Two Days of Pie

So, I recently bought the cutest little cookbook from Barnes & Noble's bargain section titled "Mini Pies" by Pene Parker, Becca Spry, and Sara Lewis because it was just too cute to pass up. Oh, in case you're wondering, I have a slight addiction to cookbooks. Anyways, I got the hankering to make mini strawberry-rhubarb pies for Dave. The book doesn't have it's own recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie, so I decided to get one off Allrecipes.com and use the crust recipe, cook times and such from the cookbook. 
After staying up until 12:30 am, alas, I could not get the two crust recipes in the book to work enough to even get half a batch of mini pies. So, I used what I could and saved the remaining pie filling (which was most of it) for the next day and a regular pie. The little twerps tasted good, though, and I just chalked up to some crappy crust recipes. 

Mini Pie

Mini Pie Bite

Mini Pie Top

I went to the store last night and bought some pre-made crusts (by the way, that was the first time I've used those rolled up ones) so I could rid my fridge of otherwise useless pie filling. Hello, fantastic! The pie filling recipe is great and oh man, was that hot pie good with a scoop of french vanilla ice cream (I'll explain later on why I specify what kind of vanilla ice cream)! Now, I don't usually use pre-made crusts because I'm trying to improve my baking skills, but sometimes, you just gotta. 
I will share the recipe with you and a couple pictures I took, but I will tell you that I'm not the best photographer and my pictures are very basic. Just a couple shots of what I made. Here's the recipe, courtesy of AMLIW on Allrecipes.com:


Strawberry Rhubarb Pie


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3 eggs, beaten
4 cups rhubarb, chopped
3 cups strawberries, chopped
1 recipe double pie crust
1 egg white


Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out one of the crusts onto regular pie pan/dish and trim edges as needed.
2. In large bowl, mix together sugar, flour, and nutmeg. Stir in eggs. Fold in rhubarb and strawberries, coating well. Pour into pie crust and top with second crust, being sure to cut slits to vent steam. Crimp edges with fingers in whatever fashion you prefer, then brush egg white on the top crust. 
3. Bake 50-60 minutes, or until crust is golden and rhubarb is tender ( I have no idea how you're supposed to tell that from outside the pie, but whatever). Serve hot with some vanilla ice cream.

 I made some little letters from the crust trimmings. Cute! Oh, and I forgot to spread the egg white on the crust, in case you can tell. But it tasted great.

 Side view so you can see how tall and...whatnot....

Doesn't that look delicious? Love it!


Oh, before I close this post, I said I would explain why I specified what kind of vanilla ice cream to have. It's because there is a real difference between French vanilla, vanilla bean, and regular vanilla. French vanilla is made with custard, which is why it's yellow; vanilla bean is made with regular cream/milk and has ground vanilla bean in it; regular vanilla, the less fancy one, has neither custard nor beans. So, I figure if I'm having regular ice cream with yummy fat in it anyway, I might as well go for the bodacious one..er..yeah. Bodacious. I said it.