Punch 3.14 into a calculator and look at it in the mirror...

Well, hey there!  Week 2 of my quest is over, and my second pie is baked (and almost completely devoured... my scale was not a friendly sight this morning).  This week's pie was white chocolate strawberry, and oh boy, was it ever delicious!

I'll get to the pie story in a second, but first things first -- a few additional rules and tidbits.  And also pictures!  Of last week's pie!  My camera is working, so from here on out, blogs will be accompanied by pictures.

With the bite-sized pies.

Now onto the other stuff before the pie part begins.  First, while this is a 52-pie challenge, that's actually my minimum.  There are probably going to be a few times where I'll bake an additional pie (for a birthday, holiday, fundraiser, what-have-you), and I absolutely CANNOT double up on pies... multiple pies one week doesn't exempt me from one the next.

Second, I'm going to follow other people's recipes for as long as I get them, but I'm sure there will be some times when I don't have a recipe or I have a great idea for one to invent... though I can't take recipes from online sources (or other generic cookbooks), I think I am allowed to invent my own.  This will come as I become more experienced in the craft of pie, but I already have a few ideas (a "Steak-N-Shake" pie is one of them... on a recent milkshake outing at the restaurant, the waitress accidentally put some banana into my chocolate and mocha side-by-side shake, and it was an unusual, though delicious combination that I want to turn into a pie).  But again, that's for later.

Finally, I'm still figuring out how this blog is going to work and what it's going to include... for now, I think the entries will be pretty pie-based (how baking went, things I need to learn, etc.), but give it a little while, and I'm sure the style will change a bit.  It takes time to get settled into the idea of blogging, so it takes time to really find my niche.  So I'll probably ramble quite a bit early on.  My apologies.  If you have ideas for what I should post or things you'd like to hear more/less about, let me know!  I'm taking my fabulous readers' ideas into account here (otherwise I'm just writing for myself, and I have a personal journal for that crap!).

Well, onto the pie!  This white chocolate strawberry recipe came from my friend Kristine, whose grandmother makes it for her on Thanksgiving.  It's Kristine's favorite, and her grandma makes something that each person will like, making this one specially for Kristine.  I think that's super sweet!

Well, the recipe looked easy enough... almost too easy, in fact.  It was a no-baker, using a graham cracker crust and instant pudding mix.  I'll admit, this worried me a bit.  I felt almost as though I would be cheating if I made such a quick and easy pie... part of the point of this is to challenge myself, right?  However, I couldn't change the recipe too much, because that defeats the point of Kristine's story.  I was in a pickle... a pie pickle, and I'm not gonna lie, I stressed about this far more than I should have.  I'm definitely a "sweat-the-small-stuff" kind of gal, and this qualified as small stuff, so I sweated.

The solution?  I decided to use the instant pudding mix (home-made can totally alter the taste, and I wanted this to honor the original recipe), but make my own graham cracker crust instead of purchasing a pre-made one.  Voila!  Besides, a store bought crust comes in an ugly tin pan, and as my dad puts it, "you can't sacrifice the pan!"  Presentation is a big part of pie making, and I think it's a big part of what I'm doing... I want this to be an art.  Especially if I'm going to use these recipes in my pie shop one day!

Go ahead, smack a dork label on me... I deserve it :)

First of all, the shopping experience this time around was a different one... I usually go to Wal-Mart for all of my shopping needs, but I don't like their produce much, so I went to Festival Foods (a local store) instead, thinking that the prices couldn't possibly be that much different.

Wrong.  They were.

I found strawberries, and they looked good (though a tad pricey), and I went off to find the rest of the things I needed (white chocolate pudding mix and graham crackers).  The pudding mix was okay, but the graham crackers seemed outrageously high-priced.  I bought them anyway, and then discovered on a later trip to Wally World that I had not only overpaid more than a dollar for the crackers, but I spent another dollar more on the strawberries!  As I'm on a budget, this was horrible.

I shake my fist at you, Festival!  Or maybe I should be shaking my fist at you, Wal-Mart, for keeping your prices so low that I want to shop amongst your plentiful aisles even when I dispise your business tactics!  GAH!

...Anyway.  So when I started baking yesterday, the only thing I had figured out as far as a crust recipe was, "all you need is graham crackers and butter."  Did I bother googling this?  False.  I did not.  I decided to wing it.  So I grabbed some crackers and melted some butter (I started small and wound up adding 4 times my original amounts of each) and got to work improvising!

First, I tried using my dough cutter to smash the crackers.

Fail.

After picking up my fifth giant chunk of cracker that flew out of the bowl and realizing that I wasn't getting anywhere, I grabbed a hammer, wrapped the crackers in wax paper, and pounded away!

Success!  Though it made quite a racket, and as I had the windows open, I'm sure people were trying to figure out what on earth I could've needed to hammer for five full minutes.

Well, it wasn't until I was relaying this story to others that my friend Alison offered to let me borrow her rolling pin for future cracker smashing endeavors.

I have a rolling pin.

I never once thought to use it.

Ah, well, the hammer was a ton of fun this time around!

So anyway, I had to add melted butter to the grahams and mix it until it felt ready to spread in a pan without crumbling apart.  10 crackers and an entire stick of butter later, I was done with the crust!

I then whipped up the rest of the filling (white chocolate pudding mix, milk, cool whip, and lemon juice) and spread it over a layer of strawberries in the bottom of the pan.

I topped it with a few extra slices for garnish, and TA-DA!!!  Pie!  With some purty flowers, just because.

Now, one thing I discovered while trying to slice the pie is that the butter in the homemade crust adhered to the bottom of my pie pan, and so there were no pretty slices this time around.  This was the closest I got.  On most other plates, it was just a big goopy mess.  However, that doesn't mean it was any less tasty... this one's definitely a keeper!  Maybe more strawberries, but the white chocolate was awesome, and it was sweet without being overpowering. 

I'm learning though... I'm jotting notes on each recipe to improve them for the next one.  While an aluminum pan would make the homemade crust easier in that I could tear the pan away, that would be sacrificing the beauty of a baking dish, so I'm going to have to test out other methods of non-stickness in the future.  Flour under the crust?  A smaller pan might help, just because this one is HUGE and makes pulling smaller slices out difficult.  Also, I think this pie was supposed to be taller, and a smaller pan would make it so.

Learning, learning learning.  So far, though, I'm loving this entire process.  It's been a blast, and I like taking time out once a week for something that's so much fun (and so yummy!).  I can't wait to get going on some of the other recipes I have... I think I'm going to mix it up each week on levels of difficulty (baking one week, no-bake the next, etc.).  So keep sending me recipes!  Email me, call me, facebook me, post a comment here, anything! 

One final note... so with pie making comes LOTS of clean-up... I'm kind of a messy baker, and I tend to use a new dish for each thing, so my dishes really pile up.  Now, my mom could tell you better than anyone that I'm lazy when it comes to cleaning... SUPER lazy.  And now that I'm living on my own, I'm realizing just how much work goes into keeping my apartment presentable... I spent yesterday doing dishes, laundry, vaccuuming, cleaning counter-tops, and just putting things away.  So basically, I appreciate my mom so much more.  Thanks, Mom!!!  I almost fell asleep during the Packers game last night, I was so tired.

That was a random note, but with this whole adult-hood thing, it's just all starting to hit me how much work goes into just living.

That fit into the blog, right?  It's about growth and learning, right?  Well, thanks for putting up with it :)

OH!  Did you do the calculator thing in the title of the blog?  Know what it spells?  PI.E... COOL!

That's all.

:)