So I made a pie last night...
Apr. 27th, 2006 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroserose...and as a result, I'm only just now awake enough to blog about it - I've been in Happy-Fun-Grog-Land for the last three hours or so, due mostly to pie-related stress and being up well past my bedtime. But let me back up somewhat.
First, as I mentioned recently, Brian has been wanting an apple pie, and I was sort of curious if I could make one without my mother's help, never having done so before. He was kind enough to get me a pastry cutter and a very nice marble rolling pin which, combined with a marble slab that we inherited from his mother, made two of the nicest surfaces I've ever had for working pastry. So, as promised, I got to work making the crust.
It was a pretty unmitigated disaster.
I started out with the full recipe (enough for a top and bottom crust), and aside from finding out the difficult way that my largest mixing bowl was much too small for that much flour, I must have lost track of how much flour I was putting in - it had way too much fat in it and ended up a mushy, sticky ball of paste. Scrapping that, I proceeded to make a half-recipe that looked better, but I accidentally put in 1/3 cup of shortening instead of 1/2, with the resulting dough being far too dry to roll properly. Finally, I managed to make one half-recipe with the right proportions; while still a bit dry, it produced a serviceable pie crust. The only flaw being, by then I was so sick of making pie crust dough that I gave up on the whole top-crust idea, and ended up making something much closer to an apple tart than a true pie.
The filling, by comparison, went relatively smoothly. Brian was a peach and peeled all the apples for me, so I just had to core and slice them. And I'm going to have to put the recipe for the filling in my blog - it was just that yummy.
Unfortunately, the recipe didn't say one way or the other about spraying the pie pan with nonstick stuff, and I didn't want to upset the delicate balance of ingredients that made up the crust, so I didn't grease the pan at all. Given how difficult it's been to get the pie out of said pan, I'm guessing that was something of a mistake.
Altogether, after all that hassle I ended up with an apple tart that tasted pretty good but didn't look very nice once served. As frustrating as it was, I can see why some people insist on homebaked pies - I'd gotten an apple crisp mix to compare and while decent-tasting it just couldn't compare. On the other hand, I can see why some people only use mixes - $3.50 and ten minutes' work for a guaranteed (if mediocre) result vs. hours of frustration and worry about the finished product and probably more money than that in wasted ingredients.
And, just because I'm a masochist, I'm going to try again this weekend. Or maybe it's because I really like using my nifty marble rolling pin. =D
First, as I mentioned recently, Brian has been wanting an apple pie, and I was sort of curious if I could make one without my mother's help, never having done so before. He was kind enough to get me a pastry cutter and a very nice marble rolling pin which, combined with a marble slab that we inherited from his mother, made two of the nicest surfaces I've ever had for working pastry. So, as promised, I got to work making the crust.
It was a pretty unmitigated disaster.
I started out with the full recipe (enough for a top and bottom crust), and aside from finding out the difficult way that my largest mixing bowl was much too small for that much flour, I must have lost track of how much flour I was putting in - it had way too much fat in it and ended up a mushy, sticky ball of paste. Scrapping that, I proceeded to make a half-recipe that looked better, but I accidentally put in 1/3 cup of shortening instead of 1/2, with the resulting dough being far too dry to roll properly. Finally, I managed to make one half-recipe with the right proportions; while still a bit dry, it produced a serviceable pie crust. The only flaw being, by then I was so sick of making pie crust dough that I gave up on the whole top-crust idea, and ended up making something much closer to an apple tart than a true pie.
The filling, by comparison, went relatively smoothly. Brian was a peach and peeled all the apples for me, so I just had to core and slice them. And I'm going to have to put the recipe for the filling in my blog - it was just that yummy.
Unfortunately, the recipe didn't say one way or the other about spraying the pie pan with nonstick stuff, and I didn't want to upset the delicate balance of ingredients that made up the crust, so I didn't grease the pan at all. Given how difficult it's been to get the pie out of said pan, I'm guessing that was something of a mistake.
Altogether, after all that hassle I ended up with an apple tart that tasted pretty good but didn't look very nice once served. As frustrating as it was, I can see why some people insist on homebaked pies - I'd gotten an apple crisp mix to compare and while decent-tasting it just couldn't compare. On the other hand, I can see why some people only use mixes - $3.50 and ten minutes' work for a guaranteed (if mediocre) result vs. hours of frustration and worry about the finished product and probably more money than that in wasted ingredients.
And, just because I'm a masochist, I'm going to try again this weekend. Or maybe it's because I really like using my nifty marble rolling pin. =D
