Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pie

best moist but structural vegan pumpkin pie recipe?

amtho — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:48:19 -0800

My ideal pumpkin pie is very moist, not too sweet, and quite structural. Is it possible to achieve this in a vegan recipe? We have a can of pumpkin in the cupboard. I'd love to whip up a pie. I have silken tofu, Bob's Red Mill egg replacer, tapioca starch, sugar, soy milk, rice milk, soy yogurt, bananas, and coconut milk "drink".

Does anyone have experience with a vegan (no eggs or condensed milk) pumpkin pie recipe that's delicious and moist, and solid at room temperature?

My previous attempts have either not gelled or have been kind of like eating dehydrated sugary pumpkin sediment - better than my description sounds, but not what I want. On reflection, I think that my favorite non-vegan pumpkin pies have had a lot of egg to provide the structure to keep them thick and moist while holding their shape when cut (and providing decent mouth feel).

Warm, Freshly-baked, Luscious, Delicious Apple Pie

jabberjaw — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:50:05 -0800

Home-cooked apple pie: What kinds of apples do you use? Or combination thereof? The last one I made was a 40-60 Granny Smith / Fuji mix, but I'd like to know what the experienced Mefi baker recommends for my next holiday apple pie. I do not want an overly-tart pie. Braeburns? Red Delicious? Gala? Thanks!

Why was my pie filling runny when warm but firm when cool

crLLC — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:39:12 -0800

Why was my peach pie filling runny when warm but firm when cool? I made my first pie over the weekend. I used cornstarch as the thickening agent for the peach filling. I finished baking the pie about two hours before serving, and it was still a bit warm when I cut into it. After removing a piece or two, the vacant pie pan space filled up with filling, which was pretty runny-looking. So I made a mental note for next time to use more cornstarch or try tapioca. However, later on I noticed that the pie filling seemed pretty firm, as if it solidified as it cooled. But cornstarch thickens when heated, right? So why was my pie filling runny when warm but firm when cool?

Cartoon illustrating absorption versus adsorption

mr_roboto — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:22:33 -0800

Years ago, I saw a cartoon using images of a man and a pie to illustrate the difference between absorption (man eats pie) and adsorption (man gets hit in face with pie). Anybody have a link to a copy? It was a simple black-and-white line drawing with two panels, one for absorption and one for adsorption. Probably from some science magazine or professional society periodical...

Help me eat pie on Pi Day

specialagentwebb — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:39:11 -0800

With Pi Day just around the corner, where do I get the best pie in the DC area? I moved from PA to NoVA 9 months ago, and this will be my first Pi Day in metro DC. I'm looking for some suggestions on places to get the most delicious pie in the area.

Requirements:
-Within 30 minute drive/metro from the Tysons Corner area
-Must be pie
-Must be delicious

Bonus points for selling pie by the slice. Extra bonus points for selling diner-style pie slices, 6-8" tall.

Can you help me, Hivemind?

Where to buy pies in Charlottesville, VA?

Bizurke — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:22:41 -0800

Where to buy pies in Charlottesville, VA? Where can I get a good pie in Charlottesville, VA? My favorites are apple and Key lime, but I'm always up for trying more exotic ones, too.

Feel free to mention bakeries that sell whole pies, restaurants that serve pie for dessert or any where else where pies are sold!

Do 3 pies = 1 tasty cake?

high0nfire — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:32:07 -0800

Last minute Christmas dessert. Someone at my wife's work made this. It's a "cake" made by taking three pies (pecan, pumpkin, apple) and smashing them one on top of the other into a three-layer "Pie Cake". It was frosted with Pecan Coconut frosting. Apparently it was very very good. We can't get in touch with the guy who made it, so we were hoping the hive mind could help us out. If anyone has heard of this, please let us know if it is as simple as taking pies out of their tins, smashing them (gently) into three distinct layers, applying the frosting and VOILA, a weird but tasty dessert item!

How do I make a beautiful pre-baked pie crust?

eirelander — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:32:12 -0800

Why is my pie crust melting?! This is so aggravating. I am trying to pre-bake a pie crust for pumpkin pie, pecan pie, whatever. I follow the directions to the tee - the crust is in the freezer for 30 minutes, so it is rock hard when I take it out of the freezer and stick it in the 425 degree oven. I've used pie weights (beans), and I haven't used pie weights, and I still get the same result. The nice crimped edge sluffs down the side of the pie pan and I end up with this bubbling blob of dough in the base of the pie plate.

