A Sugar Cream Pie New Year

Where were you 10 years ago? What were the decade's top songs/artists/albums? 2009's best music: Vote Now! Not going to lie, I got very tired of seeing these types of polls and articles pop up in my inbox and on my Twtitter feed. So here's mine.

2009: Fine as a Swine
-I traveled to Las Vegas for the first time (!)
-I took over Jack and Jill magazine (!)
-I reached a quarter of a century and have had various small quarter life crises (...!...?)
-I came to terms with the term "broke" and made some lifestyle changes such as canceling cable and cutting shopping (not !)
-I visited camp under the guise of a work trip and got my flight paid for (!!!) hey I did write an article on my fave place in the world for the mag
-My dog was banned from my parents' house (not !)
-I fell into more new music than I could have ever have dreamed of (!!!!!!)
-I decided to one day open a bakery in North Carolina with Bette and have a prostitution business on the side (!!!!) (anyone interested in a "cherry pie" aka a tall blonde with big tatas and a midget on the side?)

-I celebrated the two year anniversary of my return to Indianapolis (not !)

My New Year's resolutions are as follows: put $100 into my savings account every month as car payments have ended, pawn off baked goods on unsuspecting coworkers in an attempt to lose weight, have formulated a move to North Carolina plan by the end of the year.

In 2010, more specifically Jan 12, Vampire Weekend comes out with their second album! You can listen here until then. I've got a couple more listens before I comment on it, but so far, so musically nice on the ears!

In 2009 I also made a sugar cream pie. Here's how that story goes.

I love pie. I love making pie. PIE. Thanksgiving is the Pie Holiday. I wanted to make cranberry caramel almond tart for Adam's Thanksgiving. Adam wanted me to make sugar cream pie. I'd never heard of such a pie, and quite honestly a pie consisting only of cream and sugar sounded bizarre. Adam's grandmother, on the other hand, makes the world's best sugar cream pie. Adam was setting me up for failure. Julia, make this pie that you've never made before, but that my grandma's a pro at for my family's Thanksgiving. I manned up, found a good recipe, tweaked it a tiny bit, and, with my sexy assistant Adam, made my first official state pie of Indiana. (That's the sugar cream pie, if you didn't get that....) His grandmother deemed it a very good sugar cream pie. I pass!

Sugar Cream Pie

single pie crust

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup cold shortening

3 tablespoons verrry cold butter

3 to 6 tablespoons ice water

Mix the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut the chilled shortening and butter into the flour with a food processor, pastry blender, or two knives until the shortening and butter are in pea sized pieces. (Chunks=flaky crust) Add the ice water, starting with only 3 tablespoons, and mix together. If you can get the dough to stick together in a ball, then add no more water. If not, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, testing for stick-togetherness after each addition. The key to good pie crust is to handle it as little as possible, so remember that. Roll the dough out onto a floured counter or between two pieces of parchment paper. Transfer it into a 9-inch pie pan and mold it to the pan. Your crust should come up over the lip of the pan but should not hang over that edge, so trim it if you have extra hanging out.

Filling

1 cup sugar

4 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pint heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 400°. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a medium bowl and mix in the cream and vanilla. Add this to the dry ingredients and whisk it all until the mixture starts to thicken. Pour the mixture into your unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle nutmeg on the top. Bake for 10 minutes. Lower the oven heat to 350° and bake for one hour, or until the filling is jiggly and set. I would check your crust about halfway through baking time. If the edges look nice and golden brown, carefully take the pie out of the oven, and wrap the edges with foil. This will keep them from burning!

Coming soon: Oma Macaroni, discussion of World Peace Cookies