Fruits and Berry Time

by Boschek

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I had no real plan for how often I would make an addition here, but I will try to get something in every week. It’s a bit of a challenge since we are still renovating/rescuing/rebuilding/restoring or 20+ room, 4-story, 115 year old home, but there is always something to report on. This last weekend we had guests and we made a peach pie. We bought 10 very nice, ripe peaches and I used my mother’s pie-dough recipe that I have been using for the last years. I don’t make enough pies to have the practice that makes bringing the dry and wet ingredients together the simple process it should be. A friend of mine suggested using the pastry cutter, not only to mix the flour and shortening, but to use it to bring the liquid into the mixture. It worked like a charm and I will do that in the future.

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Once again I made up the recipe as I went along, using bits and pieces from here and there and I was generally very happy with the results. I did take notes so I can share the recipe here and in our recipe archive. One thing I might change, however, is not to use flour with the peaches, but rather use cornstarch. The flour made a rather dense “sauce” and I would have liked it to be a bit lighter. Nonetheless, the results were most satisfying and our guests enjoyed it with vanilla ice cream and a cappuccino.

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Here is the recipe I finally used:

Peach Pie

Ingredients

Pastry for a 10 inch double crust pie

1 egg, beaten

8-10 sliced peeled peaches

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (220 degrees C).

Line the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate with one of the pie crusts. Brush with some of the beaten egg to keep the bottom crust from becoming soggy.

Place the sliced peaches in a large bowl, and sprinkle with lemon juice. Mix gently. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Pour over the peaches, and mix gently. Pour into the pie crust, and dot with butter. If you wish to make a lattice crust as we did you can roll out and cut pastry with a zig-zag wheel or straight with a knife and lay out the lattice as usual. You can also just make a closed upper crust, but don’t forget to make slits in it to vent the steam. Brush the remaining egg over the top crust. Cut several slits in the top crust to vent the steam.

Bake for 10 minutes in the hot oven, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for an additional 40 – 45 minutes, until the crust is brown and the juice begins to bubble through the lattice or the vents. If the edges brown to fast, cover them with a skirt of aluminum foil. Cool before serving. The pie tastes better warm than hot.

 

A Berry Nice Day

 

We saw some beautiful blueberries on sale and rather than making jam, we decided to make a cake. Looking around the Internet we found a recipe from “IRENED” on Allrecipes that sounded good. I’ll copy the recipe in the archive (see “Recipes” in the menu above). It turned out very well and I wouldn’t really change anything from the original recipe.

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We enjoyed it with a cappuccino made from our own freshly roasted coffee, a blend of Colombian, Ethiopian, Sumatran and Honduran beans.