2nd Annual “All Over Your Face” Pie Eating Contest

So, last year I was a total slacker and didn’t post anything about the two dozen pies I made for our annual pie eating contest. I’ve been thinking about it because it’s almost time for me to start making pies for this year’s competition. Last year, I made the “regulation, competition-sized pies” in blueberry, apple, and peach; I made pies for those who wanted to eat them at a slower pace; I made an heirloom tomato tart, beer pie s’mores pie, and pie pops! I’ll try to get some recipes to happening on those soon, though one or two need a bit of extra tweaking.

For now, please enjoy this video from last year…

…then head over here to win some loot from my new Etsy shop!!

Overflow Apple Butter

It’s the time of year that there is always an overabundance of apples around the house. For us, we get them in our CSA. For others, (ok, for me, too) they go apple picking and get just a little carried away. Or, perhaps, they’re (like me, again) and have a pie eating contest and didn’t estimate the number of apples needed for the apple pies correctly, and had a huge pile of apples left (and no one interested in more pie).

Left with that calamity, I decided to put my slow cooker to use again and make some bangin’ apple butter. I still haven’t learned how to can, so don’t get all worried about how you’re going to deal with that stage. The good news is that apple butter is supposed to freeze pretty well, so even if you don’t know how to can, you can still make this! It also lasts a couple of months in the fridge and makes an awesome gift. Oh, and one more thing – it cooks down a LOT, so don’t worry that you’re going to have four quarts of apple butter to deal with. I ended up with maybe six cups.

I love this recipe because it was super easy and because it made the house smell incredible. This is a lot spicier than many apple butter recipes out there, and it came out awesome!

Ingredients

12 cups apples (or just keep peeling, coring, and dicing apples until your slow cooker is about an inch or two from full)
1 peach (optional)
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste

Directions

Peel, core, and dice those apples as small as you can deal with. Toss them in the slow cooker. I had a rogue peach that was going to go off, so that went in, too, but you can leave that out if you want.

Dump in all the other ingredients, a little at a time if you’re hesitant about the sweetness or the spiciness. Adjust to taste. Give it a good stir.

Cook on low with the lid on for 8 hours or so. Take the lid off and cook on high for 1-2 hours or until the mixture looks a lot less liquidy.

Put through a food processor in batches (or use an immersion blender) to smooth it out. Leave it a little chunky if you like!

Store it in thoroughly washed containers in the freezer. Try it on some homemade muffins. Mmmmm.

Peach Blueberry Granola Crumb Pie

The second annual “All Over Your Face” Pie Eating Contest is coming up soon. We’ve had some roadblocks with scheduling, and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to get all the pies made in time. But, if we do, we’re going to be sick of pie for a while, so I wanted to make one for us to enjoy before we got into that mindset.

We’re having guests for dinner tonight, our old friend Bo, and his friend Gina, who I’ve never met. Dinner is planned (eggplant parm made with eggplant from the garden and heirloom tomatoes from the CSA), but since we’re having a new person at our house, I thought it would be nice to bake something. I had a whole bunch of Starfire Peaches that we’ve been getting in the CSA, as well as some blueberries that I’d frozen when they were at their peak several weeks ago. I cheated a little today and used a pre-fab pie crust instead of making my own – I’m going to be making plenty of my own pie crust in the upcoming weeks.

Ingredients

pastry for double crust pie
egg wash

Filling
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
5-6 large ripe peaches, peeled and sliced
1 cup blueberries

Crumb
1/3 cup butter
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 cup graham crackers
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup granola (I used acai berry)

Directions

In a medium bowl, combine the peaches, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar. Stir it up so that the peaches are evenly coated. Add the blueberries and get them coated, too.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. With a pastry blender, cut the 1/3 cup butter into the 1 cup graham crackers, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, and 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon. Once it’s all the same texture, add the granola and stir it.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the peaches and blueberries another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust. You can make a lattice, or, to do what I did in the photo, take a small cookie cutter and cut out a ton of shapes as close together as possible. You may need to re-roll the dough to get enough shapes. Arrange them in a lattice, or, as I did, in a spiral. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top, especially if you used the cutouts, as the egg wash will not only make it a pretty color, but it will help the shapes stick together.

Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes or until the crust is browning and the filling is bubbling. You may need to cover the edges with aluminum foil for the first 20 minutes to prevent excess browning. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

Apple™ Crumb Pie (and Thoughts on Local Food)

Charlie’s been making this pie for a while, and he always gets extremely rave reviews with it. (This photo is from when he and Ben made the pie for me once!)

