Easy as...um...Pie?

I love to bake, that is no secret. But one thing is for sure, I am NOT a pastry wiz! My sister, Melanie, bakes amazing pies, and apparently my Mom did too. I am more of a cakes and cookies kind of girl. In fact, I didn't even eat pie until I became an adult! Pie didn't usually involve chocolate, so I just didn't see the point in it. I was also always more of a veggie person, than a fruit person. However, when I was pregnant for my first child, I became addicted to fruit; developing an insatiable appetite for it. I now appreciate pie, and give it the praise that it deserves. This new appreciation for pie, however, does not make me better at baking it.

I decided to bake not one, but two different pies that I had never baked before, to enter into a pie contest at a pioneer celebration day. Why couldn't I have just chosen one pie to bake? Because that just wouldn't be me! I always have to make things difficult for myself - always trying to do more than is realistic. I remembered a pie that I had had in a little restaurant in Stirling, ON. It was a Raspberry Meringue Pie, which I had never heard of before. It was absolutely scrumptious! It was cool, and tart and smooth and sweet, and I had thought about it so many times after having it that day. I found out that they actually didn't bake the pie in their restaurant, but that they had it shipped from British Columbia! Since then, the restaurant has closed, and because there are no plans in my immediate future to visit B.C., I decided that I needed to try making this pie myself. I got on trusty Google and began a search for the recipe. I came across many different recipes for the pie, each one of them varying in ingredients. I was surprised to discover that the pie that most resembled the one from B.C. was from a recipe from the U.K. It was the only one I found that strained the seeds from the raspberries, which I thought was crucial to the smooth texture of the pie. It meant that I had to do some conversions, but it was pretty basic. I was excited to see how this pie would turn out!

The second pie that I was itching to make was inspired by a children's tv show called Little Bear. If you have young children, then chances are that you have watched Little Bear gobble up all the delicious desserts that Mother Bear bakes for him; his favourite being Mixed Berry Marshmallow Pie. WHAT IS THAT??? I always wondered, and it just sounded so yummy! Back to the trusty internet I went! In my search, all the berry and marshmallow combinations pies were a fluffy pie served chilled. This was not what I pictured Mother Bear's pie to be like. So against any common sense, I decided to come up with my own recipe for the pie.

I never made it to the pioneer celebration day, and neither did my pies. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I was finished baking. Making pies, when you're not a pie-baking person, can really take a lot out of a girl!

This is a picture of a beautiful, unbaked pie shell that I made...so far, so good.

But not matter what tips I try, my baked pie shells usually turn out something like this. I poked holes, I put a foil bag of dried beans in the empty shell while baking, but the pastry still shrunk and came out deformed.

I tried not to get too discouraged, and instead, found beauty in the brilliant red of the fresh raspberry puree. I loved that this raspberry pie recipe instructed to run the puree through a sieve to make the pie seedless - I'm not big on seeds of this type.

This is the pre-baked Mixed Berry and Marshmallow Crumble Pie (before I added the crumbly top). I love this shot. It makes me want to stand at attention and sing The Star Spangled Banner. The deep reds and purply-blues of the fresh berries contrast so beautifully the pristine white of the marshmallows.

What a wonderful looking pie! I knew it was too good to be true. Don't get me wrong, though, the fresh raspberry filling was absolutely divine-tasting, it just didn't fully set. That seemed to be a theme for me that day. The next time I make this pie, I am going to cook the filling until I can stir no more, then it will hopefully set properly. It was definitely an experiment, and was bound to have some imperfections. I do believe I will be able to redeem myself with a second try at this one.

My whole house smelled of heaven on earth when the Mixed Berry, Marshmallow Crumble Pie was baking. It was a mixture of fresh berries, and the topping which included brown sugar, butter and cinnamon that made the aroma so irresistible. However, once again, when I cut into the pie a flood of berry juices came running out under the crust. The filling didn't thicken. I was very discouraged again, but once I had a bite of this pie over vanilla ice cream, it just didn't matter anymore. I loved how you could see the melted marshmallows coming up through the crumbly top of the pie. Next time, I think I will not mix the marshmallow with the berries (as they seemed to just disappear into the filling when baked), but rather just cover the whole top of the filling with marshmallows and see how that turns out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that pie is NOT easy. Pie is finicky, and temperamental. I don't think that I will ever claim to be a pie baker, as I'm pretty sure that my pies could fail without any warning or reason. I want to continue to experiment with pie-baking, and especially to ace that Raspberry Meringue Pie, but if I need something to work out right, without any risk of failure, I will stick to baking cakes.

