Let Us Pretend This is Peach Pie

 I took a week off of the cookbook challenge to focus on canning, and then took another week to be a guinea pig for GAT and Lizzy in their cookbook challenge.  I then got wrapped up in reading The Enchantment Emporium, by Tanya Huff. I will write  a review on that later, but the one thing I will say about the book right now, is that it put me in the mood for pie.

Realizing that my hiatus in the challenge will only put me further behind than I already feel that I am, and knowing that I had fruit that I needed to use up, it was time for me to crack open a cookbook and get back to work. Choosing one of the many dessert cookbooks that I have at random, I figured there had to be a pie recipe in there somewhere.

Pie Time!

 When I think about pastries, I think about turnovers, pies, and filo pastry. I do not often think of savory dishes; but surprisingly there were a fair amount of savory dishes available in The Best Ever Pastry Cookbook.  I had pie on the brain and could not be persuaded despite how delicious some of the dishes sounded.  I was in luck. There was a lovely recipe for Peach Leaf Pie. It even had a crust recipe and didn't have the audacity to assume that I know how to make a crust.  It has been years since I have made a pie from scratch, much less made a canned pie.  Crust has never been something I have excelled at. Pie isn't something that is normal in my house. Cakes and cookies reign supreme, until now. Pie might become the new cake.  Not to mention it freezes better.

Bald Not- Peaches Peaches

I pulled out my ingredients and looked over the recipe and I seemed that I had everything, but one critical item needed for peach pie. I didn't have any peaches. The peaches that we did have, were used the night before on the grill with and devoured with vanilla ice cream. It was a noble peach death.  All was not lost. I did have some nectarines and a few golden plums from the local CSA.  Nectarines are just bald peaches, or at least that is what I am pretending.

Balls

Assembling the dough was easier than I thought and I am pretty lethal with a fork. Mostly because out of all the kitchen gadgets and thing-a-ma-jigs that I own, I do not at this time own a dough blender.  I decided that I could just fork it into submission. It worked, and that is all that matters.  Molding the dough into two butter filled balls, I shoved them into the fridge and started to slicing the fruit.

There is something magical about fruit in sugar. It gets all syrupy and sticky. It is delicious and I could have eaten a bowl of the not peaches in sugar and fallen into a sugar coma if I were a person of less restraint.   Rolling the dough out, I filled the center with the delicious goodness of seasonal fruit goodness.

Iggins in the Cabinet

The recipe called for dough to be cut out into shapes of leaves and piled onto the pile and a very beautiful time consuming passion pattern. I do not have a leaf cutter. The idea of doing it all by hand while I have I have an Iggins begging for my attention or cat food did not entice me to cut out three dozen dough leaves by hand, add veins to them and arrange them onto the pie.  I do however have ninja cookie cutters. Pie crust is nothing but a dough, and cookie cutters are made to cut through dough. It was perfect. My pie is covered in ninjas.  They are in a constant battle over the peaches. It is awesome.

I think that I will make more pies in the future and that they are more visually appealing to me when decorated with things that appeal to me.  I think that the Peach Ninja Pie would appeal to people. Especially if no peaches were harmed in the process. Maybe for Thanksgiving I'll make a Blueberry Dinosaur Pie, or a Sour Apple Snowflake.

In other news. Two more cookbooks have been added to the challenge. My mother in law brought me a lovely cookbook back from down south, and I compulsively bought a new cookbook and chocolate. My rational was that I didn't own a chocolate cookbook, and I needed more chocolate in my life. I will be updating those books to the list on Library Thing soon. Total number of cookbooks is now 60. Total of 9 out of 60 have been completed.