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Breaking News! Indiana About To Designate A State Pie


BLSamuel

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Yep. Today's pretty slow too. This came on after the by now infamous geese doo doo story followup. Oh that's sweet. Somthing about consuming cases of Wicks Sugar Cream pies at the plant or town where produced in Indiana (whew, or great, our state pie, made in Michigan).

I guess there's a resolution to make Sugar Cream the offical state pie.

I suppose Sugar Cream would be fitting .... as many think of us as a bunch of couch potatoes and who doesn't like a good Sugar Cream pie? Yummy. And those frozen Wick's Sugar Cream pies are pretty doggone good for a frozen pie.

I can just feel my arteries hardening and waist expanding.

Ok. Now the best part. Alea, our youngest who attended the 2008 Pilgrimage with me, was home sick from school today, and I kid you not said she was perturbed as they interrupted I Love Lucy reruns with Breaking News! Indiana's getting a state pie!

I'm sure more details can be found somewhere on www.wishtv8.com

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Now that'd make more sense to me. Or blueberry. Or strawberry. Or something crazy like gooseberry would probably be more fitting. Or black raspberry or rhubarb all would seem more fitting. Even peach or apple. Or maybe lingonberry though I'm not sure lingonberries grow in Indiana but I'm pretty sure gooseberries do as that was Dad's favorite pie - I think he usually had the whole pie to himself... Or cherry.

Raspberries pretty much grow wild all over the place as do strawberries though most wild strawberries are pretty tiny but the various hybrids will spread and grow for year until plowed under and/or taken out with Roundup. (I know from experience, my brother and I had a few acres at one time... 4-H projects ramped up into a pretty decent summer spending money

I'm not sure we don't grow sugar - pretty sure no sugar can, maybe some sugar beets. Grow lot's of corn that's processed into corn syrup, but an idigineous fruit would seem more fitting. And pumpkin is probably the most popular.

Piegate - how the official state pie was bought.

Maybe Mitch's brother in law is no the board at Wick's?

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Johnny Appleseed, born John Chapman (September 26, 1774 – February 18, 1845), was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance of apples.

I vote for Apples too... Mom makes incredible Apple pies...

My wife can't keep a sugar cream pie in the house longer than 24 hours...LOL

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I'm just a slow witted Illinoisian, What is a "Sugar Cream Pie"?

I was going to ask the same question but I appear dumb enough already, thanks for asking for me ! [;)]

Corn pie [+o(] plenty of corn up there.

What about some humble pie for Peyton Manning ?

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Sugar cream pie, or

Hoosier sugar cream

pie, Indiana cream pie, sugar pie, or finger pie, is simply a pie shell spread with layers

of creamed butter and maple or brown sugar with a sprinkling of flour, then filled with

vanilla-flavored cream and baked.


1850s - The

recipe appears to have originated in Indiana with the Shaker and/or

Amish communities in the 1800s as a great pie recipe to use when the

apple bins were empty. You will find somewhat similar pies in the

Pennsylvania Dutch County and a few other places in the United States

with significant Amish populations. The Shakers believed in eating

hearty and healthy food. They definitely must have had a sweet tooth,

though, judging by the sugar cream pie.

This

pie was also know as finger pie because the filling was sometimes stirred with a finger during the baking

process to prevent breaking the bottom crust. People used to skim the thick yellow cream

from the top of chilled fresh milk to make this delectable dessert.

The following information is courtesy of Joanne Raetz

Stuttgen, author of

Cafe Indiana:

I suspect there is no

single origin of sugar cream pie. It is a simple and basic pie

"desperation pie" that could be made with ingredients that would have

nearly always been on hand on any farm, just like buttermilk pie,

vinegar pie, and mock apple pie using green tomatoes. It's possible

that it may have originated with Indiana pioneers, or with the Amish,

who make a similar type of egg less baked cream pie.

The Hoosier

Cookbook (1976), by Elaine Lumbra and Jacqueline Lacy
,

includes but one recipe for sugar cream pie. The note says it is a

160-year-old recipe; it was contributed by Mrs. Kenneth D. Hahn of Miami

County. This would take the recipe back to 1816, the year of Indiana

statehood. So, you might ask, which came first? Indiana or sugar cream

pie? The arrival of the Amish began in the 1830s, so apparently Hoosier

sugar cream pie predates the Amish. I find it very interesting that in

The Hoosier Cookbook
, the two

recipes following the one for sugar cream pie are Amish Vanilla Pie and

Vinegar Pie, two other desperation pies.

I've had a chance

to do some research and make some calls to the Shaker villages in

Kentucky, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, a historian of Shaker

religion at Indiana University, and the local extension homemakers

council. The "finger" sugar cream pie you have in your cookbook may be

derived from the Eastern Shaker community,
West

Union Shaker Village in Busro, Indiana. A

recipe for Sister Lizzie's Sugar Pie appears in
The Best of Shaker

Cooking
by Amy Bess Williams Miller and

Persis Wellington Fuller
.

The historian at Shaker Hill is unfamiliar with the pie among the

foodways of the Western community, of which the short-lived Indiana

community (1810-1827) was a part. She doubts that its origins lie in the

western community.

The dry mix method

was/is apparently also by the Amish (Haedrich, 373), of which there are

large and very old communities in Indiana. I am also familiar with a

baked Amish cream pie that is similar to sugar cream, but it has a

stiffer texture (more like pumpkin pie) and is not as "gluey" as sugar

cream.

There are many

varied recipes for sugar cream pie in Hoosier compiled cookbooks. Most

have very similar ingredients (a few have eggs or egg yolks), but the

cooking methods vary. Instructions include cooking the filling on the

stovetop and pouring it into a baked pie shell, at which time the pie is

finished; or, then putting the cooked filling/baked pie shell in the

oven and baking 10 to 15 minutes; or putting the uncooked filling in an

unbaked pie shell and baking the pie until it is done, about an hour or

longer. None of the methods have the baker putting the dry ingredients

into the shell, pouring over the liquid, and baking the pie in the oven.

No one I have talked to here in Indiana has ever made the pie that way.

Although to be honest, few people I talked to make the pie at all, or

had mothers who made it.

In my opinion,

Hoosier sugar cream pie is best distinguished by the lack of eggs (even

though some local recipes include them) and the wet filling.

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