Friday Pie Day

Friday is Pie Day. I scour NYC for pies of all kinds & present my findings on Fridays. #Delicious. Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on my Facebook page, or Tweet at me @fridayispieday. Find every past review or recipe at fridaypiedayblog.com/reviews!

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Kicking off the morning with mom's chocolate cream pie.

I’ve decided that perhaps this is as good a place as any to conclude my pie adventures. As always, you can find all past reviews here and I may spontaneously return one day. But for now, thanks for following, random strangers.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[fridaypiedayblog]

Friday Pie: Mrs. Smith’s (Frozen) Pumpkin Pie

On a recent voyage to the grocery store, a large sign in the window caught my eye: Mrs. Smith’s Pies $2.99. Only $2.99 for AN ENTIRE PIE! They must be atrocious! With Friendsgiving/Thanksgiving hurtling around the corner, everyone is looking for some cheap, quick potluck item that looks like it took actual time and effort. These pies might actually be your saving grace.

Now the first thing that really surprised me about this pie was the amount of time this damn thing takes. Holy Jesus. It’s ridiculous. I could make several homemade, easy, delicious pumpkin pies in the time one of the frozen variety takes to cook with just slightly more effort. Look at this:

Over an hour cooking time. TWO HOURS to COOL. Mrs. Smith!

I chucked it in the oven before making dinner, and was already through two TV shows and dinner by the time it was out. I let it cool through another two hour-long episodes of Project Runway Season 14 and fill my apartment with glorious pumpkin spice smell, then I got out my Cool Whip and sliced myself a petite serving.

Consistency-wise, it appeared a little less solid and more creamy than I would have liked but not awful. The smell was kind of bothering me - it smelled just a bit too chemically sweet. One plain bite, and I was not really having it. It was all spice, no pumpkin, as if Mrs. Smith was trying desperately to hide the fact that it wasn’t fresh pumpkin. We know, Mrs. Smith. The jig is up.

But a bite with a spoonful of Cool Whip was a game changer. Seriously. The chemical cream of Cool Whip blended insanely well with the chemical pumpkin and the crust tasted like Pop Tart crust and I was feeling. it. The outside crust was also adequately tasty and buttery. Good job, Mrs. Smith!

And considering the amount of effort it takes, this is a completely passable dessert item for a potluck. Plus, it’s only $3 ($5 not on sale) plus maybe $3 for Cool Whip. Budget buddies, you’re welcome. Just make sure you budget 3+ hours for it so you aren’t carrying a very hot very jiggly pie on the subway. PROTIP: This time can also be used to defrost your Cool Whip properly! Whoa! Tell your friends you made it from scratch. They won’t know.

Happy Friendsgiving!

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[piecorps]

Check out our crumb! Thanksgiving is nothing without butter & sugar. Pre order your Apple Crumb w Rosemary Caramel or Pumpkin Crumb: http://www.piecorps.com/order-your-holiday-pies/

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Pumpkin crumb??? I'm in.

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Patti LaBelle I have to say girl you did it with this pie.

Posted by James Wright Chanel on Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Holy jesus this review is everything.

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Friday Pie: Super-Quick Chocolate Cream Pie

This blog is likely to become an erratic non-weekly thing since unfortunately making and/or traveling to the depths of Brooklyn for pie hasn’t topped the priorities list lately. It’s half good (hooray exciting things are happening!) and half bad (oh no so many pies not being eaten). In the theme of having not enough time for things, this week’s pie is a fabulously quick pie I thought up on the subway home the other day. It takes 3 minutes to assemble, comes in at about 200 calories if you use all the low-cal ingredients, and tastes/looks like it required way more effort! Woohoo!

Quick! Pie!

Ingredients:

1 Keebler Graham Mini Ready Crust

1 Sugar Free Chocolate Pudding

~4tbs Fat Free Cool Whip (which always makes me think of Stewie)

It’s as simple as you think. Throw that pudding in the shell first (I didn’t use the entire cup, but ate the leftovers).

Top that pudding with the Cool Whip and sprinkles.

Put it in your face.

Delicious. In the future I might opt for whipped cream over Cool Whip just because Cool Whip has kind of a weird vaguely non-existent flavor. But always, always sprinkles.

Next week, a more complex homemade pie.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[kylefewell]

Pumpkin pie and whipcream bbs

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I support this.

[piecorps]

PIE. IN. A. JAR. Yes, we said that. Apple Crumb w Rosemary Caramel. It’s so good it’s stupid.

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Oh boy. Pie Corps, you tempt me.

[fridaypiedayblog]

Friday Pie: Homemade Apple Rose Pie

This week I went apple picking in Hell aka Barton Orchards (see Yelp for details, why did I not start there?) and decided to challenge myself to a Pinterest-level pie, in which the baker is supposed to twist apple slices into a rose shape to fill the pie shell with beautiful roses. Easy-peasy. I kicked things off with the wrong type of apple, the wrong type of crust, and a limited amount of confidence in my own abilities. I’ll write out some of the steps, but really this video by Eugenie Kitchen is pretty straightforward and no recipe is needed. Hooray!

