Making Thanksgiving Pies at My Farm
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
I love baking pies and every Thanksgiving, I bake one for every member of my staff here at the farm to thank them for all their hard work during the year. I hope you caught my special LIVE Food Network Kitchen class earlier this week when I made a delicious Chocolate-Bourbon-Pecan Pie. If you haven’t already, download the App today and start your three-month free trial. We also made Tarte au Fromage, Five-Spice Pumpkin Pie with Phyllo Crust, and colorful Nut-Crusted Cranberry Tarts for everyone to enjoy - just click on the highlighted links to see the recipes.
Here are some photos.
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- When cooking or baking in large quantities, take out all the ingredients you need first – seeing them all on the counter helps to identify what you have and what you may still need to get. We had to make more than 20-pies, so it was important to ensure we had enough of everything.
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- Then, we placed all the necessary ingredients for each recipe on a tray. Sticky notes are used to identify everything – it is a must especially when using a lot of different recipes. This tray includes ingredients for our Chocolate-Bourbon-Pecan Pie.
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- We made a lot of pate brisee discs in the refrigerator ready to roll out for our pie crusts. I have been making this pate brisee for many years and have perfected this recipe. It calls for two-and-a-half cups all-purpose flour, one teaspoon kosher salt, one teaspoon granulated sugar, two sticks unsalted butter, and a quarter to a half cup of ice water.
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- Molly Wenk, who does a lot of the baking for my television shows and event appearances, came up to help me make the pies. Here she is rolling out one of the discs. When rolling, make sure there are no cracks. To fit a nine-inch pie plate, roll out an 11-inch round that’s about 1/8-inch thick.
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- The pate brisee recipe allows enough extra dough to fold under and decoratively crimp the crust.
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- Next, using kitchen shears, Molly trims the edge to one inch and folds under, so it all looks neat and tidy.
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- Here is a perfect pie crust in its glass dish. I like to use glass, so it is easy to see when the pie’s bottom crust is sufficiently browned.
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- Crimping is not only decorative, but it makes it less likely the sides of the pie will fall or shrink during baking. Molly crimps the dough all the way around.
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- Prick the bottom of the crust a few times with the tines of a fork and then freeze for 15-minutes.
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- When the crust is ready to blind bake, line the crust with parchment paper, and fill it with pie weights. Bake it for 20-minutes and then remove the parchment and weights. Then bake it until the crust is dry but not brown, about five minutes more.
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- The filling for the Chocolate-Bourbon-Pecan pie includes unsalted butter, granulated sugar, dark corn syrup, eggs, bourbon, salt, pecans, and semi-sweet chocolate. You can still download the Food Network Kitchen App now and make this recipe with me in time for today’s feast.
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- We also made Five-Spice Pumpkin Pie with Phyllo Crust from the November issue of our magazine “Living”. Here’s Molly brushing butter onto sheets of store-bought phyllo and layering them at different angles in the pan.
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- She butters in between the layers as she goes and sprinkles with a mixture of sugar and five-spice powder.
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- This powder can be found at many grocery stores. Chinese five-spice powder actually contains cinnamon and clove which are already found in standard pumpkin-pie spice mixes.
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- In all, there are 16-layers of phyllo in the pan.
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- We set our new Kitchen Aid Commercial Style Oven to 400-degrees Fahrenheit and baked the crust until it was crisp and golden – about 15 to 18 minutes.
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- Here it is all done – it looks great and perfectly golden. It will be left to cool completely before adding the filling – eggs, pumpkin, milk, syrup, vanilla, flour, salt, and more of the sugar and five-spice powder mixture. It will be poured into the crust and baked for another 20-minutes.
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- Here is a nut crust for our Cranberry Tart. I originally made this fall-friendly tart in season-7 of “Martha Bakes”. The crust includes finely chopped walnuts, unsalted butter, sugar, salt, egg yolk, and vanilla extract.
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- The filling for the Cranberry Tart includes cranberries, sugar, jelly, cognac, and gelatin. Then it is poured into the crust and chilled for at least one hour.
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- It looks absolutely beautiful when ready to serve.
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- Here is one of the finished Five-Spice Pumpkin Pies. I love the modern touch to the pie crust made using the phyllo.
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- And here is a Tart au Fromage. It resembles a ricotta cheesecake in flavor and texture, but it is made with a mixture of creme fraiche and farmer’s cheese. I made this in season-11 of my television show, “Martha Bakes” on PBS. I hope you enjoy your day of cooking and baking. Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving.
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