Simpler Living Blog

BAKING, RECIPES

Heirloom Recipes for Pi Day

Name: Grandma RaymondMattie’s Cottage Pie
Yield: 4 pies
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 2 cups dark karo syrup; 2 cups water; 1 tbsp flour; 1 tsp vanilla; 1 egg; 2 cups sugar; 1 egg; 1/2 cup Crisco; 1 cup sour cream; 3 cups flour

Homemade pie. Really, who doesn't love it?! Celebrate Pi Day (that's 3/14!) with these unique, mouthwatering pies from Lehman's staff. We did a quick office poll, and these two family favorites stood out from the rest.

Grandma RaymondMattie’s Cottage Pie From Michael, Lehman's Web Developer:

Michael has an Amish background, so he shared the origin of the interesting one word Amish nickname in the pie's title. The Amish have large families and a somewhat limited pool of first names, so they put a husband and wife's name together to differentiate people. Michael says, "We actually used that quite a bit in my dad’s family. We have 3 Amanda Millers, my sister, my dad’s sister and also one of my dad’s sister-in-laws. So growing up, it used to be DaveManda, Mark’s Mom (or Sister ‘manda), and Little ‘Manda, although we don’t use those names as much anymore."

According to Michael, the following recipe was always the highlight of Thanksgiving dinner (along with pumpkin pie, of course).

Grandma RaymondMattie’s Cottage Pie

Lehman's

Servings

4 pies

This recipe is just for the pie filling. Prepare four raw pie shells beforehand.

Ingredients

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1 cup sugar
2 cups dark karo syrup
2 cups water
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

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2 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup Crisco
1 cup sour cream
3 cups flour

Instructions

Make the bottom (Karo) filling:
Mix the ingredients for the bottom in blender for 1 minute. Divide evenly into four parts and pour into pie shells.
Assemble the pie top:
Mix ingredients by hand. Using a spoon, drop spoonfuls of the mixture on top of the karo filling in the pie shells.
Bake at 350 for 45 – 50 minutes until the center is firm.
The two layers blend during the baking process, but you wind up with a firm, almost cake-like upper portion and a thin layer of liquid at the bottom, right above the pie crust.