I have tried all butter and butter/shortening recipes.

So the dough is cold and weighted, and it still melts.

What am I doing wrong here? What is the trick to getting a beautiful pre-baked crust?

American Pie

ITheCosmos — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:46:31 -0800

How should we class up a patriotic Jello pie? So, my friend linked me to the aforementioned pie, and we were thinking of making it for Thanksgiving dinner, both for novelty's sake, and because one has to go a little bit over the top when one is having an American Thanksgiving dinner in Canada.

However, we were wondering if there'd be a way to make it out of, you know, real foods while preserving the colour scheme and stratified nature. Something blueberry and strawberry based is the obvious choice, but how to make it structurally sound such that the stripes remain distinct? Any notions or advice are welcome.

need help planning a special birthday celebration for a good man!

Snoogylips — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:19:47 -0800

Need help planning a special birthday celebration for husband in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas area. His birthday is in the first half of December and we mostly just have weekends together. It will be just the two of us celebrating. Husband is turning 27 and I want to do something special and fun to celebrate his birthday. Does anyone have any ideas to make this a fun and special day on a budget? Also where can I get a super delicious apple pie or a excellent key lime pie? Open to many suggestions to make the day fun and memorable-like a date idea in the Ft worth area. Places to visit? Any special events we might enjoy or want to check out? For example of things He likes is Alamo Draft House in Austin (but we cant roadtrip to Austin this time), Texas, XBox360, computer and electronic things.Im not looking for a gift but mainly for a memorable way to celebrate and for him to surprised!!

Will my pie turn to mush overnight?

hibbersk — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:41:02 -0800

I'm cooking my first ever pie for a lunch tomorrow (apple pie from Jamie Oliver's "Jamie's dinners" book if that makes a difference). I'm likely to be busy in the morning so can I get away with making it tonight so it just needs heating tomorrow? Or will the pastry go soggy overnight? Second option is to make the pastry and filling tonight, keep separate and assemble tomorrow. Or just get up ridiculously early? Thanks!

Formatting charts in Illustrator CS3

special-k — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:03:16 -0800

How do I format an entire data series for a chart in Illustrator CS3? I’m new to illustrator and am having a hell of a time formatting a graph. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to format an entire data series at the same time. Say I have a bar chart with two data series, A and B. I can’t just click on A and change the color for all the bars and the legend at the same time. I have to click each individual bar, and then the legend and change the color, which seems very tedious and needless.
I also have plenty of line charts where I have to select each segment of each line to change the color, which is way more frustrating. I’m sure there’s a simpler way, I just don’t know how. Can anyone tell me a simpler way to do this?

Bonus: Know of any blogs/video tutorials where I can learn to get better at making charts in Illustrator CS3? Book suggestions are also welcome.

Thanks!

This squash is a wash: I baked a pumpkin pie without sugar!

unixrat — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:33:42 -0800

Fresh off of making chicken that was too hot to eat, my wife and I have baked a pumpkin pie that has no sugar in it. Before you take away my spatula, please help me rescue what's left... Okay, no excuses but this concoction came to be due to two circumstances: (a) A pregnant wife who really, really wanted pumpkin pie in March and (b) an important phone call during the mixing process.

Anyways, we now have 7/8th of a large, perfectly cooked pumpkin pie sitting in the fridge. It's... very bland and what isn't bland is squash-flavored. I can eat squash, but I doubt that I can do two pounds of cold, bland pumpkin and the wife won't go near it in it's present state.

I have pretty much every major utensil and food-stuff available and am pretty deft (and daft, apparently) in the kitchen. I have no problem throwing away the crust, so feel free to suggest something from your bevy of "reused sugarless pie filling" recipes. I beseech thee, Julia Children of AskMefi: Can this pumpkin be saved?

How do I get the first piece of cake out of the baking dish without wrecking the first piece itself?

Effigy2000 — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:13:56 -0800

Whenever I make a cake or pie in a baking dish, I always find that once it's done, I always wreck the first piece while trying to get the first piece out of the dish and onto a plate. After the first piece, getting subsequent pieces out is easy but that first piece is impossile. But there must be a way! Share your tips on how to get the first piece of pie/cake out of the baking dish and onto a plate without destroying it!

