The challenge in question was a Pecan pie, it has a self-made pastry base and a filling made of syrupy, sugary, nutty mixture, yummy! Thankfully my first ever self made pastry base went swimmingly; putting it into a tin, weighing it down with baking beans (or rice, it's cheaper and does the same job!) baking, rising. Perfect! I had assumed that once that was out of the way the rest would be fairly straight forward. It was merely melting a few ingredients and mixing them together before cooking everything for a bit. As always, the simple task is always the one which goes wrong!
It went into the oven with everything melted together looking beautiful; it was literally picture perfect. I could compare the book and mine and they looked identical other than not being cooked. But everything went so very wrong as soon as it went into my terrible, teasing, sadistic oven. Have I mentioned my oven before? If yes, I don't care, I'll say it again. IT'S BLOODY AWFUL!
- My apologies for the language but I figure if "Bloody" is in the first Harry Potter film then it'll hardly bother anyone with access to a computer! -
The oven has wonky shelves. It has the most imprecise heat gauge I've ever seen on an oven (there is literally a millimetre between gasmarks four and five and no dashes to help differentiate the two). And of course it has a big ole fire at the back just to make baking anything that bit more difficult. I think the first problem can be blamed on the oven - unequivocally, unmistakeably, undeniably the oven. The pie is all wonky on one side, strangely not the side which the oven slopes down towards but the opposite end! I can only assume that despite rotating the slowly-spoiling pie half way through the cooking time wasn't enough, my oven is far too clever to be outwitted in its attempts to spoil my food for that, nooooo, it all bubbled up in the second half of the cooking time and solidified halfway up. Result... WONKY PIE.
I must admit, that this wouldn't usually bother me, I've made various concoctions on this challenge which have been, let's say, aesthetically challenged. So I would have let it fly if it wasn't for problem two...
The reason I decided to do this challenge was mainly on a whim inspired by Julie Powell's famous blog (check out what's left of it here) but also because I stumbled across a recipe book which looked great and was reduced by £15 down to £3. A bargain I simply couldn't resist! Yet, my parsimonious (word of the day!) ways have resulted in me having what can only be described as a sh***y recipe book.
- Harry Potter fans don't get that word so nor can you! -
Over the few challenges I've had so far I've discovered that most of the recipes have been ok, but some have certainly not been anywhere near as good as ones I've tried in the past. DO NOT USE THIS PECAN PIE RECIPE... EVER. Essentially, the recipe has turned into a wonky pie which tastes absolutely awful. There is significantly too much syrup in it which makes for a dominating and permeating taste in the mouth, the flavour of the £5 per kilo pecans is lost and the filling has the consistency of scrambled egg ( my guess is two eggs is too many!). I won't pretend to be able to tell you what is wrong with this recipe properly or how to amend it but I can promise you that I followed the instructions to the letter and it came out with something I almost feel bad giving to my housemates... almost.
The Result:
 |
| Mmmm, it looks as good as it tastes... |
No comments:
Post a Comment