Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Peaches not really being in season, it’s a little hard to put together a decent peach pie.  I’ve never tried using frozen peaches, but I’ve heard mostly good things.

But the ultimate in cheap fruit is canned peaches.  I often get 12 can case at CostCo.  The only problems are that, well, their canned, and they come in “lightly sweetened juice” (read: light syrup).  But I was really into peach pie so I decided to see what I could find on the net.  Sure enough, there were several interesting possibilities.  But they were all pretty random.

I decided to wing it, taking a little from all of them.  Here’s the basic recipe I produced for a 9 inch pie.

3 cans of peaches (in light syrup)
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1 tbsp. butter

1 double crust flaky pie pastry

Open all three cans and drain the juice from two of the cans and set aside.  Drain the juice from the third can and save it or not.  I didn’t use it.  Juice will vary from brand to brand, so you might want it if your cans seem a bit “dry.”  In a medium sauce pan, mix the sugar, cornstarch and nutmeg.  Mix in the juice and butter and allow it to thicken over a low to low-medium heat, stirring frequently.  The idea is to let it slightly boil, but not get too hot to burn.  Remove from heat and allow to cool down.  You don’t want to throw boiling sugar into an uncooked pie crust. The butter in the crust would melt and turn your flaky pastry into hardtack.  It should be a little thinner than cool honey and will thicken a bit more as it cools some.

While the sauce thickens, line your pie shell with the larger crust and stow in the fridge.  When ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees and pour in the peaches and the sauce.  Top the pie with the second crust and form an upstanding ridge.  Make a few slits in the top of the pie for venting and maybe a little one near the edge.  Bake until bubbling and the crust is golden brown.  Tent with loose aluminum foil if the edge gets too dark.  Approximately 30-40 minutes.

It was a little runny still but plenty yummy, especially for a cheap off-season peach pie.

I love to try new ways of decorating, especially when I get to eat the results of my experimentation.  Since I’ve been so into pies lately, I decided that I would take my cooking art up a notch and add some tricks for purely aesthetic reasons.  Here’s a few pics of the results.

This is just a fun way to make use of those mini cookie cutters, but the effect is great for the holidays.  Pumpkin pie works especially well because of the contrast and the “flat” nature of the pie.  Apple pie bubbles and buckles, so the little maple-leaf holes in the top crust don’t hold shape as well.

All in all, a fun (and tasty) experiment.

I wish I had a real double boiler, but until I do I have found various ways to make-do. The simplest way is to take a very small sauce pan and place a Pyrex serving dish with handles inside it. The only problem with this method is that I don’t have a combination that’s large enough to melt more than an ounce or two of chocolate. It’s also a little hard to stir the contents since the inner pot tends to move around freely. With steam bubbling up around the edges, holding it can be awkward.

An alternative method which works a little better is to use two sauce pans and a simple sturdy binder-clip of the kind that holds a large stack of paper. You set one pan inside the other and clip the far edge of the pan to the other pan with the clip to hold it above the water in the outer pan (did you get that?). You can grab the handle of the pan for stability. The only drawback is that the inner pan will probably tilt slightly (instead of laying flat) and things will pool there. But for thick stuff like chocolate or caramel it works great! See the pics below.