Runny Pie, you are making me crazy.

dirtdirt — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:56:37 -0800

Why did my pecan pie get runny? I love pecan pie - I consider it to be the pinnacle of human endeavor. Over the years I've made a lot of them. This year, for the first time I made them using Steen's instead of corn syrup and the taste was worth the extra hassle and expense. A more complex sweetness, earthier. Really really good. BUT...

My pies were sort of runny. They were a lot runny.

I followed the recipe on the Steen's can (pretty standard recipe - eggs, flour, salt, sugar, Steen's, pecans). Should I have cooked them longer? Shorter? Added more egg, or flour? A lil' bit of corn starch? Was it an issue with the cane syrup?

Calling All German-Speaking Mefites/Cooks!

amyms — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:01:49 -0800

I recently purchased several boxes of magazines at a garage sale, including copies of a German magazine called "Lisa." It's a typical "woman's magazine" (i.e. fashion, celebrity news, recipes, human interest stories). It's been fun to peruse through it since we don't get much exposure to "foreign" stuff here in the sticks, and one of the recipes caught my eye: Luftige Joghurt-Aprikosen-Torte. From the various translation sites available on the web, I understand that it's an "Airy Yogurt Apricot Pie" but the instructions are too long and complicated to get an accurate translation of the whole thing. It looks delicious, however, and I'm curious if any German-speaking Mefites might have the recipe for this heavenly-looking dessert.

Help me win a pie making competition.

djstig — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:02:43 -0800

Help me win a pie making competition. I have been challenged to a Pie-Off this weekend, and am looking for interesting savoury pies that could win me this challenge.

I have looked and found sweet pies in the archive but am looking for a meaty number to blow away the competition.

I am in the UK and have not got access to exotic meats, so no crocodile or zebra based pies please!

No, I don't want to buy a crust.

Medieval Maven — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:59:33 -0800

I want to make a pie crust that isn't insane. OK, so I can now bake. I am now trying to make pies. Well, cheesecakes at the moment, but pie will be on the horizon. I followed this recipe for pumpkin cheesecake, and I followed the directions to make the crust with the following caveat - I crushed gingersnaps instead of using graham crackers, and because I was feeding someone with a nut allergy, I eliminated the pecans and subbed with more gingersnap dust. The crust, while not terrible, did not get crispy, and it wept butter all over the place. After refrigeration, the crust was still seeping butter, but of course now it was gooey. It didn't taste bad, but what did I do wrong? I want to make this thing for Thanksgiving and other gatherings this fall, but not with the weirdass gooey crust. Halp!

Pie-Off

Miko — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:12:44 -0800

Help! I'm running a pie contest Sunday. I need pointers on how to set it up. It's part of this event. I don't yet know how many pies will be submitted. Here are the specs:

There will be two categories: Best Traditional Pie and Best Original Pie. We will also award a People's Choice to the crowd favorite (though the two top award winners will not be eligible for that).

We'll take 1/3 of each pie for judge testing, and 2/3s will be cut into small shares for People's Choice evalution.

This needs to be blind - the pies will have just the name of a pie and an identifying number or letter. But we need to keep track of which number was whose pie.

I'd like your pointers on setting this up from the moment of pie drop off to the awarding of prizes. I've never done a contest like this and I know people are taking it seriously, so I want to make sure it's for real. Should my judges have a score sheet? On what criteria should they judge? Should I make up entry blanks? How should I assign numbers to the pies and to the people while keeping it anonymous? And for people's choice, should be it be "Just write the number of your favorite?" or should there be some sort of ranking?

Any wisdom at all from past bake-off or other contest organizers most welcome!

Who's the cartoon character who stole pies off windowsills?

mikemonteiro — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:51:58 -0800

There's a standard cartoon routine, where a woman whose head you can't see puts a pie on the windowsill, "fingers of aroma" waft off the pie and swirl around until they find this particular cartoon character and pull him towards the pie which he then discovers and steals. I'm pretty sure it's a Looney Tunes character. It was a recurring schtik but I'm pretty sure it was always the same Looney Tunes character. Which one?

