On the baking of pie

[jethrien]

I set out to make a dark chocolate pecan pie last night. I had a new recipe that I'd wanted to try. I also had my mother's recipe for regular pecan pie. They were similar, but the proportions were somewhat different. I decided I would try something in between the two.

I started out with an all-butter crust. Now, I've been experimenting with fats (my basic recipe calls for all shortening). The 2/3 butter, 1/3 shortening came out delightfully stretchy and easy to roll out. (Easy as pie?) Unfortunately, the all butter didn't come out so well. I'm still not sure whether I didn't add enough water or something, and will need further experimenting, but the dough came out on the brittle side. It's the first time I've tried to get a crust into the pan and failed and had to reroll it out in years. So I was behind on my timing already.

One recipe called for 1 cup of corn syrup, the other for a cup and a quarter. But when I poured the corn syrup into the measuring cup, I discovered that I'd seriously overestimated the volume left in the bottle. I had about a quarter cup of corn syrup. Crap.

It was 9:15 at this point, and the pie would take 50 minutes to bake and I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable time. So I didn't just leave to go get more corn syrup.

I though of something clever - pancake syrup is essentially corn syrup, with a little maple flavoring added. Maple and pecans would go just fine together. I grabbed the pancake syrup and dumped that in the measuring cup.

I had a quarter cup of that, too.

So I tried to get creative. I boiled down a brown sugar and water mixture, and stirred in cornstarch to thicken it. It did indeed thicken, but by the time it had boiled down, I had less than a quarter cup of that.

Finally, I remembered I had molasses hidden in the back of the cabinet. I topped it all out with the molasses.

So this is going to be more like a cross between shoofly pie and chocolate pecan pie. Should be interesting.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

...

I...how...do you even know to do these things!?! Improvising in the kitchen always astounds me. Let us know how the pie comes out.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Instinct, practice, willingness to experiment, and lots of hand-wringing followed by out-loud assurances that it'll probably be fine. There's a whole process for this sort of thing.

Though really, a lot of it come from making a lot of similar recipes over time. If you have a bread recipe that is identical to your usual one except that it uses honey instead of white sugar, then it'll often stick in your head that honey and sugar can be interchanged in some recipes. Similar is Jethrien's ongoing experiments with fats in pie crusts.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I guess it's the scientist in me. I recoil in horror at the thought of substitution. I've done that by accident and ruined buffers, alas.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Cooking don't require quite the precision that science demands--even baking, no matter what people tell you. You can switch around fats, substitute flours, use different sweeteners, heck, even replace eggs in some cases, and everything still comes out just dandy. And half the time, no one can even tell the difference.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I trust that you could do that. I think I would probably just hyperventilate and die. That's why I don't cook. I'm more likely to die if I don't cook something right--eitehr by panicking or by actually eating what I make.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Then you stick to the recipe, and remember that you're in a kitchen and not a lab. As long as you remember to cook your chicken and shellfish all the way through, don't add mushrooms you found growing in the park, and don't try to substitute drain cleaner for gravy, I doubt you'll kill anyone. If the sauce is watery or the souffle falls, you shrug and say "oops". It'll probably still be edible, if you made it out of food.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

It'll probably still be edible, if you made it out of food.

What if it's made out of people?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Meh, still edible.

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

soylent green?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Instinct, practice, willingness to experiment, and lots of hand-wringing followed by out-loud assurances that it'll probably be fine. There's a whole process for this sort of thing.

Chuckro's gotten used to my "I'm sure it will be fine", stated in a loud voice as if the ingredients will obey if I'm clear enough.

I've yet to have anything turn out inedible. It doesn't always come out the way I expected. There was the mango fool that was just boring, or the brown sugar cookies that were supposed to be cakey but came out more like toffee, or the chocolate mint pie that never solidified and so was more like chocolate pudding in a big crust. You accept your mistakes, eat the evidence so no one sees, and learn.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I really liked the brown sugar cookies. Then again, I like toffee. And the chocolate mint pie was a huge hit regardless of its solidity.

That's another point, I think: Just because something doesn't match your expectations doesn't mean other people won't find it awesome.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, I liked the brown sugar cookies very much. They just weren't what I intended. And the pie was just fine when eaten in bowls.

[shnayder.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. I should start baking more, but always screw something up so I have to eat the evidence :)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

And now you know why I like baking so much. :)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Experience.

I've made pecan pie before, and I was looking at two recipes with slight but noticeable variations. Both result in pecan pie. Therefore, a combination of the two will also result in pecan pie. It will be slightly different, but still edible. After trying different recipes, you start to get a handle on what effects you get if you change proportions.

I've also made sugar pie, and Tollhouse pie. And I've looked at recipes for chess pie and shoofly pie. So I've made a bunch of pies with slightly different bases - corn syrup, molasses, brown sugar and butter - that come out with somewhat similar textures. I know that I need a liquid ingredient that has a high viscosity and a fair amount of sweetness. I can't add straight water - not viscous enough. I can't add milk - I'm not really sure what it would do (there's melted butter in the recipe, but there's a big fat content and viscosity difference). I'm obviously not going to add orange juice, so this limits my options.

The original calls for corn syrup. I know from the back of the bottle that pancake syrup is composed of basically 90% corn syrup, with the rest being preservatives, caramel color, and maple flavor. The preservatives haven't killed me yet, probably won't hurt pie. The pie is already brown - caramel color won't do anything. There's maple flavor, but I know from candy that maple flavor and nuts and chocolate are all friends. Therefore pancake syrup is equivalent to corn syrup for the purposes of this recipe.

Molasses has a similar texture and sweetness level as corn syrup, although it's a bit thicker. It has a very different flavor, so it can't be substituted in blindly. However - brown sugar is flavored with molasses. There's already brown sugar in the pie. So adding molasses won't so much change the flavor as increase the molasses content. I like molasses, so that's ok.

I know from other recipes that I can make a syrup. Cherry pie, for example, involves cherry juice (liquid), sugar, and cornstarch, boiled until thickened. I don't have the pectin from the fruit to help here, but generally sugar likes to get sticky when heated or wet and cornstarch makes liquids thicken, if you add it in a way that it doesn't clump. I know how to make fruit filling, and I know how to make gravy and a roux, so I can handle thickening sauces.

Honey is another option - it's sweet and thick. But it's a different flavor than the molasses/syrup route. (You know this - you know what they taste like. Corn syrup is liquid sweetness, molasses is like liquid brown sugar with a darker, deeper flavor.) I'm not sure if it will match with the others. Also, it's got a drier, stickier mouthfeel. (Again - you probably know this. Ever had honey on pancakes instead of syrup? Much stickier, needs juice to wash it down.) So the texture might also get thrown. So I don't add honey.

It's all a matter of experience. You start by following recipes you know the result of, and follow them to a T. When you can make recipes turn out exactly the way they're supposed to, you can start trying recipes you've never tasted before. When you can make those come out to what you expected them to be, you can start improvising a little. You pay attention to what you eat - try to figure out what's in restaurant dishes, ask people questions about the food they made. You compare recipes - why is this cake heavier than that one? You gradually get a sense of how it all comes together.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

::jaw drops::

Well, clearly, experience is the differential here, but wow. Still very much wow. I am vastly impressed.