You may have noticed when I posted the recipes from All Over Your Face, I omitted the apple pie recipe. That’s because when we made our pies, we weren’t happy with the quality of the apples we were able to get during the first week of August. It really wasn’t quite apple season yet. I decided to hold off and post this recipe during peak Granny Smith apple season, since that’s our apple of choice for pie-making. In the New York area, that’s about the third week of September.

Our process with the assembly line pie-making madness for the pie-eating contest was that Charlie would make the dough, I would peel all the fruit, and I would put together the spices and sugars and flavors for the filling. He almost took over on the apple crumb pie, but it ended up being a team effort. I made the filling, and he made the crumb and the dough. Although this is a recipe that he often is wholly responsible for, I’ve taken the liberty, for the purposes of this blog, of making the adjustments that I would make were I making the pie entirely on my own. That is, his version is quite a bit sweeter than mine, but otherwise, it’s essentially the same.

A few more notes on picking your apples… We’re fond of the Granny Smiths because they’re a bit tart and they’re sturdy, so they won’t break down into mush in your pie. You definitely want to avoid Macintosh, as even though those are great for eating, they’re not ideal for baking pies with. Some good options for acquiring your apples are at farmers markets, pick-your-own farms, or leeching off a friend’s CSA. Farmers markets will have a live person to make recommendations about which type of apple from their crop they’d recommend for pie. Pick-your-own farms usually have a map of the orchard with a “Good for eating vs. good for pies” breakdown. Farm shares might have a website or an email that they send out regarding their harvest, or you might just have to guess. In general, you want a firmer, somewhat tart apple.

If you’ve always wanted to try out buying from a farmers market but never did, autumn is the time to do it. Last year I was horribly depressed about our food production situation in this country because I walked into a chain grocery store in September and saw the beautiful displays of apples, of varieties that are local to New York state, but upon closer examination, the apples that were on the shelves were from Washington state, thousands of miles away.

Farmers markets have produce that is local to the area, often organic, and it’s obviously a much closer connection to your food if you’re able to talk to the people who grew it. Although farmers markets sometimes are rumored to have notoriously high prices (these rumors have some truth and some fiction), depending on where you live, apples are often even cheaper at farmers markets than at the grocery store during peak season.

Pick-your-own farms are a really fun alternative to shopping at the grocery store. They’re another way to get fresh, local produce, and have an adventure. This Pick Your Own website can help you find a pick-your-own farm near you. Produce often ends up being super cheap because the farmers don’t have to pay for labor. Some of the farms are quiet, family places, and others are monstrosities with corn mazes and petting zoos and country stores and live music, so you can choose whichever you feel is appropriate for your adventure.

Another way to get local food into your pies is if you have a friend who belongs to a farm share, or Community Supported Agriculture organization. They sometimes get more apples than they know what to do with during this time of year. Let them know that you’re planning to bake, and they’ll likely share the bounty with you when they end up with 30lbs of apples over a couple of weeks. We belong to Catalpa Ridge Farm’s CSA and we love it. (I’m pretty sure I’m going to use all my apples, though!)

Onto the recipe…

Ingredients

1 pastry for double-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust)

Crumb Topping:
1 sleeve crushed graham crackers (plain is recommended or it will be quite sweet)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter

Filling:
6 to 8 apples, peeled and sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1-2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

While you’re slicing up the apples, keep them floating in some water and the lemon juice so they don’t turn brown. When you’re ready to start, drain off the water. Next, add the cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, and flour, and give it a good stir. If you don’t like things very sweet, add the sugar a little at a time and taste it as you go.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. Mix graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and flour. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a fork until crumbly. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the apples another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust, leaving about an inch of apples showing around the edge in between the crust and the topping. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust, making strips to form a lattice top crust. If you need detailed directions on how to make the lattice crust, they’re also in Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust recipe. Optional: For complete irony, cut out an Apple logo and affix it to the center of the pie. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top lattice crust if desired.

Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes or until the crust is browning and the apple filling is bubbling. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

Stovetop-Free Strawberry Pie

This was one of the flavors that we offered for the pie-eating contest, and as I mentioned in the Blueberry Crumb entry, I had a lot of trouble finding a recipe that didn’t pre-cook the blueberries into glop.For the strawberry recipes I perused, [I'd never made blueberry or strawberry pie before] I found that the recipes mostly wanted me to do the same: cook the berries down into glop, often with some sort of gelatin. Ew.

The other recipes were more like tarts, with a custardy layer and the berries never going near the oven, and that wasn’t what I wanted either. I decided to employ the same technique that I’d used with the blueberries, using cornstarch to thicken the mixture in the crust, figuring that it would be close enough… and it was.

