Hummmmm.... Pie

Our neighbours (and good friends) are having a big party on Saturday evening in celebration of their daughter's recently wedding that took place in beautiful Mexico. They have been planning, prepping and working so hard for months on end to get their place ready for this big day - it looks amazing - and now it's just a couple days away (YIKES)!

So, we offered to help them out with whatever we could and I somehow also volunteered to make pies, 3 of them to be precise. It's not like I didn't have anything else to do, far from it, but they wanted home made pies for dessert and the number of people who are coming quickly jumped from 65 adults to just a handful shy of 200... they were really short on pie and I like to bake... I just made sense to me that I'd do my bit!

All that aside yesterday I had grand plans of cleaning our house and getting all organised and everything ship shape in preparation for my surgery next week, because I knew I wouldn't have any time this weekend and didn't want a mad rush on Monday & Tuesday.

Well, I should start by saying that didn't exactly happen... ok, that didn't happen at all. But I did do a few things around the house in the morning before my afternoon got a little crazy.

I decided that I needed to do a trial run of one of the pies that I would be making for the weekend. It is a recipe that was originally Cory's Mammaw's (Mother's mother). She gave it to Cory's Grandmother (Father's mother) who changed it a little, and then it was given to me by Cory's Mom... (are you still with me? I know, that's a lot of women and mothers, but it's really simple... keep up!).

I seem to have a habit of not really being able to make a recipe exactly as it is written, even if I have tasted the recipe and it seems perfect, there's always a little something here and there that I want to change... this wasn't any different. But since it would be fed to people other than Cory & I it needed testing, I didn't want to be embarrassed by showing up with a monstrosity!

So, I nipped to the store, grabbed a few things I needed and hurried home... Cornstarch sometimes makes me nervous - sometimes it can get messy when you're trying to make syrupy goodness and instead it just turns into lumpy gross yuckiness.

Thankfully this seemed to go smoothly, my syrupy goodness was mixed and was cooling before I added it to the pie crust.

In the middle of the cooling time, and way before it was ready to go hubbie called... He'd gotten a flat tyre about 15 mins from here and needed me to come get him, take him to go get a replacement and then bring him back to change the tyre.

So, I decided that it was now or never with the syrupy goodness I had so proudly mixed. I had no idea how long I would be gone and just had a feeling it would be set in the jug by the time I got back if I left it, so I took the plunge and quickly poured a little on the crust. I knew it was too hot but I carried on.
I added the fruit - yummy raspberries and then hurriedly poured the rest of the mixture on top. I threw it in the refrigerator, grabbed a couple berries as a to-go snack, my keys and handbag and jumped in the truck!

Last night we ended up eating out (read: fast food - but decent fast food, I will say) and by the time we got home neither of us were really up for pie... so tonight we;re going to try it. I hope it's ok!

(As you can see from the photo it has a couple bubbles which I guess are from just throwing the berries in, and then pouring the filling over top but not doing anything else)

I guess I'm going to whip up an apple cake (cleverly disguised as pie) and an English style apple and clove pie for the party, so at least those two are safe bets! ;)

Now I'm about to head and do some of the other things I didn't get done yesterday, and whip up a batch of hubbie's fav cookies too - I like to put them in his lunches!