Week 12: Off to the County Fair

The Washington County Fair was coming up this week. So on Friday, I spent all day baking eight pies altogether. I entered five of them in the fair. The other three were duplicates of some of the fair pies.



The pies had to be entered on Sunday, and were judged on Monday. But I had to wait until the fair opened on Thursday to find out if I won any ribbons

To my delight, I had won three blue ribbons, for the blueberry, peach, and cherry-cherry-berry pies.





I took the duplicate blueberry pie to work and shared it with my co-workers. It was delicious, with just-right sweetness and fresh blueberry taste.

I wasn't surprised that the other two pies had not won. We discovered that the duplicate lemon meringue pie was more like soup. It just didn't set up right. Alton Brown let me down. (I got the recipe from his show) The meringue looked rather like alligator skin--there must have been too much moisture.



The strawberry delight pie, which is the same one that won a blue ribbon at the Multnomah County fair back in May, turned out differently this time. It didn't taste as sweet, and the cream cheese flavor seemed too pronounced. No wonder it didn't win.



We have decided that the solution must be that I have to combine the recipes for the fresh strawberry pie, the one that I didn't make because the filling didn't thicken up enough, and the strawberry delight pie. That gives it the right sweetness and texture. I guess I've invented a new recipe!

You can find the recipe for the cherry-cherry-berry pie here, and the strawberry delight pie here (but watch for an updated recipe on that one). I'm not going to put this lemon meringue pie recipe in the blog, but you can see here for a different recipe I've used that has turned out well.

I've included the recipes for the peach pie and the blueberry pie below.

Spiced Peach Pie
recipe from FoodNetwork.com, Sandra Lee

Prep Time:5 min
Cook Time:1 hr
Serves: 8 servings.

Ingredients:
For filling:
2 (12-ounce) bags frozen peach slices
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup instant tapioca
2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
For crust:
1 (11-ounces) box pie crust mix
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon peach nectar, chilled, divided
1 egg
2 tablespoons coarse sugar, for dusting, optional

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

For filling:
In a medium bowl, stir to combine all filling ingredients. Set aside for 15 minutes.

For crust:
In a large bowl, stir together pie crust mix and 1/3 cup chilled peach nectar until dough forms a ball. Split dough in half, and form into 2 disks.

On a lightly floured surface, use a rolling pin to roll dough 1 1/2-inches larger than an upside-down 9-inch pie pan. Fold dough in half and unfold over pie pan. Press onto bottom of pan.

Fill pie shell with peach filling mixture; set aside.

Roll out remaining dough and place over filled pie shell. Pinch the edges of the pie together or crimp with a fork. Trim away any excess dough.

Lightly beat egg with 1 tablespoon peach nectar or water to make egg wash. Use a pastry brush to lightly brush top of pie with egg wash. Sprinkle with sugar. Cut slit in center to vent pie.

Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 60 minutes or until crust is golden and filling is bubbling through vent. If edges get too brown, cover edges with foil to prevent burning.

Cool before slicing.

Country Blueberry Pie
Recipe courtesy Cheri Garnett, from FoodNetwork.com

Prep Time:1 hr
Cook Time:1 hr
Serves: 6 to 8 servings.

Ingredients:
Filling:
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup water
3 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Pastry:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup shortening
1 egg
2 tablespoons water
1/2 tablespoon vinegar
Flour, for dusting
Sugar, for sprinkling on top

Directions:
Filling: Combine sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and water. Add to a saucepan and heat rapidly until thickened. Set aside to cool as you prepare the pastry. Once cooled add the berries and lemon juice.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine flour, sugar and salt. Cut in shortening. Whisk together egg, water and vinegar. Add to flour mixture tossing lightly with a fork. Turn out onto a lightly floured cutting board and using your hands combine dough. Separate into 2 single crusts. Line the bottom of a pie plate with 1 of the crusts.

Pour filling into dough lined pie pan, and sprinkle the lemon juice over the filling. Adjust top crust, cut vents and flute rim. Sprinkle top lightly with sugar. Place pie onto a baking sheet and into the oven for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake for an additional 20 to 25 minutes. Allow to cool, cut and enjoy!

