Jus' Deb's Dissertations: Baking Friday

Our last pie of 2014. Pie # 12 - our 13th pie once you count the 5th Friday pies in June.

Speaking of counting pies - 2014 has been the year of the most pies for me! I haven't counted every pie, but it is somewhere around 60+ pies made this year when you count all of the pies made for this here blog plus 3 - that's right - 3 Pie Nights this year! That averages out to over 1 pie / week all year long! 2014 - The Year of the Pie! A full summary of those pies will be shown at the end of this post, but here is our pie # 12...

Uh...Deb...that is 4 pies up there. Which one is Pie # 12?

Is it this one?

Nope. This was a birthday pie...for...well, you can see who it is for! It's a Lemon Meringue that I added a touch of birthday greeting to made out of meringue. Wanna see it before it was all toasty?

I'd never done this before, but I think it turned out well enough that I would do it again!

Maybe this is our Pie # 12?

No again. This is another birthday pie - a Peanut Butter pie for..well...again...you can see who it's for.

So that leaves us with two pies. Is one of them our Pie # 12?

Well...not exactly...they both are!

Quiche! The top quiche is a ham and cheese and asparagus one, and the bottom quiche is a spinach and artichoke and cheese quiche. Yum!

I enjoy quiche. In fact a long time ago - like back when rocks were still fluid and hardening - there was a weekly, community newspaper here in the St. Louis area known as The Suburban Journal that featured a local cook each week. I don't remember the details of how I got featured way back then, but I was. Now this was also the time when "Real men don't eat quiche!" was a popular phrase. But these quiches aren't like regular quiches, so I shared my recipe with the capture that "Real men eat this quiche!" Today we have progressive metrosexual and lumbersexual men walking around, so eating quiche doesn't bring a man's testosteroness into question any more, but back then! Back then? Oh yea...men who ate quiche had to do it in private. We've come a long way baby and all that, right?

What makes these different?

Mainly that they are tarts so they aren't as eggy as most quiches, and I like that about them. The fillings get the main stage rather than the eggs which I think makes them much more appetizing.

I found out about another way to make quiche this past weekend from G's daughter, K, that uses sour cream as the dairy with the eggs which not only brings richness and flavor but also cuts down on the egginess of many quiches. Those quiches that she made and served us last weekend were really good but I don't have that recipe to share! Maybe I will pass along that recipe whenever I have made enough Pie Night pies for K to earn a copy!

Speaking (once again!) of Pie Night, want to see pics from our 3rd and final Pie Night for this year from last weekend? Of course you do! I will post more about these pies in a couple of nights, but here are their names!

So let's see. Are we ready to talk about how I made those quiches? They really are easy and would be great for a Christmas brunch around the tree. They can be baked ahead of time and reheated in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes or assembled the night before so you only have to add the egg mixture and bake Christmas morning! (If you do that, they really smell wonderful baking - like Santa left you a special treat in your oven!)

I started with a homemade crust, but feel free to use a packaged pie crust without one iota of guilt! I like to pre-bake them so that they stay done on the bottom without getting soggy.

Oh but wait! I have to confess something! I was making two quiches so I wanted to use both of my tart pans. However while I could find two tart pan rims, I could only find 1 tart bottom last week. It's when I was looking for the bottoms that I realized where my other bottom is right now.

Ok - let's re-read that last sentence - about looking for my bottoms and wondering where one was. You and I both know that we are talking about my tart bottoms, but the phrase "Context is King!" seems to fit here! We ARE talking about tart bottoms here...not any other sort of bottoms...ahem...

Ok, back to my story. Where is my other bottom? I realized that I had let my very pregnant daughter in law take home her chocolate strawberry tart from pie night, and we haven't gotten it returned yet. Do I care? Seriously? When she gives us this Lady L face, you think I care about my other bottom?

Of course I don't!

As long as I've already interrupted this Pie # 12 blog post with one baby picture, can I share one other cutie? We got to personally meet and snuggle with and hold OL-man last weekend for the first time!

I like pie, but I like babies WAY more!

Where was I again? Oh yes, pre-baking pie shells and missing my other bottom. So I improvised! I put a 9" rim inside of one of my 10" cheesecake pans that also has a removeable bottom. Viola! Tart pan! Not perfect, but it worked!

OH, and here's the regular one!

I laid my pie crusts in the pans, pricked them, and then weighed each one down with an empty pie pan inside and then a weight.

I baked them at 350 for about 20 minutes until pale but baked and let them cool.

Now for the fun part! The fillings and seasonings! For both quiches, I sauteed some sliced onion until sweet and soft, sprinkling a bit of chives and parsley in at the end. I took half of that onion and added it to the crust for the ham, cheese and asparagus quiche.

To the rest of the sauteed onion, I added about a half a jar of artichoke hearts and 1 package of frozen spinach that I had drained. And because nutmeg and spinach go so well together I added a touch of nutmeg.

After sauteeing those for a moment to lightly brown the artichoke hearts, I spread those into the other crust.

Oh look! I've added cheese to this one, too! (This pic is making my mouth water again for quiche!) I also added chopped up ham steak and grated cheese to the other one. I really didn't measure any of the ingredients for these except for the eggs. The fillings are really to taste, which is one of those other things I like about quiche. You can be creative and do what your family loves!

Now it was time for the eggs. For each quiche, I beat together:

3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
Dash of salt
Dash of thyme (I love thyme with eggs!)

I poured this mixture over each quiche and then added a few stalks of asparagus to the ham one.