In prepping for this, I realized that she didn’t really tell you how to slice the apples. She mentioned a vegetable slicer, which I do not own, but didn’t really give much strategy beyond that. So basically, PROTIP: you’ll only use slices from two sides of the apple and the rest kind of just gets thrown out. You need the half moon shaped pieces to really get the rose effect. It took approximately one apple per mini pie crust.

Post-slicing, sprinkle a nonstick pan with a good amount of cinnamon-sugar mix, then put the slices in a single layer around the pan and let it sizzle on low heat until the apple slices are tender, no flipping. Chopsticks came in handy getting them off the pan and onto a plate, where you’ll put them cinnamon-sugar side up. These need to cool or you’re going to burn your hands and get super sticky assembling the roses.

Target the smaller slices for the center of each rose, and use a slightly larger one for the outside. I was pretty amazed by how easy this assembly process actually was. It just takes a while because you have to assemble so many roses and make more petals as you go.

Now for the nuts in bottom of the pie shell, I went with chopped pecans because that’s what I had around, but the recipe calls for walnuts. Whatever, man. Pecans worked out fine, and soaked up the glaze to create a gooey layer under the rose-apples.

I may have messed up the glaze. I don’t know. I think I didn’t put enough on. But regardless, these came out looking pretty damn awesome. I would only attempt a full-sized version if I seriously loved someone and it was their dying wish for some reason, but I’d definitely make mini ones in the future to impress people and bask in my own glory. If you really want people to think you’re a genius at baking, make one of these suckers. What’s fantastic is you can easily assemble only one of them without wasting any ingredients if you use a pre-made crust and freeze the leftover dough in mini discs for future mini pies. Perfect for those nights when you want to painstakingly assemble your own dessert!

Bon appetit!

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[fridaypiedayblog]

Friday Pie-atus.

Pie next week, I promise. I’m going apple picking this weekend, which means an abundance of apples that must immediately be baked into mini pies and big pies and crumbles. It also means visited a farm stand where I can buy MORE PIE. Oh boy. Hudson Valley Heaven. Here’s a genuine gif of me and a friend pondering the pies that await.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[fridaypiedayblog]

Friday Pie: Mixed Berry Tart from Le Pain Quotidien

I cheated on pie this week with his cousin, the tart. It was a moment of weakness in the face of a demanding schedule that I’m still not quite used to having spent five months basically lounging either on my couch or at the beach. I don’t regret cheating with this tart from Le Pain Quotidien. It was the perfect dessert for a dreary, exhausting day.

Due to an abundance of people avoiding the rain and taking up seats in Le Pain Quotidien, I took my tart to go and ate it on the subway platform on my way to some gallery openings like a true New Yorker.

So here’s my reasoning behind picking a tart this week: isn’t a tart basically just a pie with a shallower bottom crust? Who are we to classify a tart as separate due to a lack of top crust when pumpkin pie, chess pie, and many other pies have no top crust? Those, if you didn’t know, are the two key differences between a pie and a tart: a tart has a shallower bottom crust and no top crust. That’s it. So if you make one of those top crustless pies a bit shallower, it’s a tart. Seems silly to me. So I’m going to go ahead and include tarts in my pie repertoire.

And this tart. It tasted like angels wept into the standing mixer where they were making the cream filling. I’m fairly certain the pope blessed each individual berry while he was here the other day. Initially I was bothered by the $7 price tag for this little tart, but one bite and I knew what love tastes like.

The cream inside is fresh to DEATH, the berries were, pardon my pun, tart! and glazed with a completely non-gelatinous, pure sugary-sweet glaze, the crust was sturdy enough to handle all that filling, and the flakes of almond around the edge were that kissing hand thing stereotypical Italians do in movies. This. (And can we please discuss that site???) Perfecto.

I’m mad that I know about this tart. I’m mad because it’s two blocks away from my office and now I know it exists and I’m going to want to eat it all the time. I’m going to tell myself I deserve it after spending 15 minutes at the gym when I definitely don’t deserve it. Alas. This is the risk I run as a pie blogger.

Le Pain Quotidien, if you’d like to try this tart for yourself (and you should), is a chain that has locations all over Manhattan and Brooklyn. They also make a whole bunch of other delicious things. Go.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

[truebluemeandyou]

DIY Apple Rose Pie Video Tutorial from YouTube User Eugenie Kitchen.

Make these easy DIY Mini Apple Rose Pies with Caramel Sauce using an easy recipe posted at the link.

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File under: things I would like to try this holiday season. Perhaps this will be what I make for Friendsgiving?

