I agreed a while back to take on the cooking for a family members wedding reception and surrounding events, and one of the things the bride really wanted was to have pie instead of cake. She is not a cake lover, and wanted to have a wedding dessert she would enjoy. So, we decided on a list of pies, and I went on vacation to Cortez Island for a week, and didn’t give the pie-making too much thought.
The weather was nice when we were camping, but the temperature was gradually creeping up. Once we came back from camping, I started on some of the advance prep, like the pulled pork and baking the burger buns. One week later, we were into a full-blown heat wave, with record-breaking highs, and I was starting to get a little worried about how I was going to roll out pastry and make so many pies.
I figured I had better do this in coordinated stages, so first I made all the pastry for the pies with pastry crusts. One had to be vegan to accommodate allergies, and two were going to be chocolate, and four were going to have graham cracker crusts. Here they are resting in the fridge!
Then I started making the pies. I had 14 to make, as someone else was going to make 3 more, for a total of 17 pies. I ended up making a number of the pies far enough in advance that they went in the freezer, BUT I was still rolling out pie crust smack in the middle of the heat wave. I think the only thing that saved the crust was the fact that I used the Cooks Illustrated trick of adding 1/2 cold vodka and 1/2 cold water for the liquid. Here’s some of the pies that I managed to catch pics of as they came out of the oven.
There were also a few that I made in the 1-2 days just before the wedding.
Both the key lime and the lemon got meringues shortly before serving, but given the humidity in the kitchen and outside, we had some problems with them weeping (still tasted good, but just didn’t look as spectacular as hoped for). I also made a banana cream pie, which was topped with whipped cream.
Finally, here are all 17 pies laid out on the table, just like a pie tasting at the county fair!
The final tally included:
- 2 apple pies, one with vegan crust
- 1 cherry pie
- 2 blueberry pies
- 1 raisin pie
- 1 strawberry-rhubarb pie
- 1 white peach pie
- 1 maple pecan pie
- 1 pumpkin pie
- 2 lemon meringue pies
- 2 key lime pies
- 2 chocolate truffle tarts
- 1 banana cream pie
Happy pie eating!