Easy As Pie Crust

For Thanksgiving this year I was asked to bring a milk free dessert that I could eat. I chose good old apple pie. (Now, keep in mind, this is only my second time doing a baked pie myself, so if it looks a little rustic... well, give me some slack, k?)

I used my aunt Jackie's "EZ Pie Crust" recipe. Not sure where she got it from, but it was very simple.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup boiling water
• 2/3 cup oil
• 2 cups flour
• 1 pinch of salt

Boil the water and mix with oil. Add flour and salt. Mix all ingredients together with a fork.

Here's what mine looked like at this point:


Then you divide the dough in half. Each half makes one pie crust (one for the top, and one for the bottom). I was supposed to roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper so there is no mess, but I didn't have wax paper, so I used foil. It rolls out very easily, but is very greasy to the touch - so if you have wax paper, use it. I am sure it would "let go" of the dough a bit easier.

Either way, transfer the first pie crust to the pan you are using.

Now you are ready for filling. I will post the pie recipe tomorrow.

Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Easy as pie?

My husband loves desserts. Specifically, he really loves chocolate cream pies. This Thanksgiving, he talked me into attempting to make one without milk (since I had never tried one before developing my milk alergy - and he felt I was really missing out).

I wasn't at all sure that it would work, so I made him agree to make the pie with me. He was game. So I first Googled cooking with soy, and found that a certain site suggested that I add 1/4 cup corn starch to my pudding filling so that it would set up. (Those of you cooks reading this, are probably already guessing this didn't work too well... but let me tell the story anyway...)


First we started by making a home-made graham-cracker crust. It was easy and fun. We took a package and a half out of our box of Honey Maid graham crackers and put them in a zip-lock bag for the karate chop. (Then we finished the job with a rolling pin.) I was afraid it might have been crushed too much - it looked like graham dust - but it worked just fine. Then we added the crumbles to about a stick of melted margerine in a bowl. I sprinkled in somewhere between a 1/3 and 1/2 cup of white sugar into the mixture. Then we pressed it with a spatula into the pie pan and put it in the fridge.


The next day, we cooked the pudding with soy milk. But instead of the 3 cups that were called for, we only used about 2 - because the website we'd looked at told us to "reduce the liquid" when using soy. And in went 1/4 cup of corn starch to make sure it would thicken. Boy did it ever! The stuff was like taffy before we could even get it to boil.



We were a bit concerned at the consistency, and added maybe another 1/4 cup of soy. We stirred it in and removed the globby mixture from the heat. We pressed it into the pan on top of the crust, using cling wrap on to so we could knead it into where it was supposed to go. We hoped it would relax, but there were still "peaks" on top when I pulled it out of the fridge the next morning to add the Cool Whip.


The pie looked fine, and we took it anyway. Though there was tremendous laughter from our friends when we explained what had happened, and they saw the chocolate pie standing up on its own and being so firm, everyone agreed it tasted just fine. There was none left when we returned home.

However, for next time, we will know to use the called for amount of (soy) milk and after it has boiled to add a small amount of corn starch. (Like maybe a Tablespoon.)