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Because it’s Friday and because we could all use more cookies in our everyday lives, these Pistachio Boston Cream Pie Cookies are up on the blog today. Not one, but TWO, pistachio shortbread cookies sandwiched between a pistachio pastry cream and then dipped in dark chocolate ganache and sprinkled with chopped pistachios. It’s the perfect weekend cookie. Make them so that everyone will think you’re cool.

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Wowowow. Must make.

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Friday Pie: Apple Pie from Pasticceria Rocco

What I appreciate about my friends is that when one contacts me spontaneously to see if I’m around and I respond that I’m free but need to eat pie, that isn’t ever questioned and the hunt for pie commences. (Hopefully my next pies will be a little more planned, but it’s been a busy month so mostly it’s just been me going ‘Oh shit I need to find pie’ every Thursday night and Yelping my way to victory.) Our Yelp scanning brought us to a well-loved Italian bakery in the West Village: Pasticceria Rocco.

We’d called in advance to make sure they had pie, but the guys behind the counter seemed quite confused that at an Italian bakery known for cannoli and beautiful traditional Italian pastries, we were looking for apple pie. I’m glad we stuck to that demand, because this was a very interesting Italian twist on an apple pie.

At first glance, it looks like a standard apple pie. Pretty lattice crust, gooey filing, normal. Cutting into it to take a teeny-tiny slice each (we’d just come from shoving almost two entire pizzas and half a bottle of wine in our faces), I immediately noticed a big difference: the crust was not flaky or firm like your average crust, but had a soft, puffy-but-dense texture, almost like the center of a croissant. Hrm.

On the first bite, the flavor difference was immediately apparent. Rather than a cinnamon-sugary apple filling, this pie had a distinct flavor that I honestly couldn’t pinpoint. My best guess is that almond was used in this pie, either in the filling or the brushed-on glaze on top of the lattice. This lent a unique taste to the pie that reminded me of the flavor of the piles of Italian cookies at most Long Island holiday celebrations, and in that way it seemed completely on-point for Pasticceria Rocco.

It’s an odd recommendation to give, but I really do recommend this for anyone who grew up in an Italian bakery-heavy area. You know the traditional Italian cookies I’m talking about, the kind of buttery almond-y ones you’d get in the big white box with the red-striped string. This pie is a hybrid of those cookies and an traditional apple pie.

It’s not on the menu and we had the odd experience of describing what a pie looks like to the waitress, who didn’t seem to know what we wanted, but it’s there if you want to try it.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

— Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on my Facebook page, or Tweet at me @fridayispieday.

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Friday Pie: Chocolate Pudding Pie from Magnolia Bakery, Grand Central Station

I’m back! I’ve been settling into the new job and finally feel like I have a slight grip on my schedule, so I’m not arriving home feeling completely exhausted every day. Hooray! This week, I took a short walk from my office to one of my favorite places on the planet, Grand Central Station. If you’ve never bothered to go inside, you’re missing out. It’s home to some of the most stunning architecture in the city. It’s also home to a pretty kickass dining concourse, which includes Magnolia Bakery!

In the case they had a few seriously insane-looking pies, but I’ve been having a deep chocolate craving for several days now so I settled on the $6 mini Chocolate Pudding Pie. Pardon my wonky iPhoneography this week.

I’ve had one other pie from Magnolia - their Peanut Butter Icebox Pie, which was almost too intensely peanut buttery. This pie was also quite rich, but in a much more balanced way. I still wasn’t going to eat the whole pie in one sitting (and plan to extend it over several sittings to make the deliciousness last), but the flavor was not as overwhelming.

The crust was really where the power was: this thick, buttery graham cracker crust almost competes with the one my mom makes. You can taste the butter (in a good way). I’d say the pie is more crust than anything else, but in this case that just makes it amazing. Nestled in the graham crust is a cocoa-licious pudding topped with little balls of fresh whipped cream.

This pie is living out the last hours of its life in my office fridge before I demolish it in the comfort of my own home, where no one can judge me for eating a whole pie alone. For $6, this is pie is a delicious little bargain - and the view when you pick it up isn’t too bad either.

Warmest regards and pies,

Lauren

— Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on my Facebook page, or Tweet at me @fridayispieday.

[piecorps]

Is that Fall we feel today? Makes us look forward to our favorite seasonal flavors.

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Oooooo I can't wait for fall flavors!

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Friday Pie-atus continues!

This week has been so busy I couldn't even let my mind wander to pie, let alone my body. Pie will likely return next week! In the meantime, check the archives for all the pie that's fit to eat: fridaypiedayblog.com/reviews. Warmest regards and pies, Lauren

[fridaypiedayblog]

Just a reminder that maple pie is delicious. (Even if last week’s wasn’t my favorite.) Missing vacation pie, but glad to be at a new job making money to buy more pie. That’s what it’s all about, right??

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That looks heavenly. Do you have a favorite maple pie recipe?

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I actually prefer to bake a maple pecan pie if I'm in the mood to make something maple. This one is fantastic: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/maple-pecan-pie-104528