BIRTHDAY SUGAR

For his birthday on tuesday, Conn wanted a starfruit pie. Our Starfruit tree is finally turning out this year's crop with giant fruits that look more like they were pushed out by a giant Play-Doh Fun Factory than the normal-sized fruits from passed years. I used to make pies a lot back when I had spare time so I took on the challenge with gusto. Back then, I'd make a double crust from memory but I found myself reaching for the Joy of Cooking to try one of their classics.

Pie Dough Cockaigne (9-inch Double Cruster slightly modified form original)

Sift together: 2 c. all-purpose flour, 1 t. salt, and 3 t. of sugar

Measure and combine: 1/4 c. butter (i used salted butter) and 3 T. shortening

Cut half the shortening mixture into the flour mixture until it has the grain of cornmeal, thencut in the remaining half until the it is pea-sized. Sprinkle dough with 5 T. of water. Using a spatula, just blend the water into the dough, if it looks too dry add a some more water in small amaounts until the dough holds together. Then knead it in your hands for a about 30 secs, forming it into a ball. Divide in half, wrap each portion in plastic wrap and refridgerate until you are ready to roll it out!

This was slightly different than the crusts I used to make, I never had shortening on hand, so I'd always use more butter. And we usually only have the salted kine butter.



For the filling, take around 10 medium starfruit (or 8 big ones) and remove pits and inner membrane and chop them up (that's why the cut up bits in the pic look like little arrows.)

Ok, so now this is where the recipe we found online went wonky and we realized it was for 2 pies! But we still only got one pie filling out of it. Anyway, the recipe said to cook the fruit with 2 cups of sugar and 2/3 cup of water. But if I were to try this again, I'd use only 1 cup of sugar and absolutely no water. It turned out way too wet. (see the pic below where we spooned out some of the liquid into a little bowl.

To add some depth of flavor, we added about 2 T. of fresh grated ginger and some fresh grated nutmeg.


So when the mixture boils, you add a few tablespoons of quick-cooking tapioca. Now we assumed that would thicken it up, but it didn't work for us. So try it if you like tapioca, it might work for you. If not, sprinkle some flour into the mixture to thicken it up, just before you fill the pie which is what we did. Bake at 425 degrees for about 35 minutes, until the pie edges turn golden.



And for his birthday breakfast he got a bacon and taro english muffin sandwich.



Then, as if the pie wasn't enough sugar, we were minding our own business in costco, keeping to our list when this little beauty sweet-talked it's way into our cart. It's a mango sponge cake with whip icing. Um, it tastes more like apricot to me, but it was tasty regardless. Kind of light except for the whip icing. Needless to say, it's size has deemed it a diet mainstay over the passed few days of little time and lots of physical labor.