Pecan Pie

Pecan pie happens to be one of my favorite deserts - after carrot cake, of course. I made my first one yesterday. Lots of recipes call for corn syrup, which apart from being really bad for you, is also the poster child for everything wrong with the food industry, so I made one with honey instead!

Berry Good Pie

Two pies! Above - the raspberry-strawberry-rhubarb pie that I made last week. It was runny and I had to resort to desperate measures that involved performing extensive drainage operations. But, I'm pleased to say that this is the first pie where I'm happy with the crust. The key to good crust (for me): vodka. (What I lack in skill I make up for in exotic ingredients but there's a nice scientific explanation for using vodka - it evaporates quickly!) Having rhubarb in a pie was something I had to do having read about rhubarb and heard about it all my life. Turned out to be a nicely tart combination. Below - I made this 'largely blueberry pie' today with the berries we had left in the fridge and freezer. To circumvent the runny insides, I used a corn-starch filler recipe, and for double insurance, made a crumb top so that the juices could evaporate.