National Pie Day II

I found myself in a familiar situation this year. The Niners in the NFC Championship, my pie in local pie contest on National Pie Day (observed). Last year, all teams lost, so I was hoping that at least one of us would bring home the gold this year.

A couple days before my self imposed Christmas break (cashing in a bunch of PTO before losing it), I saw that the second annual pie contest was a go. At the time, I was stuck in the middle of a fun tax accounting class at PDX and thus I spent the rest of the afternoon listening intently to the speaker sketching pie presentation ideas.

I was present for the judging over the summer, and I noticed that there is a lot of room in the pie contest world for grandiose, over the top presentations. Why should birthday and wedding cakes get all of the decoration fun anyways?

My day dreaming during class ultimately led to a fantastic pie-vision: a chocolate silk pie topped with seafoam meringue, inside of a rum-poached spiced pear pie, topped with a pirate ship battling a kraken: "The Pie-rate and The Octo-pie".

I'd been mulling the idea of doing a pie within a pie for a while, kind of like how you can get a pizza that is half pepperoni and half veggie split down the middle. I thought a circular pie sitting in the middle would be a little more impressive that just a pie divided in two. During some internet browsing for pie crust decoration ideas, I stumbled across some pictures of a pirate ship made out of pie crust, and knew that was a winner.

Since pirate ships cruised around the ocean, I wanted the center pie to play off of that imagery, and my first thought was chocolate filing with seafoam frosting. The pie surrounding my ocean-scape therefore needed to represent the land, so I considered a fruit filling and crumble topping to represent the land and sand. I settled on a spiced pear filling because I felt that it would pair (pun!) with the chocolate, and I could booze the pears up with some black spiced rum.

The plan was set, now I just needed to practice.  I first made mini pear and chocolate silk pies separately just to test the recipes in a simple manner. They turned out nice, so I knew I was on to something good:

Next, I did a mock-up of the pie within a pie concept. Since the pear portion was going to be baked in the crust, I made the outer edge first, and used a ramekin in the middle to hold the void where there chocolate silk was going to be poured.

Then, the day before the contest, I made some pirate ship molds out of foil mini loaf pans and baked up pirate ships made from pie crust. I think every pie needs one now. I also made my kraken the night before out of marzipan.

I think the final product really represented my initial inspiration:

While the pie didn't win, it sure was a show-stopper when I walked into the pie shop on the day of the contest with a pie topped with a frickin' pirate ship battling a frickin' kraken. Oh, you made a nice lattice weave on your pie? That's nice. I made a pirate ship. Fighting a kraken. I'd like to think that I raised the bar for pie presentation. Y'all been served.

Oh. And Niners. Super Bowl. Let's get it!

--Isaac.

2012 Holiday Season Part 2: Christmas

Much like our Thanksgivings, our Christmases turned into a marathon. I'm pretty sure I was 80% Christmas cookies by the end of it. The other 20% was likely rum. And while we didn't match Vince Vaughn's "Four Christmases" in quantity, we far surpassed him in quality (dude needs an "off" switch).

Christmas The First:

We started in St. Helen's with Mary's immediate family. I led off with a very solid apple pie with a pecan crumble topping:

The pie came in handy when I needed to drown out my sorrows of having to watch the Niners get embarrassed on national TV by the Seahawks. (Guess it has turned out alright now though as the Niners are in the Super Bowl!)

Christmas The Second:

The festive tour continued the next day with Mary's extended family. The proteins were covered by the hosts, so I roasted some Traeger vegetables. I think one of everything from the produce section is represented below:

And an excellent Emma Torte made an appearance. So that was nice.

 

Christmas The Third:

Day three of three was an extended stay at my family, first with the immediate peeps, and then with the extended. The salmon I smoked and took to my parents on Thanksgiving got invited back for Christmas. But since we inhaled it in record time and it ceased to be many weeks prior, I couldn't invite it back and so had to get bring a new smoked salmon. A younger, hotter smoked salmon.

I'm pretty sure we plowed through it before the extended family arrived.

Another successful three month holiday marathon. Having a house the entire time helped, as did a stellar showing by the magical Traeger. Mostly the Traeger.

--Isaac.