Strawberry Cream Pie and Radio Folk

So on Friday, I dropped off two pies to the all day show put on by X96's Radio From Hell. I've been cooking pies for Kerry, Bill and Gina since Bill mentioned that he wanted to be a member of the National Pie Council a few years ago. He wasn't able to get the station to send them out to Celebration, Florida for the yearly competition, so I thought he should be able to grade a pie here in Salt Lake. I brought a Coconut Cream Pie into the studio for him to try and he liked it, so I've kept bringing them pie for the yearly 13-hour broadcasts for the past 5 years.

This year, I brought the classic Coconut Cream Pie for Bill and a Strawberry Cream Pie for Kerry. I don't create a pie for Gina because she has a standing policy of not eating anything cooked in someone else's kitchen. Rule 1: Never waste pie... ever. You can hear me delivering the pie if you download the April 23 2010 6PM Hour podcast from the Radio From Hell section of iTunes. And seriously, if you're not listening to Radio From Hell on X96, you should give it a try. It's the best radio morning show I've ever listened to, mainly because it's not your standard morning show. It's actually intelligent and the entertainment is genuine, not a bunch of classic radio stunts.

Bit since this is a food blog, let me give the recipe for the Strawberry Cream Pie. It's very similar to the Coconut Cream Pie, just a different finishing ingredient.

Strawberry Cream Pie

2 ½ cups whole milk
¾ cup heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
5 ½ tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup lightly crushed strawberries

Separate the egg yolks and place them into a small container, mix them up and set aside for the time being. You'll be coming back to them later. Next, chop up about 9 large strawberries and place them in a bowl. Using a fork, crush the majority of the pieces into pulp, but leave some of the chunks whole for texture. Place them to the side until later.

In a medium saucepan, pour in the sugar, cornstarch and salt, then stir them together until they are completely combined. This prevents the cornstarch from clumping together and getting lumps like bad gravy. Add the milk and cream and whisk until any existing sugar and cornstarch lumps are gone. Cook over medium heat and stir constantly to prevent scorching.

After about 8-10 minutes, the consistency will switch from milk to a thicker warm pudding. Right after it starts to thicken, scoop a small amount of the mixture into the egg yolks and immediately start stirring the yolks. (Tricky part, continue to stir the other mixture too so it does not burn). Do this a few times so the yolks slowly warm up. This will prevent them from curdling when they are added to the main mixture. Now add the yolks into the saucepan very slowly, stirring the entire time.

Once added, pour in the butter and cook for two more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Add the strawberries and just stir until it's mixed in well.

Immediately pour it into a pre-cooked crust and refrigerate for 2-3 hours so it sets up.

When you're ready to serve it, make sure you top it with whipped cream. If you want, you can also create a strawberry syrup to drizzle over the top.

Strawberry Syrup

1 cup strawberries
1 1/2 cups sugar

Cut the strawberries into small pieces. Crush half of them with a fork and place both the crushed and chunk strawberries into a small saucepan. Add the sugar, stir and heat until it boils, stirring frequently. Once they have boiled for 2-4 minutes, pour the mixture through a strainer to remove the chunks. The remaining liquid can be placed in a small bowl to be scooped onto the slices of pie or placed into a squeeze bottle to drizzle over top of the pieces.

Reminder, I'll be going through all of the pie recipes by the middle of November so you can use them for Thanksgiving. So keep reading!!!

Next post: A marinara recipe that's extremely easy to make.

The Coconut Cream Pie, thanks Mom!

OK, here's the famous coconut cream pie. But first a story about how the recipe came to be.

As kids we all learn how to make some food. You can make a PB&J while you're in early elementary school. Pour yourself a bowl of cereal and add the milk. Then ramen noodles and Kraft Easy Mac find their way into the repertoire. If you're lucky, you learn how to use the microwave and then a whole new world opens up. But I got my crash course in cooking at the end of my 7th grade year.

I got strep throat 5 times between January and May during 7th grade. I'd get sick, go the the doctor for antibiotics, recover and be disease free for three weeks and then it would come right back. I missed about 20 days of school and we had no idea why I kept getting sick. While driving home from school on the last week of school, my mom broke the news. She had Rheumatic Fever. This is basically the strep throat flesh eating virus infecting you, but instead of infecting your throat, Rheumatic Fever attacks your heart. And she had it for the past few months without any of the doctors figuring it out, which explains why I was getting reinfected so often. The only way for her to heal was to take massive amounts of antibiotics and to be bedridden for the next 6-8 weeks. She could get out of bed for food and bathroom breaks, but that's it. And since I was now the oldest child at home, she would need my help during the summer to keep the house in order.

