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Pie Making
Last week we had the privilege of learning how to decorate 2-crust pies from a friend who makes multiple pies every year for an auction at the Mennonite church. She is well-known for her skills and was so kind to pass them on to us.
Here we are rolling out our dough.
Here are our pies - two apple, one blueberry, one cherry.
One apple pie got small apples all over the top. The apple was cut with a small cookie cutter and the leaves were just cut freehand with a knife. When decorated this way, each slice of pie will have an apple cut-out on it.
The other got one large apple. The veins of the leaf are pressed in with the back side of a knife. Notice the shape of the slits she cuts for vents.
Here’s the blueberry and the cherry pie after baking. The only trick to adding cut-outs on pie is to moisten the back of the piece with water before placing it on the pie. This insures that it sticks. We saw in a magazine that you can brush the top of the pie with one beaten egg mixed with one tablespoon water. This will give the pie a shiny look. We have not tried it yet.
For a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, she often decorates the crust with leaves. Instead of crimping the edge of the pie, she cuts out leaves of different sizes and overlaps them all along the outside edge. In a local craft store we found a set of cookie cutters that had three different shapes of leaves with three different sized cutters for each shape. That will be easier than cutting them all freehand. You can also cut out a turkey with a cookie cutter, bake it separately from the pie, and place it in the center after the pie is baked.
Here are the four of us with our instructor.
Posted by lilypress at November 10, 2005 2:44 PM
