Some people we go to church with own a catering business, and they had to do a huge 3-day farm sale this weekend, plus the Country Club's Memorial Day gala. Both events needed pies. Mike (the owner) was talking to my dad about this, and my dad offered my "expertise."
I used to bake pies for the restaurant/coffee shop in Pomona when I was a teen. But they took advantage of the fact that I was only like 14, and only wanted to pay me something like 6 or 8 bucks a pie, even though fillings would cost me at least half of that, not to mention my time. (Then they would turn around and charge something like $4 a slice.) That job didn't last long, but it gained me some experience.
I didn't sleep well Sunday night, before I started this undertaking. I was nervous I wouldn't get it all done.
And then I get there on Monday, and find out that instead of the 40 pies I thought I'd signed on for, it was 100+. They told me how many they needed to serve, and my math..... Oh well. They have an industrial kitchen, so things cranked out pretty fast. Being able to bake 12 at a time really speeds things up - had I been doing this in my own kitchen, I don't think I could have gotten it done even baking around the clock - 4 would be the max in my own oven, and they wouldn't bake evenly at that.
All in all, I made 64 fruit pies, and 44 cream pies. In 4 days. I'm proud of myself. I made all of the fruit pie fillings from scratch, and even though we used frozen crusts for the bottom of every pie, I rolled out a homemade crust to top the ones that needed it (cherry, peach, and strawberry rhubarb; we did a crumb topping on all the apple - much faster). The lemon pies were true cream pies (custard-type), but the chocolate, peanut butter, and coconut we cheated on and used a mix. The coconut will be interesting, because we used a pina colada mix instead of coconut milk which the stores were out of. I thought it was amazing.
So I really do have an excuse this time for my lack of bloginess. (Although as I look, I do have an entry this week, even though it really wasn't about this week. I did it while babysitting.)
I do have more blog fodder coming. After this weekend. Today I'm working at the farm sale I baked all these for (hopefully seeing the pie being swooped up by customers!), then tonight is my brother's [24th?] bday party, then tomorrow is church, then Monday we have a graduation reception and are having our own celebration cookout since Paul's got the day off.....
All 64 of the fruit pies. I couldn't get all the cream pies at once since they were stuffed into every available refrigerator or freezer.
1 comment:
Damnnnnnnnnn... I am TOTALLY impressed!
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