Charmed Life
As I’ve said in this space before, I am not a baker. This is largely due to my feeling that following directions closely and relaxing and having fun are mutually exclusive. But once each summer, when the blueberries come in, I turn my back on my natural antipathy toward baking and make the recipe for Blueberry Sour Cream Pie,, which ran back in July 2002, soon after I started working at Style. I always remember that issue, because a photograph of the pie ran on the cover. And when I made the pie for the first time, I was pretty damn pleased (and surprised!) that my pie looked like our cover pie.
Friday afternoon I stopped by the store for sour cream and bought blueberries at a rock bottom price—2 pints for $3—and started the pies Friday evening. I got my recipe out and followed it step by step…EXACTLY.
Maybe I was tired and distracted. Or maybe it was just the curse of the non-baker. But I ended up not seeing the first measurement for flour (2 1/2 tablespoons), which was the amount to be added to the pie filling. Instead, I saw only the measurement for the flour needed for the crumbly topping—6 Tablespoons. Since I was doubling the recipe to make two pies, I put 12—count ‘em, 12!—tablespoons of flour into the custard, only realizing my mistake after the fact (of course). I was so annoyed that when I realized I didn’t have any vanilla, instead of running one block away to pick some up at Eddie’s Market, I reached into the cupboard, pulled out coconut extract, and used that instead. I had tried to be a good little baker and follow directions and failed. I didn’t feel like being well-behaved anymore.
The pies looked great when they came out of the oven. My husband delivered one to a neighbor with a new baby, along with a can’t-miss frittata (I figured one out of two would be good) and I wrapped up the other pie to save for Sat. night, when friends were coming over to play a new board game, Pandemic.
“I have retroactively remembered that a little coconut extract goes a long way,” I said, as I doled out the pie that night. “So this might taste like suntan lotion. Oh, and I put about 10 extra tablespoons of flour in, too.”
My friend Catharine, who has reliably good taste, declared that the pie tasted like coconut blueberry cream pie—in other words, it tasted like it was supposed to be coconut-y. I had to agree. And the excess flour? Well, the pie was certainly denser than I remember previous versions being. But that didn’t seem like a bad thing, either.
Regardless, I’m relieved to be done with the pie until next year!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/12/10 at 01:21 PM