This was another that we forgot to get a glamour shot of, but luckily, our buddy Jordan Cooper snapped this awesome post-contest carnage photo. Some said it looked strangely like a strawberry Pop-Tart® when cut into, but they assured me that the flavor was much, much better.

Ingredients

1 Pastry for double-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust)

1/2 cup white sugar (taste your berries to see how sweet they are – you may need a little more or less)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Dash of cinnamon
3 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, sliced

Directions

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the strawberries, sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon. Sprinkle the cornstarch over the berries, mixing it thoroughly.

Roll out half the pie dough for the bottom crust, lining the pan with it. Heap the strawberries into the bottom crust. You want the strawberries to mound up and out of the crust, as they’re going to cook down some and you don’t want your pie crust to sink.

Place the top crust over the mound. Seal the crust at the seam with a fork, then trim away the excess. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top crust if desired, and cut four vents at least two inches long in the top crust.

Cover the edges of the pie with aluminum foil to prevent the edges of the crust burning. Bake for 45 minutes, removing the foil about 15 minutes before removing the pies from the oven. The pies are done when the filling begins to bubble and the crust becomes flaky and brown.

Blue Ribbon Blueberry Crumb Pie

This pie was by far my favorite out of any at the pie-eating contest, and I’m definitely going to try to squeeze in another one before all the blueberries disappear from the supermarket shelves (or the prices rise dramatically as they are shipped in from lands far far away). People were clamoring to get a piece of this pie, be it because they were biased because the winner of the pie-eating contest had blueberry, or because of the rave reviews that traveled fast throughout the backyard.

Most blueberry pie recipes require you to cook the blueberries on the stove before you put it into the pie crust. Frankly, I thought this was crap, as I didn’t see why I needed to boil it down into gush, add more sugar than I ever do, and add more steps and more dishes to do when I was already making approximately two dozen pies. I searched and searched, and I finally found a recipe that didn’t pre-cook the blueberries. The magic ingredient was cornstarch, which would thicken the berries as they baked in the oven. I think our pie turned out way better than pre-cooked glop.

Though this pie hasn’t won any contests (yet!), we’re calling it blue ribbon since it was the blueberry pie that Joseph had when he won All Over Your Face 2009.

To make the exact pie that won the competition, just remove the crumb topping and instead of the lattice, make a double crust like in Mommy™’s Peach Pie.

Ingredients

1 pastry for double-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust

1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup white sugar (taste your berries to see how sweet they are – you may need a little more or less)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon lemon zest (I was down to the wire with guests coming when I made this, so I used about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice – next time I’ll probably do 1 tsp juice, 1 tsp zest)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
I might have put a dash of nutmeg in, too? I can’t remember.
3 cups fresh blueberries

Crumb Topping:
2/3 cup crushed cinnamon graham crackers
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter

Directions

In a medium sized bowl, stir the lemon juice and zest into the blueberries. Next, add the vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, and water. Sprinkle the cornstarch around the top, then mix it into the bowl.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. Mix graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and flour. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a fork until crumbly. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the blueberries another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust, leaving about an inch of blueberry showing around the edge in between the crust and the topping. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust, making strips to form a lattice top crust. If you need detailed directions on how to make the lattice crust, they’re also in Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust recipe.

Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes or until the crust is browning and the blueberry filling is bubbling. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

Lime Bar Pie

It’s been two weeks since the pie-eating contest, so any remnants that you may have smuggled home are long gone, unless you were smart enough to pop a slice into your freezer for a delicious treat in the future. For most people, though, the pie coma has worn off, the nausea from inhaling the equivalent of several slices of pie at once has passed, and, well… you’re kinda craving some pie again.

Thankfully, friends, we’ve been renovating at my place of work, so my normal workload has been reduced significantly. Hell, I couldn’t even hear the phone ringing over the jackhammers at one point yesterday, so, while I had to be in the building, I certainly had a bit of time to get these pie recipes all sussed out, and they should appear in dribs and drabs in the next few days.

First, let’s get down to the Lime Bar Pie. Our recent guest baker, Jack, “does not eat of the cooked fruit,” so we had to come up with some kind of alternative for the competition. Charlie and I had agreed that all of the pies had to be double-crusted to ensure fairness, so something like a meringue was out. We copied my lemon bar recipe, except with lime, except into a pie crust, with a few alterations. In our haste of frantic pie-baking, we neglected to take some glamour shots of a few of the pies, but I thought these pictures of the aftermath of the contest would work just as well. Today’s photo is by one of our guests, Jordan Cooper.

I made one big lime pie just for eating, and it didn’t have a double crust. You can make yours double or single, or even just make the lime filling to top the crust from the London Ladies Lemon Bars recipe.

