Father's Day prep



Update: now in vivid colour!

A bit of a primer on my dad's taste in food: he has a healthy respect for savoury items of all sorts, which means he is very willing to try new foods. He can't handle spiciness, and disapproves of anything which is too-insert taste here (e.g., salty, sweet, sour, bitter or — presumably — umami). So his tastes in desserts can be fairly complicated, as many are overly sweet for his liking.

The not-Key lime pie I made for Father's Day last year turned out to be near-impossible to cut through. Lesson learned: brownie pie crusts end up being too tough to be usable. That said, the filling was about as perfect a "dad food" as could be. It was sweet without being too sweet and bitter enough to make things interesting (too bitter for mom and Caty). Dad and I both agreed that the bitterness contrasted nicely with the chocolate-flavour of the otherwise impractical crust.

I effectively began making this year's pie some time around January, when I made a point of juicing two(!) bags of the damn things by hand while they were in season. My hands were cursing my existence for weeks. Still, this year's pie will be authentically-Key. I also decided to make chocolate sandwich cookies, to crush as the pie crust. Last night was devoted to baking a double-batch for that purpose.

In the two-birds-with-one-stone category, I'm going to a house-cooling (think about it) party on Saturday night, and thought I'd give about a dozen of these cookies (with filling) to the host as a gift.

The remainder of the cookies (I hope there are some!) will be for me and Matt to nibble away at while they last. The few we sampled last night, sans crème, were fantastic!