I make really ugly pies.
Some of you can attest to this, from personal experience/trauma.
It's not that I can't make pies; I can. It's just that they look like they've been made by a seeing impaired person with no dexterity.
My home-ec teacher in high school, Mrs. Bray, rolled her eyes (Yeah, you alumni are grinning...you got the eye roll too, at one time!) and said, "Mary Dutton! You make the ugliest pies I've EVER seen!" That was my Senior year, after she'd seen 4 years of my sorry little attempts at them. And that woman had seen some ugly pies in her day! You know she had...
My mother makes lovely, Betty Crocker picture perfect pies. Her pastry is flaky, rolled out to the perfect thinness and her scalloped edges are a work of art. I used to watch her whip those pies out with no more apparent effort than making, say, pancakes. At branding time, she'd produce at least 3-4 pies and they were so pretty I hated to cut into them.
Pie crusts are the wickedest, most vexing creations in the kitchen! Whoever started the phrase, "easy as pie" had obviously not spent a lot of time making crusts. I'm assuming that person's job was the filling, because filling is glamorous AND a snap! Crusts can cause the most patient of cooks to wail, gnash teeth and hyperventilate. They have a way of looking stable on the rolling cloth and disintegrating into a mass of 1/2 inch pieces on the way to the pie plate. You can't re-roll, because whatever adhesive quality was there during the first go-round has absolutely dissipated during the collapse, and you're better off starting with new dough. If you even have the desire to go on, that is...
I've used Pillsbury crusts. I'm not proud of it. But when I need certain qualities, such as uniformity and relative pie-ishness to look at, they work. Here's the thing about Pillsbury piecrusts: just because they are already made for you, doesn't mean you can pull them out of the fridge and slap them into the pan with no preparation! No. If you read the fine print, you'll notice they need time to soften up; precious time that cannot be gained with a microwave. That's also in the fine print, but should be in bold, red print.
Tomorrow is a big pie day in America! In honor of this, I dug around and found the cheater pie crust recipe (relies on chemical process for flakiness...something about the egg and the vinegar together; don't dwell on it. I don't.) and made two pies. One pumpkin and one Georgia peach streusel. They are acceptable, but not photographable.
The GOOD thing is that I ALSO have plenty of heavy whipping cream to turn into real clouds for disguising any and all pie-flaws. If Mrs. Bray were to show up, she'd just be so gosh-darned thrilled I wasn't using Cool Whip that she might not notice the ugly pie underneath....
Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you have some really pretty pies to work over!
5 comments:
Happy Pie Day to you and yours...
Hang in there Mary, people tend to not really care what they look like as long as they taste good!!!
You do have a thing for heavy whipping cream, don't you?? No wonder we get along so well!
And maybe I should schedule my Cohagen photo-safari for branding time, since there's apparently lots of pie involved. :)
Hope you and your family have a really wonderful holiday!!
This cracks me up... because this morning, I was having a little Pie Making 101 class with the Queen of Pies, Gram Syl. She brought me the flour, salt and shortening already mixed together and then we went through the process of mixing in the water and rolling out the dought together. When it gets clumpy, and doesn't want to stick together when you roll it, that means there's too much lard (she called it too rich) and needs more flour and water.... that's usually my problem! Too much fat!
Anyway, just had to laugh at your post, because as much as I cook and bake, pie crust still eludes me too...
I have a firmly held belief that the ugly pies/cakes/complicated desserts are the most delicious. Perhaps this evolved out of my need to excuse the asthetic qualities of my culinary creations, but honest and for true, the ugly stuff always ends up tasting better.
Yes, I DO have a great love for heavy whipping cream! Really, though, I don't keep it around all the time and that's probably why I adore it. I saw a commercial on television, about a year ago, where a waitress stood in front of a lady at a diner counter and asked her, "Oil or cream?" (A choice between Cool Whip and Readiwhip) I couldn't imagine it, so I went to the freezer and looked at the ingredients. Sure enough, it was whipped oil! Next time I was in the grocery store, I looked on a can of Readiwhip at the ingredients. Sure enough, it was real cream. I've bought real whipping cream and Readiwhip ever since.
AND Mark, if Traci and I needed to work on our pie crusts to get more practice, would you be willing to eat the pies? We love to bake and sadly, love to eat our products. It would be such a help if you'd take over the tasting portion of the operation. My husband doesn't really eat pie or any sweets, so I'm out of tasters.
Michelle, I've never thought about that aspect of my ugly pies! I don't know. Have you been to the cakewrecks.blogspot ? Now THERE'S some ugly desserts, and I can't believe they taste better. But yours probably do. Come on over, when Mark does, and you can prove your theory!
Traci, let's practice our pie crusts! If Mark and Michelle "flake" out on us (yes, that's a TERRIBLE pun) we could donate them to a Senior Center or something!
And Lori, I'm sure you're right. But Mrs. Bray's words ring in my ears everytime I roll the blasted crusts out! Perhaps you should come taste, too!
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