Friday, November 14, 2008

A Must for Crust: Three Ways to Beautify Your Pie


Last fall, an article in Martha Stewart Living opened my eyes to the decorative possibilities for pie and pie crust. You can link to the original article here, but I wanted to share my favorite three ways.

The beauty of these tips are that they work on both homemade crust and refrigerated Pillsbury Pie Crust- which is the best cheater crust out there that will fool anyone. It rolls out so there are no creases and you can shape it as you like so it looks homemade as well.

Number One: Sugars and Washes


Before baking...

After baking...

That perfect golden crust that you see in magazines has a secret: it’s a wash. There are several types of washes that you can brush onto your raw pie crust before baking to give it a certain sheen or color. Additionally, sugars, in fine or coarse texture, can give a lovely glittery effect. Here are the 7 different treatments that I have applied to raw pie dough and baked to show the effect:
Each number corresponds to a different treatment. The sugars and washes can be combined as well. Click on the photos for a closer look.

Sugars
1) regular sugar (far left)- traditional sugar gives a fine glittery effect
2) sanding sugar (middle)- these slightly larger crystals catch the light a bit more
3) coarse sugar (far right)- these chunky crystals stand out

Washes
4) water wash- created a slightly different surface but is good to adhere sugars
5) egg wash- for a shiny golden brown crust
6) heavy cream wash- for a brillant sheen without the golden brown
7) egg yolk plus 1 Tbsp of heavy cream – my favorite wash that gives good yellow color and a nice sheen


Number Two: Cut-Out Crusts


When you cut vents in your fruit pies to allow the steam to escape, you can be a bit playful. I have used several different small cookie cutters to create delightful patterns in the top crust. Hearts, stars, florets and others look great. The trick is not to make so many cutouts that the top crust is hard to transfer. Martha even uses small leaf cutters to make an intricate top- she however, partially bakes her top crust to avoid breaking the delicate pattern.
Here is a strawberry pie that I made for Mother’s Day using hearts.


The top crust with cutouts...



And here is a reverse idea of a cut-out crust where I used the cutouts to build the crust. This was painfully slow to do but the effect was lovely.

Stacking the cutouts and "gluing" them with egg wash...

Sprinkled with sanding sugar...

Voila!

Number Three: Decorative Additions


In addition to cutout crusts, you can use your pie scraps to embellish your pie. As with the hearts, I used the cutout as adornments on the pie. Use wash to “glue” the raw cutouts in place on the pie and bake. You may need to use foil to cover any delicate parts of the pie that brown quickly. Don’t have a cutter? It is actually fairly easy to cut a sage-like leaf out by hand using a knife. These leaves make lovely fall additions to pies.


For custard based pies or pumpkin pie or any pie where the filling is liquid and cannot support a top crust, you can bake your adornments separately and add then once the pie is out of the oven. Last year, I baked a ring of fall leaves and crowned my pumpkin pie with them for an elaborate effect. A simpler effect might be to bake 1-3 of these leaves and add them to the pie once it is cooled.


Happy Baking!

2 comments:

PleaseRecycle said...

Will you make me one?? Your pies look delicious.

The best pie I have ever, ever had, was a coconut cream pie made by a Menonite woman (Liz) in South Carolina. OMG, just thinking about it is making my mouth water!

Have you ever made a coconut cream pie?

BookyG said...

How is it that you are not fat? And, on appearance alone, your number 7 wash does look fantastic.