Jesus, Take Me Home

As I'm sitting here in my bed for the second day in a row, watching my sick little boy finally resting peacefully, I am reminded of a story from my childhood. This story had an everlasting effect on me, and I instantly had a desire to look it up and write a blog about it. During my googling endeavours, however, I stumbled upon a blog that was so close to what I wanted to write, that it's kind of redundant for me to write my own.

I will still tell my readers about this story, and share the bang-on blog at the end of my post. Many of you, or maybe not so many of you may be familiar with Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories. They were a series of Christian children's books that came out in the 1960's. If you were a child in the 1970's, as I was, you may have also had this collection of books on your bookshelf. The books were compilations of stories that were said to be real-life stories of good Christian values. My personal favourite, was one of some little girls; I remember the illustrations so vividly: girls with pretty, floral dresses, bobby socks and mary-jane shoes, with shiny ringlets adorned with ribbon-tied bows. I was a sucker for that kind of girly-girl, squeaky clean wholesomeness when I was young. These little girls would sew their own doll clothes for their beautiful old-fashioned dolls. Nothing in the world seemed more wonderful to me than that. I can't even remember what the moral of that story was, but I'm sure that I studied that illustration of the pretty girls with their dolls and carriages for hours on end.

The books were definitely a piece of my childhood, and I remember reading them and enjoying them. There was one story, however, that traumatized me (and obviously not just me) a bit, and I haven't forgotten it to this day. I don't remember the name of this story, but I remember that it was about a boy who had been hit by a car. He was in the hospital, and obviously was in a lot of pain; so much so, that he wished he would die. Let's keep in mind that this is a "bedtime story". The boy had it in his head that all he had to do was ask Jesus to take him, and he would. Another boy who shared his room in the hospital told him that Jesus came into the room each night, and that if he just raised his hand, that he would take him. The little boy knew what he had to do, but he was so weak that he could not keep his arm up. The other little boy, being the saint that he was, helped his roommate by propping his arm up on a pillow so that Jesus would see that he wanted him to take him to heaven. Jesus did take the boy that night, and that was it. Couldn't that other little boy be guilty of euthanasia, or something? You can imagine my horror as a child, when I would awake in the night and notice that my arm was in such a position that it was slightly erect. OH MY GOSH! I could have died tonight! I must be more careful! Seriously, I was actually concerned that Jesus might get the wrong idea and take me when I wasn't ready to go. I still think about it to this day, and panicked slightly when I glanced over to see my sick little boy with his arm pointing upward between the mattress and the pillow.

See also:No! No! Please No More Bedtime Stories!

Heart-shaped Memory

I was kneeling on one of the dining room chairs, and watching in admiration as she piped each name with precision. The cookies seemed giant. They were definitely over-sized, but being a small child, they may not have been quite as big as I remember them. Heart-shaped sugar cookies, iced with the palest pink icing, and then scripted with the names of our family members – one for each of them, in white icing. This is one of the most vivid memories I have of my mom. She died when I was five years old, and I can't be sure if I had just turned four, or five, when she and I made this special Valentine's Day surprise for everyone, but I do remember not being able to contain my excitement! “When are they coming?” I would ask. My four older siblings were at school, and my Dad was at work. I just could not wait for them to get home so that they could see what we had made for them!

It's a very tiny memory, but it is one that I have held onto my whole life, thus far. Was it the special time that we were sharing? Was the anticipation of presenting the family with this most wonderful surprise? Was it the deliciousness of the cookies? Perhaps my Mom had already been sick, and this was a rare time when she was home and feeling well enough to do anything with me. I guess I will never know why I have held this memory so close to my heart, except, simply, that it is of her.

There is a lot of pressure on a woman who has grown up without her mother. It is in the form of having unrealistic expectations on herself, of being EVERYTHING to her own children, that she didn't have growing up. Of course no mom is perfect, so we take the mom who bakes, the mom with the spotless house, the mom who threw the best birthday parties, the mom who cooked amazing meals, the mom who signed her kids up for anything and everything that they showed the slightest bit of interest in, the mom who went on every school trip, and of course the mom who took her daughters shopping for clothes, and we put them all together to make one SUPER MOM. That is who we try to be. Maybe all women try to be her too, but we will kill ourselves making it happen.

