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.
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!
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.
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
Friday Pie: Tartelette au Sucre from Marché Atwater, Montréal
I know, I know, this isn’t a NYC pie, it’s a pie many hours away from NYC, but Montreal is where I was at this week! I spent a glorious three days walking and biking every corner of Montreal eating poutine, bagels, and maple everything, checking out their art museums and street art, and running amok with Europeans and Australians from my hostel until sunrise. If ever you find yourself wishing you could be in a semi-European and incredibly artsy city but you don’t want to traverse an ocean, I highly recommend heading north to Montreal. If you’re alone, definitely stay at M Hostel. And while you’re there, Atwater Market is a must-visit.
Atwater Market is essentially a farmer’s market on the outside and an array of specialty food shops on the inside selling meat, baked goods, sauces, cheeses, beer, fish, and basically anything you could possibly need for an incredible meal. I beelined for the boulangerie/bakery and was met with a huge array of French meat pies and more traditional sweet pies, as well as a super-enticing pile of fresh croissants. Heaven.
I opted for the mini maple pie (or tartelette au sucre) and ordered in appalling French, then took it back to my bike and biked my way down the river to Old Montreal, about 20 minutes away on a lovely bike path using the city’s free Bixi bikes. I grabbed a spot by a fountain next to Montreal’s City Hall and prepared my body for the deliciousness of maple pie.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this pie. I’ll admit my expectations were high - I had vivid, delicious memories of the maple pie I grabbed elsewhere a few years ago in Montreal and was looking forward to that gooey maple goodness again. But this pie was severely lacking in the maple department. The flavor was not distinctly maple, but tasted (and looked) more like the filling of a pecan pie sans pecans: semi-sweet, but bland without a kick of something else.
The crust was a thick shortbread that packed far more flavor than the filling and so redeemed it somewhat, but I was so put off by the lack of maple that I didn’t even finish the pie. I’d luckily grabbed some bags of maple candy to get my fix, but the Atwater Market Boulangerie let me down on this one.
Luckily the rest of my time in Montreal was incredible enough that I quickly forgot my disappointing pie experience. If you do happen to head up there and want to give maple pie a try, I’d recommend seeking out Canadian Maple Delights in Old Montreal instead - that’s where I grabbed pie years ago, and they know what’s up.
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.
Friday Pie: Nectarine Pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds at Brooklyn Public Library
Earlier this week I was offered a job with New York Public Library to be their new Social Media Marketing Associate, and I’m ridiculously happy to say I accepted! I’m still processing the pure awesomeness that is my new job. My brain can’t handle it. I’ll be starting there in a couple of weeks, so expect some pie-atuses (that’s me making a terrible pun out of hiatus) as I get used to the full-time life again.
Now, Brooklyn Public Library actually isn’t a part of the NYPL system (they’re a separate entity), but all libraries are good libraries, and this one happens to have a café serving Four & Twenty Blackbirds’ pie!
Pie this way!
It’s been a lifetime since I ventured to bklynlibrary since I live in Queens, and I forgot how regal the entrance is to their Grand Army Plaza location. Once you’re inside, the pie can be found straight ahead and to the right, easily spotted because of the neon PIE sign:
Pardon my iPhoneography. Though I have a deep, deep love for all crumble pies, I decided to go with nectarine because I haven’t spotted a single nectarine pie in all my time pie-hunting. I’d actually kind of forgotten what a nectarine is because I basically never opt for anything nectarine in my life. Nectarines, for those few individuals who are like me and forget about nectarines, are basically just the bald relative of peaches. I opted for the 50 cent whipped cream add-on, which the server and I agreed I’d be a fool to pass up, and settled in for some library pie.
I don’t know how I feel about this pie. It was incredibly difficult to tackle with a plastic fork and I honestly should have walked the ten feet required of me to get a knife to make my life easier. Instead, I struggled through with a plastic fork that was not at all capable of handling the thick crust. Halfway through the pie, I realized that I’d accidentally eaten all of the filling with an abundance of crust still to go. The nectarines were sliced up into large chunks that my fork wasn’t splitting up well. The texture and flavor veered more citrus than I expected, and that tangy, tart flavor isn’t my absolute favorite in pies. It was certainly unique, fresh, and well made, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d personally opt for again. Just my preference, not a reflection of quality!
