Pizza...pie

Today was a day of firsts in the kitchen!

A few weeks ago, I found a book called “Mini Pies” published by Love Foods and ordered it online. I failed to note that the book was out of stock and it took it forever to finally arrive, but it was worth the wait. This little gem of a cookbook contains recipes for a variety of tiny pies and tartlets from cherry cream to Mississippi mud, but the one I picked out from the beginning was key lime. Todd loves key lime. And as he is a man of many likes but very few loves, I really try to play to those. 

I decided to try these miniature pies out for my friend’s shower tomorrow (yes, one of the friends getting married...surprise surprise), as she is a big fan of the KL as well. The picture in the book has lovely little graham cracker crust cups filled with beautifully pastry-bag pushed filling, and a light lime zest garnish. I couldn’t resist fantasizing about how perfectly artistic my rendition would be, which was a bad idea. I really should have known better. As much as I like to cook, and as often as it comes out pleasantly edible (I have had my flops...), I can never make things look pretty. It is the bane of the utterly unartistic. But they are sooo cute in the book. 

Anyway, the part that had me worried was the graham cracker crust, a mixture of light corn syrup (and by “light” they mean light in color...that stuff is definitely not light in anything else!), melted butter and powdered crackers. After I combined it and plopped (my signature move) little balls of it into a mini muffin tin. Todd gave me the brilliant idea of pushing another muffin tin on top to mold the crust to the cup! He’s such a genius. After I got it started with the tin, I finished forming with my finger tips and the back of a small spoon. Pop them in the over to bake for a few minutes, let them cool, and presto!  Little graham cracker crusts! I was really impressed with how well they turned out, and held up. I removed all of them from the tins without breaking a single one, and for this aesthetically challenged girl, that’s an accomplishment!

The filling, unfortunately, was a less successful venture. The ingredients were just heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, lime juice and zest. I wondered how that combination would thicken, and with good cause; it never did. 

There are a couple of possibilities here: either I didn’t whip the heavy cream long enough to allow it to thicken, or my limes were extra juicy. Regardless of the cause of the failure, the result was a bowl of limey liquid and an emergency trip to the grocery store. I ended up going with a cream cheese based filling, which still included sweetened condensed milk, lime juice and zest. It created a thicker filling, but still not the right consistency for a pastry bag presentation. So, I just used my old standby technique: the 

highly technical plop. 

Here’s the finished product; I'm really rather pleased :)

Friday nights are traditionally pizza nights at the Overbeek house. Usually this means throwing a frozen pizza in the oven, but tonight, I used a recipe my highly resourceful sister-in-law was good enough to provide. Just yeast, sugar, salt, vegetable oil and white/wheat flour go into this tasty vehicle for sauce, cheese (not for me, thanks) and meat. And I do mean meat. I better not find a vegetable on my pizza. Actually, just keep them off my plate altogether. 

While Todd and I are generally carnivorous, we rarely ever cook with red meat. I have discovered that turkey will work for just about anything. For tonight’s pizza, I cooked up some italian turkey sausage. I also use turkey for tacos, burgers and meatloaf. It’s leaner and I really prefer the taste. 

The crust was super easy to make, and takes next to no time at all if you have a KitchenAid mixer. Like my mom does. Maybe I made my crust at her house. Maybe not. 

Put a jar of my mother-in-law’s homemade pizza sauce on that delicious white/wheat crust and you’ve got...pizza Friday!