Week 15: Shoofly Pie – A Year Of Baking

Shoofly Pie

What on earth made us put this on the list you ask? Well, it certainly wasn’t Aubrey’s idea. As I occasionally paged through my Mom’s Best Desserts cookbook, I was always met with some very traditional…historically “true American” desserts. I’ll admit that I get nostalgic pretty easily and am always interested in desserts that have humble, every day beginnings. This is one of those desserts!

The shoofly pie was developed by the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1880’s. It was served with strong black coffee for breakfast (I do love a good dessert for breakfast). The shoofly pie is a molasses crumb cake baked in a pie crust. Its early beginnings were sans the pie crust and it is thought that the crust was added so it could be eaten without a plate and a fork. It is also believed to have been made mostly in the winter when eggs were scarce while molasses kept well in the cold.

Since this bake is all about the “pie” filling, I don’t spend a lot of time discussing the pie crust. We might do that on another post. I’ve made hundreds of pie crusts and it wasn’t the reason for choosing this selection and it really was secondary to the filling, in my opinion. I’ll post my favorite recipe-just note that I used whole wheat pastry flour when I prepared it.

Ingredients

For the Crust (will use half)

3 cups sifted flour
1 T Sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/8 cup shortening
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
5 T cold water

For the Filling

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
4 T butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup hot water
2/3 cup dark molasses
(light cream, to serve)

Directions

For the crust: Lightly mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in a bowl.
Then add shortening with a pastry blender or fork. Combine until crumbly.
In a small bowl, beat the egg, vinegar, and water together with a fork and dump it all at once into the flour mixture. Stir until dampened, then press the dough into 2 balls.
Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until chilled. (Makes two single crusts.)
Roll the dough between 2 floured pieces of waxed paper. Place rolled dough into the bottom of pie plate.
For the filling: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees with a rack in the lower third of the oven.
In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture has the consistency of coarse meal.
Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water; combine the molasses. Pour one third of the molasses mixture into the unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle with one third of the crumb mixture. Continue layering, ending with the crumb mixture.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for 20 minutes, or until the filling is firm when lightly pressed with your fingertips.
Let cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or cold with the light cream.

Our Experience

Our substitutions were our typical items. We used Swerve brown sugar and Splenda for our granular sweeteners and we used a mixture of whole wheat and all purpose flour for the flours.

*Our ingredients for the day (minus the pie crust that was chilling in the refrigerator).*

When I make pie crust, I use my KitchenAid with the paddle attachment to cut the fat into the flour. It’s the lazy way to do it, but it saves my arthritic finger joints from having to use the pastry cutter for several minutes.

*The dry ingredients for the pie crust.*

Ever since I purchased my kitchen scale, I have slowly converted to weighing everything. It is much more accurate that way and I like that we dirty far fewer dishes and thus, less dish washing (And, we should all agree that the clean up is the worst part of baking, right?)

When I use the scale I am very precise because I can be. In this instance, I left a few extra grams in
the measurement because I assumed I would lose some when I scraped it off of the waxed paper.

I should have chilled my shortening but, again, I was being lazy today and it rarely ever affects the crust if I don’t, so I have little reason to go that extra mile. When adding the shortening to the flour, I put small scoops of it in the bowl rather than one big lump.

*As I put the shortening scoops in the flour, I mix it and each piece gets covered with flour so they don’t go back into one big lump.*

*This should be “pea sized” lumps in the flour, but without the chilling of the shortening, it will look like this before I add the wet ingredients.*

After adding the wet ingredients, my recipe is very sticky. It really needs to chill before using it, so, I spoon it all onto a piece of plastic wrap and then wrap it all up and get it in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

*My dough recipe is pretty sticky, but it tastes so good, I don’t care if it’s more difficult to handle.*

*The wrapped pie crust dough, ready for chilling.*

After the dough chilled for about an hour, it was time to roll it out and get it in the pie plate. I rolled this one very thin because I wasn’t sure if the cake required a thick crust…I mean it’s already a dessert by itself.

