Living the Life

Last week I wasn't able to do my Dorie bake but this week I made the Double Crusted Blueberry Pie picked by Amy from South in Your Mouth , You can find the recipe for this pie in Dorie's fabulous Baking: From My House To Yours or at Amy's site. With the prices of blueberries here being 2.99 euro for 125 grams, I figured out I needed about $20 in blueberries for this pie, now I like to stick to the recipe, but that was a little too much for me. So I used some more of the frozen berries that I also used for the mixed berry cobbler we baked 2 weeks ago. Shortening is also a thing that is hard to come by on this side of the pond so I used the cheapest hardest margarine I could find as a substitute, which worked out fine. I used my food processor to mix all the ingredients which made life so much easier. The pie came together very easy. The only thing I forgot was to sprinkle it with sugar but I don't think that that made a lot of difference. The taste was great, the crust ...

Florida Pie was this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie and was picked by Dianne of Dianne's Dishes , thanks for picking one of my favorite American desserts! I've been to Florida quite a few times, the first time was about 25 years ago and that was when I first ate Key lime Pie. Whenever I see it on the menu I have to try it and I made it a few times here at home too. I never did the meringue on top though, so that was the new thing for me. I left the coconut out because I couldn't find any sweetened coconut flakes here in the village and didn't feel like driving 10 miles for just the one ingredient. The pie was very easy to make, I used digestive biscuits instead of graham crackers which aren't for sale in this part of the world but taste almost the same as a base for the pie. Dorie uses more crumbs for the base than my old recipe but it was way better, so this one is a keeper. The filling is pretty straight forward too. For the meringue I made sure there was a...

My second Tuesdays With Dorie bake, this week's recipe was choosen by Natalie of Burned Bits and can be found on page 310-311 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My House To Yours . When I read the recipe I thought that it would be pretty simple to make this one, well it wasn't! I had a lot of trouble with the dough, it was really sticky! When I finally rolled it to the right dimensions it wouldn't let go of the parchment, resulting in a very messy top layer. The bottom layer I could patch with bits and pieces but that didn't work for the top layer because of all the apple bits underneath. When it came out of the oven after 65 minutes it didn't look ok, it was very dark around the sides, almost burned. In the middle it was ok. My trusty tasters and I didn't care for it. One reason could be that I used goudreinetten as the apple, a very old Dutch apple breed that we use here for apple pie, applesauce etc. This a a very tart apple and I think the filling could...

A long time ago I had banoffee ice cream, I think it was from Häagen-Dazs but it could have been Ben and Jerry's also. Later I found out it was based on a pie and I made one yesterday. It was a big hit and not as filling as we'd expected, even my brother loved it and he's kind of picky with new things. Here's how I did it: Banoffee Pie Ingredients: 1 tin of condensed milk (400 gr) 150 grams of digestive biscuits 75 grams of butter 3 large bananas 250 ml whipping cream some dark chocolate to grate over the pie Instructions: Put the can in a pan filled with water and boil it for 4 hours, make sure that the can stays submerged all the time, otherwise the can may explode! Let it cool down. The milk has turned in to toffee. Put the biscuits in a ziploc bag and hit them with a rolling pin until you have only crumbs left. Melt the butter in a pan, add the crumbs and spread this mixture evenly in a pie tin. Let this cool down in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Spread the...