(Psst: don’t forget to go enter this drawing to win a $100 Cooking.com gift card from Country Crock.)
A whirlwind session in the kitchen this morning produced:
- 7 quarts of sliced peaches
- 3 quarts and 2 pints of applesauce
- 1 peach pie (for the freezer)
- 1 leek/eggplant quiche (lunch today)
- 2 apple pies (1 for freezer, 1 for dinner tonight)
Thankfully the kids helped me for about an hour, or my kitchen time would have gone on all day instead of just three hours! I am really excited to tell you about an adaptation that I discovered recently to my push-in piecrust recipe. The original recipe is on page _____ of Family Feasts. (Have any of you tried it?)
Anyway, I’ve been reading recently that coconut oil is better for your health that most other oils (excluding olive oil). And since the original piecrust recipe in my book calls for regular oil, I decided to try substituting coconut oil instead. YUM! The flavor is wonderful, and the texture is light flaky perfection.
For those of you not familiar with the original recipe, this is not one of those tetchy roll-out piecrusts. All you do is heap the dry ingredients right in the pie pan, mix, add the wet ingredients, and form into a ball. Then you simple flatten the dough and push it up the sides of the pan. The piecrusts that you see above were made by my 13 year old son. Here’s the recipe:
Easy Push-In Pie Crust
Makes one crust
Prep time: 10 minutes or less
- 1-1/2 cups flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Measure the above ingredients right into an 8 or 9 inch pie pan and mix with a fork. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add:
- 1/2 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil)
- 1/4 cup milk (decrease milk to 2 tablespoons if you are using vegetable oil)
Using your hands, mix all ingredients until ingredients are evenly dispersed and you can form the dough into a ball. If your dough looks very crumbly, you can add a dab more milk to help everything stick together. But don’t overdo the milk. Once everything is well combined, your dough should feel smooth and a little oily, not sticky.
Press the dough out towards the edges of the pan, working it until the entire pan is covered. This step will take several minutes, especially the first time you make this recipe. But once you’ve done it a time or two, you’ll find that you can form a crust in less than 5 minutes. At this point you can treat your crust just like you would any piecrust. I usually top my peach and apple pies with a crumb topping.
More about coconut oil:
New York Times: Once a Villain, Coconut Oil Charms the Health Food World
Huffington Post: Coconut Oil Benefits