Sour Cream Raisin - Week #13

Every week, I feel greater and greater pressure to get this blog updated on time.  On time, however, has slipped further into the work week until it has found a steady home on Wednesday night.  That isn't where the pressure comes from though.  It's the reader(s) of this blog that keep(s) me up at night.  

Here's how I know that I should be feeling the heat.  This week I added two new features that are interesting only to me (okay, and to you too, S.M.) to the blog.  I added Google Analytics, which tracks site hits and activity, and I added a Feedburner feed so that I could track what kind of activity the blog is getting through the RSS feed.  Imagine the pressure of confirming that there are literally one's of people reading this foolishness every week.   It's cool, I suppose, to have added these additional data points.  But, only for me.  I can imagine my wife's eyes rolling as she reads this paragraph, and I haven't even published it yet.  All right, already...  On with the pie.

As I mentioned last week, this week's pie was prepared expressly for the pleasure of my lovely wife -- I have to do some sucking up this week as some portions of last week's post did not go over so well; I have no idea why.  Sour Cream Raisin pie apparently brings back some pleasant memories of her childhood, and so I was pretty excited to take a pass at it.  

I'll skip the usual crust discussion -- nothing thrilling on that front -- other than to say that I am finished with the glass pie plate for the pastry crust.  Every one that I've made has shriveled up and turned out hard and dry.  I am all to eager to blame that on the plate.  It certainly couldn't be me with my myriad skills in the kitchen, right?  Right?

The filling and meringue were easily the most interesting parts of this pie.  Believe me, that is a pile of sour cream in there.  I followed the recipe right down the line.  I did have some golden raisins lying around (remember the Cranberry Pie?) and so used a mix of those and regular raisins.  I don't think there is any noticeable difference between the two varieties other than appearance, but am happy to be contradicted if someone knows something I don't (about raisins, I mean -- back off smarty pants).  Anyway, I think that it all went fine.  Everything mixed up well and thickened as I expected.  Here's a picture of the pie after what I'll call phase one.

 

Meringuing (it's a word) for the second week in a row was just as much fun this go-around.  I followed the recipe pretty closely for that as well.  Once again, unfortunately, I did not have the intestinal fortitude to try to make meringue manually and pulled out the electric mixer.  One of these days.  I have got to admit that I assumed that the brown sugar meringue would look quite a bit different from last week's, but that wasn't the case.  In the end I think it looked almost exactly the same.  Last week I was pretty judicious with the meringue, but based on the picture from this recipe, it certainly appeared that you are supposed to be anything but with this pie, so I layered it on.  It has to look like the picture, right Grover?  Please, someone has to remember, or I really am getting that old.  So, I piled it on, and piled it on.  I did do a little bit of reading about the weeping meringue and the key apparently, is to really seal it to the pie crust, so I glued them together with a touch of super glue.  That stuff is edible, right?  Here.  Take a look.

I really slopped it out there to the edges.  Seemed to works since the meringue didn't shrink noticeably and I didn't notice as much of the weeping.

And, baked.

A slice - a little weird looking, I suppose, but I liked it a lot and was told that it was "just like" she remembered it.  That's the best complement I could have gotten.  My life is full.  At least for this week.

I have decided that I like these little things, whatever they are, that show up after sitting overnight on meringue.

I am calling it a success, and #3 in the rankings for overall texture, flavor, and execution.

Weekly notes

Still no decent rankings gadget/widget.  I finally took the time to read about how to create your own.  Now, I just have to do it.  Some day.

Enjoy National Pie Day everyone.  Undoubtedly you all have big plans.  Mine is to accelerate my pie week a little bit and make next week's pie(s) this Thursday night to be shared at work on Friday.  A post in a few minutes will include the flavors.