Amish Custard Pie

Last grocery trip I spotted some clearance cottage cheese. I thought it might be a good way to get my 2 year old to consume some protein as he likes both yogurt and cheese...and cottage cheese seemed like a nice blend of the two. Somehow it slipped my mind that he 'can't' eat lumps in his food....d'oh. This left me with 16 ounces of cottage cheese that had to be used by this weekend. I started hunting.

Using allrecipes' ingredient search I discovered this gem. I love Amish recipes (though I'm never certain how traditional they are). They're generally simple, affordable, and very satisfying. I made this yesterday, but we didn't try it until this morning for 2 reasons: Mr. V is on the 'No S' diet, which limits his sweets to weekends and special days. Also, the recipe suggests letting the pie sit for a day before eating.


I thought it was a bit decadent to have pie for breakfast, but didn't want to wait any longer to try it. Turns out this is a great breakfast pie. It's not too sweet, but rather refreshing with just a hint of lemon. It reminded me of a very soft, light cheesecake.

Ingredients: - I don't know what happened to my ingredients picture....and I'm way too lazy on a Saturday morning to gather everything together for another one. Apologies!

16oz cottage cheese

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons flour 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 pinch salt

1 12oz can evaporated milk

1.5 cups milk

3 eggs - separated

2 9in pie crusts

Equipment:


Mixer bowl / whisk attachment
Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Pie server
Pie pans
Spatula for folding


Directions:

• Beat the egg whites on high. Picture to the left is after 30 seconds of 'whipping'

•  After 60 seconds

•  After 2 minutes...these eggs know who's boss!

•  Mix all the other ingredients together in a separate bowl, then gently 'fold' in the egg whites.

•  Pour into your pie crusts - I used a pre-made graham crust on the left, and attempted a crust-less pie in the pie dish on the right

•  Bake @ 425 F for 15 minutes then @ 350 for 25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.  This was the perfect amount of time for the pie on the left, but the one on the right had much more custard and took a bit longer. The white 'break' in the middle of that one is from the several (8 or 9) times I tested it.

Cost:

graham pie crust	$0.99
cottage cheese	$1.89
lemon juice	$0.05
milk	$0.34
evaporated milk	$0.79
eggs	$0.37
flour	$0.05
Two Pie total	$4.48
Cost of each pie	$2.24