Saturday 13 September 2014

How to have your own PIErty!

A Pie Party with homemade Pie Review


Coming soon – how to have your own PIErty! But for now, a little teaser of the homemade baking part of the full article to come:


Of course no pie party would be complete without some homemade pie baking going on! And while we may have got complimented for the pastry of our Crocodile Pie from none other than Michel Roux Jr, we’re certainly still firm believers that we (apart from the Ship’s Cook) are primarily pie raters, not pie makers! So we’ll leave making pies to the pros and get on with the important job – rating those pies!!!

And what’s even more awesome than asking a friend to make you a pie (or five) is arriving home after a long week at work and finding a pie tin (note: definitely not a cake tin with pies in) on your doorstep! Recently I had the pieleasure of rating Sophie’s Apple and Raspberry mini pies. Now of course you’ll immediately spot that one of them has a crumble lid, which we’ve already discussed at great length and determined does slightly detract from the score, so the following is a review of the fully encased pie, followed by an adjusted score for the crumble lid (even though it tasted just as good – but that doesn’t make it a proper pie!!!)


After heating in the oven for 15 minutes on 180 degrees, the pies were crisp and a nice colour. Not quite golden piefection but I didn’t want to over bake them and ruin the taste and filling. The home grown apple and raspberry content was on the whole very nice, though a fair bit of contrast between the sweetness and sourness of the fruits. There was definitely a bias towards the raspberry in my pies and I personally would have liked to have sampled just an apple pie, as I think the raspberry detracted slightly from the filling.

Being quite small pies, it is always hard to get the pastry:filling ratio quite right, but Sophie did a good job and the pastry was nice and firm, but a little flaky. No soggy bottoms in sight, the pastry was the highlight. A slight downside of the condition though was that the lid didn’t seamlessly merge into the side pastry, with a very clear lid/base distinction. Of course being home grown fruit, this is an ingenious way to score highly on the cheapness (unless you’re using Harrods flour or something!)

Overall, a great little pie, which would have rated higher if a bit more apple content and in a larger version, where the pastry:filling ratio would naturally have improved. Great job!

Sophie’s Homemade Apple and Raspberry Mini Pie
Score: 5.64/7
[Colour 5, Capacity 6, Consistency 5, Condition 5, Chewiness 6, Cheapness 7, Content 5.5, Total: 5.64/7]

Sophie’s Homemade Apple and Raspberry Mini Crumble Pie
Score: 4.93/7

RAS


Pierate is a pie review website charting a course to find the ultimate pie. For all the pies we have reviewed have a look at our Pie Rankings or find pies of a particular flavour under Pies: Categorised.

Make sure you 
and let us know your thoughts!


No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for getting in touch with the Pierateers!