Pops De Milk

Procrastination takes the form of the desire to bake. In my case, I baked an apple pie yesterday using the recipe found on the Joy of Baking website, which I believe is from a Rose Levy Beranbaum book. Thus far, every recipe I’ve made from the Joy of Baking website and the few recipes from Ms. Rose have been amazing. Easy to follow and delicious to eat. Except I made one little mistake last night.

I started out by slicing all the apples and then putting them in a bowl to macerate for two hours. I made the dough and that was no problem though I was almost sweating from nerves. You see, I haven’t made an apple pie in the longest time because the last couple of times I made a pie the baked crust turned out sandy and mushy. I found out that happened because the crust wasn’t chilled or something like that. Anyway, I made sure to follow the instructions very carefully for the dough. Once the apples were macerated I began the process of collecting the juices from the apple mixture. I collected exactly half a cup as the recipe says. I thought, “Woo! This is a piece of cake, er, pie!” I put the juices to boil with butter on the stove, enjoying the wonderful aroma as they bubbled. While that was happening, it came time to roll out the dough so I did that and I became so absorbed in my task that I didn’t notice the syrup had already finished cooking. It wasn’t until I started to smell a very noxious odour that I jumped into the kitchen to remove the pot from the stove, which now held a very black liquid. Needless to say, I didn’t pour the liquid into the apple mix. How could I? It looked like burned oil! So, if you’re going to make this pie, please be sure to keep an eye on boiling liquids.

Despite the fact that I didn’t include the syrupy liquid, the pie turned out so delicious. The instructions say to wait 3 or 4 hours before cutting it. I waited about two and a half hours because Jay and I couldn’t resist anymore. The crust was so nice and crumbly and the apples were tender, not mushy. I think the pie was a tad too tart but Jay didn’t think so. Next time I’ll be sure to include the apple syrup.