Tastes Tart....Must be Lemon Pie

I do have to apologize, it's been over five months since my last posting.  Ok, I just realized I sounded like I was at confession and I'm not even Catholic.  Moving on....
I like tart tasting pies and cakes.  I just like the way it hits my tongue and makes me clench my jaw sometimes.  I found an easy lemon pie recipe again from Pinterest.  One of these days I'm going to have to talk about Pinterest because I've heard there have been *fails*.  Gasp!! A failure! It cannot be born.  Anyway, focus, Kelli.  This one uses canned lemon pie filling and cream cheese and a regular graham cracker crust but I had to change the graham crackers to ginger snaps.  How long has it been since you had a ginger snap?
So here is it, Layered Lemon Pie
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Crust:
2 cups ginger snaps crushed or 1 cup ginger snap and 1 cup graham crackers
3 TSP sugar
6 TSP melted butter
mixed together and press into a nine inch pie pan and then bake for about eight minutes and let cool.  Set aside.
Filling:
1 pkg cream cheese softened to room temperature
1 can lemon pie filling, divided
1/2 cup sugar
1 container of cool whip or other whipped topping

Using a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth.  Then beat in half of the pie filling.  Fold in about half of cool whip and mixed thoroughly.  Spread into pie crust and then spread other half of lemon pie filling.  Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours.  After it is well chilled, then spread remaining cool whip on top and garnish with a few lemon slices.  Voila!!

Sweet Potato Pie with Pecan Streusel Crunch

My coworker who is diabetic asked me to make her another pie last week.  A sweet potato pie.  Not my favorite pie but since I grew up with it, I can still make it.  To me it's so plain, it clearly needs something else to jazz it up.  So I added a streusel.  Bam!!!

I took it to work and she allowed the office to devour it and took the little that was left over home to her husband.  But she said it was amazingly good.  So I can give myself a little pat on the back.  Thanks again Pinterest!!  It was a recipe I saw there and I tweaked the streusel topping since I didn't have any toffee bits and I didn't feel like leaving the house at that time.  Still tasted great.  Here ya go

Slightly tweaked Sweet Potato Pie with Streusel Crunch:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

• • 1 9-inch refrigerated pie crust
  • 2 cups pureed sweet potatoes ( I bought a can and used my hand mixer to puree it)
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup heavy cream (didn't have any in the house, so I used about 1/2cup of milk)
  • 3 large eggs, beaten
  • 2 tsp vanilla or rum extract
  • 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (1tsp allspice, 1tsp nutmeg, and 3tsp cinnamon)
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/3 cup crushed vanilla wafer crumbs( I'm lazy and there were graham crackers in the pantry)
  • 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 Tbsp cold butter, cubed
  • 1/4 cup chopped pecans
  • 1/4 cup English toffee bits (skipped entirely)
  • 2 cups fresh sweetened whipped cream, for garnish (only if you want it)

• In a electric mixing bowl, mix the pureed potatoes, sugars, and mix together.  Add one egg at a time, then vanilla extract and the seasonings and salt.

• Roll out dough in a 9 inch pie pan and pinch edges together and fork prick the bottom the pan.  Put in over and let bake for about 7 minutes.
• Meanwhile, crush 1/3 cup of graham crackers or vanilla wafers with sugar and cinnamon and pecans.  Add the cubed butter and use a fork to make it crumble.
• Take crust out of the oven and pour sweet potato mix into pan and put back into oven and bake for 30 minutes.  Take out again and put crumble on top of pie and one more time put back in oven for another 30 minutes until set.  Let cool completely and then refrigerate.   I think it tastes better at room temperature.  
• Enjoy!!
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