Purple Plum Pies, Plural

This week: two plum pies.

Purple Plum Pie

This turned out pretty delicious. Our backyard plum tree is exploding with ripe plums and we've been using as many of them as possible: jam, chutney, plum sauce, plum liqueur. (And of course plum tart from the week before last). So plum pie was the logical next step. This was a randomly Google find of a recipe, originally from http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Purple-Plum-Pie, but using Carolyn's magic pie crust techniques.

Carolyn's Top-Secret Magic Pie Crust Technique: Part 3

Today: The thrilling conclusion of this weekend's pie trilogy!
If you haven't already, you'll want to peruse Part 1, which outlines dough-making, then Part 2, which shows rolling out and shaping. Today we see pictures of the results, after Carolyn put the crust to work in the form of a savory Red and Yellow Pepper Tart.

Carolyn's Top-Secret Magic Pie Crust Technique: Part 2

Welcome back to our instructional extravaganza, in which guest piemaker Carolyn Walters shows us her pie-making magic. You may want to check out yesterday's post if you haven't already-- we're beginning today's session with yesterday's refrigerated dough.

First, let's pull yesterday's dough out of the refrigerator so that it can warm up just a little (if it's too cold it'll crack instead of rolling out properly; if it's too warm it'll fall apart-- so we want to just warm it up enough to be handled). You can actually warm it a bit with your hands, being sure to rotate it and pay attention to the edges, until it's just soft enough to be malleable all over.

Carolyn's Top-Secret Magic Pie Crust Technique: Part 1

Today is a special episode of our series, in which we watch pie expert Carolyn Walters demonstrate her super-magic pie crust techniques, which she originally learned in person from renowned chef Madame Kuony in Milwaukee in 1981 and has been using to win local pie contests ever since.  If that isn't enough to establish pie-master credibility, here's a photo of her delicious rhubarb pie (of which slices were eaten so quickly that no photos of the whole pie remain):

Not convinced? How about a close-up of the incredibly flaky crust?

OK, now that we're all drooling, let's talk about how this sort of thing is done.

Lemon Meringue!

I asked Suzanne what kinda pie to make and she said, without hesitation, Lemon Meringue.

I wound up taking photos at night, so they're not so great, but this is more or less what it looked like:

Plum Kuchen Tart

I still haven't decided for sure if tarts count towards my pie-a-week project, but since Suzanne was returning from a week away, and the plum tree in our backyard is nearing a complete ripeness explosion, I decided to surprise her with a plum pie, and the recipe that seemed most like what I was looking for was a tart. A Kuchen tart, to be precise. More below:

Mixed-Berry Pie

This one was a birthday present for Georgia Gunesch. I used the same recipe, basically, for both the pie crust and filling, as listed here; however, I used a mix of marionberries, blackberries, raspberries, and white raspberries, which were pretty on their own but quickly picked up the black-red-purple colors once mixed in. The overall flavor was pretty dominated by the marionberries.

First, the end-result photo, then details about the making of, below.

Yum. More details below...