I have waxed poetic about my love of wild blueberries before on this blog. (See here, here and here). Sweeter, smaller and less acidic than their big sister, the cultivated blueberry, they are, without question, my favourite summer fruit. Mostly I just enjoy them raw, in cereal or with yogurt and granola, but I also love to bake with them.
My daughter is pushing me to try flavour combinations I have never considered before. Blueberry and ginger? According to Bon Appetit it’s a dynamite combo. The ginger adds a subtle bit of heat in the back of your throat that is totally unexpected but very delicious. Tart lime adds the perfect hit of acid.
I decided to make mini pies, because I was dying to use my new tartlet pans from Nom Living in London. Their ceramics are beautifully hand crafted and just a joy to look at. I had some fun covering the pies with little flower cut outs. Plain or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, these mini blueberry ginger pies are just adorable. But, full disclosure here, I found the crust to filling ratio was wrong. Way too much crust in these mini pies. A fruit pie needs to be singing with fruit and these tiny pies were just humming.
A 9 inch glass pie plate is the perfect vehicle to cram in all this blueberry happiness.
Depending on where you are in your particular family life cycle, hearing the phrase “Family Togetherness” may wrap your heart like a warm hug or may cause you to run screaming from the room.
In my case, the chicks are all grown and have flown the coop. When my progeny all come together under the same roof, I sleep sounder at night. It fills me with joy. However, there was a time when I wanted to run kicking and screaming from their loving and sometimes all encompassing embrace, but that’s a tale most moms can relate to, and there is certainly no need to go into the gory details here.
This past weekend, the stars and planets were aligned just right and we were together as an entire family at the cottage. As we were having dinner on Saturday night, the youngest, wanting to relive the defining moments of his childhood, asked his siblings what were some of their worst memories of growing up. He is a bit of a “glass half-empty” kind of kid. We all laughed and then they were off down memory lane, telling stories about the time(s) mom yelled, or the time blood spurt everywhere when dad cut the youngest with an electric razor during his inaugural shave.
As I listened to my kids tell these tales it struck me that even with all the digital advances we have made with memory keeping, a family’s folklore and history really lives best through good old fashioned story telling. It is the telling and retelling of these anecdotes that connect us as a family. In our family, some of the stories have been told so many times that my kids and their cousins use a shorthand system to refer to them. As in, “Oh come on Uncle Roger, tell us Chapter 18 again.” (Chapter 18 is the tale of how my husband came to shave off his moustache of 31 years, after losing a hockey bet.)
My daughter and I collaborated on Saturday to create this cocktail. One to two of these will be all you’ll need to get the stories flowing. Somehow, the kids and I polished off the entire pitcher while my husband was napping on the hammock, so I am certain that by next summer he will be telling the saga of his hurt feelings when his family neglected him during aperitivo hour.
Yesterday at spin class, when I climbed down off my bike after an especially gruelling 55 minute class, I noticed a few drops of water under my bike. I checked to see if my water bottle was leaking, but no, the lid was screwed on tight. Suddenly it dawned on me that the liquid on the ground was my own sweat. If you are not a spinner, you may not realize the significance of this discovery. It is the athletic equivalent to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.
There is a right of passage in the Jewish religion known as a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. When a young boy turns 13 he has a Bar Mitzvah and we say “Today you are a man.” For girls the age is 12 and it is called a Bat Mitzvah (we mature faster!).
Today, after spinning consistently 3-4 times a week, for the past 6 months, I have finally worked hard enough to produce an actual puddle of sweat, albeit small, under my bike. I would have shouted, “Today I am a spinner” but I had not one ounce of energy left to even utter mazel-tov.
When I got home, all I could think of was celebrating with something sweet and salty to replace all those precious calories I sweated away. And then I remembered the “Oh My God” pie recipe my friend Marla had sent me. It seemed a fitting way to commemorate this milestone in my life.
This is a traditional pie, served all up and down the North Carolina Coast. Similar to a key lime or lemon meringue pie, but with a twist. The difference is in the crust. Instead of a traditional pastry or graham wafer crust, this crust is made from saltine crackers. Bill parted with tradition and topped his simply, with whipped cream, instead of the traditional meringue topping.
Bill said that when he was growing up it was common knowledge in his part of the world that you would get very sick if you ate dessert after a seafood dinner. This pie was the only exception and it was served in all the seafood restaurants on the North Carolina coast.
Recently, Katie was dining at Bill’s Chapel Hill North Carolina restaurant, Cook’s Corner. After an amazing dinner of shrimp and grits, fried oysters and hush puppies, Katie says she was stuffed and had no room for another bite. But then Bill brought out a slice of this pie. Katie took one bite and had her “When Harry met Sally” moment. All she could utter, between bites, was “Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god!”
What makes this pie so outstanding is the crust. Crushed saltines, a bit of sugar and softened butter are transformed into a thick, dense, crispy, salty crust. No dough rolling, just press it into a pan and pre-bake the shell, while you prepare the filling.
The filling is made with lime (or lemon) juice, sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks.I learned a great trick for whipping cream ahead of time from pastry chef Anna Olsen. Her secret is to add 1 tablespoon of skim milk powder for each cup of whipping cream at any point during the whipping process to stabilize it. She says, “It doesn’t impact the taste or texture, but it stabilizes the whipped cream. You can pipe it, you can dollop it, every swirl and swish will stay in place for a full 24 hours. If you ice a cake you can cut it and you get these clean perfect slices and the whipped cream stays whipped.”I decided to get fancy with my whipped cream and I put it into a piping bag, fitted with a star tip, to top the pie. You could just spread the whipped cream over the pie with a knife, or even serve it on the side, with a slice.
This pie is a study in contrasts. The crispy crust is in perfect balance with the silky creamy filling and the billowy whipped cream topping. The saltiness in the crust is utterly complemented by the tanginess of the lime and the sweetness of the condensed milk. This is beautiful harmony in a pie. Click here to print recipe for Oh My God Pie.
I have waxed poetic about my love of wild blueberries before on this blog. (See here, here and here). Sweeter, smaller and less acidic than their big sister, the cultivated blueberry, they are, without question, my favourite summer fruit. Mostly I just enjoy them raw, in cereal or with yogurt and granola, but I also love to bake with them.
I had some fun covering the pies with little flower cut outs.
Plain or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, these mini blueberry ginger pies are just adorable. But, full disclosure here, I found the crust to filling ratio was wrong. Way too much crust in these mini pies. A fruit pie needs to be singing with fruit and these tiny pies were just humming.
