Pie Are Squared: Strawberry Lover's Pie

This was a departure from the Sweety Pies book. My sister was coming into town and asked for a chocolate pie. She rejected every chocolate pie in my book (there are actually only three), so I ventured elsewhere.
This pie was okay. I feel like it took too many steps for a mediocre product. And just so you know, that is NOT Hershey's syrup drizzled on the top. It is melted chocolate chips, on top of a raspberry jam glaze, which is on top of fresh strawberries, which are on top of a cream cheese/sour cream mixture, which is in a chocolate painted crust.
See what I mean by too many steps?
The pie was good, but not THAT good.

Ratings:

Flavor: 6

Execution: 8. The drizzling really wasn't pretty.

Difficulty: Easy, but it takes a while.

Overall rating: *** 3 out of 5 stars.

Sister Baby's Buttermilk Pie

This is not a picture of the pie I made. I forgot to take a picture, so this is one I found online of the same recipe. My pie was not nearly so pretty. It browned to a dark brown on top, and the filling was still runny. It tasted good and all, but I am frustrated with my failures at custard pies. Every single one has turned out runny. I don't know if there's something wrong with my preparation, my oven, or the elevation, but I really want to figure out the problem. As I've researched potential solutions online, I've come across several options that I would consider cheating: adding cornstarch or tapioca to thicken things. I'm not saying it's morally wrong or anything (haha, the morality of pies), but I feel like the recipes were written that way for a reason and they should be able to work without adding an extra thickener.
So. Since I feel like I've become pretty good at pie crusts (which was my original goal in this endeavor) I think I will move on to making successful custard pies (which is differentiated from cream pies in that custard pies are baked in the oven, while cream pies have a filling that is precooked on the stovetop before putting in the oven). I won't necessarily be making a custard pie every time, but that is my new goal.
Here's a link to the recipe, which I would recommend for sure. And let me know if your custard sets well. I need some help. Oh, and the online recipe calls for orange zest, while my recipe in the book called for lemon. I think orange would be even better than lemon.

Ratings:

Flavor: 7

Execution: 6

Difficulty: Easy, if you ignore my custard problems.

Overall rating: *** 3 out of 5 stars.

Camp Cupcake: Fruitcake

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I am a week away from moving out of Lubbock, six days from graduation, five days from my family coming to visit, and two days from quitting work. I've been a little bit busy.

I have now completed all of the recipes I committed to make in Martha Stewart's Cupcake Cookbook. They are done. It will probably be a little while before I blog about all of them.

However, yesterday was July 31, and I promised that I would be done with all of these recipes by then.

On Wednesday, I made the fruitcakes and attempted the meringue mushrooms on Thursday.

Let me go on record right now as saying that this is one of Martha's more bizarre ideas.

I can wrap my head around fruitcake. When my parents were first married, my mom made fruitcake at Christmas. My dad, after tasting my mom's, decided to try to improve upon it. Since then, it has been a weird obsession with him to make fruitcake every year, usually just after Thanksgiving, and to try to improve upon it every year (Yes, I am aware that I have probably inherited this from him).

I realize that not everyone likes fruitcake. In fact, it is sort of a joke at Christmas time. It is dense, with a very small cake-to-fruit ratio. In addition, the fruit is typically candied, and like marzipan, is a substance unto itself. At the same time, I have fond memories of fruitcake at Christmas. I discovered that I am not the only one. I brought these to the temple yesterday and had a 15-minute conversation with one of the other temple workers about the fruitcake her husband's mother made for many years. My dad has several people he makes his for every year, and for them, it is a holiday highlight (or so they say).

The meringue mushrooms made a lot less sense to me. When I described them to people, I realized that I was not alone. I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why Martha thought that needed to happen. Apparently, fruitcake is not impressive enough by itself.

So I made the recipe, which I have included here. The only difference between the recipe linked and the one I made is that I used half the fruit and nuts, which gave it a better cake-to-fruit ratio.

I did not make the Seven-Minute Frosting because there is little difference between it and the meringue I had to make for the mushrooms, so before I baked the meringue, I used it to frost the cupcakes.

Here is a picture of my cookbook:

You probably can't see the smears of chocolate, or the pages hanging loose. I intend to have it spiral-bound when I settle down in Utah.

I really wanted to wrap this up neatly, like Julie and Julia, with the life lessons I have learned, and a pilgrimage to Martha Stewart's home in New York to sneak a can of Dutch-processed cocoa onto her porch before her security guards find me. However, in the midst of all of this baking and blogging, my life happened in a wonderful and exhausting way that, unlike Julie Powell's life, has nothing to do with baking or blogging.

So, that's the lesson I would leave for the three people who are curious if I ever finished this project or not: life does not always have to fit together neatly. Sometimes, you can do something like bake cupcakes or start a blog, and it can be a wonderful release without having to give birth to a book deal or a new restaurant, or a calling or a relationship. Sometimes, baking can just be about baking.

Sometimes a cupcake is just a cupcake.

And, while I have not yet selected a new project to continue my involvement in this blog, rest assured that there will be another one. As silly as the cupcake project was, there is something about setting a goal and completing it that I am addicted to.

For now, though, this is Camp Cupcake, aka Keiko Agena, signing off.