I made pies in honor of pi day (at the insistence of my youngest, although it wasn’t a hard sell). My favorite crust recipe is the Featherlight Vinegar Pastry from The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods, by Bette Hagman. She uses her own “Featherlite” flour mix, but I’ve found King Arthur’s Measure-to-Measure flour is very similar and works well.

The crust recipe is for 2 crusts, so I used the first for my youngest’s favorite: Chocolate Chip Pie. I use this recipe, which is awesome as is. Either Gluten-Free flour or Heritage Wheat Flour work fine for the added flour.

The second crust I blind-baked with pastry weights, but made the mistake of removing the weights and cooking it a little longer. It puffed up and cracked. Ugh. Here is a good site for crust crack issues, especially creating a spackle for cracks and using an egg wash to keep the filling from seeping. The recipe I used for the custard was easy and tasted good is from The Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I won’t put the nutmeg on top before baking, as in the instructions, because it did strange things to the surface. I don’t know why I don’t make this more often, though. Yum.

Happy Pi Day! And yes, my pies are round. I also scheduled the post for 3-14 1:59, which makes me happy.

Yes, this is what I called it when I presented two different batches of crepes for a taste test. My youngest thought it was hilarious. I decided to make both corn starch based crepes and heritage wheat based crepes. I have two different recipes and wanted to see which tasted better. To try to even the board, I used the same amount of sugar in both batches. I did not match fats; the corn starch version uses butter and the wheat version uses vegetable oil. On my second batch of crepes, I started seeing faces in the bubbles, so decided to make my own face. I may have spent too much time over the skillet.

Results were mixed. Both crepes were OK, but the corn starch version had more flavor (possibly because of the butter). My youngest liked the wheat version because it had smiley faces, so three votes for taste, one for presentation. There we go.

Heritage wheat wins again. I was able to go back to my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe, but make it with Heritage Wheat All-purpose flour from Sunrise Mills. They came out so nice! I do roll out my dough on parchment paper, then pop it in the fridge (because I am never patient enough to put it in the icebox for three hours). I cut out the shapes on the parchment paper, then remove the excess, so the cookies stay the right shape. By the end, I’m sick of cutouts, so roll out the remainder and use a pizza cutter to make squares. We tried buttercream frosting, but it overwhelms the cookie, and is a pain to store (no stacking!) They do go very well with cranberry jelly, or lemon icing.

Well this was fun, I didn’t realize how easy it is to make a cranberry jelly mold. I took a 12 oz package of fresh cranberries, one cup of water, and one cup of sugar, brought it to a boil and cooked it until the cranberries popped. (I did help a few along by pressing them against the side of the pan. It scratches the same itch as popping bubble wrap.) While it was hot, I strained out the hulls, then cooked the liquid some more. I tested periodically by dropping a bit on a cold plate to see if it gelled. Cranberries have enough pectin on their own that I didn’t need to add any thing else (here is an interesting article on that). When a drop gelled, I poured the liquid into silicone rose tea cake molds and put them in the fridge. To get the jelly out, I ran the back of the mold under hot water for a few seconds, until the sides released. I think they turned out quite pretty! I realize that cranberry jelly is not everyone’s favorite thing, but I quite like it. It goes well with ham, and cornbread, and surprisingly, gingerbread.

I needed two batches of corn muffins, so decided to do a taste test. I made one batch with measure for measure gluten free flour, and the other batch with heritage wheat all-purpose flour.

The heritage wheat corn muffins took 5 minutes less to brown, rose higher, and had a smoother dome. The texture of the heritage wheat was lighter and had a better taste than the gluten-free.

This is in interesting result, because we actually prefer making our baking powder biscuits with the gluten-free flour rather than the heritage wheat (or really tasted no significant difference.) Hm. Below is the recipe I used.

• 1 cup corn meal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 15g powdered egg plus 2 Tbsp water
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3 Tbsp olive oil

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then combine with dry ingredients. Spoon into 12 parchment cups placed in a muffin tin. Bake at 425 degrees F until golden brown at edges (15-20 minutes).