Happy Pi Day! Colonial Innkeeper's Pie

I never plan ahead properly, so every year for Pi Day I find myself looking for something easy that I can put together quickly. But those aren't the kind of pies I usually want to eat. 

I've had this recipe for "Funny Cake Pie" bookmarked for some time. It's an odd recipe, from an odd (now defunct) blog. I'll let that blogger explain...

This month’s pie is a traditional pie of the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Supposedly the pie, like the community of settlers from which it comes, is German in ancestry, but I am a bit skeptical of this claim, since I’ve never run across anything like this in German bakeries.  In fact, pies in general are little known by traditional German bakers.... The name “Funny Cake Pie” is telling in several ways. First of all,  the pie itself is cake-like, much like a shoo-fly pie, or a lemon sponge pie, or a Montgomery pie.  There is a cakey layer component to the filling.  The “funny” bit refers to the way the chocolate layer goes on top when you make the filling but it comes out of the oven with the chocolate layer mysteriously on the bottom layer!

Old recipes were written very differently from how they are now with far fewer directions that are often quite vague, so I'm usually hesitant to try them.  I think this blogger actually made the pies on her blog, but she doesn't have a clue how to write a recipe.  I've rewritten it below and tweaked the recipe a bit in order to, I think, give better flavor.  Here's what I used:

9" unbaked pie crust

Vanilla mixture:
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup salted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup milk

Sift together the flour and baking powder; set aside. In a medium-sized bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and beat until well mixed. Beat in the milk alternately with flour mixture until smooth; set aside.

Chocolate mixture:
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon espresso powder (optional)
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

In a small bowl, stir together the cocoa powder, sugar, espresso powder, and salt. Add the water a little at a time and blend to combine. Add the vanilla and stir to mix well. Pour into an unbaked pie shell. Over this carefully pour the vanilla mixture. (It’s okay if the chocolate oozes up around the outside edge---it gives a nice crusty edge on the finished product.) Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35-45 minutes or until toothpick in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before slicing.

This didn't turn out quite as she described. I'm not sure if that's because she made a mistake in posting the recipe, or if the recipe was simply bad to start with. (When I was a little girl, my mom and I made a shoofly pie from a recipe in the back of a book I'd read. It was a disaster. We even made it a second time---bless my mom's heart--- to see if we'd made a mistake the first time and got the same results: a watery molasses mixture that never even began to set up. Wish I could find that recipe now to take a look at it.  Apparently it's supposed to have a "cakey" part as well.) The chocolate batter was watery and the vanilla batter very thick, so yes, the chocolate mixture did ooze a bit, but it came out of the oven exactly as it went in, just no longer raw. Nothing mysteriously changed places or did anything else unusual, other than it took at least 10 minutes longer to bake than instructed. At least it did set up. I was worried I would end up with another shoofly disaster.

I've never heard of Montgomery pie, so I looked it up and I found that this recipe is very similar, but substitutes the molasses flavor for chocolate.  The chocolate option seems to be called Colonial Innkeeper's pie.  I also noticed that one person baked her pie for 45 minutes at 375 and it still was underbaked.  (Most significantly, she used an egg in each part.  I don't actually know what made the chocolate part in this set.) 

Conclusion:   My co-workers seemed to like this but I didn’t care for it. It tasted commercial, partially because of the poor quality cocoa and partially because it was too sweet. (Other recipes use ¼ cup less sugar, I think.) The texture was gummy even though it was baked, and the flavor was sort of bland. And I don’t know why you’d bake a cake in a pie anyway. But it was a fun experiment.

Original recipe: Funny Cake Pie via Pie of the Month Club 

Another recipe to try:  Colonial Innkeeper's Pie via allrecipes

Happy Pi Day! Easy Coconut Custard Pie

Every year I chide myself for not participating in Pi Day, but this year I was on top of it.  The thing is, I was out of town the first part of the week on business, and I returned home Wednesday evening over-tired and frazzled, with no time to think about pie.  I needed something really fast and easy that I could pull together with minimal effort.  I knew just the thing!

This is one of those "magic crust" pies, where you dump everything in a blender, whir it all up together, and the crust "magically" forms during baking.  This recipe called for Bisquick, but I've seen others that use just flour.  I didn't have  Bisquick, so I used an equivalent amount of flour and added 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

I don't know about the magic crust business -- the flour did settle to the bottom, but the layer was so thin and soft that I have to wonder, "What was the point?"  Gimmick, I say.  Perhaps it just makes the slices easier to remove, or gives a little more body to the custard.  Otherwise maybe it would fall apart like pudding.

Like the original poster, I also baked the pie longer -- about 53 minutes -- mostly because it didn't look deliciously toasty until then, even though the center looked cooked.  (It rose up quite high in the middle and cracked a bit, so I could actually see into the center.)  As it was, it probably would have had a nicer, creamier texture if I hadn't.

The flavor was good and it was a big hit in the office.  One person appreciated that it wasn't "too sweet".  I would agree that some pies are sweeter, but personally I would take this one down a notch, maybe reducing the sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup.  The only other issue I had was with the coconut itself.  Something about commercial coconut always tastes artificial and chemically.  I'll have to find a better source.

Conclusion:  This gets major points for ease and convenience.  And with all the eggs, milk, and coconut, this would make an excellent breakfast pie. Although it certainly doesn't rise to the caliber of a traditional coconut cream pie, it's not at all bad for something you whip up in a blender in minutes.  

Original recipe:  Amazing Coconut Pie via My Retro Kitchen