Not that I need a special occasion to bake a tasty pie but mother’s day combined with picking 6 pounds of fresh rhubarb added up to a good excuse.

I puttered around on the internet looking for less ordinary recipes than what I was used to and came up with an idea and a recipe.

The pie with the lattice top was a regular strawberry/rhubarb mix but I stirred the fruit in a custard before adding it which made it richer with a hint of nutmeg.

The pie in the background was a Rhubarb and Pineapple Pie. There were four layers of fruit in the pie: two pineapple and two rhubarb. I thought it was a good combination, but really, we’re talking about butter, sugar, and fruit – how bad is it going to be? You could put pomegranates and kiwis in there and it’d probably still taste great.

Oh, one more thing – what’s the deal with tiny pies? That recipe I linked to calls for two cups of rhubarb and one cup of pineapple…really? That’s it? If I’m going to all the trouble to make pie crusts and bake a pie I’m going to fill that bad boy up. I put in around 5 cups of rhubarb and an entire pineapple. Of course, that meant a piece of the pie wasn’t so much dessert as the whole meal.

The site claims the vanilla can be used as soon as a month but I expect to filter it around September and then transfer it to smaller bottles. All in all I should get about a cup and a half of extract. I hope it’s as delicious as it smells.