We really liked last week's plum pie, enough so that when we wanted to thank our neighbor Nicole for feeding our cats, it made sense to make her one just like it as a thank-you. A couple days later, we also decided to make one for our friend Brian's birthday.
(Lest anyone thinks me some sort of plum fanatic, I should point out that I'm only partially plum-passionate; the presence of a prolific plum tree placed in the periphery of our pad permits plentiful possible plum pie permutations at puny prices).
It was a good idea in theory, but allow me to say: don't make pie in a hurry. I may have to re-learn this lesson over and over again, but it's still worth saying. Making good pie is not hard. But it does require a bit of time, and rushing through it causes problems. At least it does when you're personally problem-prone. (ack, sorry about the alliterations, they're hard to stop once begun).
I'd intended to make both pies early in the week, and, enthusiastic about the success I'd had previously with Carolyn's pie-dough technique, I decided to make both doughs in advance. A couple busy days passed, with lovely little dough discs in the refrigerator. Then, busyness ensued. Saturday came around and I finally had time to make pie. But the discs were now gray and rotten-looking. Disgusting! So, I had to throw them out and start over. Lesson: freeze pie dough if you make it in advance.
Then, because I was in a hurry, I didn't refrigerate the finished dough before putting it in the oven to pre-bake. Imagine my horror to discover, upon opening the oven, that my pie dough had melted. A whole side of the dough had shrunk and slid down into a puddle in the pan. Apparently I let it get too soft...
I let it cool, put it carefully in the freezer, re-shaped it, then put it in the freezer a bit longer, until the dough felt pretty thick. Then filled it and baked it without pre-baking, hoping for the best. As far as I can tell it came out well, though you can see from the photo above that the edges of the crust are a bit mangled. The streusel topping, however, came out much better (at least, from appearances) than last week. I think this is because I took my time cutting the butter into the flour with a fork.
Another photo of this pie:
Now, today I made a second version. I had some trouble rolling out the pie dough, I think I didn't quite make enough and barely had enough dough to fill the pan. I had to trim all the edges, then patch the empty spots, then press the edges out again. It wound up looking quite pretty, especially after I decorated the edges with a fork... but it was a close call.
This time I was in somewhat less of a hurry, so the only major mistake I made was in forgetting to take the plums out of the freezer early enough. (I'd chopped them up last weekend, then frozen them... our freezer is full of fruit). As a result, I wasn't able to properly drain the liquid, since the fruit was still a bit icy when I sugared them. (The previous pie, I wound up with at least a cup of liquid that didn't go in the pie, this seems pretty normal so far for my fruit pies). This extra liquid bubbled up and made the streusel look a bit bloody and gruesome:
Through poor social skills and bad communication, we have failed to get the birthday pie recipient over to eat this pie, so we may have to eat it ourselves. Sigh. Well, these things happen. I hope it tastes good.
(chomp, chomp, chomp)
Yep.
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