Monday, December 6, 2010

Thanksgiving Pies

Hello there! Again, I'm so sorry I haven't been posting - now that all the high school stuff is over, I'm in my school's play (Much Ado About Nothing), which opens this week, so I've been in rehearsal every day after school. I just wanted to write a little about the Thanksgiving TWD, where we got to do a rewind of our choice.
At my school, all of the 8th graders have to do a community service project. I decided to make mine be working with the soup kitchen down the street. They always have a big meal on Thanksgiving, and love it when people bring in pies. I decided to combine that week's TWD and my community service project and make a whole bunch of pies.
About two weeks before Thanksgiving, I decided to make all of the crusts. For all of the soup kitchen pies, plus the three we were having for ourselves, that meant fourteen crusts.
A few days before the due date, I set about making the pies. First, I made all the pumpkin pies. Five for the soup kitchen, one for us. Those were easy - I rolled out the dough, whisked together the filling, and baked them all. Okay, not so easy - I did manage to slightly burn a few of them. I used Libby's classic pumpkin pie for those. Since my pans were a little smaller than those the recipe called for, I made four times the filling instead of six. I still had way too much, and ended up making a few mini pies in a muffin tin (some with crust, some without). They were as delicious as the pumpkin pies themselves (which were quite delicious).
Then I made the pecan pies. I used Dorie's recipe, but since I wanted a classic pie, left out the chocolate, espresso powder, and cinnamon. This time, I made five times the filling (haha, don't ask me why), which ended up being the perfect amount (???). Those baked up nicer-looking than the pumpkin, and the one we had was also quite tasty.
On Wednesday, I took the five of each kind of pie to the soup kitchen. They were so grateful to have ten homemade pies!
Wednesday afternoon, I used the remaining two crusts (and scraps from the others) to make two of Dorie's apple pies with my friend, one for my family and one for hers. Those were delicious as well!
All in all, it was quite stressful to make thirteen pies, but it was a lot of fun and I loved getting to take them to the soup kitchen. Who knows - maybe I'll even do it again next year :)

PS - I know I haven't done a Daring Bakers in several months, and I probably won't be able to do this month's either. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in January! (That includes weekly TWD!)