I have made it a tradition to bake and decorate sugar cookies for every occasion. Even before I had kids, I would make them for my friends and family. Now that I have kids, even though I mostly enjoy making them, I do feel obligated to do this activity with my them. As crazy as it sounds, the few times that I have not made sugar cookies for a holiday, for one reason or another, I have felt sad and resentful about it. THEY'RE ONLY COOKIES! But for me, they are much more than that. They represent one special moment that I was able to share with my mother, in the short time that I had her. So even if, after a particularily disasterous sugar-cookie-making-and-decorating experience, I may say “never again”, I know that I will always have the desire to build on this tradition.

That's The Way The Cake Tumbles

Whenever I am looking for a party idea, the first place I go is to marthastewart.com . Martha has provided me with so many irresistible ideas, and I really admire the work of her team of creative geniuses. A couple of years ago, when I was hosting a baby shower, I found this adorable cake. I had to have it! I had to make it! The problem was that the cake was decorated in fondant, which, although I am an avid baker, I have never ventured into the world of. Fondant just seems like a set-up for failure for me. I have friends who are incredibly talented cake-tresses, and who use fondant to make amazing cakes and cookies that go beyond my stretch of creativity. See Rosie, of http://sweetapolita.com/. But back to my need make this cake; thankfully, I decided against trying it for this particular baby shower, and went with a simple onesie cake of my own design. However, when I agreed to host the baby shower for my nephew's girlfriend, I also offered to make the cake. I immediately knew exactly which cake I would be making: the adorable baby building blocks cake. I knew enough to understand that my version of the cake would be sloppier (if you can imagine) than Martha's, because I would be using buttercream instead of fondant – messy, messy, messy. But I felt inspired and excited, and somehow confident that I would be able to make a similar cake for the shower of my great-nephew in-waiting. It had to be this cake! I would settle for no less.

For some reason, I decided that when I make my version of the baby blocks cake, I would actually build the blocks up like a tower (what gravity?). I figured it would be even cuter, AND better with the buttercream...and I can't remember how I came to that conclusion. You see, the difference between me and the fabulous artists of Martha Stewart's kind, is that they use their heads. Me – not so much. I'm more of a heart person, than a head person. Besides, why would I let something so miniscule as gravity stop me from making the cake that I want? I was so excited to get started on this cake, that I got to it as soon as I dropped the kids off at school on Friday. Admittedly, the Martha Stewart group has likely got the advantage of several baking pans to their disposal. I was pumped because I had just purchased a perfectly square 8” pan for which to make these perfect cube cakes. I spent $14 on this little pan, and couldn't think of buying more than one at this point in my caking career. I figured that if I baked three cakes, and cut each into perfect four squares, that I would get twelve squares, which would make six two-layer blocks. I thought I was pretty bright to figure all that out by myself. I would have three blocks on the bottom, two in the middle, and one on top; the ideal little tower of blocks! The baking of the cakes took a very, very long time. I had to make the batter (my favourite deep dark chocolate cake recipe), then bake the cake for about 45 minutes, let it cool for ten minutes in the pan, then remove, then repeat. So I was looking at at least three hours of baking alone – and that was without any breaks or interruptions. The first cake was in the oven, only minutes away from buzzing, when the phone rang. It was the school telling me that Max had a sick tummy, and could I please come and pick him up. Wow. This was going to be a challenge. It was a good thing that I was starting to make the cake on Friday morning, because the shower wasn't until 6:00 p.m. On Saturday night.

It was well into the afternoon when the cakes were finished baking and were cooled. I had to spend quite a bit of time with Max, who really was feeling down and out. I think it was after school when my husband arrived home that I started to cut the squares. I actually used a measuring tape to make the squares as close to even as possible. This might seem like common sense to most people, but for me, it was a new concept. After cutting the twelve squares, I started on making the buttercream, which was also a big job. I figured I would need at least double the recipe, but actually ended up making four batches of the icing. It should be noted that I didn't stop for food during this day, but got all the nourishment I needed from the icing which I had to constantly lick off of my fingers. But don't worry! I washed every time after licking! I covered the top sides of each of six squares with plain buttercream, then stacked one of each of the last six squares on top to make six two-layer cubes. The cubes were not perfect, despite my measuring tape step. I didn't think this would be a very big deal. This was a very big deal. I then started the task of creating the six most perfectly pastel icing shades. This part was a piece of cake (no pun intended), although a little tiring to mix all the colours in six separate bowls. I was, however, very happy with my colour palette, and I'm sure that even Martha would approve. Next I did a crumb-coat on each of the six blocks. This was a new step for me, but very much an effective one. I applied a thin layer of the pastel icing to each block, covering it completely. After chilling the blocks, I was able to apply a second coat (for which I had to make another batch of icing and all six colours again). This coat went on smoothly, and it completely covered all the crumbs. Looking at the blocks, I began to feel a little unsettled at how imperfect they were in their cubiness (I know that's not an actual word). I wondered if this might cause a problem in assembling my genius block tower. I left the cakes at this stage to chill overnight. It was midnight – not bad for me at all.

