TWD: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler

Much thanks to Amanda from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake for selecting this week's dessert, Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler. This recipe provided me with a few more firsts since I have never:

• pitted cherries
• touched rhubarb
• & even baked with whole wheat flour!

Just a few more milestones met & crossed in my short baking career!

I was lucky and was able to find rhubarb in 2 different stores since it is going out of season very quickly. Whole Foods was charging $4.99/lb(!!!), almost as much as a gallon of gas and the Dekalb Farmers Market was charging 89 cents/lb & the rhubarb came from Washington State. See if you can figure out which store I purchased it from! :-)

We had fresh ginger at home so we used less ginger than Dorie called for because it was so potent, and omitted it from the biscuit topping. The cobbler was done in about 40 minutes and we all dug in literally 20 minutes later.

I absolutely loved it- all the flavors just tasted so perfect together for me, and topping it off with Breyer's vanilla just threw it over the top because it was still so warm. My husband wasn't as crazy about it, he's not much of a ginger fan and my mom also liked it. So 2 votes yes, 1 vote no. I would make this again just to eat all by myself! Can't wait till next June for the first arrivals of local rhubarb!

TWD: Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

Before I forget- lots of thanks to all the well-wishers for our move! We're almost unfinished unpacking- just a few more boxes and then lots of pictures to hang!

This post is a bit of a downer for me. I have no pictures of a delicious looking pie to share and I also wish I could start this post by writing something along the lines of "BEST PIE EVER!" But I can't because I never got to try it.

I am hitting a wall making pie crusts. I made Martha's 4th of July Blueberry Pie a few weeks ago with some success but the crust wasn't as perfect as it could have been. I was really excited about making Dorie's because I figured being my 2nd pie, it would be a little easier! (eh, instead I went backwards!)

So here's how it all went down:

I have a regular size food processor so I made 2 separate pie crusts and refrigerated them both for over an hour. I made sure that the butter and shortening were cold/frozen just like Dorie said. I used ice water and gave the crust 3 tablespoons each. I think I probably messed things up with the water. The dough pulled together nicely and then I wrapped them with plastic wrap, flattened them and refrigerated them.

When I took the first crust out to roll it, I tried rolling it between two sheets of plastic wrap. Turned disastrous as the crust completely stuck to the plastic wrap as I tried to remove it. That ended up being tossed. Thinking the plastic wrap was the problem, I tried rolling the second crust in between sheets of wax paper (with a little extra flour just in case). Same problem, as I removed the wax paper, the crust stuck to it and split apart. So then I was left with no pie crust :-( I just took all those blueberries that I had and made a blueberry cobbler (at least I knew how to do that already!)

I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas of what went wrong here. What would make the pie crust get so sticky? Would adding more water in the processor make it less sticky? 

My Mom is coming to visit in 2 weeks and I'm really excited because among other things, she's going to bake a pie with me so I can see what the consistency of the crust should really be like before refrigerating it. This "learning experience" also made me with I spent a couple more minutes with Mom in the kitchen on Thanksgiving making pie instead of always being glued to the tv with Dad watching football! :-)