Food hacks: Pie dough; Easier cooked filling

In search of a workable Pie Dough 

I don't know where my brain has been all these years to miss this great product: Jiffy Pie Crust mix.

I like to be able to say my pie is from scratch, so I still cut my own pie dough, roll it out, and battle to get it into the pie pan in one piece. About a month ago, I wrote down 11 pie crust recipes, hoping to find one easy to handle and lay into a pie pan. That's how desperate I was for a good crust.

Going through the pantry yesterday, I found 3 boxes of Jiffy Pie Crust I bought on sale and never used. Why not try it, I thought? If I don't like it, I'm only out 60 cents a box. So, today I thought I'd make some mini lemon pies using cupcake and mini tarts pans. I mixed up the Jiffy crust per the instructions (but ended up having to add a bit more water) and made a ball of dough.

Imagine my shock when I realized I had pliable dough in my hands that wasn't splitting at the edges! I divided it and rolled the first piece out on floured wax paper and thought I was living in a dream! The dough cooperated! I could mend tiny splits! I could even pick it up with my hands and it didn't fall apart! I cut my little discs and shaped them over my pans... success! How could this be? All I did was add water! So, I checked the ingredients. The mix uses lard, like cooks did in my mother's and grandmother's day. Maybe that's the secret, and that's okay. Jiffy Pie crust mix is my new best friend!

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 Lemon or cooked Pie Filling tip

For those pie fillings or puddings that are cooked in a saucepan on a stovetop, I have a little shortcut I use. 

I dreaded making these fillings because it seemed to take forever to stand there and stir, stir, stir while I waited for the mixture to thicken. Plus I never felt like my whisk was coming into contact with the bottom of my pan well enough ( I didn't want the mixture to clump up or develop 'cornstarch balls').

So I started using my stainless steel skillet instead of a saucepan and a potato masher in place of a whisk. I felt more of the skillet would come into contact with the heat from the burner and the mixture would not be so deep in the saucepan, possibly heating quicker. The potato masher is flat and I move it across the bottom of the skillet in circles, and it keeps the mixture on the bottom from sticking. We all know you can't rush a cooked filling; turning the heat up too high risks burning it. I feel it gets thick quicker this way... my filling today was done in less than 15 minutes, start to finish.