Sunday, August 30, 2009

Orange-Apricot Pie

The College Cravings summertime hiatus is OVER! Finally.

Although there are no blog posts to prove it, all of us here have in fact been perfecting our kitchen skillz for this coming school year. And now that there is a functioning camera, a kitchen larger than Harry Potter's living quarters in book 1, and 11 hungry college students split between two off campus houses (with no meal plans) to ensure that our cooking never stops, we promise to actually update this blog regularly.

So here we go....

Over the course of the summer I became obsessed with two food items; onion rings and key-lime pie. And when I say obsessed I really mean psychologically addicted to. My cravings were equivalent to that of a pregnant woman....who smoked at least 3 joints. Why? I have no idea...but there were definitely way too many 1am trips made to various local diners for these gloriously satisfying foodz. So to commemorate the ending of a really great summer I decided to try my hand at making my own key-lime pie. I searched foodgawker to find the recipe that I thought would be best. I found it and the end result was primus.

And that's when I decided to get creative and sub out the key-limes for another citrus--oranges!--just to see if I had the ability to create my own dessert recipe. Surprisingly enough, I did.

So here it is: Orange-Apricot Pie...a delightfully sweet dessert that looks like, but tastes absolutely nothing like, Key-Lime Pie.

Ingredients

1 & 1/4 cup gram cracker crumbs
6 tablespoons butter, melted
5 tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup orange juice
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup apricot preserves (the chunkier the better)
2 tablespoons water

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Combine gram cracker crumbs, butter, and 3 tablespoons sugar in a bowl. Mix well and spread it into a 9in pie pan.
3. Bake for about 10min so that the crust is golden brown. Cool.
4. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
5. Combine the last 2 tablespoons of sugar, orange juice, orange zest, condensed milk, orange extract, and almond extract. Mix until all the ingredients are blended together.
6. Preheat the over to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Pour the pie filling over the crust and bake for about 30min. The pie should not be completely set, it should jiggle a little bit when you move it...but make sure it does not jiggle too much. If it does, continue baking until it has a nice amount of jiggle to it.
8. Place in fridge to cool.
9. Bring apricot preserves and water to a simmer in a skillet. Once it begins to simmer take it off the heat and pour the reduction over the pie evenly.
10. Place pie back in fridge until it is completely cooled.
11. Serve and enjoy!




Yours Truly,
Kelly

photo credit: Dana Reinert