My first pie!

There always has to be a first try.  And this time it was my first try at a pie!  We were heading over to our friend's place for the evening and I of course offered to bring a dessert - an excuse to try something new out :-)  However there was one catch - our friends were half way through their Lent of being vegan!!!  Hmm, no eggs, milk, cheese, anything you would usually find in baking!  Eek...what to do.  I was searching recipes but wasn't sure about preparing something specifically using vegan ingredients - so many different powders, milks crazy stuff I had never heard of.  And then the thought came to me, I could use a vegan shortening in a pie.  That would be the only substitution necessary but no butter or egg wash on top of the crust but I thought I'd give it a try and see how it went.

I think using the vegan shortening did effect the crust a bit but the taste was good and the filling wasn't effected by anything and I think we all enjoyed it!  

The next pie I make I will try with butter in the crust to see if there's a difference.  

I used this recipe here as well as her vegan pie crust link you'll find on there.  I loved the combination of pear and blueberries and the filling was nice and gooey.  So my crust isn't as pro looking as the one on her website but oh well - first try!

So some of the pastry was a little crumbly pre-cooking.

I seem to be missing a photo or two of the cooked pie so this is all I'm able to post right now but I'm pleased with how my first pie went and look forward to more pie-making soon :-)

Mother's Day Tea

Well what better way to start off my 'Tea' category than to blog about tea!  This year I thought for Mother's Day creating some handmade tea bags would be perfect.

My Mum used to only drink regular tea.  Just the normal.  But I then kept discovering some green tea at home when I visited and in general it seems that loose leaf tea is all the rage...so I put that together and created tea bags filled with our choices of loose leaf teas!  I ordered the tea bags from ebay which would seal with heat - an iron!  We filled them with the teaspoon or so recommended for a cup of tea, added string and a little label to distinguish each one and voila, handmade tea bags!

To match the gift, I made a tea themed card to go with these.  Some purple card, a white lacy doily and a cookie cutter created this card.  Loved using doilies to make cards, and could do any simple shape with them for a really cute feminine card or scrapbook piece.

Happy Mother's Day Mum! ♥

They're in the Freezer!

And it's true...they are in the freezer!  We are now the proud owners of freezer cookies to be shared at a moment's notice :-)  Come on over!  Lemon Icebox Cookies - kind of shortbready - so yummy!  Cherry cookies with pieces of glace cherries in and such a cool colour!  And finally some of the good old classic chocolate chip cookie dough - maybe we'll keep this one just as dough!!  

Unfortunately I don't have the links of the recipes we used, just the recipes saved as a document - let me know if you want to try them!  They are yummy.

In a freezer mood that day we also made some compound butters!  Using a combination of our stand mixer and food processor we managed to create my personal favourite - basil butter as well as roasted garlic butter, chive butter, roasted red pepper butter and one sweet one - maple butter perfect for waffles or pancakes.

Just a little chunk sliced off, placed on top of a freshly grilled steak and you're ready to go!