On Saturday morning I awoke uncharacteristically chipper and feeling ahead of the game. I am NEVER ahead of the game. Something that I hate to admit, is that I tend to be late for everything. I host many family dinners and get-togethers for my large family in my home. I am never ready when people start arriving (which is usually late). My family knows that if anyone dares to show up early, or even on time for that matter, I am not going to be delighted to see them. I have a great appreciation for people who show up fashionably late. It is a fault of mine, I know, but how is a girl supposed to finish upholstering the dining room chairs if people are going to show up on time to a party (true story)? Anyway, back to my cake. I started by placing a block on the cake board and using white buttercream to pipe on the number and the pictures on each side of the block. I added the next block beside it, and thought about how strange it was that it was about an inch higher than the first block. Oh well! I continued on until I had a nice little row of the three bottom blocks finished. I thought they looked really cute. Next, I placed one of the middle row blocks, centred above two of the bottom blocks – hmmmm, it's not quite sitting straight – probably due to the height difference of the bottom two blocks. Oh well! I repeated with the second middle block, but decided that it would be smart for me to place a small piece of cardboard under one of the corners to level out the block – it was leaning forward quite a bit. I finally placed the top block on, decorated it, stood back and admired it. It was now just before noon. I still had six hours before the party was due to start! I was impressed! I then placed the cake with great care onto the dining room buffet, and took some pictures of the cake...just incase.Notice how I sculpted the tower to give the effect of a child's tower of blocks, just before it comes crashing to the floor. I lie. It was not intended to look that way. After about thirty minutes, my husband thought that the cake looked like it was going to fall. He suggested that we put some skewers through the blocks to connect them internally. Now why didn't I think of that?! He then helped me to masterfully place the skewers into the cakes. It was much sturdier now. The phone rang, and it was my sister Melanie. When I told her that the cake was done, she said, “so does that mean that you won't be still working on it when we all get there?” She's funny. I said, “nope! It's all done!” After I hung up the phone, I walked casually into the dining room to find that my tower had crumbled. Yes, the only blocks still standing were the two outside blocks on the bottom; the middle block, (the runt of the bunch) was completely smashed to smithereens! I didn't cry. I didn't even curse. I wipe the pastel mixture of buttercream off of the dining room wall. I just picked up the fallen blocks and set them on the large board. I was pretty sure that I could salvage them, although they would have to be redecorated for the most part. I couldn't think about doing it at that moment. After all, I had already spent the better part of about fifteen hours on the cake! The phone rang again. It was Melanie. I told her my cake fell. She said, “Aw, so you WILL be still working on the cake when we arrive.” I said, “Yes. Yes I will”.

I worked on cleaning the house that I had neglected for over twenty-four hours, and by the time I finished that, had a shower, and got ready, there was a little under one hour to save the cake. I made ANOTHER batch of icing, colouring not six, but five different bowls of buttercream (as I lost one of the blocks in the tumble.) Then I did what I should have done, but wasn't smart enough to do in the first place. I placed the blocks flat on the board and decorated them.Everyone enjoyed the cake. It was moist and delicious, and everything that a fifteen hour chocolate cake should be. I did learn a lot from this experience. I learned that I can't fool physics (whatever that is). And as I was in the kitchen finishing the redecorating of the cake, partway through the party, I realized that the most important thing that I learned is that it's best to be behind schedule, because then when the cake is finally ready, half-way through the party, it will get eaten, and there will be no time for it to topple. I have also decided that I don't want to see any form of icing for a long...ooh! Look at these adorable conversation heart cookies! I could make these for the kids' classes at school!