I am “up to Camp”, as one says in New England-ish, this weekend. So I am packing up Ludwig (yes, my car is named Ludwig van Volkswagon) and headed north from the steamy city. New England, after our brutal winter, skipped spring altogether and it’s been summertime hot for the good part of a week. No complaints, though I do have to put in my air conditioners soon, lest I have to stop baking in the heat. And never one to arrive empty handed, here is the pie I made.
This pie title and idea with the “stars” is based on a pie that I saw somewhere on the intertubes called Midnight in Paris Pie. Of course, they don’t really have pies in French desserts (tarts, yes … pies, not so much) and it was just someone using the cut out stars to decorate a “plain” blueberry pie. I went for the berry combo to make it a little “darker” and then added the mint. You don’t actually taste the mint too much but it does have a nice freshening effect.
Time for Blueberry Thyme Pie. I’ve had a few sleepless nights in the last few days. Lots of worries on my the brain and emotions are running high. This does not bode well for my already light sleep, so I tossed and turned until 1 AM, stared mindlessness through the extra innings of a West Coast Red Sox game and then managed a few hours of actual sleep from 2-4. Then I decided to make pie. Baking always makes me feel better and the bonus of insomnibaking is that one gets to eat pie for breakfast. The herbiness of the thyme balances nicely in this. If you have lemon thyme, that would be even better.
All of a sudden, it seems to be spring. After this winter here in Boston, I never thought that we’d be saying “Gosh, it’s hot!” again, but here we are on May 7 … and it’s downright hot. So, in celebration thereof, I made this here cake. I actually have a bit of a philosophy that I have broken with this cake — which is that I think that a cake should look like a cake, not like something else — but eh, rules are meant to be broken sometimes and I ended up with this cutsie little cake. It’s just a chocolate cake with raspberry filling, chocolate butter cream frosting and lots of mini-M&Ms.