Let me have a moment by myself here and… ok, here I go…
I could live on eating pies, literally just eating pies, and my homemade pies that is. There is something mysterious about looking at a pie with a crust on, like a hat on top of a head. The crust covering the pie tells the message of something wonderful hiding underneath, and it is up to me to discover it.
Any pie, either savory pie, sweet dessert pies or meat pies communicate with me. Maybe I was a pie in my previous life or more appealing than that, I was a pie baker. Yep, I prefer the latest one.
Because I make pies very often and because there is no way on this planet that I can eat them all, I always do small recipes for pie shell. That way, I get to make a lot, to give away and get to start all over again.
The last one I did was the Date and Ricotta pie. Pretty simple in all because the cooked fruits was already in a small container in the fridge and that same morning, I made fresh ricotta cheese.
I mixed both the dates and cheese together in a bowl, drop the mixture in a pie shell, used one single layer of cheese slices, layered very nicely on top of the mix, sprinkled homemade granola on top of the cheese slices and cover the entire pie with a second pie shell.
The pie was baked in a warm oven turned at 375F, for about 20 minutes. I removed the pie, brushed the top with whipping cream and add some white sugar on top of the cream to give it an inviting look of: ‘Eat me’ and baked the pie for another 10 minutes or so, until a nice golden brown color came out.
Pretty easy, won’t you say? I love a nice piece of pie, when the inside stays between the two pie shells when it is served. This one stayed very nicely together because of the cheese combination used in this particular recipe.
Here is the recipe:
1 ¼ cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cold
2 tablespoons Crisco (shortening)
2 ½ to 3 tablespoons cold water
Mix together, put for one hour in the fridge. Roll out, put in pie plate and back in the fridge before filling out the pie shell.
