Pie

Who doesn’t love pie? Pie is one of those special desserts, one that truly deserves it’s own category. Why? Because baking a pie is a labor of love. Although there are certainly shortcuts you can take, like using a store-bought crust or frozen fruit, most pies require some a certain amount of commitment and dedication.  From lovingly and patiently creating the dough from scratch, chilling it, finding the perfect fruit for the filling, assembling your masterpiece, rolling the dough and shaping the pie, to the careful and long baking time. It’s a very special labor of love.

Personally, I love baking pie. In fact, I love baking pie so much that I wrote a whole cookbook on it (with over 200 recipes). That’s a lot of pie.  For a year and a half, we ate pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our kitchen counter was filled with pies. We gave pies to our neighbors, friends and local schools. We were up to our elbows in pies. I even handpicked most of the fruit for the pies from local farms and orchards. Crazy, right?! But I truly enjoyed the whole pie making process.

So fast-forward a couple of years and cookbooks later. My family has gone from “never wanting to see another pie as long as I live,” to suddenly asking me why I don’t bake pie anymore. It really makes me laugh a bit, because this is the crazy world of a cookbook author. Our meals revolve around whatever book subject we’re working on at that moment (cupcakes, chocolate, pizza, ice cream, etc…). But this was a legitimate question from my pie-deprived family.

So yesterday I decided it was the perfect day to bake them a pie. I had some gorgeous organic nectarines, which I pared with some big, beautiful boysenberries. I added some grated fresh lemon zest too. I made the crust from scratch, trying out a new gluten-free recipe (from the book Cooking for Isaiah by Silvana Nardone). It was crispy, flaky and fabulous, and one that I will definitely make again!  I even topped the pie with a lattice crust. That pie was filled with love. And it was delicious too! I finally pulled it out of the oven at 10:30 last night, as we waited patiently for it to cool down enough to eat.

That was one fantastic pie. Now I find myself wondering what kind of pie I’ll bake next: apple, pear, cranberry? Of course, that pie will probably be followed by a chorus of “how come you never make cupcakes anymore”.