Oh, Crap! Week #3 (November 9-10, 2008)

All right!  Time to finally get caught up with the early pie-making blogs here.  On to week three, but first...

By the time I got around to making my third week's pie, I had a ;pretty good idea that I was going to be both 

   a) attempting the 52 pies in 52 weeks thing, and 

   b) blogging about it.  So, some preliminary rules.  

Readers, please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and ideas, rules you like, dislike, think should be added/removed, etc.  I'll ignore all of your submissions (it's my blog, for crying out loud), but it will give you a warm feeling inside to think that you've contributed.  Ok, I'm only kidding.  Having never blogged before I'm finding that I actually really enjoy reading the thoughts and ideas in the comments.  I'd like this to be as interactive as possible, thus -- hint, hint -- the current poll question that everyone who visits should be answering.  So, some preliminary rules:

1) The "pie week" runs from Saturday through Friday

2) Next week's pie will be selected on the preceding Wednesday.  I'll do my best to do a mini-blog entry every Wednesday night

3) No more leaning on my wife for any of the work, and questions should be kept to the bare minimum.  She had no idea what she was in for when she said, "I do," so no fair piling on now.

4) No repeating pies.  

5) Recipes must be procured either

   1) online, or

   2) through contact with a real person (recipe card, recited from memory)

No cook books.  Why?  I have absolutely no idea.  Logic is not required for this project.

6) No "instant" pies like the Jell-o pudding recipes or anything like that.

7) I was informed by my wiser, much older sister that "In fairness to pie-bakers around the globe, and to make this a true challenge, I believe you need to make the crusts from scratch as well."  So from now on, crusts from scratch...

If I get a lot more from user comments, I'll make the list a more prominent part of the blog somehow.

Back to the title of this entry...

Week 3 - Coconut Cream

I used the recipe here.  I decided that I'd spend some time upfront really trying to understand the recipe and the order that I could/should do things, and I think that helped --but only to a certain extent.  An amateur is an amateur for a reason, and I'm exhibit A.

I thought that making the filling for this pie was probably slightly more difficult than the French Silk, but since it wasn't a pie that you baked, it was less time consuming and difficult than some of the earlier pies that had to be assembled and then baked.  I like coconut a lot and was looking forward to this one.  Toasting the coconut for the topping made any longing for completed pie even tougher because it made the whole house smell awesome.

Other pie making items of note for the coconut cream:

   1) I didn't make it until late afternoon on Sunday and it requires at least an overnight to set up, so I didn't actually finish it (with the whipped cream and sprinkled coconut) until Monday night.

   2) What exactly does bring milk and coconut to simmer mean?  I know I'm supposed to be leaving my wife out of this, but that doesn't mean I can't rely on helpful, experienced readers to fill me in, right?  Anyway, I thought that simmer was something where you brought something to a boil (i.e. bubbling) and then brought the heat back down until it was no longer bubbling.  So, then, how do you just bring something to a simmer?  Any help is greatly appreciated :)

   3) I had a frozen deep dish pie crust that I used for this pie, and so I doubled the recipe to fill the extra space.  Very adventurous of me, huh?  Who knew I could multiply by 2?  I think all of that turned out okay.  There was nothing glaring anyway.

Enjoying...

So, here's the finished product.

Almost looks edible, doesn't it?  Almost.

My lovely wife takes one look at it and says, "that looks like one of those pies that you throw in someone's face."  I should have just cut my losses and found out right then and there if she was right.  Unfortunately, I didn't.

Instead, I asked her to cut a piece for each of us.  As she's getting ready to cut she says, "So, how long did you have to bake the crust?"  Uhhhh.... this is where the Oh Crap comes in.  For the unintiated (that would be me), you have to bake the frozen pie crust before you put in the filling (if you don't bake the pie post-filling I suppose).  I started to write about how unbelievable that it is that I screwed this up, but it's actually not unbelievable at all.  Pathetic, yes, but far from unbelievable.  I hope, however, that it's a mistake you won't be reading about again.  We tried to salvage some of the filling and eat it, but it was a colossal mess and didn't end up being worth the time.  Oh well, there's always next week.  That's the great thing about this mess I've gotten myself into.  I always have another opportunity to redeem myself.  We'll see how that goes...

Don't forget to vote in the poll!