Club: BAKED - Mississippi Mud Pie AKA Coffee Ice Cream Tart

The Club: BAKED bakers are at it again.  This time the recipe we're all making (making, since no baking is required!) is Mississippi Mud Pie aka Coffee Ice Cream Tart.  It involves a homemade chocolate cookie crust with a bourbon chocolate fudge filling topped with coffee ice cream.  


The original recipe tops the whole thing off with a chocolate topping, but I thought there was enough chocolate already so I made a Bourbon Salted Caramel Sauce (Good decision! Recipe found here).  Besides the caramel sauce, the only other adjustment I made to the original recipe was to omit the nuts and use chocolate animal crackers instead of chocolate wafer cookies (like a few others, I couldn't find these at any local stores either!).  I loved the crust that resulted - it reminded me of the chocolate crunchies found in store-bought ice cream cakes... and who doesn't love those??  The whole pie was reminiscent of an Ice-Cream-Cake version of one of those frozen blended coffee drinks... yum. 


We really enjoyed this dessert, especially with the Bourbon Salted Caramel Sauce.  The saltiness provided a nice counterpart to all of the sweetness.  But hands down our favorite part of the cake was the crunchy-like cookie crust.  Be sure to visit the Club: BAKED site to see how this pie came out for the other bakers.  Stop by Jess' blog, The Saucy Kitchen, for the recipe.  Thanks for hosting, Jess!

SMS: Ginger Custard Pumpkin Pie

This weekend it began to feel like Fall in Florida.  Up until now, it was still a consistent high 80's - 90's.  But Friday morning started off chilly and it has been long-sleeves weather ever since.  It is definitely a nice change!  And what better way to make it feel extra Fall-ish than to make a Pumpkin Pie.  

SMS: Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie

This week, Melissa of Lulu the Baker selected Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie as the recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays.  Thanks for picking this recipe, Melissa!  This was a fun one.  I don't think I'd ever made a buttermilk pie before!


I prepared this recipe exactly as Melissa Murphy says in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book - no substitutions and alterations!  In fact, it was the first time I baked with actual buttermilk instead of substituting buttermilk powder. It was almost a success!  (and the buttermilk pancakes that were the result of having left over buttermilk were VERY much a success... I think I may have found a new favorite pancake recipe! More on that later!)   I simply decreased the amount of blueberries for the topping to 12 ounces because I thought 1.5 pints was a bit of overkill.  


Everything went very well, though there was a significant amount of clear liquid (butter maybe?) flowing out of the pie and onto the cookie sheet during the last minutes in the oven.  And I think the liquid made the crust a bit too soggy, because it wouldn't come out of the pie plate!  It did wind up being quite a mess, but it was a DELICIOUS mess.  Everyone enjoyed it at dinner tonight!


Thanks for hosting, Melissa!  I liked this one quite a bit.  Go to Melissa's blog Lulu the Baker for the recipe.  And be sure to visit the list of this week's participants to see if the other bakers had a less messy experience than I did!

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Strawberry Cobbler Pie

So I'm trying out a new blog layout. I tried to neaten it up a little bit, make it look cleaner and tidier and a little less cluttered. What do you think?

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this week's recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays. Our host for the week, the lovely Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures chose Strawberry (Rhubarb) Cobbler Pie... I left the Rhubarb out, so mine is just a Strawberry Cobbler Pie. Though I was tempted to try out Rhubarb (like many other SMS-ers, I've never tried it before!) but I'm bringing it to family dinner on Sunday night and I wasn't sure how the fam would feel about it.

I made the cobbler pie exactly as the recipe from the Sweet Melissa Baking book states, except I subbed the 2 cups of Rhubarb for an additional two cups of strawberries. Also, I prepared my biscuit dough in the food processor since I don't own a pastry cutter, and it came together just fine. I may have used a tad bit more lemon zest than Melissa calls for because I'm never sure... when a recipe calls for a teaspoon of zest, is it one teaspoon packed? But... I admit... I cheated and used a pre-bought frozen pie crust. I'm sorry! I really wanted to give the pie crust recipe a try, I was a little short on time.


slicing the strawberries with an egg slicer... time saver!



Daniel cutting me some star shaped biscuits


Very liquidy.


Cute! This is the pre-baked pie. The star shape totally worked!


I told you mine was wet!!!! Was anyone's oozey and wet like this?





It came out looking very good! I can't wait to try it tonight with the family. I wish we could just dig in now!!!
Besides the SEA of STRAWBERRY OOZE GOO that flooded out of my pie, everything when perfectly smoothly. I thought Melissa's sweet biscuit recipe was great. I wound up with a few small stars that wouldn't fit on the pie, so I brushed them with milk, sprinkled with sugar, and baked them up. Served warm with a little jam... excellenttttt. If this is any indication of the taste of the whole pie, it should be quite delicious indeed! With the remaining heavy cream left over from the biscuit dough, I plan to whip up from whipped cream to serve with the pie... and maybe even some vanilla ice cream... mmm, perfection.

Check out the other SMS bakers to see how their pies came out by visiting the blogroll. And see Tracey's blog, Tracey's Culinary adventures to see the recipe. Buon appetito!

SMS: Chocolate Pie Crust + Brownie Pie

For Sweet Melissa Sundays this week, the recipe of choice was Chocolate Pie Crust, the pick of Donna from L'Amour de Tarte. And we could choose whatever filling we like to put in it. Nice choice, Donna! I love that this recipe left a lot of room for creativity. It is so much fun to check out everyone else's post in creative ones like this and see the different things we all came up with.