Pie Recipes

TwelveTwo — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 14:45:11 -0800

The most delicious pie recipe in the world. Naturally, there's I'm looking to bake a pie. The goal is simple: deliciousness. What is the most delicious pie, and its recipe? I'm looking for something that is made of ingredients that are in season and accessible. (It is fall in the pacific northwest.)

Secret Apple Pie Recipe

jaimystery — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:11:28 -0800

TV Trivia question - what sitcom was this? Thanksgiving episode, frustrated wife & her mother-in-law's 'Secret Apple Pie Recipe'. The scene: Two women are in the kitchen during Thanksgiving, one woman expresses her frustration at her mother-in-law's refusal to share the 'secret apple pie recipe'. This same woman has been trying a different recipe every year, hoping to get it right but this year, she was so frustrated that she bought a pie crust, used canned filling & threw it in the oven.

Husband comes in and says 'Honey, you finally got it right! This is Mom's recipe!"

It sort of echoes Phoebe's chocolate chip recipe from Friends and I'm sure, countless other shows. Someone suggested "Everyone loves Raymond" but this show was earlier than that, maybe 15 years ago.

I've googled but I'm not hitting the right combination of words to come up with the answer. Does anyone else have a better memory?

Rhubarb cherry fajita?

croutonsupafreak — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 10:59:39 -0800

A couple of days ago, I was googling around for help when it came to cooking rhubarb and cherries together. I found a recipe that looked really good that called for baking them wrapped in tortillas with butter, sugar, and I don't remember what else. Now I can't find the recipe any more. Any suggestions on how this might work? I've never cooked rhubarb or cherries before, got both at a farmer's market a few days ago. I don't want to make a pie, because I don't like store-bought crusts and I don't feel like making my own crust today.

I'll take other nominations for ways to combine these two ingredients, as long as it's not just a rhubarb cherry crumble.

Excel Help for Pie Graph of Frequency of Appearance of Values in a Column?

WCityMike — Fri, 19 May 2006 11:33:20 -0800

ExcelFilter: I need help creating a pie chart as a separate worksheet in Excel that counts how often values appear in a column and creates a pie graph based on that data. I'm stumped, I'm not using the right Google terms, and my company's help desk couldn't guide me through the process, either. (That sounds awkward, so I describe it more comprehensibly inside.) I am a legal assistant whose station changes from day to day and week to week (a "floater"). I keep an assignment log as an Excel spreadsheet, detailing where I worked each day, and any personal notes about the desk.

The horizontal subject headers are "date," "secretary," "department," "practice area" (a sort of 'subdepartment'), "attorney 1", "attorney 2", "attorney 3", "attorney 4", and "notes." The vertical headers are the dates I work.

I'm seeking to figure out how I can have Excel create, and automatically update, a pie chart based on the "department" column, and, optionally, to help me break down further in some clickable way the practice area off of the respective departments. The latter is not entirely necessary if it would add too much of a complicating factor.

Let's say, for example, that the department column of this spreadsheet looks like this:

Rotor-Scooting
RealityDistortionField-Creating
GatesAssassin
Metafilter-Reading
Widget-Making
Widget-Making
Widget-Making
Widget-Making
Rotor-Scooting
GatesAssassin

I'm looking to figure out how I can get Excel to create a pie chart that would have 40% widget-making, 20% rotor-scooting, 20% GatesAssassin, 10% Metafilter-Reading, and 10% RealityDistortionField-Creating ... based on its own, updated count of the frequency of appearance of the departments as compared against the total non-blank entries in the column in question.

And if all the following week, I worked for the BallmerAssassin department, it would automatically add in the appropriate slice and udpate the chart.

Keep in mind that since the number of entries in that column will change on a daily basis, I'd prefer not to "hardcore" into any existing formula or chart or what-have-you the rows part of the range, unless it can't be done otherwise.

Is what I'm talking about possible? I thought it'd be something that Excel could do with its eyes closed, but not only did I dredge up a big fat zero when trying to figure this out, so did my business' help desk. Any ideas?

2 cool 4 pie?

bitdamaged — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:06:00 -0800

Do I refrigerate a bakery bought pie for tomorrow? So I got tasked with bringing a pie to our Easter festivities tomorrow so I dutifully went to my local bakery and got a mixed berry pie. Now my sister and I are debating if you store it in the fridge or not. It's a cool day in San Francisco if that makes a difference.