Niagara Falls to Lancaster Friday, 27 September Day 11

We left Niagara Falls to travel to Lancaster in Pennsylvania and our encounter with the Amish People.

We continued on to Lancaster through farming lands where corn was the main crop. It was half way through harvest season so we saw some fields harvested while others remained untouched.

We arrived at our hotel, The Marriott Lancaster at Penn Square and then had an evening meal at an Amish run restaurant enjoying local Amish food which was similar to the food I cook at home. We did, however, enjoy a traditional Amish dessert of Shoofly Pie.

Shoofly Pie

Perhaps no other single dessert is so identified with Amish Country as is the shoofly pie. First-time visitors always want to know what it is.

We might say it is more like a coffee cake, with a gooey molasses bottom. This bottom can be thick or barely visible, hence we refer to pies as wet-bottom or dry-bottom. Some cooks put chocolate icing on top for a chocolate shoofly pie. Some use spices; some don't. There does seem to be agreement that they are best slightly warmed with a major dab of whipped cream on top. There are even recipes for shoofly cake.

Shoofly pies can be tasted in most of the area restaurants, where you can usually buy one to take home as well. Most people find them very sweet, what with all that molasses and brown sugar. If you like sweet desserts, you'll probably love shoofly pie.

But how did these pies get their name? The most logical explanation seems to be that the sweet ingredients attracted flies when the pies were cooling. The cooks had to "shoo" the flies away, hence the name shoofly pie.

Another story claims that this is really a French recipe, and that the crumb topping of the pie resembled the surface of the cauliflower, which is "cheux-fleur" in French. This was eventually pronounced as shoofly. Locals have a little problem with that explanation, and most of us have never seen this pie served up in the fine restaurants of Paris.

No less an authority on things Pennsylvania Dutch than John Joseph Stoudt states clearly that shoofly pies "are soundly Pennsylvanian, made in the earlier days with sorghum, later with molasses, and with brown rather than granulated sugar." Phyllis Pellman Good, in her book Amish Cooking, feels that these pies may have been common because "this hybrid cake within a pie shell" faired better in the old style bake ovens after the bread had been baked. With modern kitchen stoves, temperatures could be controlled and the more standard, lighter pies developed.

Shoofly Pie Recipe

Original recipe makes 1 9-inch pie

1 (9 inch) pie shell

·        

1 cup molasses

·        

3/4 cup hot water

·        

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

·        

1 egg, beaten

·        

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

·        

1 cup packed brown sugar

·        

1/4 cup shortening

Check All Add to Shopping List

Directions

1.    Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

2.    To Make Bottom Layer: In a medium bowl combine molasses, hot water, and baking soda. Stir well. Whisk in beaten egg. Pour mixture into pie shell.

3.    To Make Crumb Topping: In a medium bowl combine flour and brown sugar. Mix well, then cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle on top of molasses layer.

4.    Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake an additional 30 minutes.