My thoughts exactly...

Bite-size Pecan Pies with Candied Bacon

I got invited to a hipster-themed party recently, so I decided to embrace the theme and rework my pecan pie recipe. It was an opportunity to experiment with bacon (which is somehow a hipster thing) and at long last an excuse to wear cutoff shorts with tights. I made three varieties of candied bacon - brown sugar, maple, and Newcastle glazed. Not surprisingly, the Newcastle glazed bacon was the best, so that's the only recipe I'll include here. I also reduced the amount of sugar and corn syrup and added brandy to my original pecan pie recipe, so perhaps I should call these "Boozy Bite-Size Pecan Pies."

Start with pecans, sugar, light corn syrup, butter, 3 eggs, salt, and (not pictured) brandy.

Prepare butter crust in advance. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Beat 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons of brandy, 1/2 a cup of sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, 1/3 cup melted butter (not too warm because that will cook the eggs), and one cup of corn syrup.   

Set aside and crush one cup of pecans. This is how I did it:

Add the pecans to the sugary mixture and set aside. Next, generously flour a flat surface and roll out your dough until it's about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Using a cup that is about three inches in diameter, cut two dozen disks out of the dough and press them into your mini muffin tin. Fill them almost to the top with the pecan mixture.

Bake at 375 for thirty minutes. To check if they are done, remove one of the pies from the tin and make sure the crust is lightly brown on the bottom.

Let cool. Finally, make whipped cream. Using a mixer, whip 1 cup of heavy cream on a high speed until it is thick. As it mixes, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla. 

Pipe the whipped cream onto the cute lil pies. Finally, add the garnish (which you can make a the day before) of Newcastle candied bacon. To make it, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place several strips of bacon (or twelve because you will want to eat the rest) on a baking rack on a cookie sheet that is lined with aluminum foil. Brush with a mixture of half a cup of newcastle and half a cup of brown sugar. About every ten minutes, flip the bacon over and brush with more of the mixture. Bake until crispy, about thirty minutes. Let cool and cut into thin strips.

Pipe the whipped cream onto the pies and place a few strips of bacon into the cream.

Bite-size Pecan Pies

3 eggs 1/3 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup butter, melted 2/3 cup dark or light corn syrup

2 tablespoons brandy 1 cup pecans, crushed Prepare butter crust in advance. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix eggs, sugar, salt, butter, corn syrup, and brandy with electric mixer. Add pecans and set aside. Roll out dough until it is about 1/8 of an inch thick, and cut 24 discs out of the dough using a glass that is about 3 inches in diameter. Press the discs into mini muffin tins and fill to the top with the pecan mixture. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the bottom of the crust is golden brown.

Whipped Cream

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the ingredients on medium-high speed until it resembles cool whip or the desired whipped-creamy texture.  If you find the whipped cream is too thick for you, add 2 tablespoons to a quarter cup of half and half as it mixes until it reaches the desired texture.  This will smooth out the whipped cream considerably.

Newcastle Candied Bacon

1/2 cup of Newcastle beer

1/2 cup brown sugar

12 strips of thick-cut bacon

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place several strips of bacon on a baking rack on a cookie sheet that is lined with aluminum foil. Brush with a mixture of half a cup of newcastle and half a cup of brown sugar. About every ten minutes, flip the bacon over and brush with more of the mixture. Bake until crispy, about thirty minutes. Let cool and cut into thin strips.

Pecan Pie

According to the chart of pies I posted earlier, January was pecan pie month. Not a fan of pecan pie, I have been reluctant to make it. But particularly unpleasant January weather and a fancy new camera motivated me to make it anyway. Although I can't say that I enjoyed eating this pie, making it turned out to be a fun way to spend another night cooped up inside. Plus I tricked a friend into doing most of the work, and I even got the bonus of being introduced to the Traveling Wilburys.  

There are only a few ingredients in this pie. Eggs, sugar, salt, butter, corn syrup and pecans (plus the flour, baking powder, salt, and shortening you'll need for the crust). Thank you, Kristin, for giving me your mom's recipe.  

Make the tried-and-true pie crust, or buy a ready-prepared crust. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Beat 3 eggs, 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, 1/3 cup melted butter (not too warm because that will cook the eggs), and one cup of corn syrup in the totally-not-superfluous  KitchenAid mixer.   

You'll end up with this oh so appetizing yellow liquid that does not call to mind bile. Not at all.

Then mix in one cup of pecans. I crushed half and kept half intact.

Roll out your crust and line a pie dish with it. Then pour in the pecan-syrup mixture.

Bake 40-50 minutes, or until the center is set. It'll come out looking like this:

It turned out with a layered quality that didn't seem quite right, possibly because I overcooked it a bit (for about 55 minutes). There was a gelatinous layer on the bottom, a crisp sugar layer over that, and a layer of pecans on top. 

But it wasn't terrible with a touch of whipped cream. 

Pecan Pie

3 eggs 2/3 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup butter, melted 1 cup dark or light corn syrup 1 cup pecans, broken or whole is fine Prepare pastry in advance. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Beat eggs, sugar, salt, butter and syrup with rotary beater. Stir in nuts. Pour into pastry-lined pan. Cover the edge of the crust with foil to prevent it from burning. Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until filling is set.