*Pie crust in the pan and ready to go back into the refrigerator to chill while we prepared the filling.* *This dough breaks/tears very easily but it also pieces back together with ease (another reason for liking it). You can see at least one place in the crust that had to be repaired.*

While the crust chilled, we got the filling ingredients ready. The dry ingredients were going to remain separate from the wet in this recipe…which, we will admit seemed very odd at the time. We used 3/4 cup all purpose flour and 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour. For the sugar, we filled the 1/2 cup measuring cup about three fourths of the way up with the Swerve brown sugar and then filled it the rest of the way with Splenda. We wanted to avoid the weird cooling effect that we got the last time we only used the Swerve brown sugar.

*Adding the butter, again, cutting in the fat using the mixer with the paddle attachment.*

*The dry ingredients with the butter cut in. This looks more like what a pie crust would look like if I had chilled the shortening.*

We put the liquids in a measuring cup because it had to be poured into the pie shell and we felt a bowl would be a mess to use.

*You can see a little shortening floating on the top. I put a really thin layer on the measuring cup to see if it would help to get the*
*molasses out by preventing it sticking. It actually seemed to help a bit, but we realized molasses is just going to be sticky.*

The pie filling was assembled by pouring 1/3 of the liquid into the pie crust, then sprinkling 1/3 of the dry ingredients on top of that. Then, repeating that two more times. We decided to weigh the ingredients so we weren’t guessing how much 1/3 was. After eating it, I’m not sure that level of accuracy was even necessary.

*The first third of the dry ingredients sprinkled on the wet.*

*The final layer of the dry ingredients.*

*The pie cooling. The recipe said it could be eaten warm or cold. I’m giving it an hour and then I’m digging in!!*

I have to say, this smelled so good while it was baking. We have a vaulted ceiling that goes up to our second floor and the cooking/baking smells are always stronger up there…good or bad! I could have sat up in my room all afternoon with this one!

*It’s just very weird and we don’t know what we are going to find inside. Looks very rustic, as it should!*

Once the pie was cut, it was evident that there were distinct layers. Which, was pretty cool because we had no idea what we were making let alone what it would look like and it was a pleasant surprise.

*The top layer is crunchy, the middle layer is cakey, and the bottom layer is moist and more custard like.*

*The close up shows the layers. The pie crust virtually disappeared as a layer.*

What we liked.

Do I even need to say it? Of course, I loved it!! Is there any dessert that I don’t like? (Not yet!) The top layer was crunchy like the topping of a crisp. The cakey center wasn’t dense or fluffy, just a nice in between texture. Aubrey said more brownie like. The bottom layer was almost custard like and felt really decadent when I ate it. While the crust disappeared on the bottom, it added a rich, flakey, crisp bite at the top. The mix of textures was perfect to me.

And the flavor? It was probably similar to a gingerbread cake (which I have never eaten), maybe??? It reminded me of my gingerbread cookies with a bit stronger molasses flavor…as a cake of course. It was a hearty dessert but not heavy at all. It would be a great winter dessert because the spices made me feel all warm and cozy.

I think it would be delicious for breakfast…or any time of day! The dessert received 5-ish out of 5 thumbs up. Kip thought it tasted a bit like coffee but I think it was just the dark, strong flavor of molasses that he isn’t familiar with. Both he and Garrett had more than one piece. Aubrey liked it but mentioned she would be “just fine” eating it without the crunchy top layer. Logan allowed it to be “OK”. One final note…it tasted better the second day!

What we would change.

I don’t know that I would change anything. I will say that I wondered if it even needed the pie crust but realized that without it, the bottom layer would be difficult to get out of the pan. I absolutely loved the variation of textures but, as mentioned before, Aubrey said she would probably prefer it without the crunchy top. Kip said he would eat it with ice cream next time.

What we learned.

Well, this was the most unorthodox method of assembling a pie/cake that we have ever tried! As a kid in Girl Scouts, we made cakes for the camp fire by putting some cherry pie filling in a cupcake liner, then topped it with dry white cake mix, and finished it off with a pat of butter on top before putting it on the fire to “bake”. I was amazed that it worked and will say the same for this recipe. I didn’t know what to expect but, 3 layers, was never part of what I imagined it would look like. Aubrey was wondering if it would have cooked the same had we mixed everything together like a normal cake. (FYI, that would also eliminate the crunchy top…I sense ulterior motives here.)

This is going to make it into the “must make again” pile.

Until next week, Happy Baking!