Mississippi Mud Pie [Club Baked]

Yes, I was going to start baking again, and I have! One of my many New Years Resolutions is to bake (and cook) - at least once a week. This way I'll be improving my skills and providing wonderful treats to my friends in the Bay Area. I'll probably send a couple of cookies on the way to my friends in different countries and states which means I need your addresses and requests!

Anyways, back to this recipe. In the book it describes the Mississippi Mud Pie as a controversy so I decided to wiki it. Apparently on wikipedia, they only have the second version of the pie, with the dense cake and not this version.

This version has a nice cookie base, chocolate in the middle, ice cream, and some fudge on top! It's a nice delicious (and fattening) treat after a great dinner with my boyfriend. I used some Bailey's instead of whiskey, oreos instead of wafers for the base, and well, karamel sutra ice cream instead of coffee. I know it's not the same, but it was delicious regardless. I really enjoyed making this. I used about 1/6 of the recipe and ended up with three little pies in cupcake liners. I made these before I left for a business trip. I was gone for a week to Sacramento so it was great to eat dinner, drink wine, and talk to him. It's those little things in a relationship that really count.

PS. Thanks to Club Baked and Jess for this awesome pick!

Fruits of the Forest Pie

I know that I had promised to bake more..and now that I'm moving out of my apartment I am! I had 2 frozen pie crusts and I thought that yesterday was perfect for a pie. 

I had tried to just use the other pie crust as the top crust, but it fell apart on me, so I decided to be a little creative instead. I cut out (using cookie cutters) hearts and made the top crust that way. This way, there were vent holes where the pie could do its thing. 

It was so delicious. We couldn't even stop and get a picture of its inside. The many many different berries made it a great combination. I feel like you could still taste all of them even though they were mixed together. It was still warm about 2 hours later when we finally dug into it and it was gone in 2 minutes. 

Fruits of Forest Pie (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

1 double crust pie crust
2 cups strawberries, cut into small pieces
1 cup blueberries
1 cup raspberries
1 cup blackberry
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Ease bottom crust in 9-inch pie pan.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Stir in berries. Gently toss berries until coated. Transfer berry mixture to the pastry-lined pie plate.
Trim bottom pastry to edge of pie plate. Place top crust on filling and fold edge under bottom pastry. Flute edge as desired.  Prick with fork for steam vents. ( I made the top crust by cutting some pie dough into shapes of hearts and decoratively placed them on the pie) 
Bake for 50 minutes, or until top is golden filling is bubbling. Cool on wire rack.

Apple Banana Crumble Pie

This pie was really delicious. It was super easy to make as well.

I brought this with me when I went to a Life Beyond Ramen. This time around we made Japanese curry. It was really delicious as well.

Recipe:

Ingredients:
3 md Apples; cut in chunks
2 md Bananas; cut into chunks
2 tb Lemon juice
1 c All purpose flour
1/2 c Sugar
1/2 c Brown sugar; packed
1/2 ts Cinnamon
1/2 ts Nutmeg
1/2 c Butter or margarine; soften
1 9" pastry shell; unbaked

Directions:

Combine fruits and lemon juice; let stand 10 minutes. Combine flour, sugar and spices; cut in butter till crumbly. Arrange fruit in pastry shell. Sprinkle with crumb mixture. Bake at 400F for 35-40 minutes. Cover top lossely with foil if crumb mixture browns too quickly. Cut in wedges to serve.

Honey Mango Pie

So this one time, my friends and I were talking about pies and one friend said that he likes a mango pie. Although he's never had one, he thought that it would be nice.

I decided that it would be nice to try a mango pie for a Vietnamese food night since it would be interesting and I've never made that before, but also because it would kind of follow the theme - Vietnamese like mangoes, I think. Anyways, I brought it and it was a hit at the party.

Honey Mango Pie
Ingredients:
pie crust [I bought one]
4 mangoes
14 oz [1 can] sweetened condensed milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup honey
1 Tablespoon of vanilla extract
Directions:
Prebake crust at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes.
Peel, pit, and puree the mangoes with the rest of ingredients.
Pour into crust. I had a bit extra; I placed it in a ramekin and made a pudding.
Bake it at 350 degrees F for about an hour.
Place a baking sheet underneath just in case it poofs up too much and makes a mess in the oven.

North Fork Peach Raspberry Pie [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, North Fork Peach Raspberry Pie, was chosen by Rebecca of Beurrista.

It was a pretty quick make, but it was a bit harder to find tapioca pearls, but I just subbed them with flour. I also changed the proportions of raspberry to peach. I didn't have enough peaches, so I just added more raspberries. It was delicious!

I might have kept it in the oven for a bit too long. I'm still trying to get used to the new oven at my new place.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Coconut Custard Pie [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Coconut Custard Pie, was chosen by Ruby of I Dream of Baking. This is the first recipe I've made in a while since I've been busy with ice cream cupcakes. I apologize to Tess and Carmen, but I hope that I can make those recipes soon! Now that I'm on "vacation" in Southern California, I don't exactly know how much I'll be baking. I should be back in Berkeley by the first full week of June - I got to start moving into my new apartment a couple blocks from my current one.

This pie was made on the same day the Pina Colada cupcakes were made. I used the same whipped cream and topped it off with some toasted coconut.

