FABRIC
Our Taiwanese apartment looked and smelled like a tiny, messy grandma bakery the last couple of days, which I love. I've never baked so many pies in one day and the days after that. I think my skinny jeans needs to wait a little longer after tasting, eating and finishing all these scrumptious baked fruit and chocolate pie's. That's life, I know But! I did however have some delicious pie's to comfort you through the rainy and colder autumn days to come. Typical autumn weather is a nice excuse to stay at home and warm up the house by baking some delicious pie's don't you think? It's easy to find endless kinds of fruit back here in Taiwan, but some of the Western fruit pie recipes ask for specific varieties of pears or grapes. I find it simple to change some of the fruity ingredients as long as it's from the same family. That's also the reason why I love many pie recipe's so much, because they are so flexible. In this case I used Chinese apple pears instead of Bosc or Barlett pears and Japanese Kyocho grapes instead of Concord grapes. So if you can't find that specific type of fruit, don't worry; try to experiment ing with other types of fruit. I also thought of some fun new ways to decorate my pies crusts, beyond the traditional weave. For example: I used two colors of dough for the Derby chocolate pie crust and used my scissors to cut out some fun shapes out of the lattice strips of the grape pie. I also used a lattice cutter for the first time. I always thought that it would make my pie look Âťstore boughtÂŤ, but I've noticed whilst making crusts by hand, they never quite looks like machine made. Especially with my personalized almond and raisin circle crust. And Braiding is one of my favorite ways to decorate a crust, it makes a pie look very good right away. Well, I hope this will inspire you to have a fun afternoon baking and crust experimentation.
Have fun! Issue 20 | August/Sept. 2015
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