You may want to double this recipe. One of our guests, Lawrence, rang me a day or two after the contest. I’d sent home a piece of lime pie with him, and he left me a voicemail saying, “I was wondering if there was any of that lime pie left because I gave my piece to [his friend] Nick… and it was [pause] so good.”

Edit: I almost forgot that I meant to give special thanks to Bo Randall, who zested and juiced alllllll of the limes for this pie. When we were making our Epic Brunch the other day and he was grating sweet potatoes, he grumbled playfully, “I feel like I’m zesting limes all over again!” <3

Ingredients

1 pastry for single-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust) or 1/4 the crust from London Ladies Lemon Bars
2 eggs
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour, maybe another tablespoon or two
3/4 cup limes juice, with pulp
Zest of 3 or so limes
confectioners sugar for dusting

Directions

Preheat oven to 375.

Roll out pie dough for bottom crust and place in pie pan. Trim edges.

In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, white sugar, flour, limes, and zest. Taste mixture to ensure that it is not too tart. If needed, add more sugar.

Pour lime mixture into pie pan. Put aluminum foil around the edges of the pie crust so that it doesn’t burn. Remove the foil a few minutes before taking it out of the oven.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the pie crust is golden brown and the lime filling has set.

Let cool, and dust with confectioner’s sugar immediately before serving.

Picnic Cucumber Salad

We served this at our pie-eating contest, but it’s good for picnics when you want something that won’t spoil easily.

This is a very easy and very refreshing way to use up some of the extra cucumbers that many of us still have popping up in our CSA deliveries. It’s another great side dish for those of us clinging to the last days of summer, or for those of you squeezing in a few more BBQs, or for you folks that live where it’s a little warmer for a bit longer.

Ingredients

1/2 medium red onion, sliced thin
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 large cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions

In a medium sized bowl, wisk together the vinegar, sugar, and about a half teaspoon of salt and some pepper.

Add the cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes, stirring to coat them in the dressing. You can add more salt and pepper now if necessary.

Refrigerate for as long as you’ve got – a half hour sounds good, four hours is better, and overnight would be awesome. Either way, your leftovers are going to be mighty tasty the next day. Taste before you serve – minor adjustments might be necessary after you’ve allowed the flavors to meld in the fridge.

Mommy™’s Peach Pie

When I was growing up, my mother would take us peach picking most summers. We went to a place down the shore by my grandmother’s ridiculously large house, and then we’d all go back to the house to make pie. There was a large island in the middle of the kitchen, and many counters surrounding it, and a double oven, and for hours, we would peel peaches, stir them into brown sugar and cinnamon, and pour them into crusts. Sometimes someone couldn’t wait for the pies to come out of the oven and would scoop some of the filling into a mug and put it in the microwave.

My mother never made her own pie crust, but now, I always do. The filling and a few tricks, however, were things I learned from her during those summers growing up. Peach pie is one of those things that I just start making without a recipe, so this one is going to be full of guesstimates!

Ingredients

Pie Crust (either pre-fab like my mom used, or prepare enough of Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust for a double crust)
6-8 large peaches
brown sugar – about 1/2 cup packed, but if your peaches aren’t very sweet or you like a sweeter pie, you can add more
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 dash nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

You can peel peaches the same way you can get the skins off of tomatoes. Bring a pot of water to a boil and drop the peaches in for a minute. You’ll see the skins start to split. Pull them out with a slotted spoon, and let them cool for a while, then you can easily peel the skins off with your fingers. This does take quite a bit longer since you have to wait for the peaches to cool down, but it’s easier and wastes less of the fruit than peeling them with a paring knife does. My ideal situation these days is to peel them with my palm peeler, which swivels around things like peaches and apples and peels them in a matter of seconds. If you don’t have one of those, though, you may want to use the boiling water method.

Preheat oven to 375.

Once your peaches are peeled, slice them and mix them in a bowl with the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Taste the mixture to ensure that it’s about what you want. If the mixture is extremely wet, you can add about a tablespoon of flour to the mixture.

Take your pie crust (that you’ve already rolled out) and place it in your pie tin. Heap the peaches into the bottom crust. You want the peaches to mound up and out of the crust, as they’re going to cook down some and you don’t want your pie crust to sink. Once the peaches are in, spread 4-5 thin pats of butter over the top of the mound of peaches. Place the top crust over the mound. Seal the crust at the seam with a fork, then trim away the excess. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top crust if desired, and cut four vents at least two inches long in the top crust.

