Chocolate Ricotta Pie

Mmmmm... this pie is good.

Tim and I had some leftover ricotta after making lasagna over the weekend.  I wanted to do something sweet with it (visions of cannoli dancing in my head... but that's too complicated for a weeknight), so I did some Googling and found this well-reviewed Giada recipe for chocolate ricotta pie.  I made a couple substitutions... almonds instead of pine nuts [much cheaper], milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet [it's all I had at the house] and I decreased the amount of simple syrup in light of the milk chocolate substitution.

Tim and I really liked it... the filling is creamy and light and the crust has a nice nutty crunch from the almonds and cornmeal.  Good stuff.  This would make a good fancy looking but not actually hard to make dish for a dinner party or holiday.

Crack Pie!!

So, the internets are all atwitter about the tasty baked goods from Momofuku Milk Bar in NYC, particularly their Crack pie (no, not named for a particularly craggy appearance or anything, but because it's addictive like crack). The LA Times had an article about the Crack Pie and posted a recipe, and since then, many a blogger has tried their hand at manufacturing this crack in pie form.The recipe has several steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. Basically you bake a giant oatmeal cookie, then crumble it with sugar, butter and salt to make the tasty crust, and finally fill it with a ton of sin (melted butter, egg yolks, brown and white sugar, and some vanilla) and bake.

The end result is a gooey, sweet, salty, delicious mess. I brought it to a BBQ and it was gone in seconds as people basically inhaled it straight from the pie plate. It was like hyenas fighting over freshly killed wildebeest or something.

The recipe makes 2 pies- I did one in a pie plate and the other in a removable bottom tart pan. The tart pan made it a little easier to get the slices out.

Chicken Pot Pie...Smurf Style

So...my girls wanted a blue Chicken Pot Pie...so they got one.

Blueberry Pie Bars

I had 2 pints of blueberries in the fridge and Chuck and Tony brought back a third one... so blueberry pie bars it was!

The photo of blackberry pie bars on Joy the Baker looked really good, so I figured I would try replacing the blackberries with some of our many blueberries.

I halved the recipe, because none of us really needs a 13"x9" pan worth of baked good. I used a 9"x9" pan. Because that 4 extra inches of baked good was really putting this over the top.

Eat these slightly warm. Mmmm.

Mini Blueberry Tarts

These are great for a BBQ... blueberry pie, no fork or knife required. Planning on topping them with a little bit of whipped cream. Made them using the awesome blueberries from the CSA and the mini-tart press that Martha put in my stocking one year. The tart press doesn't get used often, but when it does, it rocks. Thanks, Mom!

I can thank the other Martha for the recipe. However, I can advise, for those of you that may try this recipe, that the 2 cups of blueberries required is far too much. At 17 minutes left of cooking, I checked on the tarts and they looked fine... with 7 minutes left, the blueberries had exploded pretty much everywhere- some of the blueberries had been violently propelled out of the tin. I would say use closer to 1.5 cups, to be safe. Do not overfill those little guys!

In any case, they tasted great with the whipped cream. I recommend these!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

"Tim, can you preheat the oven and pull out the pie plate, please?"

"Ehhhhhhhh... when you said you'd make me a pie, I didn't think I'd have to be involved!!!"

Used another Smitten Kitchen recipe, although I omitted the cinnamon and substituted some lemon juice instead since I have a weird thing against cinnamon in sweet dishes. I only like it in savory dishes like chili, etc. Pretty tasty, although a little watery as the recipe noted.