How to Make Pie Crust at Home

My wife makes a fantastic apple pie.  She is really good at it and can put together a perfect apple pie in about fifteen minutes.  She uses commercial pie crust found in the refrigerator section of the supermarket, and feels no guilt about it at all.  Being a full time working mom with very little extra free time for baking on the weekends and staring at a basket of gorgeous apples from the farmer’s co-op, she doesn’t mind a shortcut. But does she really need a shortcut when it comes to pie crust?

Store bought pie crust (which can be frozen by the way)  is certainly convenient, and if my wife can use it to make a great homemade pie, I’m all for it.  Then, I started wondering what’s in commercial pie crust.  Here’s what I found out.

According to the back of the box, Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust contains the following ingredients:

• Enriched flour, bleached
• Partially Hydrogenated Lard with BHA and BHT Added to Protect Flavor
• Wheat starch
• Water
• Salt
• Rice flour
• Xanthan gum
• Potassium Sorbate and Potassium Propionate (preservatives)
• Citric acid
• Yellow 5 and Red 40

Now, homemade crust only contains three main ingredients - flour, fat and water.  So it makes me wonder what all these extra ingredients are for.

I guess I can understand some preservatives, because they can’t know how long you’ll keep the dough in the freezer.  Citric acid could add a subtle “zing.”  Most home bakers get that with a little vinegar. But partially hydrogenated fats that contain trans fats? BHA and BHT? Xanthan gum? Food coloring?

I’m not suggesting that any of these ingredients are harmful.  After all, they are all FDA approved.  And, if it gives busy people a leg up on making homemade desserts, then that’s great.

But, if you’re interested in making your own crust with just a few ingredients, all of which are pronounceable, here’s how to make your own pie crust.

Flaky Pie Crust

12 oz. all purpose flour
9.5 oz. very cold butter, lard, 0 trans-fat shortening or a combination (try 4 oz. fresh lard and 4 oz. butter)
1 ½ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
3-5 oz. ice water—fill a glass with ice cubes, and then add water

As you can see, it’s a pretty basic list of ingredients.  But, if I ask ten home cooks what they find most intimidating about baking, I bet that at least seven of them would answer “pie crust.”  That’s because making a good pie crust takes a light hand and a feel for the ingredients.  It takes practice, but once you get it, you’ll have it for life.

How to Prepare a Flaky Pie Crust

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Baking Questions You Want Answered

I get lots of baking questions from you guys so I decided to answer a few of them in bunches again. Some of them are straightforward, but like sometimes you get a really “interesting” question like one of the inquiries in this batch. I try to answer these as best I can, usually with the help of Pastry Chef Jenni Field, a graduate of a top baking and pastry school.  Jenni is one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to baking and pastries and has a wonderful web site at www.pastrychefonline.com.

As much as I try to give helpful responses to your questions, I am always interested in what you have to say and often, you have better answers than I do and I appreciate your help. In fact, the last question in this post is a correction about my key lime pie recipe that I will be fixing.

Can Kitchen Smells Get Into a Cake

Robin contacted me and asked,

Can a potent/hot aroma alter the taste of a cake being prepared?  For example, if chilies are cooking (they are  so potent I have the leave the kitchen!) in the same kitchen where a cake is being mixed together (at the same time), can the cake batter absorb any of the aroma?  Could the aroma possibly alter the taste of the cake?

I’ve never experienced such a thing, but that could be because I’ve never been roasting hot peppers while mixing cake batter.  As most of you who have been reading my blog or visited my site, I’m not much of a baker. My 11 year old daughter is getting interested in baking so you will see more recipes posted based on what she is making in the future.

Having said that, smells are physical properties. We smell tiny airborne molecules of whatever is giving off the scent.  From that standpoint, it stands to reason that some of the volatile components of peppers and other “hot” foods could waft about in a kitchen and settle on/in your cake batter.

I think it would further depend on the type of cake you’re mixing.  Fats readily absorb flavors, so a butter-heavy cake would most likely pick up more flavors than a leaner cake, such as angel food.  I can say that all sorts of scents waft around in commercial kitchens - roasting lobster shells being a particularly pervasive and pungent one and pastry chefs continue with dessert production in spite of it.  If you have any concerns about flavor transfer, I would recommend that you don’t do both tasks at the same time.  Hope this helps.

Help With Coconut Macaroon Recipe

Resi wrote:

Hi RG!
I have a coconut macaroon recipe that I’ve been having troubles with.  I’ve been cooking it for years but have never really perfected it. Usually I get different results every time i cook it. What I would like to achieve is a layer of chewy baked macaroon top with the bottom, a layer of custard not unlike flan or crème brulee.

I bake them in really small paper patty pans and they come out like this : Sometimes I get the result I would like to achieve, other times the macaroon is dry and the custard layer would not be there and it is hollow at the bottom.

These are the ingredients I generally use:desiccated coconut, eggs, condensed milk, vanilla, butter, molasses.