Cover the edges of the pie with aluminum foil to prevent the edges of the crust burning. Bake for 45 minutes, removing the foil about 15 minutes before removing the pies from the oven. The pies are done when the filling begins to bubble and the crust becomes flaky and brown.

All Over Your Face 2009

Yesterday, we held the first annual “All Over Your Face” hands-free pie-eating contest and BBQ. I mention this here because, well, it’s ridiculous, and because over the next few days, you’re going to see a lot of recipes related to the contest. The “competition sized pies” were seven inches and each had a double crust. They came in blueberry, strawberry, apple, peach, and lime (for our friend, Jack, who “does not eat of the cooked fruit” – you may remember zir from the Mocha Pillow Cookies recipe). There also obviously had to be plenty of pies just for eating, too.

The thing is, though, that Charlie and I baked all the pies from scratch. We figured it would be cheaper, more delicious, more fun, and so on and so forth. Over the course of seven days, despite my recent back problems (two herniated discs), we managed to make twenty 7″ pies and five full sized pies. We had a little help here and there, but mostly, Charlie made the crusts and I made the fillings. That includes peeling about six pounds of apples, hulling four pounds of strawberries, peeling nine pounds of peaches, and zesting and juicing ten limes.

We also made macaroni salad, gluten-free pasta salad, mini cupcakes, a watermelon keg, and a cucumber tomato salad, so, there will be recipes galore related to this contest.

For now, please enjoy a few pictures of the contest. Charlie’s going to make a video as soon as everyone sends in their footage.

The winning pie.

That’s my partner, Charlie. He almost edged out Mike for third place, but Mike took it.

Fortunato is looking up in awe at Joseph, who won the contest, seated to his left.

Our first, second, and third place winners, after the awards ceremony. Joseph, Micah, and our local Councilman, Mike.

These photos, I believe, were taken by our lovely friend, Gina R Snape.

Watermelon Keg and Punch Recipe

We saw the idea for this in Food Network magazine a few months ago and decided that we absolutely had to make it happen. We procured a plastic tap, added a bit of tubing to make it a little more secure, and made it happen! Warning: This is really, really messy. I got watermelon juice all over the kitchen trying to do this.

Tools

Spigot
Sharp Knife
Sturdy bowl or other means of supporting the watermelon
Pastry blender or potato masher
Strainer
Toothpicks

Ingredients

1 large watermelon
1 L bottle Mount Gay Rum (do yourself a favor and don’t use Bacardi – use something nicer)
1 package fresh mint leaves, stems removed
6 limes
lime juice to taste
lemon juice to taste
ice

This is what the drink mix looked like just before adding the rum, I believe…

Directions

The first thing you’re going to need to do is hollow out the fucking watermelon. It’s a task. Make sure you allow enough time for it. Take a sharp paring knife and slice the top of the watermelon off at an inward angle, like when you’re carving a pumpkin. Have a big bowl handy and a metal spoon and scrape the watermelon out until you’re down to the rind. See the video link for a demonstration. It’s less of a two person procedure than it looks like – I’ve just got two herniated discs and can’t lift anything.

So, once you’ve scraped out your watermelon, cover the top with plastic and put it in the fridge. Take a pastry blender, potato masher, or a big fork and mash up the watermelon as best you can. You’re basically juicing it. Take another bowl and put a strainer on top of it, preferably with fairly big holes, but not big enough for the seeds to fit through. Pass your squished up watermelon through the strainer, and you’ll get tons and tons of bright pink watermelon juice. If you’re not getting very much, continue to mash the pieces of watermelon.

Set aside the juice in a container that is not the watermelon. You can see that there’s a lot of juice. Since we were making lime pies, we had about 10 limes that we’d already juiced and zested but that still could contribute flavor to our cocktail. We threw them into the watermelon juice and let them sit there for the duration. What you can do is cut the limes in half, (pick out any obvious seeds), give them a good squeeze, and toss them in. They’ll bob around and flavor your drink.

Throw in the mint, then stir in some lemon and lime juice. Pour in the bottle of rum, then taste it, and if you want, add more lemon or lime. Refrigerate until serving.

When you’re ready, set the watermelon in its base. Use a sharp knife to poke a hole, close to the bottom of the watermelon, for the spigot. Insert the spigot snuggly. You’re now ready to fill the watermelon!

I wasn’t sure exactly how much the watermelon would hold, so I alternated a cup of ice, then a cup of punch until I was about halfway up, and then added some more punch. Since we didn’t want the fruit to just be rotting in the sun, we made sure to put a lot of ice inside. It kept the watermelon very cold. We left about half the punch inside the house to refill the watermelon with later.

I secured the lid of the watermelon to the top with two toothpicks, then we carefully carried it outside. Everyone loved it!