Pie, Pie, Pie – OH MY! — Desserts for Days

This is it! This week we finally got to dive into making pies. Pie is my absolute favorite dessert (all kinds, I don't really have a concrete favorite). I think if I could eat one dessert for the rest of my life, 100% it would be pie (just don't make me choose one!). Small side note: has anyone else seen that store Pieology? I legitimately thought that it was a pie store, I was so excited. There's this tiny place in Seattle called Pie that's ~amazing~, so I thought that it was reminiscent of that. Nope. Turns out it's pizza. I'm just a little bit bitter. LOL

But anyway! Onto this week. With Monday being a holiday, we had a short week this week, but with all of the stuff we managed to get done, it sure didn't feel like it! Wednesday was #PieDay, which was just beyond exciting, we had 4 pies on the roster: apple, lemon meringue, pumpkin, and caramel apple streusel. We only managed to get to 3 of the pies, but heck, who cares? That's still 3 pies in one day! It was a busy night, to say the least. We started off with rolling out and placing our pie crusts in the pans. Then, we got to add little decorative borders to them, if we wanted.

Making pie is one of my favorite things (hello upcoming holidays!), and decorating the crust is even more fun! It's like a little mini art project, sort of, and I love me a good art project. I think I was a little ambitious, but I also think that it paid off; I loved how my crusts turned out! I was braiding crust, cutting out leaves, cutting out triangles, the whole shebang!

Pumpkin, lemon meringue, caramel apple streusel, and apple pies // before & after!

The three pies that we did to completion on Wednesday were the apple, lemon meringue, and caramel apple streusel pies. We did do the first bake on the pumpkin pie crust, as well, but we ran out of time on Wednesday to get that one finished. We were given the different options for our quiz (which is on Monday!), and we got to draw numbers on Friday. Sad to think that the tarts and pies unit is coming to an end, but next week we get to start pate a choux, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

On Friday, we started off finishing up our pumpkin pies. On Wednesday, Chef Jeanne made a gigantic batch of pumpkin pie filling, so it was one less thing we had to do. After we had those setting up, we made two batches of dough. One, that we'd use to make our mini quiches, and the other for our test on Monday. On Friday, we made whole wheat crust for the first time. This crust was going to be used in our spinach and goat cheese quiches. After we made our crusts and got them chilling in the fridge, we had a 45 minute lecture on nutrition.

After our lecture was over, we had about 25 minutes left before dinner, so we blind baked our crusts for the quiches, and while those were baking, we got everything prepped out for the rest of the quiches. For the Lorraine, that was the egg custard mix, Gruyere, and bacon, whereas the other one, there was spinach, shallots, goat cheese, and the egg custard mix for that, too.

After dinner, we assembled our quiches and put them in the oven, then while those were baking for the second time, we whipped up a quick batch of chantilly creme to decorate our pumpkin pies with! Friday was definitely a more laid back night that I'm used to, but nearing the end of the unit, there really isn't that much to do. The quiches were pretty quick to assemble, at least I thought.

We had a little guessing game, too. After the quiches were finished, we had to guess which one was more nutritious. Almost everyone thought that it would be the spinach and goat cheese, however, we were wrong. Surprisingly enough, in term of calories, the quiche Lorraine was actually better for you. But really, the difference was so minute, it hardly makes an actual difference, at least I think.

After that we drew our numbers for the practical portion of our test on Monday. There were 4 possible combinations of a large tart and two tartelettes, and I was hoping that I would get either the one wth the chocolate ganache tarts or the one with quiche Lorraine, and lucky enough for me, I randomly picked the one with quiche Lorraine! More quiches for breakfast for me! Woohoo!

All we did the rest of the night was go over material that was going to be on the written portion of our quiz. It was a pretty low key night, and week, as a whole. Come Monday, after our test is over, we'll get started on the pate a choux unit!

Stay tuned for my blog next week, and if you want more frequent updates, you can check out my Instagram.

Thanks for reading!