painting by Terry BrooksPie ladies, I like whipped cream with my pumpkin pie, but my husband likes vanilla ice cream. Who is right? (family harmony on Thursday is riding on your answer...) And my mother does her crust with Crisco, as her mother, a home economics instructor at University of Texas, did. I prefer butter because Crisco seems like car grease. But my mom's pies always taste better. What to do? Please advise.
Eeeks! Tough one!
Why not do both? Have both ice cream and whipped cream available for your guests to pick their favorite or both (this could be a popular choice for the under 12 crowd). Catie's mom garnishes her pumpkin pies with cool whip, but we think it just looks pretty and doesn't add much to the overall taste. We like to add a little ginger & cayenne when we whip cream. The spices go great with pumpkin pie to counterbalance the sweetness of pumpkin. Perhaps even a cinnamon or hazelnut gelato. It is fun to have the options to add complexity to your pie. Or, you could just fib and say, "the store was out of vanilla ice cream".
Crisco is a very even- keeled pie crust ingredient even though it does resemble car grease. It seems to lend a flakiness to a crust that butter doesn't. What if you tried your moms crust with part butter and Crisco, so you had the flakiness of Crisco and the butteryness of butter? After all we need a little grease for our engines every now and then.
Pie crusts can be very difficult, but with an expert in the family, she may have a few tricks up her sleeve. After we mix all the ingredients for a pie crust and gently blend it with a pastry blender we store it in the fridge for about an hour in a tight ball wrapped in plastic wrap. The extra time makes the dough easier to work with and also seems to glue the ingredients together more soundly.
Happy Pieing!
Catie and Meg
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