Pie" – p. 32; "Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie" – p. 72; "Ricotta Nut Crunch Pie" – p. 104 and "Black Bottom Pie" – p. 124.  And then Andy, whose birthday was 3/1 (and boy, what a memorable day that was as we got stranded in Newark's airport), decided he wanted chocolate so it came down to either the "Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie" (he loves malts) or "Black Bottom Pie."

In the end, it was all decided at the grocery store.  Whereas the "Black Bottom Pie" sounded good, it has a lot of ingredients, one of which was Zwieback crackers.  I've heard of them, never used them, but was sure I'd easily find them in the grocery store.  I did not.  So this tipped the scales to the malted pie.

One of the main ingredients for the malted pie was chocolate wafers.  I knew exactly what I was looking for and found them at Byerly's grocery store.  Byerly's is an upscale grocer and when I looked at the price (over $5), I thought I'd get them cheaper when I went to Rainbow, a decidedly NOT upscale grocery store.

And so I went to Rainbow to get that and other basic ingredients for the malted pie and was dismayed to find out that while they used to carry them, they no longer did.  So this required one more trip to a grocery store that did carry them.  And that meant I had to either backtrack to Byerly's or hike over to Kowalski's about a mile away.  Either way, I was peeved both with the store and myself ("A bird in the hand...").  Thankfully, Kowalski's had two packages left of the chocolate wafers or I would have been extremely irked.  Mind you, Target was closer than either of these two but you can't depend on them to carry stuff like this although they should as these wafers are the base for every type of black-bottomed pie, like Grasshopper Pie, known to man.  And who doesn't love Grasshopper Pie...except me? (Seriously. Can't stand mint.  Can't.)

Okay then, so I got all the ingredients together and assembled this pie in short order and then put it in the refrigerator to chill. The instructions tell you that the chocolate filling will be the consistency of pudding and that's exactly how it was when I pulled it out of the fridge for serving – pudding.  So forewarned is forearmed:  it's a rather messy pie to cut and serve but very, very tasty.  And Andy was a happy camper and so that's all that mattered.

So one more word about an ingredient before I set you loose on this sucker:  "malt powder."  If your grocery store carries this, you should be able to choose between "original" and "chocolate."  "Original" is cream-colored and chocolate is, well...chocolate.  I had a container of chocolate malt in my cupboard, circa  the year 2000 something but it was as hard as a rock (guess I didn't use it much) – go figure. And so when it came down to purchasing a new container, I hemmed and hawed between the two flavors.  I finally decided on "original" because the recipe did not say "buy chocolate malt powder" but I left it up to Andy for the final word and he didn't care because by this time, where was his pie anyway?? So I saved myself another trip back to Byerly's to exchange one for the other and just went with "original." 

When I posted on Facebook that I was making this pie and would post the recipe later, one of my friends said "So...I'm coming over?" and I said "Oh darn, we were just going out for a bite to eat."  And we did.  Since Andy's actual birthday was a comedy of errors, he wanted to go to a fun restaurant near our house, Sonora Grill.  So we went and ate really good, "nouveau" Spanish/Argentinean cuisine, washed down with tequila (me) and a "cerveza" (beer – him).  And then we went home for pie.

This concludes Pi Day, 2015.

Ultrasmooth Chocolate Malted Pie – makes one 9-inch single-crust pie

Crust

*24 chocolate wafers (2/3 of a 9-ounce box)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

¼ teaspoon salt

Filling

7 large egg yolks

8 ounces semisweet chocolate (Ann's Note:  the authors suggest you use a high-end chocolate like Tobler or Lindt but I couldn't find anything that was semisweet so I used Nestles.)

2 cups heavy cream

¼ cup malt powder (Ann's Note:  as mentioned above, you can buy either "original" or "chocolate.")

*Ann's Note:  this pie crust was almost swallowed up by the filling so if I made this recipe again, I think I'd just the entire box of wafers (not that many are left anyway) and adjust the butter and salt accordingly.

Crust Preparations

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Crush the wafers into find crumbs in a food processor or put them into a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin.  You should have 1 ½ cups.  (Ann's Note:  As noted above, you may want to increase this yield).  Put the crumbs, butter and salt into a 9-inch pie pan and use your fingers to mix them together.  Press the crumbs onto the bottom and sides of the pie pan.  Bake for 6 minutes and set the pie crust aside to cool.

Filling Preparations

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks well and set them aside.  Chop the chocolate into small pieces and set it aside.  Scald the cream in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.  When the cream begins to steam, stir in the chocolate until it has melted completely.

