Peach and Blueberry Pie

The Occasion: One of my dear friends and coworkers left our small Wisconsin town in order to pursue his education in California. This was his “going away” gift.

So this pie I made…the experience was one-quarter pain in the ass, three-quarters enjoyable.
 The pain in the ass portion involved me boiling peaches then submerging them in ice water to “slip” the skin off. Aesthetic purposes are cited for this step. If you don’t remove the peach skin, it will separate from the peach flesh while baking in the oven and you’ll have little flaps of fuzz dotting your pie. It won’t ruin your pie or give it an unsavory flavor, but it does look prettier without random bits of flesh clinging everywhere.

The boiling thing…yeah, that was definitely NOT enjoyable. The process involves boiling a pot of water large enough to immerse your peaches in. According to the ripeness of the peach you should keep it in the hot water anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds until the skin has loosened. Once that has happened, use a slotted spoon or tongs to remove the peach and place it in a separate bowl of ice water to shock it. The skin should easily slip off.

I boiled eight peaches. Only one skin came off without me having to whittle away at it with a paring knife. Patience is not high on my list of virtues, and carving up a peach was a tad trying for me. As is burning my hand on one that I thought had cooled enough. Next time I believe I’ll buy frozen sliced peaches.

I bought an extra pint of blueberries. I have a habit of munching while I’m cooking, so it was a good thing I had extras because I finished off a whole carton on my own.

The crust was a pre-made one, a Pillsbury roll-out, find it in your grocer’s freezer. It was alright as far as crusts go. A factory made one, I feel, leaves something to be desired. Tell me if you’ve found one that works, I’d really like to know!

After combining my ingredients and spooning the mix into my baked crust, it was time to begin work on the lattice. Honestly, it was not as hard as my relatives and coworkers said it was going to be. It was actually my favorite step in the whole process. I can’t boil a peach, but I can weave a lattice. I’ll take what I can get.

I had extra ingredients, so I decided to make an army of mini pies to accompany the larger. We had 5” diameter, deep dish pie tins, six in total. With the recipe I was able to fill five of them. I used, I’m guessing, 3 rolls of pie crust. Maybe it’s just because they were mine, but I thought they were the cutest damn mini pies I’ve ever seen! With their little lattices on top, and the blueberries and peach slices poking through…Yep. Definitely keepers.

My friend received his at work, near the end of the day, hot ’n fresh from the oven. He may have burned his mouth, actually. Oops. In addition to the large pie I gave him, I brought in two of the smaller ones for our coworkers to share. It feels good to have people ooh and ahh over something you’ve made.

Another mini pie found its way to my grandparents house. My grandmother recommended that I use a box of Jiffy for my next pie crust. Maybe “recommends” is not quite the word for it. Something like “ordered” or “commanded” is much closer to the truth. Raising nine children gave her a rather authoritative tone.

Back at home I finally sat down with a piece of my fresh peach and blueberry pie. It was pretty good too. A different pie crust and more sugar may be in order if I bake it again, but all in all, I’d say it was a success to be enjoyed with a scoop of ice cream. Okay, maybe two scoops.

My mom really saved me on this one. I’m a late riser, so she had already gone off to work by the time I was rolling out of bed. Stumbling half-blind out into the kitchen, I found a note for me on the counter. It was from my mother (of course), with a large heading bearing my name and the title “Necessary Hints.” She had placed a 9” round pan with a broad rim on a pizza tray, because a fruit pie tends to bubble over. She knew I would have used our standard glass pie pan that has no edge. Next to the pizza tray was a pizza cutter for me to make my lattice with. There was a mention of boiling peaches. Another note said that I should bake my pie at 350 degrees no matter what the recipe said, and that yes, it would take longer, but our touchy fire alarms would go off at anything higher. Also with the baking, Mom said to make sure the crust was a deep brown before removing it from the oven because there’s “nothing worse than an underbaked pie crust.” Baking seems to be all about aesthetic qualities, I’m finding. After brushing the lattice with milk, if I wanted, I could sprinkle regular sugar across the top to give my pie a sparkly look to it. The last bit advised me to not use more than 5 cups of combined fruits, otherwise a major spill over was guaranteed. My favorite part? At the bottom of the page, written in larger print than the heading, were the words “Good Luck! You can do it!” Made me all warm and fuzzy inside, hardcore.