Oh dear readers, you’re in for a rare treat of baker
ineptitude. I’ll cut to the chase: I finally set something on fire. But oh the
tale of how I got there…
In the midst of Easter preparation madness, I was informed
that I had to bring a dessert to Easter. Since my brain was mostly on a work
crisis, I decided to go with something easy, tried, and true…the pecan pie. I've never actually blogged about the pecan pie but I've made it twice before
with varying degrees of help. It’s a great recipe that makes a very pretty pie.
So with that, we commence!
I first had to make the pie crust which is a pretty
straightforward process. Except that my mom usually does that part. Mixing the
ingredients was easy but then I had to cut in the butter and that was such a
colossal pain in my ass. I really don’t like the sound that the metal knives
made against the metal bowl that I was using. Eventually, I got there though
and, after confirmation from my sister that it looked ok, I set about rolling
out the dough. Well, I don’t know if I made the dough too sticky or if I’m just
bad at it but when I rolled it out, I got a bunch of holes, it stuck to the
countertop, and when I tried to move it, the whole thing broke into about four
pieces. Too frustrated to re-roll the crust, I just smooshed it all together
into the pie plate. I tried to use my fingers to make it look pretty and to
make it of even thickness but honestly, I was tired and didn't care that much.
On to the filling! The filling is super simple: light corn
syrup, dark corn syrup, crushed pecans, eggs, and…brown sugar. Whoops. I
totally forgot to check if we had brown sugar when I assessed that we had all
the ingredients. So I went digging around and eventually found a little bit of
brown sugar. I needed ¾ cup and I really didn’t think there would be enough.
Also, the brown sugar was hard as a rock. Not exactly the consistency you want
for brown sugar. But that’s ok, I know that I can microwave brown sugar to
soften it up. No big deal. As it’s microwaving, I start to try to figure out
what I can substitute for the remaining brown sugar that I’ll need. Eventually
I found some dark brown sugar. Perfect! Except that it’s also hard as a rock.
At this point, the light brown sugar only needed about
another 30 seconds in the microwave so I figure “whatever, I’ll toss the dark
brown sugar in there too to soften it up.” So I do. Approximately three seconds
later, there’s a loud bang from the microwave and a tiny, tiny flame on the bag
of dark brown sugar. Apparently the twist tie was still on the dark brown sugar
and, being metal, it doesn't like microwaves. Now things get comical. I
immediately turned off the microwave and was just standing there staring at the
tiny tiny flame. Seriously, it was little match girl tiny. Almost adorable.
Except that it’s a fire in the microwave. Meanwhile, my sister panics and runs
to get the fire extinguisher…except she ran to the place where the fire
extinguisher was before the kitchen remodel and there is a refrigerator in that
spot now. Actually, the kitchen fire extinguisher isn't even in the kitchen
anymore (a detail that should probably be corrected). So my sister is all “I
don’t know what to do! Open the microwave and we can put water on it to put it
out!” Now, what do we not do if there is a tiny microwave fire? We do NOT open
the microwave, give it oxygen, and turn it into a big microwave fire. Somebody
wasn't paying attention to fire safety. So picture if you will: me standing
calmly in front of the microwave waiting for the flame to burn itself out and
saying “oops.”, my sister pacing and freaking out, and my mom…in the other room
having no idea any of this happened. Until now. Sorry Mom, I cleaned it up!
Microwave’s fine!
So there you have it. I finally caused a fire. But it was
tiny and controllable! Here’s the best part: turns out there was actually
enough light brown sugar in the bag. I never needed to put in the dark brown
sugar. Oops.
Last thing to do was to make the pie look pretty. I made
some lovely pecan concentric circles. And I had juuuust enough whole pecans to
finish it. My sister was in charge of preheating the oven…unbeknownst to me,
she set the oven to convect bake. I don’t have a newfangled convection oven so
I’m not used to it. I noticed when I put the pie in the oven though and asked
my sister if she did the time adjustment on the oven. Her actual response “No,
but it doesn't matter, things just go more quickly. Keep an eye on it to see
when it’s done.” Dear sister, that is not how baking works. So then she says
“you just take off five minutes.” Ok, easy enough. My mom checked it 15 minutes
before the timer was due to go off and it was already getting pretty burn-y.
Alas alack. First a fire, now a burned pie. Fortunately, my mom pulled it out
so it wasn't really badly burned. (I was way too busy watching Billy Crystal’s
HBO special, “700 Sundays” which was fantastic).
When all is said and done, the pie still looked and tasted
terrific. So it was a baking win, ineptitude and all!
A Disney Moment:…nope, we still have one more movie to watch
in the next group of five. We’re so close but we just can’t make ourselves
watch Home on the Range!
