Vanilla Bean Cardamom Peach Pie

I went with a full-size pie this week, you guys. I've been wanting to try this peach and cardamom pie, complete with latticed top, for a while now, and it seemed like trying a new crust technique AND going miniature-size was asking for trouble. However, now that I'm an expert at it, look for a jam jar version of this woven pie top in the near future. It's almost apple season, after all. 

I have lots of links for you today. The main recipe I followed comes from Pastry Affair, and, though I know I say this frequently, I once again highly recommend checking out the original post; the photography is so good. For the pie crust, I went to Emily Hilliard's tried and true Nothing in the House recipe, and it turned out great (even though I used a food processor to mix everything instead of her spoon/bowl/hands recommendation). Then, when it came time to fashion that fancy, woven crust pattern, Smitten Kitchen's lattice tutorial was extremely useful.

Here's square one-and-a-half. I made the pie crust without taking pictures, but nothing exciting happened, so it's okay. I was mildly concerned that I didn't see the 'coarse sand' texture happen when I pulsed the butter into my dry ingredients, but everything seemed to come out properly in the end. I wrapped the dough-discs in plastic and chilled them for more than an hour before embarking on this leg of the project. Ingredients are fairly basic - the vanilla beans and cardamom are really the stars here, along with the fresh, summery peaches, of course.

 Labor Day was pretty stormy here, so the color and aroma of these peaches was a welcome contrast - like a lil' bowl of sunshine, isn't it? (Among other things, this week's recipe underscored the fact that I have a lot to learn about slicing peaches in a uniform and pretty manner...)






There are few things in this world more satisfying than scraping vanilla bean seeds out of their pods. The flavor I got out of this little guy was not disappointing.






So the vanilla beans went into the filling along with the other standard ingredients, and everything got tossed together and dumped into the waiting pie crust. So far, so good. Without incriminating myself and under the condition that there will be no follow-up questions, I'd like to point out that this week you get to see the rolling out of the crust from dough-disc to filling-ready because making my own from scratch isn't always something that happens in this amateur kitchen...but this week it did! :)

Okay, are you ready to lattice? This technique was surprisingly easy, especially for anyone who was a kid in the 80's and had the benefit of growing up with the Make Your Own Pot-Holder loom kit like I'm sure a lot of us did.


The basic over-under pattern wasn't hard to recreate with pie crust. My one mistake was probably making my strips a little too wide, so I had fewer of them to work with than I'd've liked (appreciate the double contraction, please...it's one of my favorites).





Next time, I'll make them closer to 1/2-inch strips. For a first try, I'm content with the finished result, especially after I went around the edges to trim, tuck, and generally polish everything up to acceptable 4-oz Kitchen standards.

After 40 minutes in the oven, I had to put foil around the edges since they were browning faster than the rest of the pie. In the process of putting the foil-edged-pie back into the oven to finish baking (which is rather delicate, since the foil is tucked around the edges in the same places I need to put my hot-padded, clumsy paw-hands), I may have almost dumped the whole thing into the nether-reaches of my oven...ALMOST. 

But in the end, everything came out looking pretty beautiful. I think some home-made cinnamon ice cream (or caramel, or almond, or maple praline, or any ice cream, really...) would be a perfect complement to the flavors in this pie. Maybe concocting a pairing for this week's dessert will be next week's project. Stay tuned. 

PS - If this end of the flavor spectrum is too sweet for your palette, Martha Stewart has a recipe for Peach Basil Crumble that has never disappointed me.