That being said, I was totally scared to do this. I have never made a pie crust, and judging by the amount of tutorials and advice on how to make a pie crust that flood the internet, I assumed it was a difficult and delicate process. So, I just avoided it all together. That, coupled with the fact that the fiance likes his fruit cold and crunchy, not cooked, soft and squishy, I never had the reason to make my first pie crust. But when it came up next on the list for SMS, I decided to give it a go. Before attempting my pie crust, I tried to read up all about it. I watched this and this. I looked at this step by step (with a different recipe) and a few others to see how the dough is supposed to look as it is coming together. I know the Sweet Melissa book said not to use a food processor, but I don't have the pastry cutter thingy (yet) and in the video, Alton made his in the same food processor I have! So I gave it a go with the Cuisinart. And it came out very nicely! I took about a gajillion pics of this one... of the process and the final product.


I did the squeeze test, and it stuck together perfectly. Time for making into a bally and chilling!


It rolled out perfectly! (with Dan's help, of course. There are certain things I am not good at and Daniel always help me when I get frustrated... rolling out dough, kneading, and crumb coating to name a few! <3 He's the best)


Going into the pie plate


So impressed with ourselves!


So for the FILLING... what to do! We could choose any filling we like. Since Daniel doesn't like cooked, soft, squishy fruit, Cherry, Apple. etc. were out. So I went searching for inspiration on Food Network. When I came across Paula Deen's "Corrie's Kentucky Pie", I knew I found THE ONE! The user comments and reviews on this one were very positive, and many described it as, a "Brownie Pie". Mmm, since the New Year's Brownies were such a big hit, and Daniel was still craving brownies, I chose Paula's "Corrie's Kentucky Pie" as my filling. Since her recipe made 2 pies, I just halved the recipe. I just made a few small changes to the filling, which I listed below. But also make sure to click here and check out the original recipe, and the multitude of positive reviews of this pie!

BUT.... before I made the batter.... I added a small secret layer to my already decadent Brownie Pie with Chocolate Pie Crust....


Because isn't every chocolate recipe a little better with a bit of peanut butter???

Brownie Pie with Chocolate Pie Crust, adapted from Paula Deen's "Corrie's Kentucky Pie"
enough to fill one 9.5" pie plate

Ingredients
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup sugar
4 oz semisweet chocolate. chopped
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and allow to cool slightly
1 Chocolate Pie Crust, from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book
handful of peanut butter chips.

Preheat to 350 F. In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar and beat. Add melted chocolate and stir. In a separate small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to chocolate mixture, mixing just until incorporated. Stirring in remaining ingredients except for pie shell and peanut butter chips.
Lay your prepared pie crust into an ungreased 9.5 inch pie plate. Sprinkle with peanut butter chips. Add brownie pie batter. Bake 50 -55 minutes. Use toothpick to test for doneness.





The end product was fantastic. The crust was a breeze to put together - So happy! And I thought it had a great taste. Not very sweet, but I think that mixes well with the sweetness of the filling. And the filling.... amazing. Nice gooey inside with a slight crust to the top. And after it has been allowed to cool and sit, it slices very nicely and cleanly. Perfect served warm with some ice cream. :)







Crust shots!!!!

Really good pick, Donna! Be sure to check our her blog, L'Amour de Tarte, for the recipe. And visit all the SMS bakers' sites to see their results and crust+filling combo's!

Cool N' Easy Jello Pie

Oops! As several of you pointed out - I totally forgot to post about the pie! What a goober!!! This weekend for Dan's sister's birthday celebration, I got a request for this Cool N' Easy Jello Pie, which I kind of think of as like a jello cream pie. It is a super simple dessert to prepare, produces a very tasty finished product, and is totally diet-friendly! I loved making this as it's so different from the things I normally make. I would definitely recommend this recipe, the entire pie was gone within minutes! And what is so great about it is that there is a lot of room for creativity - experiment with different flavors, add different fruits, mix the fruit in, lay it on top, etc etc.

You can find the recipe here. Below is what I did to make a nice cutely decorated pie :) If you're going to be bringing this somewhere, I would suggest decorating the top with fruit, or else it's kind of boring and weird looking.

Cool N' Easy Jello Pie

Ingredients:
2/3 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (4 serving size) box of JELL-O (the original recipe says strawberry, that's what we did, but you can experiment with others like lemon, key lime, banana, etc... yum!)
Ice cubes
1/2 cup cold water
1 tub (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed
1 HONEY MAID Graham Pie Crust (6 oz.)
About 5 - 7 Fresh Strawberries
Additional Cool Whip for decorating

Bring 2/3 C of water to a boil. Stir the boiling water into the dry jello mix in a large bowl at least 2 min. until completely dissolved.
Add enough ice to the 1/2 C cold water to bring it up to 1 cup. Add to gelatin; stir until slightly thickened. Remove any unmelted ice.
Add whipped topping; stir with wire whisk until well blended. Refrigerate 15 to 20 min. or until mixture is thick enough to mound.
Spoon into crust, and smooth over with a rubber spatula.
REFRIGERATE at least 4 hours or until firm.
Wash and dry approximately 5 - 7 strawberries. Cut them into slice (with the help of a handy dandy egg slicer!)
Starting in the center of the pie, cover the surface of the pie with the strawberry slices.
Place some additional cool whip into a piping bag and decorate the top of the pie.

Before Decorating:


After: (much nicer)