Peach Pie Problems

Daniel has been out of town for a few days (in Vegas...for a Vet Conference? Sounds fishy ;), so I came to stay with Kirby and Felicity while he was gone. Kirby and I always have a ton of fun together doing what sisters do best; talking and laughing the practically the whole time we're together.

Well the sweet sister that she is, Kirby offered to make dinner for a family and wanted to make them a homemade dessert. Growing up, I was always the one in the kitchen helping make dinner, Kirby on the other hand...not so much. So my sister's recent interest in baking and cooking is still taking some getting used to! Daniel and Kirby bought a HUGE basket full of fresh peaches from the farmer's market so she really wanted to use the peaches for a dessert she was making for this family. So peach pie it is!

Kirby peeled the peaches and mixed the pie filling together while I tried my hand at making pie crust. 

I've made several pies before, but always have wanted to make pie crust instead of using the Pillsbury right-out-of-the-box kind. The recipe called for flour, salt, shortening, and ice cold water. Well, we didn't have shortening so we figured oil was a fair alternative and after 2 failed attempts of putting water in the freezer to make it "ice cold" (in other words, I spilled chilly water all over myself and the floor...both times), we settled for really, really cold sink water. All of these mishaps are all pointing to "most delicious pie crust ever", right? ha! After some kneading and a floury mess, the crust was as ready as it would ever be. 

We filled up the pie tin with the peachy, gooey goodness (that's butter dotted on top if you can't tell...); 

 And began to cover the top with the other half of the pie crust. Ya see...it was a little bit slippery from the oil instead of shortening combo, which made it difficult to just put on top of the pie. I had success with the "lattice" top pies before, but I went with what I knew. And yes, this was a candid shot that I was trying my best to hid from.

I forgot to take a before picture, so 5 minutes into bake time, I snapped a shot from inside the oven. 

We put it in the oven for the directed 50 minutes and the top was a crust was a little soft still so we put it in for 10 more minutes. Then another 5. And another. I've lost track how many times we added time to the clock, but needless to say the baking process took much much more time than we had anticipated.
Side note: all while this was happening, Kirby managed to knock down all of her spices on her spice rack. Like a good sister, I just laughed. This whole pie baking process involved more spills and mess than usual. 

Loooong story short, after much deliberation and setting and resetting the timer, we decided the pie was done. Disclaimer: the juice from the pie filling spilled over onto the cookie sheet and burned to a crisp. It was really hard to overlook the black disaster that was surrounding our pie and just look at the pie itself, but we decided the pie on its own was "pretty enough" to give to someone else to eat, but we were still a bit doubtful. 

We let the pie cool while we were watching Make It or Break It...yes, it's that ABC Family show about gymnastics. I blame Kirby and Hulu. They got me hooked. Before we went to bed, we tried to lift the pie off of the cookie sheet. Like most everything else in our pie making process, this did not go as planned. The black, volcanic tar had now hardened and stuck to the bottom of the pie tin, which in turn made the pin tin stick to the cookie sheet. So we had to perform a bit of removal surgery...It got messy. I even broke her spatula. In my defense, it was already falling apart.

After lots of laughing and chipping away at the burned nastiness, we accomplished our mission!!

It might not be the prettiest pie there ever was (might not be that delicious either...we won't be able to tell since we're giving it to Kirby's friends), but we had fun making it. My sister has made a delicious peach pie before, so I'm sure this one will be no different...although the problems this pie caused were more than normal. My sister and I have just come to terms with that fact that whatever we're doing together is going to take twice as long as it would the normal person, but we're okay with that because we get to do it together.

And that's enough cheesy for one blog post :)