Pie Chart of Pies

Here is Modern Farmer’s guide to eating seasonally – through pie.

Martha Stewart Insults Bloggers, Makes My Day

"Who are these bloggers? They’re not trained editors at Vogue magazine. I mean there are bloggers writing recipes that aren’t tested, that aren’t necessarily very good, or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. So bloggers create a kind of popularity, but they are not the experts. And we have to understand that."



Watch the interview and read an excellent response here.

 

I'm quite pleased to be part of a movement that irks Martha and happy to impart what I have learned making (literally) hundreds of pies, even if that means laying bare my failures.  

Bite-size Key Lime Pies

Today I bestow upon you, my handful of devoted readers (and the remainder of you whom I have guilt-tripped into reading this blog), the cutest thing I have ever made, nay, quite possibly, the cutest thing ever. Ok, ok, these pies aren't the cutest thing ever because the creatures have already claimed that title. C'mon:



Sometimes they do things that are so cute it
actually makes me hate them just a little bit.

These pies are pretty darn adorable nonetheless. When I took them to a BBQ, they were met with many "squees" and "oh.my.gods!" And when I brought some to work, I learned an important life lesson - the road to workplace popularity is paved with bite-size pies.

This is my go-to key lime pie recipe baked in mini muffin tins that I lined with homemade graham cracker crust. Gather 5 limes (as previously noted, it's not necessary to deal with the hassle of using key limes), graham cracker crumbs, unsalted butter, sugar, eggs, and sweetened condensed milk. The recipe below makes two dozen lil pies.

As usual, I doubled the recipe, so this picture contains more ingredients than you will need. You'll only need 1 can of sweetened condensed milk, 5 limes, one stick of butter and 3 eggs.

Measure 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs (you can buy the crumbs or use a food processor to crush the crackers into a fine powder).  In a small bowl, mix 1/3 of a cup of white sugar with the crumbs.  Then pour 6 tablespoons of melted butter over the crumbs and mix with a fork until all the crumbs are wet. 

Line a mini muffin dish with paper liners, or brush them with butter.  The paper liners were easier for cleanup, plus they gave the crust a nice zigzag edge. Using a rounded teaspoon, spoon about 1 1/2 teaspoons of the crumb mixture into the cups. Roll the rounded bottom of the teaspoon around the bottom of each cup, pressing the crumbs up along the edge and packing the crumbs together as you turn the spoon. It is much easier to use a round object to form the crust than to use your fingers. I imagine pressing a shot glass into each cup may also work, if it is the right size, but I didn't have a shot glass to test this theory.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees as you finish forming the teensy crusts. Bake for 4 minutes (not 5 minutes, not 3 minutes...trust me, I tested both out. After 5 minutes, the crust becomes too dark, but after only 3 minutes, the crust does not stay together. It's science...).

While these are baking and cooling, zest 5 limes, cut them in half and juice them until you have 2 teaspoons of zest and 1/2 a cup of lime juice. Make sure to get all the delicious pulp into the juice because it adds a lot of flavor.

Mix the lime zest and juice with one 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk.

Then add three egg yolks and mix until it is blended thoroughly.

Next, spoon about 1 tablespoon of the filling into each cup until the filling reaches the edge of the graham cracker crust. The filling doesn't puff up, so it is fine to fill them all the way.

Reduce the oven's temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 10 minutes.  Let them cool, then refrigerate overnight. The next day, remove the paper liners (because you don't want anyone mistaking these for cupcakes, god forbid!). Then place them in a box lined with hot pink gingham tissue paper because OHMYGODTHESEARESOCUTE!

Seriously. 

Finally, make whipped cream. Using the Kitchenaid stand mixer that was totally worth all the money you spent, whip 1 cup of heavy cream on a high speed until it is thick. As it mixes, add 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla.

I put whipped cream on 2/3 of the pies and left 1/3 without. Surprisingly, the whipped-cream-free pies were pretty popular (but not as popular as the pies with whipped cream, because that would be insane).

I tried meringue on a few, but it didn't turn out quite right. The meringue didn't adhere to the filling, so it fell off after they baked. They looked nice before I put them in the oven, though:

I was really on a roll with my tiny pies and itty-bitty meringues, so I even attempted to make candied lime zest as a garnish. There I was, saying to myself "eat your heart out, Martha," when I tasted one of these and realized (bitterly) that I had better stick with the things I am good at.  So candy is out. Even if the zest hadn't tasted horrible, it wouldn't have been worth the effort I put forth just to make a garnish.

Key Lime Pie - makes 24 

Crust: 

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs 

1/3 cup of white sugar 

6 tablespoons melted butter 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix crumbs and sugar, then pour in melted butter, stirring as you pour. Press the crumb mixture into lined or buttered mini muffin tins, using the method described above. Bake for 4 minutes. 

Filling:

One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

3 egg yolks 

1/2 cup fresh lime juice 
2 teaspoons lime zest

Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake pies on middle rack for 10 minutes. Remove, let cool and refrigerate overnight (or at least 3 hours).

Whipped Cream:

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix heavy cream on medium-high heat, adding sugar and vanilla as it mixes until the whipped cream thick. Pipe onto the chilled pies before serving.

Study shows desserts should be served with the appropriate key words

Note to self: serve all pies after eliciting memories of love in my guests.