Pie

Jul 27

Question: What's more fun than cleaning up after kids cooking?

Answer: Kids Cooking!!!

Seriously, I much prefer helping kids cook to helping them clean up or doing the cleaning up solo. However, part of cooking is cleaning, so, if you are going to teach kids to cook it's wise to teach them to clean up. It seems like a wise disclaimer but since perfection isn't my game, I am just going to admit that I did not make them help clean. But they had fun and are likely going to want to bake again, and that IS A WIN!!!

Pie might be a dying art with all the gelato, homemade popsicles (personal fan of frosé), keto fat bombs and whatever cupcake du jour. With summer fruit season underway in the northern hemisphere I urge you to embrace PIE! Even if you are dairy-free and/or gluten-free, there is a pie for you. Heck, you can skip the sugar in most pie, especially if you have ripe fruit and/or apple juice. Lemon juice works wonders in getting a fruit to release it's natural sugars and preserves the color of your hard earned fresh fruit.

Our neighbor is dairy-free, in order to accommodate his diet I did a little searching on Pinterest for a dairy free pie crust. Honestly, it only briefly occurred to me to make a custard and forego making a pie crust (and I should have made a custard anyway because my other favorite neighbors are gluten and dairy free). BUT the plan was to make pie...because I love making pie and honestly, cooking with kids is even more fun if we make something I am passionate about. You can all thank my Aunt for forcing me to make a lemon meringue pie 25 years ago, it kind of got me hooked. However, I made a lot of really not amazing lemon meringue because my patience level wasn't always fantastic and I typically made the pie around midnight when I would come home from college for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But learning is half the fun, the other half is eating pie.

Blueberries are a raving deal right now but not just a great deal, they are ripe and full of flavor. So stock up on berries now and freeze them for use all year long. I freeze the berries in a single layer on a cookie sheet and then pour into freezer bags. I can't take credit for this idea as my oldest sister passed the knowledge down when I was in college and making a ton of fruit smoothies (I don't eat that much fruit in one serving anymore). But this fruit freezing knowledge has served me well as a mom.

My late night Pinterest addiction revealed some custard or cream pies topped with blueberries and it seemed interest enough. We chose to make a completely dairy free pie (using this custard recipe with the cornstarch option) for the neighbors and a cream pie for our house but with our coconut oil crust (so the two kids could make pie crust together and graham crackers were out because of a potato intolerance for another child).

I will say that I love trying to accommodate allergies or food intolerances because foods are amazing and most recipes can be altered in ways to accommodate these diets. And kids should not suffer in the process of helping their bodies to be healthy.

Here's a few tips for baking with kids:

1. Patience, you can never have too much

2. Let the kids do the majority of the work and practice their reading and math skills

3. Fun, accidents happen and egg shells aren't that difficult to fish out