So my domestication crash course began. I learned how to do the laundry, iron the clothes. get the kids ready for the day, but most importantly, I needed to learn how to cook meals. I did the basics for a while, hamburgers, spaghetti, etc. But I wanted to do something nice for her. So I asked her to explain how to cook a pie. We pulled out the Lion House Recipes book and read through the directions for their cream pies. And from her bed, my mom taught me how to separate eggs, mix ingredients and how everything should taste once it's combined. The first time I made it, I didn't stir it enough to prevent it from scalding, so it was a Toasted Coconut Cream Pie. We tried it again a few days later and it was better. It was a little runny, so my mom and I took some educated guesses on what we could do to improve it.

And so in a 6 week period, we had altered it to our liking and I've been cooking this way ever since. My mom taught me to always experiment with a recipe. Make it to your liking and some other people may like it as well. I've now morphed that basic recipe into 12 different Cream Pie recipes and I promise to post all of them before the middle of November so you can use them for Thanksgiving.

Mom's better now. The illness did attack a valve in her heart, but she's been dealing with the consequences for 25 years and is still going strong. So thanks Mom for instilling a love for cooking in me, even in the worst of circumstances.

OK, enough of a walk down memory lane, here's the recipe. Remember, this is a cream pie, it is not a low-fat or low-calorie dessert. I've tried reducing the fat by using half-and-half instead of whipping cream, using skim instead of whole milk and leaving half the butter out. But honestly, it reduces the flavor and the creamy goodness your mouth feels as you slowly consume it is just not the same. So go full fat and enjoy it all. Also, regular pure vanilla works better than the Mexican vanilla in this one recipe. I truly love Mexican vanilla, but in this case, it makes it taste a little peculiar.

Coconut Cream Pie

2 ½ cups whole milk
¾ cup heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
5 ½ tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup shredded coconut

Separate the egg yolks and place them into a small container, mix them up and set aside for the time being. You'll be coming back to them later.

In a medium saucepan, pour in the sugar, cornstarch and salt, then stir them together until they are completely combined. This prevents the cornstarch from clumping together and getting lumps like bad gravy. Add the milk and cream and whisk until any existing sugar and cornstarch lumps are gone. Cook over medium heat and stir constantly to prevent scorching.

After about 8-10 minutes, the consistency will switch from milk to a thicker warm pudding. Right after it starts to thicken, scoop a small amount of the mixture into the egg yolks and immediately start stirring the yolks. (Tricky part, continue to stir the other mixture too so it does not burn). Do this a few times so the yolks slowly warm up. This will prevent them from curdling when they are added to the main mixture. Now add the yolks into the saucepan very slowly, stirring the entire time.

Once added, pour in the butter and cook for two more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Follow this by adding the coconut and just stir until it's mixed in well.

Immediately pour it into a pre-cooked crust and refrigerate for 2-3 hours so it sets up.

When you're ready to serve it, make sure you top it with whipped cream and if you want to make it pretty, brown some coconut and sprinkle it on top. To toast it, turn on your broiler and sprinkle some coconut shreds on either a cookie sheet or an over safe plate. Place the coconut under the oven's heating elements and check it in amount a minute. Pull it out of the over when the color looks right to you.

The pie should server 8, or you can be greedy and eat two pieces a day for four days. Trust me, those four days are great days...

I'm so glad you're here, because that means we get pie!

First of all, welcome to everyone and thank you for reading the blog. I learned how to really cook as an early teenager and I've been coming up with recipes for the past couple of decades. But have I ever written them down? No! So I figured this blog would be a great way to not only document all of them, but it's an easy way to share them with friends, family and anyone else who thinks that they may sound tasty.

Now I know that the name of the blog is a little ... well... weird. But there's a story behind it. About 13 years ago, I lived in Seattle and was going through a heartbreaking divorce. My parents offered to fly me home for Thanksgiving so it wouldn't be as lonely. My food assignment was a coconut cream and chocolate cream pie. I had been making them for years and it had been my constant chore forever. So when I arrived, one of my cousin-in-laws came up, gave me a big hug, and said, "I'm so glad you're here...." I knew she had heard about all the horrible things that were done to me and I was appreciative of the sentiment.

And then she completed her thought, stating as serious as a heart attack, "... because that means we get pie!"

It caught me off guard for a minute. It wasn't a joke... wasn't sure how to react. But then I thought, you know, if my cooking is memorable enough that after a four year drought, she would be sitting there in rabid anticipation to have a slice of pie, I must be doing something right. So I accepted the compliment and made sure she got a slice of each with extra whipped cream.

My plan it to post a recipe, a comment about food or just a note about cooking, restuarants, or anything food-related at least once a week, maybe more if I can. So please check back often.

Our first recipe, the Coconut Cream Pie...