Flour Play - Pt. 3 &4: Pies & Cookies
November 23rd 2024 - Sweet & Savory Pies
For our third session of the Flour Play series we dove into the multi-step process that is baking pies from scratch. Pie baking goes back centuries to ancient Egypt where ingredients like regional grains and honey were typical for pies, and has since come a long way to include popular flavors like sweet potato, pumpkin, blueberry, apple, chess, and more depending on the season. During our time together, bakers were shown and practiced how to make a flaky butter crust from scratch, followed by demonstrations of spiced apple and sweet potato fillings.
Photos by Mackenzie Goulbourne and Ana Moran for Deep Routes, please don’t use without written permission.
Participants preparing their pie dough from scratch using chilled butter.
Maya demonstrating the assembly and concepts behind a basic apple pie filling.
After some sweet potato and apple pie filling demonstrations, participants gathered around to start filling their pie tins!
A close up shot of a purple sweet potato pie and chicken pot pie before their head into the oven.
A close up shot of an apple pie with a lattice top.
A close up shot of a participant creating a lattice top over his apple pie filling.
A participant masterfully preparing a pie tin with half purple and half orange sweet potato pie filling.
Close up shots of chicken, apple, and sweet potato pie fillings prior to them getting tops and heading into the oven.
Baked up apple and chicken mini pies.
Participants showing off their finished mini pies.
Participants bringing their pie doughs out from chilling in the freezer.
December 14th 2024 - Cookies
In our closing session we got into sugars and fats and how techniques like creaming transform them into the foundation for treats like cookies. December is prime cookie baking time and we dedicated our time to practicing simple drop cookies like chocolate chip, sunbutter, oatmeal cherry, and sorghum molasses (shoutout to Maya’s friend Chelsea Askew introducing her to the Appalachian Appetite where the recipe can be found) as well as brownies.
Maya going over creaming and cookie batter assembly with participants.
Maya demonstrating cookie scooping techniques.
Maya demonstrating brownie batter assembly and a consistency check, talking about the difference between a cakey batter and a fudgy/chewy batter.
Maya supporting a participant in browning butter for cookies.
A participant getting ready to bake up her sunbutter cookies.
A participant measuring out ingredients for their cookie batter.
A participant grinding up oats for oatmeal lace cookies.
Oatmeal cherry cookies scooped onto a tray and getting ready to go into the oven for baking.
A brookie being assembled with brownie batter and chocolate chip cookie dough.
Freshly baked cookies after cooling down a bit.
Vegan chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven cooling down.
A closing group photo! Missing a few people but they were there in spirit!
