I made pie!
If you don't know it, eating pie is a North American institution. There are all sorts of pies that you can make, blueberry pie, rhubarb pie, pumpkin pie and the list goes on. In Australia I don't know if I have ever eaten pie, except once in Year 7 when a Canadian lady made it for us as part of understanding thanksgiving. Pie is just not a big thing in Australia (Hang on, I just realised I used to eat an apple pie that my grandmother would make). My hypothesis is that it is hotter in Australia and so we don't want to bake as much so we don't make pie. But that's just my thought.So Stephen said that he wanted maple syrup pie for his birthday. This is something that his mother makes (think, huge reputation to live up to with many years of consumption) and is his favourite form of pie. So I decided to make this pie for his birthday and what a saga it has been.
First you have to realise that maple syrup pie is not that easy to make and Stephen had recommended to me that I make a couple of versions of it before his actual birthday so that I could get it right (besides the fact that he would have that much pie to eat). But I didn't get around to it. I also needed to call his mother and got the phone number and lost it twice. So I finally called her on Tuesday to make this pie. And today was the day to make the pie.
Here's how it went. After saying good morning to Stephen I set off to catch the bus down Main St to Superstore (no place here would sell the stuff that I need) and as I am going to the bus I decide to check that I have the recipe. I don't. So I go back home to see if I can find it. I can't. So I have to sneak back into Stephen's room to see if I can find his palm pilot with the number in it. Thankfully, I can. So I call his mother and get the recipe again and once more head off down Main St. I get to my destination and eventually find everything that I was looking for and then take the bus home.
And now came the real action - I had to make this thing, and I had never seen what it looked like before and I have never made pie before in my entire life. So I was totally freaked out about the whole thing, let alone the fact that if you are making anything that requires heating and setting of sugar it can be tricky. And here's how things went. First of all, I tried to bake the pie base (which was actually the wrong type) and as I was putting it into the oven I dropped in and so it cracked and spilled into the oven and I attempted to pick up the pieces and push them back together. Then I mixed the milk, syrup and butter together, which was fine. It was the next bit that was tricky because I was adding corn starch to milk and eggwhites. But the amount of milk was undefined and it ended up that the amount of corn starch I had written down was so much more than it seemed was needed. But I wasn't sure, because I knew that you needed the corn starch to thicken the sugar, but did I have enough. And then there was this whole process of combining the corn starch mixture with the sugar and then heating it until it thickened. And I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. I have done some things with sugar before and so I had some idea of what to do, but was really completely uncertain. And so I heated it in the microwave, 1 min intervals at a time. And slowly it did thicken but I had no idea whether it was enough. I was so worried that it was not going to work. And so I thickened it until the point where I thought that if you thickened it more it would burn. And then I just kind of gave up and said, "If this doesn't work, that's it." In the meantime I am also having difficulty stiffening the egg white for the meringue - which should be the easiest thing in the world to do. I also didn't know what to do with the pie - should I put it in the fridge? Was that going to be bad for it? Could I really ruin it anymore? And so I am completely stressed and feeling very incompetent and like I shouldn't have tackled something so tricky that I had no idea about.
When Stephen woke up and asked me how it was I said that I didn't know and so he confirmed that it should be in the fridge and we left it at that. And so we came home to eat it tonight and I was so worried about it. But when we got it out of the fridge it looked like it should have looked and then when we ate it everything was exactly as it should be. So now I am so excited because I made pie and it was good and I was so sure that it wasn't going to be. It was a nice way to finish off the day that we celebrated as Stephen's birthday.
posted by bec @ 10:30 pm
5 Comments:
it was good pie. :)
spb
Come home, Bec.
Ditto to Jess
such a cute story babe.
ohhh, it makes me laugh, smile, almost cry and twinge (is that a word?). . . cringe(?)
happy birthday to stephen! when was it? the 20th?
you're so cute bec!
hehe, thanks Roro - let me know when you would be available for me to call. I have the number now.
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