I froze some pared and cored Fiery Fury peaches from a short trip out to Orr’s Farms in West Virginia a few weeks ago. 4 peaches were taken out from the deep freezer, put in a metal bowl with a cling film cover and allowed to thaw in the fridge for a couple days. 

Woke up this morning after fixing a quick sandwich on challah  to decide that what I really wanted was pie, so…

1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
10 tablespoons of irish butter ( I prefer KerryGold)
1/4 cup of vodka

Mash it all together with a fork except for the vodka until it looks like lump store-grated parmesan. Add the vodka until you get to a pie crust consistency. You might not need all of the 1/4 cup, so pour it in sparingly. Whatever doesn’t go into the dough, go ahead and drink it. 🙂

Form 3 disks, wrap in cling film and put them in the fridge to rest.

Take the thawed peaches out of the bowl and slice them, not too thick, nor too thin. If you haven’t sucked down that vodka, pour it into that syrup that the peaches have left in the bowl and shake that over ice, and maybe add a bit of soda. Great stuff.

Clean out the bowl and put the peaches back in with 2 tablespoons of cane sugar. 1 tablespoon of maple sugar. 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger, and a splash of peach schnopps, and a quarter cup of corn starch.  Stir that all together, but gently so you don’t break the peaches.

Take out two mini pie pans and roll out your dough into tops and bottoms for the pies. Assemble, put the mini pies in sandwich bags and put them in the freezer. Fall is coming and you might have a guest show up who is desperate for some pie. Its nice to be able to grab a personal one and throw it in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes, plate it and impress the hell out of someone.

As for the leftover dough and leftover pie filling, pour the filling directly into a mini cast iron skillet. You can roll out the dough and try to make it lovely, or you can lay the dough in demented jigsaw-style pattern on top of the pie filling. Doesn’t matter. The top becomes the bottom once its baked.  Put the skillet into a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 35-40 minutes. Carefully remove it from the oven. Its hot and pie-filling burns are not anything you want to fuck with. 

Sit the pie out on the counter to cool and do not give into the temptation to taste it yet. You need to have your taste-buds intact, OK?

Once the tart has cooled but is still warm, get the little transpose spatula you use to ice little cupcakes, and go around the edge of the skillet to free up the tart, then put a plate facing down on top of the pan and flip the whole thing over.  Take a little peek. Is it still sticking?  A bit?  Go back in with the spatula and carefully ease the tart out of the pan onto your plate.

I tend to keep ice cream on hand in the deep freezer. Salted Caramel from Trickling Springs Creamery is my ice cream of choice. A nice scoop or two should be fine.  I topped mine off with some of that ginger peach syrup I made a couple days ago from the skins of all those peaches I peeled.

Dig in.