Combined, I bake them in a pre-heated 180 degreess oven for 15 minutes.

Are there ingredients in my list that I should exclude? Help, where do I go wrong?

I asked Chef Jenni for help with this one. Here is what she had to say:

This is strictly speculation since I’ve never made macaroons with these specific ingredients.  Since Robin doesn’t give the amounts for any of the ingredients, I’m going to assume that these guys are mostly dessicated coconut and egg with the other ingredients there for body and additional flavor/richness.  If so, there are a few variables.

One would be the weather.  When working with an egg-heavy recipe, the amount of humidity will certainly affect the final product.  Low humidity will equal a crisp outcome and high humidity equals chewy.  So, that’s something to think about.

Another variable that the baker has more control over is mixing time.  I would suggest that over mixing yielded the hollow-bottomed result.  Next time, keep track of how long and how quickly - you’re mixing and write it down.  If the results are hollow bottomed, dry macaroons, decrease the mixing time.

Eventually, you’ll hit the magic speed/time combination. Then, assuming that humidity isn’t the deciding factor, you’ll always get your desired results by mixing for that specified amount of time..  My gut is, if you’re looking for chewy/custardy macaroons, you’d want to mix on no more than medium speed for a fairly minimal time.

I will be interested to hear how things turn out and would also really like to see the full recipe and the procedure sometime.

As to the last question Resi asks, if she she should exclude any ingredients to get the results she is after, I wouldn’t alter/omit any of the ingredients.  I would look to the mixing speed/time first and then to oven temperature.  And, for my part, I’d probably add a very healthy pinch of salt into the mix!

How Many Key Limes Does It Take For 1/2 Cup of Lime Juice?

Susan wrote and said:

I absolutely love your key lime pie recipe.  I only have one comment…  For 1/2 Cup of KEY lime juice, it requires 12-15 KEY limes.  I can’t help but think your suggestion of 3-4 limes refers to regular limes, hardly the same thing.  There is NO SUBSTITUTE for key limes, they are quite unique.  And, now, I must go make my pie!

Yes, Susan is absolutely right.  Key limes are very small, about the size of a pecan in the shell.  It would take quite a few to yield 1/2 cup of juice so I’m guessing 12 - 15 looks right.

Key limes generally are generally only grown in Mexico now, and they can be pretty hard to find in the States.  I  used Nellie and Joe’s Key Lime Juice rather than trying to juice a ton of hard-to-find key limes.  For folks who can’t find key limes or key lime juice, in a pinch you can substitute Persian (”regular”) limes, but the flavor won’t be as sharp.  If you have some citric acid, you can add a pinch of that, and it might get you closer to an actual key lime flavor.

HOW TO GLAZE A CAKE

I received an email from Nan asking, "I am making a lemon cake. Most of them call for a glaze. What type of frosting would you suggest for a lemon cake? Thanks, Nan.

I immediately forwarded this email to my friend Chef Jenni Field, a graduate of Orlando Culinary Academy - Le Cordon Bleu and a professional pastry chef with her own web site called Pastry Chef Online. She is a wealth of culinary knowledge especially when it comes to baking and pastry. Here is how she asked Nan’s question:

Simple Glaze

Depending upon the texture of your lemon cake, a glaze or a frosting could be called for. If you are making a dense lemon cake, like a lemon pound cake, I recommend a lemon glaze. A simple way of making a lemon glaze is to mix fresh lemon juice with powdered sugar until it has a "drizzling" consistency. Then, drizzle the glaze over the cooled cake.

If you’d like the glaze to soak into the cake, glaze the cake while it is still very warm. The glaze will thin and run, so you will have to "baste" the cake several times with the drippings. The end result will be a lovely, moist cake with a deep lemon flavor and a shiny, slightly sticky outside. Sift some powdered sugar over the cake right before cutting and serving for a pretty look.

Simple Lemon Glaze

Another option for a lemon glaze would be to make a simple lemon syrup. Bring the zest of two lemons, 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1 cup water to a boil. Cool to room temperature, and strain out the lemon zest. Taste the syrup. You can add a touch of fresh lemon juice or a bit of lemon extract if you’d like it more lemony. Thoroughly brush the cake with this syrup while it is still very warm, but after you have taken it out of the pan.

Lemon Frosting

If you are making a lemon cake with a lighter crumb, more like a standard yellow or white cake, you can use a lemon frosting. Lemon cream cheese frosting might be nice–the slight tang of the cream cheese would marry nicely with the fresh lemon flavor of the cake. Cream 4 oz. each of softened unsalted butter and softened cream cheese until light and fluffy. Slowly add 1 pound of sifted confectioner’s sugar and cream very well. Beat in a pinch of salt, the zest of 1 lemon and a couple of tablespoons of fresh lemon juice (enough to give it a good spreading consistency).

Whatever option you choose, and whatever kind of lemon cake you made, I’m sure it will be very tasty.