In which I win a contest and am flabbergasted

Guess who won a pie contest? Nah, too self-serving, Ali. Try again.

Guess what I did over the weekend? Thinly-veiled attempt to brag without seeming like it. Nice try

.Today, I’ve got a pie recipe for you!  Oh, please.

To heck with it. I never get to brag. Here goes:

I won a pie contest! Best of all, I won it with a recipe that I made up myself!

First let me tell you (have I mentioned this before?) that one of the only things I’ve ever won in my life was an Easter basket from the local A&P when I was in 5th grade. Our name was pulled from a random drawing, and our entire family (including my mortified 13-year-old sister) had to have a poloroid taken standing next to a man in an Easter Bunny suit, holding the cellphone-wrapped basket (inside of which were delicacies like canned meat and Ritz crackers and waxy fruit). The photo hung at the entrance to the supermarket for weeks, and if I had a nickel for every kid who made fun of me for that (and I had invested all those nickels in Intel stock), I would be a very rich woman by now. So, please forgive me for being a little giddy about all of this. I am not accustomed to winning.

The pie contest was run by the Williamstown Rural Land Foudation, which is based on the most stunning piece of land in rural Williamstown, Mass (they do lots of great things, not just pie contests; local knitters, take note: they’re starting a regular knitting circle on the property!). This contest was intended to celebrate local foods, and both Merrie and I decided to join — her in the kids’ category, and me in the adults. Merrie won a prize last year for her Funny Runny Pear Custard Pie…I’ll post that recipe soon.

Anyhow, it was a great evening; there were crafts, an evening hike, and a local foods potluck during which I sat next to a man who had once won a hot-dog eating contest (225 hot dogs in 3 hours! Impressive. Or…something…). Then, the judging.

Let’s start with Merrie’s pie, as we need a little help:

Merrie is not a fan of fruit pies, so we tried this custard pie recipe. It seemed like a winner: it’s earned 4.5 stars from 109 reviewers, and it was simple enough that an almost-6-year old could make it. We used farm-fresh milk, and the most stunning eggs from nearby Cricket Creek Farm. We made graham cracker-ginger-snap crusts for both pies (which actually turned out pretty well; see below). But the custard itself? I dunno what happened. It was not a winner. It tasted like eggs. Not so much like egg custard…Just kind of like sweetend eggs.

Here’s where I’m hoping you can help: I’m wondering if either (a) the eggs were so fresh, so very “eggy” (remember the old egg taste test?), that they were just too intense for the recipe…perhaps I should have used fewer, or at least fewer eggs? Or maybe (b) when we added scalded milk to the egg/sugar mixture, the milk was too hot? Perhaps we should have let it cool? I really don’t know. But something went wrong, and we could use your help in figuring it out.

Here’s what hers looked like (some of the crust rose to the top….but see how yellow it is? No food coloring there; just farm-fresh eggs. That’s why I’m thinking that the eggs may have been too intense for the recipe):

My pie was actually a bit of an after-thought, actually. One of those, “Well, if there’s time after we make Merrie’s pie, I’ll see if I can throw something together” things. My pie? Crunchy Pear Crumble! A recipe of my own invention!

Well, sort of. I’d seen this recipe for Crunchy Apple Caramel Pie, but wanted to make something with pears instead. And I didn’t think that the caramel would go as well with pears. And I wanted a touch of ginger. So…I kind of made it all up as I went along.

I’m tempted to say that you can get the recipe here, but really, that’s just a shameless attempt to get you to see the newspaper article that uses my name next to the phase “won first place”. You have no time for clicky-clickies that are simply my own shameless boasts. So here’s the recipe. It seems complicated because it requires several parts, but really, it’s quite simple:

CRUST:

9 large (rectanglar, not square) graham crackers

8 ginger snap cookies

1/3 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup maple syrup

Cinnamon to taste (a couple shakes)

PEAR MIX:

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

few sprinkles nutmeg

5.5 cups peeled, thinly sliced local pears (approximately 3-4 pears)

CRUMB TOPPING:

1/2 cup local butter, melted

1/2 cup oats

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup flour

Reserved ginger snap/graham cracker mixture from crust

CRUNCHY TOPPING

1 cup chopped pecans

Directions: (1) CRUST: Place graham crackers and cookies into food processor and blend until they become fine crumbs. Mix with melted butter, maple syrup, and cinnamon until moist throughout. Reserve a small amount (approximately 1/4 cup) of mixture for crumble topping. Then press crust mixture into 9-inch pie pan (wetting fingers with water will help keep it from sticking to fingers). Bake for 5 minutes in preheated 300-degree oven.

(2) PEAR MIXTURE: First mix sugar, salt, flour, and spices. Then add pears and mix throroughly. Place in pie crust.

(3) CRUMB TOPPING: Mix butter, oats, brown sugar, and flour. Then mix in reserved ginger-snap/graham cracker mixture (reserved from crust). Scatter evenly on top of pear mixture.

(4) BAKING: Before adding nuts, bake for approximately 25 minutes in preheated 375-degree oven. Then cover with pecans, cover pie with foil, and bake another 25 minutes. If pecans are not yet crunchy, remove foil for final five minutes of cooking, being careful not to burn nuts.

Here’s what it looked like, from an extremely odd angle:

Here’s the line o’ pies (yum):

And yeah! I won! I didn’t even hear them call my name (by that point, I was chasing a deleriously tired Charlotte through the parking lot, trying to keep her from running straight into the bear-infested woods), but Merrie came dancing up to me to tell me.

I won! I did! In a town filled with bakers and cookbook authors (like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one…and, okay, none of them actually entered the contest, still, it is a town that knows how to bake a pie), I won a contest! I even won a nice mixing bowl and wooden spoon!

And here we are at the end of the night: (Merrie looks unhappy, but I really don’t think she was, even though she didn’t win. She actually seemed deliriously proud of her mama in real life, and not winning was made up for by the fact that she ate pie until her stomach ached).