Pies Parading On

Thanksgiving

I chipped a small piece of my wrist in November, while talking.  Yes, the longest blog post hiatus of the ten year I have been doing this can be attributed needing to wear a brace from talking too enthusiastically.
Anyway, all is not fully healed, but I am now four days without a brace and soon I will be typing at full speed again.  In the meantime, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Epiphany Pies.

For Thanksgiving, The Mister cooked most of the meal at the Mister's parents' house.  I baked pumpkin, sweet potato, and mincement pies and a cranberry mince tart, while my parents drove from Colorado to Kansas to join us, bringing pecan pie, a cranberry walnut tart and my niece.

In my mind, Thanksgiving has a set pie tradition, and adding chocolate to those mentioned above would be about as far as I deviate from it.  Christmas, on the other hand, is not normally pie time in my household, and while the Christmas Eve meal and desserts are set, Christmas Day is fairly open.  I baked three pies, intentionally making them not predominately sweet.  I attempted to improve upon the homemade mincemeat from Thanksgiving and ended up with a very dense mincemeat, heavy on the allspice, ginger and cloves.  Cranberry rhubarb was tart and bright and the shaker orange with teh snowflake top crust included the peel, so it has bitter notes along with the tart and sweet.

We had friends over for dinner last night and decided to make it an Epiphany/Three Kings Day/Twelfth Night celebration.  We had a sausage apple pie in a cheddar crust and almond frangipane in puff pastry, which I am insisting on calling an Epiphany Pie rather than a Galette des Rois or a Kings' Cake.  Aster was very involved with the baking of both Epiphany pies and is planning what next year's kings' cake will be.  I explained to him the tradition of the "lucky" recipient of the charm being required to bake the next cake, and that he can do it any time until Mardi Gras, he doesn't need to wait until next year.  The Mister suggested that he bake a Martin Luther King Cake next week for after the march.

Joining Families at Thanksgiving on the Ranch

Mincemeat and Cranberry Rhubarb: Christmas

Shaker Orange: Christmas

Sausage and Apple in a Cheddar Crust: Ephiphany

Epiphany Pie-- or Galette des Rois