Week 5: Strawberries, Serendipity and the County Fair

Another week has gone by so quickly! But I did at least have a good reason for most of this delay, this week. I had to wait to see if I had won a prize!

On Sunday, our church leaders announced that we had had an imaginary earthquake, and they asked us to voluntarily live on our food storage for 6 days. No trips to the grocery store, just living on what we had in the house. We thought it would be interesting to do this experiment and see if we could make it. One of the things that I really like about our church is their concern that we be prepared for emergencies, and this was part of being prepared.

The biggest challenge in this experiment, other than possibly running out of milk, was the pie situation. We don't have a whole lot of fruit in our food storage, and not enough fresh fruit to make anything. Dried apple pie could be interesting I suppose. I could have made chocolate pudding pies, but I did that last week. And with not enough cool-whip they would not be as delicious as I'd like.

I finally settled on strawberry pie. We have a lot of frozen quarts of strawberries in our freezer, and it is supposed to be spring (you wouldn't know it nowadays with all the cold rainy weather we've had throughout May). I found a recipe that I thought would work, even though it called for fresh strawberries.

I was waiting for the frozen strawberries to thaw, so I didn't start trying to make the pies until Thursday (instead of Wednesday). After making the glaze and adding it to the bowl of thawed strawberries, I could see that this pie was not going to work. The formerly-frozen strawberries just had too much juice in them. If I put them in my beautiful pie shells, it would be like having strawberry soup pie.



Consulting with a few Facebook friends, it was decided that for this service-oriented project I would make an exception to our commitment to avoid going to the grocery store. At Albertsons I picked up some cream cheese, sour cream, and cool whip. I used these to make a recipe I've made before called Strawberry "Cheesecake" Pie. I could still use the strawberries, I just didn't need as much. My 16-year-old son happily consumed the leftovers. I finally wrapped up the pie-making at nearly bedtime on Thursday night.



On Friday morning, I was driving to work, with one pie sitting on my seat to take to a co-worker who had been having bad and continuous headaches for several weeks. That's when I heard Dana Jeffries of K103 talking about the Multnomah County Fair being held this weekend and how she was going to make a pie to enter when she got home that day. Hmmm, I thought, I have a pie, I wonder if I can enter? I hadn't decided yet where to take my second giveaway pie. This seemed a little too serendipitous.

Usually when I hear something like this and then have to go on to other things, I totally forget about it by the time I could do something about it. But on this day, I got home from work, remembered the morning broadcast, and looked up the location of the fair, how to enter, etc. I debated on whether I could go, and when I could go, and whether someone who lives in Washington County could enter another county's fair.

But with a little more Facebook encouragement, I set out after dinner to go to Oaks Park, a SW Portland amusement park that is maybe one or two steps above the traveling carnivals we got in our small town every summer. A lot of the rides are even the same--the spider, the tilt-a-whirl, the scrambler, and the merry-go-round, just to name a few.

I imagine that the reason Multnomah County has their fair so early in the "summer" is because they use Oaks Park as their locale--they are pretty busy the rest of the summer and wouldn't be able to give them the space to hold their event. And since Multnomah County is also mostly city, with not that much in the way of rural areas, this county fair is also pretty sparsely entered. It turned out that I had the only entry in the cream pie category. I only saw maybe six pie entries period.

Nevertheless I was thrilled to go back on Monday and see that I had won a blue ribbon and a check for $6.00. After all if they hadn't liked it, they could have refused it a ribbon.



It was so much fun to win a prize that I've decided I'm entering at least a couple of pies in the Washington County Fair in August. The competition will be stiffer there, so I will keep on practicin'!


Strawberry Delight Pie

1 pint fresh strawberries (frozen can be used)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 8-oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1 8-oz. container of whipped topping
1 9-inch graham cracker crust (I used a homemade baked pie shell)

Slice 1 pint of strawberries and mix with 1 Tbsp. sugar. Let sit until berries become juicy, then crush lightly to release additional juice. Beat cream cheese until smooth and then gradually blend in 1/3 cup sugar. Beat in sour cream, vanilla and strawberries until thoroughly blended. Fold in whipped topping. Spoon into crust and chill until set, at least 4 hours. Slice and serve.