Very gradually, pour the chocolate mixture into the egg yolks, stirring continuously as you pour.  Pour the filling mixture back into the saucepan and set it over low heat.  Continue to cook the filling, stirring it constantly, until it is steaming and has thickened to a puddinglike consistency, about 5 to 10 minutes.  Do not let the filling boil.

With the mixture off the heat, stir in the malt powder.

Let the filling cool for 10 minutes and pour it into the pie shell.  Before serving, cool the pie completely in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours.

"Pie Shell Creations from Pet-Ritz" - Caramel Custard Pie for "Pi" Day - 03.14.14

Date I made this recipe:  March 16, 2014 (to commemorate Pi Day 03.14.14)

Pie Shell Creations from Pet-Ritz®

Published by:  Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen/Meredith Publishing Services

© 1979

Purchased at Hopkins (Hennepin County Library) Library Sale

Recipe: Carmel Custard Pie – p. 60

Folks, if not for the Internet, would any of us have realized that Pi Day was upon us?  I think not. 

Actually, Pi Day was discussed on my local radio station's morning show (The Current – 89.3 FM – the most fabulous station ever!) but you know how that goes, right?  You're waking up, you turn on the radio, you hear announcers talking but it all sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher and then you think you hear something about "pie."  Okay...sure...and then maybe if you're me, you doze off for a bit and forget you heard any of this...

....until you sit down at your computer and you pull up the local news and there it is – Pi Day.  A day set aside to celebrate a mathematical constant – 3.14.  Wow—are we a great country, or what?

Now if you are mathematically challenged like me, "pi" – the number – means nothing.  It's not like I've ever walked around with that knowledge stuck in my head.  3.14?  Yeah, what about it? 

But when you talk about "pie" as in an incredible edible, then we're onto something.  This is language I can speak. This is a concept I can retain. This – the baking of "pie" – is something I can do.  And so I did.

And so to the bookshelves I went and I have to say that the main reason I selected this book above all others was that it is musty and I wanted it off my shelf and into storage ASAP to avoid further allergic moments.  That and the fact it was taking up shelf space; recipes were secondary.

What I love about this book – and this will crush many bakers, including my husband – is that I didn't have to prepare the dough.  My husband, Andy, loves to make pies.  I do not love them as much.  They're not hard, but there is an art form to making the perfect crust and I wasn't in the mood for a tutorial (or more likely, a crash and burn).  And so when the recipe ingredients told me to buy a frozen pie crust, I was all over that one.  And then pre-bake the crust for 6 minutes – what?  How easy is that?

The next (easy) decision I made was what kind of buy to make.  Andy tends to like sweet pies (as opposed to savory) and he loves custard (crème brule, flan, etc.) and loves caramel and so decision made. Other than the pie crust, all I had to do was purchase a can of evaporated milk and that was that!

 Now just because Pet-Ritz mass-produces these pie crusts, doesn't mean they don't pay attention to the details of making a pie.  The first couple pages are instructions for making the (perfect) single crust pie; double crust pie; lattice topped pie; graham cracker crust pie and so on.  There's even a section for Microwave (pie) cooking – a first for me!  And then there are instructions for keeping pie fresh and this is always good to know.  A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a fresh blueberry pie.  For whatever reason, I didn't think it needed refrigeration and so it sat out on my counter for a few days.  You should know that  this was not a good idea as my stomach just roiled and I was sick for the rest of the day after eating a very small slice.  Ah – life's lessons learned!  (Never turn your back on the ocean and never trust a pie that's been sitting out!)

Once you get past all the preliminary instructions, then you can knock yourself out with any number of recipes in this book – pot pie, taco pie, quiche, turnovers – you name it.

I'm glad we went with the simple and easy approach – as easy as...pi(e).  I can't say the texture was to my liking but the taste was great.  I find custard pies to be challenging as you don't want them too underdone but you also don't want to move in the direction of them looking too eggy.  This one was close to that but we didn't care as the caramel was fabulous.  And you can be sure that this sucker went into the refrigerator shortly after cooling.  Safety first, folks!

So Happy Pi(e) Day, everyone!

Caramel Custard Pie

1 Pet-Ritz "Deep Dish" Pie Crust Shell

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 tall can (13 fl. oz.) evaporated milk

2/3 cup water

1 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons butter

Prebake unpricked pie crust shell on preheated cookie sheet in 450 degree oven for 6 minutes.  Remove from oven.  Reduce temperature to 400.

Combine eggs, evaporated milk, and water.  Combine brown sugar and flour; cut in butter until crumbly.  Add milk mixture; beat well.  Pour into partially baked pie shell.  Bake on preheated cookie sheet in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or until knife inserted just off center comes out clean.  Cool.