I actually don't know how it tasted because at the party, everyone had the cupcakes, but no pie. I hope that everyone else tasted their pie and hope it was amazing!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler Pie, was chosen by Tracey of Tracey’s Culinary Adventures. She's always helpful and in two of the same groups I am in!

This was a definite hit with my Circle K friends. They dove in and ate the pie within a couple of minutes. I swear whenever I bring things to the meeting, they are gone in a few minutes.

Instead of using fresh strawberries, I used some fresh strawberries that I had cut up and frozen. They were on sale a couple of weeks ago and I thought that I would not be able to make a grocery trip before making this pie so I decided to go that that route, but also because they were on sale! I also used a frozen pie crust! I KNOW! I just don't have the kind of time to make pies crusts. I'll try harder next time we make a pie crust. In addition to those two, I decided to go with a cocoa topping instead of the biscuits as suggested by Melissa. I had some left over cocoa strudel from my mini cocoa strudel cheesecakes so I decided to top the pie with that strudel.

It was so delicious. The strawberry and chocolate is such a great combination! I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well. I still don't know the exact flavor of rhubarb, but I would definitely make this pie again!

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

PS I got my Secret Baker's gift. Thanks to Lisa S. for the wonderful apple cake. It was delicious!

Double-Crusted Caramel Pear Pie [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Double-Crusted Caramel Apple Pie, was chosen by Susan of Baking with Susan.

I decided to use pears instead because somehow I still had a whole bunch in the fridge so I thought I would make use of it. But since I didn't have enough pears, I decided to add one apple in there. I also used two premade pie crusts. I knew that I would have no time between making last week's SMS and the MSC and this week's SMS. It just made sense to me.

I made these for an interfamily social at a friend's house on Pi Day. I just made sense to me that I would make a pie for Pi day! At the social, I finally had my first taste of poutine which is like a Canadian version of cheese fries with gravy and cheese on top of French fries. That and mole. I love my friends and the food we always end up having. We just ended up eating most of the night. FUN STUFF!

Sorry for no picture of the pie cut open. I forgot my camera and forgot to make someone take it for me! So it's not the most beautiful pie on the outside, but it was delicious.

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

PS. my spring break started 3 days ago, so I'll be baking lots this week to celebrate the end of the Circle K year and also a break from school! I'm looking for a good, easy cookie recipe. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section!

Peanut Butter Pie with Chocolate Pie Crust [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Chocolate Pie Crust, was chosen by Donna of L’Amour de Tarte.

We had an opportunity to choose what we wanted for the center and since I had this bookmarked for the longest time to make, I decided to take the chance and make this peanut butter pie. Although it calls for fudge on the bottom, I decided to skip that part because the crust was already chocolate flavored. Because of that, I made half of the fudge layer for the drizzle on top. I also made this into a tart pan, well because it would just be prettier and easier.

I bought it with me to my trip to UCLA this past week and it was a crazy week this week.

Monday, UCSD - Circle K meeting and food.
Tuesday, UCI - Circle K meeting and more food. Chipotle
Wednesday, Avatar 3D with my friend and crepes and starbucks. Gossip and talking haha.
Thursday, UCLA - Circle K meeting and a frat rush party. I ended up taking care of a drunk girl. Ahh oh well - I guess that's the perk of being sober.
Friday, relaxing because it's been a crazy busy week.

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

November Baking GALS

For this month's Baking GALS, I had decided to bake by myself instead of with Circle K since its been a crazy couple of weeks doing so. In addition, they needed to be sent out by the 14th and last weekend was my crazyyyyy fun FTC weekend and this weekend, well it would be too late. But this weekend is masquerade ball.

So Vetern's Day, day off of class, I decided to take my time and start baking. In the morning, I trekked the mile or so to go and shop at safeway. This was my change to try and bake all day and see if that was possible. I think I started baking around 12pm and didnt finish until about 6pm the same day. Even while baking, I think I may have tried to fall asleep since I was so tired of everything.

So here are the pictures and recipes that I used to bake some of the various yummy things for the soldiers!

Pumpkin Muffins

Pumpkin Pie Bars

Butterscotch Cookies: this one and this one.

sorry I dont have pictures of the rest, but I do have pictures of the filled boxes. well mostly filled!

Triple Threat: The Cookie Cake Pie...sorta

I had all the intentions of making the Cookie Cake Pie for the district board meeting this weekend, but what had happened was that:
1) no good pie pans at home [Brea] and I was being lazy and didn't want to go out and get some more
so instead of a pie looking pie, it's going to be in a 8 by 8 pan and a mock-pie. They're more like cookie cake pie bars.

The cake would just not set, but eventually...it did! But it

Mini Apple Pies

So my goal for this summer was to create 10 out of the 100 or so things on my want to make list. This sounds like a daunting task, but I have technically already created 5 things off the list since the beginning of summer. This is the 6th one. Only 4 more to go.

These mini apple pies are actually called by the creater as Apple Tarts. I think that these are more like mini apple pies because they look that way. I decided to make that crisscross shape on the top of the pies because they would look nice.

These were really simple to make and oh so yummy! They really went well with some vanilla ice cream and some caramel.

recipe here.