Okay – REAL TALK. Developing recipes is HARD. Developing recipes for desserts is REAL HARD. You can’t just throw things in a pan, always with garlic, salt to taste, and then add more hot sauce. You have to think about proportions and structure and gluten formation and temperature and consistency and timing and…my eyes are rolling in the back of my head already.
I think, as a fairly adept home-baker, you also have to deal with your own well-meaning ego. The ego that puffs you up with confidence and says that you can do no wrong, the ego that’s still reminding you about that lemon elderflower cake, the ego that also still remembers how your first apple pie ages and ages ago came out effortlessly picture perfect. That ego. I mean, I love her – she’s what keeps me feelin’ myself each and every day. But sometimes, sometimes… she leads me terribly, horribly astray.
And so, I’ve decided to dedicate a section of this website to my most memorable, most catastrophic, most stomach-dropping flubs and flops. No recipes here, just life lessons.
The first entry is this sad banana cream pie that I tried to make for a fourth of July BBQ this past weekend. I had dreams of recreating this banberry (that’s banana cream with strawberries) pie from Polly’s Pies. If you grew up in southern California, as I did, maybe you’ve heard of Polly’s – they’re a diner-cum-pie shop restaurant chain in southern California, similar to Marie Callender’s. I’ve never eaten there, but when I was little, my mom and I used to buy their banberry pie all the time. I loved how it paired vanilla-scented, pillowy banana cream with sweet, fresh strawberries, and topped it all with a mountain of whipped cream. Eventually, we stopped going – I think because the location closest to us closed, although I’m happy to see they seem to be still going strong! – and I hadn’t thought about that pie in ages. Until this BBQ invite came in, and I needed a new pie to try. I also hadn’t made anything to celebrate America’s birthday, and a red-and-white dessert seemed patriotic enough.
And then – everything went sideways. I tried a new pie crust recipe and, while I’m sure it would work great under different circumstances, I didn’t pay enough attention and it crumbled. A recipe for vanilla custard used in banana pudding may not have been the most structurally sound for banana cream pie. The grocery store was out of whipped cream so I bought a can of Reddi Whip, knowing it wouldn’t really work but just sort of choosing to ignore logic. And, oh yeah, the whole thing sat on a kitchen counter in the July heat for too long. When it rains, it really pours!
Needless to say, it did not turn out to be pie in any sort of recognizable capacity. Within a couple of hours, the strawberries were swimming in a melty mass of Reddi Whip and custard. I was too embarrassed to serve it, save to a few brave (and slightly sozzled) souls, and so slinked out with it at the end of the night and made James eat it all with me (banana cream crumble for breakfast for DAYS!). I’m happy to report that the flavor was still good, but the aesthetics left something to be desired.
And so, here are the lessons I’ve learned, from the pie-related to the life-related.
1. Pie crust gives me THE biggest headaches. Lord almighty, how a single pie crust can go wrong in so many different ways. I am not unaccustomed to pie crust failure, but usually my fails go the way of adding too much water. I’m well acquainted with tough and hard pie crust, and thus I’ve become obsessed with adding as little water as possible. I read that this King Arthur Flour pie crust recipe says to spray the water onto the pie crust with a spray bottle, and thought it was ingenious, because one of my problems is often that I can’t get the water to distribute evenly with the dry dough, and then I have to work the dough more to moisten it all, which also contributes to tough crust. Instead of reading the instructions all the way through, though, that pesky ego reared her self-assured head, and I became convinced that I could get away with the bare minimum of water they suggested. Not so. Even as my pie crust was crumbling under my rolling pin, I was muttering to myself – “It’ll come together. Flaky or die! Flaky or die! Flaky or die!!” Well, I got flaky – I got so-flaky-that-it-was-just-breaking-off-into-bits. I added way too little water, and my crust was breaking all over the place – while I was rolling it out, while I was trying to put it in the pie pan, while I was desperately trying to patch it. And when it came out, I could see that it had baked more in pieces than as a whole, coherent mass. So. I repeat – if your pie crust is crumbling and not staying together under pressure, it needs more water. I read this description recently, and thought it was useful – pick up your pie dough in your hand, and squeeze. If it’s ready, it should stay intact in your hand while you squeeze. I also read that when drizzling in the water, it helps to toss the flour and butter mixture around with a fork to more evenly moisten it, which I will also try next time.
2. All custards are not created equal. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just use a recipe for banana cream PIE. I just remember adoring the Smitten Kitchen banana pudding custard recipe that I had made before (for banana pudding). I didn’t really think about consistency, or structure, or anything else. Well, the SK custard for banana pudding has 6 egg yolks, 3.5 cups of milk, and 1/4 cup of cornstarch. I compared these proportions to a lot of recipes specifically for banana cream pie, including ones that used flour, ones that used cornstarch, ones that said you could use either, and ones that used cornstarch and flour. I won’t bore you with the details. But besides the fact that cornstarch has about twice the thickening power of flour, I also learned that all of these pie recipes had a much higher thickener-to-liquid ratio. Which makes sense. The pie recipes were for a sturdier, thicker custard that needed to hold its shape in a pie slice, not a silky, smooth custard to be ladled over Nilla wafers. <Insert forehead-smacking emoji here>
3. Avoid Reddi Whip. I should have just stopped when I couldn’t source whipped cream. But I was obsessed with creating that pillow of cream on Polly’s banberry pie, and literally thought it was a fine idea to pipe the Reddi Whip on the pie at home, snap a few pics (because taking pictures of a pie at a crowded BBQ would be crazy), scrape the Reddi Whip off after the pics, and call it a day. While this idea may have passed muster if everything else had gone okay, instead it just became the melted topping to my day of bad decisions. Besides the fact that it melts in literally two seconds, Reddi Whip just doesn’t taste very good. Avoid.
4. Cream pies should really be refrigerated before serving.
5. Life lesson: I think that starting this blog has been fun, but for me, it’s also increased the pressure I put on myself for everything I make to be good. I mean, I try hard, and I hate wasting ingredients, time, and money if something doesn’t turn out, but at the end of the day, food is food. The only things that it really needs to do are taste good and bring people together. Food is meant ultimately to be consumed. It doesn’t matter if it’s not Instagrammable, or if it’s not perfect, or even if it’s not how I originally envisioned it. This thing we call failure is not something to run away from, or to be ashamed of, or even failure, necessarily; it’s just something that happens in life, because life is messy. This thing we call failure should be something to be embraced, or at the very least, tolerated, as the Icelandic apparently do! To me, cooking and baking are, at its core, about creativity and expression. And in creativity, as in life, you have to be able to roll with the punches, laugh off your mistakes, and adapt to changing circumstances.
And so, I give you the most important lesson –
6. When life gives you broken pie crusts, melty vanilla custard, and liquid cream, just CALL IT A FREAKIN’ CRUMBLE.
