the good old days

Another Historiann Recipe, this time for Tuesday instead of Thursday because hopefully nobody will be election-obsessed in two days time. (Seriously, Nation, I would like an election that’s over the same day it starts this time. Is that too much to ask? No more 2000/2004 drag-it-out bullshit, there’s a good country.)

Considering today’s long lines, it’s a good thing there was a tasty cake waiting at home. Even though I got to cut in line because I had a toddler with me. Did you know that parents with kids under 6 and anybody over 65 years of age gets to cut in line at the polls? I didn’t. I thought the person who said we could go to the front was kidding. Part of me felt bad, like I took advantage of my son to get out of there faster — but another part says to hell with that, I didn’t want to stand in the cold drizzle with him for two hours. (If you do take an adorable child to the polls with you, just make sure you don’t let it push the buttons for you. My kid kept trying to change the selections. If Chuck Baldwin takes South Carolina, I blame the “under two” voting contingent.)

Hartford Election Cake
1/2 cup each yellow and dark raisins
4 t dried coriander seeds
¼ C brandy
2 packages active dry yeast (2 T)
2 ½ C warm water
½ C nonfat dry milk
7 C all-purpose flour
¾ C sugar
½ lb. butter (2 sticks)
¾ C brown sugar
4 eggs
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
½ t freshly grated nutmeg
½ C sliced citron
Molasses

Soak the raisins and coriander in the brandy for 3-4 hours.

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in ½ C of the warm water and let stand a minute. Add the remaining water, the dry milk, 4 C of the flour, and ¼ C of the sugar and beat well, about 100 strokes by hand or 3 minutes on the electric beater. Cover with plastic wrap and let this sponge rise for about 3 hours.

Cream the butter* with the remaining sugar and the brown sugar, then beat in the eggs, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Turn this mixture into the sponge, stir in the remaining flour, cup by cup, using enough to form a soft dough. Add the citron and the raisins and coriander, along with their juices, and a little more flour, if necessary to make a cohesive dough. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise again until double in volume.

Beat down the dough, adding a little more flour again if it is too sticky. Divide in half and placed in two greased 9-inch cake pans, cover lightly with a towel, and let rise again for 30 minutes. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 55 minutes. Turn out of the pans onto a baking sheet. Drizzle molasses over the tops and slip the cakes under the broiler until the glaze bubbles. Let cool on racks

* This is an excellent time to realize you don’t have as much butter as you thought you did, swear for a while (”I have coriander but I’m out of butter?“), then drag a sleepy toddler to the store to buy more. When you arrive home, inhale deeply to appreciate the mingling aromas of brandy and yeast and realize your kitchen smells like a brewery (and not in a good way). Definitely adds something to the baking experience.

The only brandy we have in the house is Armagnac. Now, Armagnac is one of those drinks that you hear about and think, “Wow, that’s really expensive, it must be totally awesome. Why would you be using it to make alcoholic raisins?” In fact, Armagnac tastes like liquid leather. We have been trying to get rid of this for years, and twice managed to get Buzz’s father to drink a shot because he believed it was totally awesome. (Unfortunately, he’s learned his lesson by now, so we are resorting to eggnog and alcoholic raisins to get rid of it.)

The initial “sponge” wasn’t terribly interesting. When the sponge, creamed butter, and additional flour came together, however, things got messy. Extremely messy.

I got batter up inside my mixer and had to finish combining everything by hand. Luckily I remembered to take rings off beforehand, or we’d be able to play a fun election game where the person who finds my ring gets to be vice-president for the next year.

And doesn’t the cake batter liook like Clayface? Maybe it’s just because I’ve been playing too much Lego Batman, but the resemblance is uncanny.

No?

I tried to draw an elephant and donkey with the molasses but they turned into runny blobs. So, in a fit of pique, I just dribbled the molasses all over the place instead.

I haven’t actually tasted this yet, although it smells good enough. I’ll have it tonight, though, while watching poll results come in. It’s a massive cake (two massive cakes!) and not the typical flat, only-slightly-risen cake that you would frost and top with candles… definitely suitable for an election festival day.

UPDATED 11/4 — It’s delicious! I really like the citron, it’s got a very bright flavor that goes well with the cake. (The raisins are decidedly “meh”, in contrast.) I agree with Historiann’s recommendation, it’s probably best without molasses but with a generous slather of butter on each piece.

However, without a version which calls for baking powder instead of so many rises, I don’t know if I’d make it again. At least Election Day only comes once a year, right?

Speaking of legumes during the Depression years…

I found this YouTube clip via Vegan Lunch Box. (I don’t remember how I found that blog, since I’m not a vegan, but anyway.) This video is totally awesome. Not only do you learn how to make Pasta with Peas, you hear a cool story about the Depression and bootleggers.

“It’s not expensive, and it’s nourishing” — the two centrally important features of Depression cooking.

So this is my heavily paraphrased transcription of Clara’s Pasta with Peas recipe.

Dice a potato. Dice an onion. Fry them in some oil for a while. Add water and let simmer. Add can of peas (including liquid). Add pasta. Add tomato sauce if you feel like it. Cook for a while. Eat.