^ The last nectarine chunk, and so much crust and whipped cream to go! You can see the extent of my struggle to neatly eat this pie in this photo. I will say that those final bits of the crusty edge were impeccable. The saltiness was really evident in those bites, and the whipped cream balanced everything nicely.
If tangy pies are your jam, I think you’d dig this nectarine pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds. Their pies are seasonal, so visit before nectarine season is over.
Warmest regards and pies,
Lauren
—
Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on the Facebook page, or Tweet to @fridayispieday.
In my search for a pie place that would fall within the route to the beach this week, I discovered a newcomer on the NYC pie scene: Pels Pie Co. They had their opening night extravaganza in late March of this year, and it looks like they’ve quickly become a neighborhood staple for inventive and classic pie and that relaxed afternoon vibe necessary for Brooklyn writers to camp out there and work.
Pie ahead!
This is not a place for people who always order the same thing - their selection of pies rotates on a daily basis, so you can never be quite sure what you’ll have until you get there. I opted for the Apricot Honey Pie because it was one of two pies listed that I’d never heard of before, the other being Fig & Buttermilk.
(They had a vegan and gluten free option, as well!) When I received my slice, I immediately noticed the consistency was way different than I’d imagined. For a second I thought I’d accidentally been given a slice of quiche. Not wanting to potentially look stupid, I said nothing and quietly took my pie to the garden out back. But come on, this looks like quiche, right?
It totally looks like quiche. It’s not quiche. This pie was like a crossover of bread pudding and custard in a thick buttery crust. Big pieces of fresh apricot punctuated the sweet honey mix with bursts of tartness. All of their ingredients are sourced locally and baked fresh daily - when I left one woman working there was busy peeling peaches for another pie. When you can see the pie process happening during your visit, you know you’re getting the freshest pie around.
(Also pairs well with their coffee from Counter Culture Coffee + a splash of almond milk.)
They were gearing up for a talent show the day I visited, and it seems like they do things in a very word-of-mouth, neighborhood-centric way for now, sans social media. I have no doubt they’ll be a great community presence in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. I’ll check back in the fall to see what glorious seasonal pies they’re churning out then!
Warmest regards and pies,
Lauren
—
Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on the Facebook page, or Tweet to @fridayispieday.
P.S. - I am currently a freelance copywriter for hire! If you’re looking for a writer or know someone who is, check out my personal website.
After a rather disappointing adventure to IKEA this week, I decided to try and revive my day through the magic of pie. One shop that’s been on my list for ages is Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies, which is located way off the beaten path in Red Hook next to a fantastic park with a view of the Statue of Liberty, about 10 minutes west of the Brooklyn IKEA. It is quite literally a hole in the wall down a rough road, and it’s the kind of quaint, colorful slice of New York I love visiting when I need to remember why I choose to live here.
Read on!
If the view isn’t enough to convince you this place is worth a little trip deep into southern Brooklyn, then perhaps you’ll be convinced by the summery goodness of this key lime pie? I’ve always wondered how a pie shop this out of the way could be around for so long, and after trying their pie I think I understand.
I opted for a simple mini pie, but there was also an option that was a frozen pie dipped in chocolate, the ‘Swingle’. What?? Check the list out:
I took my little pie over to the nearby park and dug in while watching some Brooklynites fish off the pier there, and it was truly a lovely afternoon. The pie had a crumbly, thick graham cracker crust topped with tart, fresh key lime custard. What makes those adorable little key limes so pie-worthy is their natural sweetness, and this pie maintained that natural key lime flavor. Steve knows what’s up.
This pie is perfect for summer. It was fresh from the fridge, chilled to perfection, and paired with the sunny seaside park I was in pie heaven.
Do yourself a favor and head down to Red Hook for these pies when the madness of the city starts to get you down. Pack a picnic blanket and have a pie feast by the sea - it’s these quiet little spots in New York City that really make the city survivable.
Warmest regards and pies,
Lauren
—
Got a pie you think I should try? Leave a comment, email me, post on the Facebook page, or Tweet to @fridayispieday.
P.S. - I am currently a freelance copywriter for hire! If you’re looking for a writer or know someone who is, check out my personal website.
