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

[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. :)