Of all the Pi Day pies I have offered to you here, I’m pretty sure this one is my favorite. It has a fabulous mix of flavors (sparingly sweet chocolate, almonds, a hint of cinnamon) and textures (creamy custard in a crisp meringue shell).
And, since people have been telling be that pi are squared, this one is, too.
Category Archives: Food
Pi Day pie #7: Vegetarian shepherd’s pie.
Saturday is Pi Day, and I figure we need at least one dinner pie to precede the parade of dessert pies currently on hand. (It’s the whole parental responsibility thing. I do not judge adults who eat dessert pie for breakfast, trust me!)
Since the Free-Ride household is vegetarian, the pie Wilkins posted won’t quite work. In lieu of an actual meat pie, we offer the vegetarian shepherd’s pie.
Pi Day pie #6: Lemon-berry pie.
Given that we have an enthusiastic lemon tree, a lemon pie for Pi Day was inevitable. The kind of berries you use will change the character of the finished pie. My recommendation is to go with berries that are fresh and as local as you can get them.
Pi Day pie #5: Foolish rhubarb pie.
Rhubarb seems to be one of those foods that people either love or hate. I love it, but I didn’t feel like using it for strawberry-rhubarb pie, the pie that introduced me to rhubarb.
Instead, I decided to make a pie whose filling is essentially a rhubarb fool. The pie itself is easy to prepare, but because each of the components requires time to chill, it won’t provide instant gratification. Some things, however, are worth the wait.
Pi Day pie #4: Tea-time cheesecake pie.
The wet weather in these parts led to an almost (but not quite) predictable cancellation of soccer games on the weekend that we were supposed to provide snacks. This means I ended up staring at a surplus of navel oranges and thinking, “What am I going to do with these?”
Marmalade presented itself as an option, except I’m still in Pi Day pie (a la) mode, so I don’t want to be distracted with canning. Then I thought, “I wonder whether a marmalade topping would work well on a tea-flavored cheesecake pie?”
Let’s find out, shall we?
Twitter made me lunch.
Well, in truth, I did all the preparation and cooking, so I guess technically I made myself lunch. However, it was by way of Twitter that I was given a good, quick idea for what to do with a mess of produce I brought in from the garden today. (Eating this produce promptly is important, seeing as how our fridge is full of pie at the moment.)
Within moments of my Tweet:
What meal can I make from: broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, spring garlic, and lemon?
blogger, SciBling, and food-maven Mark Chu-Carroll replied:
Pi Day pie #3: Schnockaschtettle.
In the ScienceBlogs Pi Day bake-off, it would seem that Pastry Chef Free-Ride has a posse.
Reader Jake emailed me to share a pie recipe for me to prepare with the sprogs. Writes Jake, “This is one member of the extended family of molasses crumb pies and a cousin to the Pennsylvania Dutch Shoo-fly Pie. This recipe comes from my Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother, and when it comes out right (tends to vary a bit with relative humidity and barometric pressure) it is nowhere near as gooey or sickly sweet as most shoo-fly pies I’ve had. A cooled slice can be picked up with the fingers and eaten out of hand with no mess other than a crumb or two.”
As someone who spent half a dozen summers of my life in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I’m happy to make the acquaintance of a less gooey, less sickly sweet pie from the shoo-fly lineage. As a bonus (yeah, I’m talking to you, jc), the recipe doesn’t call for any ingredient more exotic than molasses.
Here’s the recipe, with our commentary on the preparation:
Pi Day pie #2: ‘I want to taste springtime!’ violet custard pie.
We’re still a week away from Pi Day, but the break in the rain here has made me believe that spring may be on its way. What better way to celebrate spring (especially in the aftermath of a wintertime fruit pie) than a violet custard pie?
The violet custard is based on a recipe from The Savory Way by Deborah Madison.
The day before you’re going to bake the pie:
Go out to the garden and pick about 150 violets.
Avoid the ones with little bitty slugs on them.
Pi Day pie #1: End-of-winter fruit pie.
It’s not Pi Day yet, but there’s no reason to believe my first pie will be the one that hits the target. So, here’s my opener in anticipation of March 14th, a dried cherry/dried apricot/apple pie in a nut crust. I’m calling it an end-of-winter fruit pie because it’s made with what I have on hand as I wait for spring, summer, and fresh stone-fruits to arrive.
The recipe follows.
Happy Square Root Day!
It has come to my attention that today’s date (03-03-09) makes this a Square Root Day.
The Free-Ride household will be marking the occasion pretty much the way you’d expect — with an evening meal that includes square roots.