This appeals to my haphazard cooking technique, because it’s rather vague about quantities. It means that while my engineering side is huddled in the corner sobbing because she needs defined limits on how much water to pour in, my disorganized side is cheerfully throwing things in the pot in the optimistic belief that it will turn out just fine. In things such as soups or stir fry, Engineering Side can just go dither somewhere else, we don’t need her right now. (I prefer the theory that a balanced approach to life is very healthy, as opposed to a sign of advanced MPD.)

The hardest part was cutting the potatoes and onions into pieces. And that’s really not that hard.

I added some turkey bacon because it has been in my fridge too long, really needed to be eaten, and I figured it would help round out the dish.

Dump in a couple cups of water, peas, and dry pasta, then go sit somewhere for 10 minutes while it simmers. This is incredibly easy.

It’s delicious. It didn’t need the turkey bacon (although the nice salty bits of meat did add variety). And it was totally awesome rewarmed the next day for lunch. Inexpensive, delicious, and with lots of room for variation — this is a totally great recipe. (And you’ll notice it was just a recipe that somebody made up, NOT some ridiculous concoction from Imaginary Expert at International Food Corp. That probably explains why it’s so edible.)

This week’s retro cooking was inspired largely by comments on Historiann’s post about my Not-So-Orange Velvet Pie. I’d never heard of the Mock Apple Pie which was mentioned by a few people, and I was intrigued.

Apparently, the mock apple pie was invented in 1852 by pioneers who missed apple pie, but didn’t have the critical apple ingredient. It must have taken quite a creative cook to figure out the right balance of carbs, acid, sugar, and stuff, but they managed to work out a convincing imitation. During the Great Depression, apples were expensive and crackers were cheap, so Mock Apple Pie enjoyed a resurgence — helped along, no doubt, by Ritz Cracker advertising the recipe on the box.

While the current Slightly Less Great Depression isn’t likely to make apples unaffordable, I decided to try Mock Apple Pie this week in solidarity with my 20th century forebears who probably couldn’t afford apples at some point. (Actually, in that era my family included a NY State Senator on one side, and Boston socialites on the other. They could afford apples. But by my generation all the money has pretty much dried up, wasted on expensive apples. Priorities…)

Um, anyway, here’s the Ritz Mock Apple Pie recipe.

Pastry for two-crust 9-inch pie
36 RITZ Crackers, coarsely broken (about 1 3/4 cups crumbs)
1-3/4 cups water
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated peel of one lemon
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Roll out half the pastry and line a 9-inch pie plate. Place cracker crumbs in prepared crust; set aside.

Heat water, sugar and cream of tartar to a boil in saucepan over high heat; simmer for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and peel; cool.

Pour syrup over cracker crumbs. Dot with margarine or butter; sprinkle with cinnamon. Roll out remaining pastry; place over pie. Trim, seal and flute edges. Slit top crust to allow steam to escape.

Bake at 425°F for 30 to 35 minutes or until crust is crisp and golden. Cool completely.

It was tempting to go with an original pioneer version.

Bet I have learned to make a new kind of Pie I think you all would like them they taste just like an apple pie make some and try them see if you dont love them. Take a teaspoon heaping full of tartarlic [sic] acid and dissolve it in water a teasp [sic] full of sugar and stir it in the acid then take cold biscuit or light bread and crumble in it. have enough to make to [sic] pies put it in a crust and one over it and bake it they are fully as good as Apple pies the spoonful of acid and cup of sugar is enough to make two pies

Charming, but a bit vague on the quantities. While I’m an advocate of casual measurement rather than obsessive accuracy, there’s too much difference between a teasp and a cup for even my loose standards.

While cooking, my first problem was that the sugar syrup boiled over while boiling, and burned on the stovetop. Luckily, we have one of those flat range thingies (easy to clean), but it made a very smokey mess. (And since I was worried about setting the kitchen on fire, I completely forgot the cinnamon.) My second problem was that the sugar syrup boiled over while baking and made a big smokey mess in the oven.

Oy what a mess. Luckily, I have a “self-cleaning” oven, and it’s rather overdue for a self-cleaning anyway.

When the syrup first boiled over, Buzz called downstairs to compliment me on the delicious caramel smell that was wafting upstairs. He was a bit less pleased with the smell when he actually came into the kitchen. (The house reeked of burnt sugar for about six hours. Oops.)

But I’m sure you don’t care whether my house is destroyed, you want to know how this pie turned out! Well, here it is! (I apologize for the blindingly white plate underneath. I finished this late at night, it was dark, the flash was uncooperative…)

Looks pretty good, right?

Even the inside looks like apple pie.

I frankly can’t think of many situations in which one would be forced to make this. Vegans can eat apples, I don’t know of any apple allergies, and apples are incredibly affordable. The recipe is definitely a curiosity more than a necessity nowadays. But what really surprised me: it tastes like apple pie. It helps if you haven’t recently eaten a good apple pie, because it’s not quite the same. While surprisingly accurate (if you’re picturing apple pie with extremely small pieces of apple), it’s just not quite perfect… it reminds me of what cheap mass-produced fruit “pie” snack makers think apple pie filling should taste like. But I can definitely imagine a poor apple-less pioneer mother being overjoyed to be able to make this for her homesick, sobbing children.

My only caveat is to make sure your bottom crust is fresh(ish), instead of one that’s been sitting in your freezer for a year. Mine had freezer burn and cracks, so the syrup leaked all over the inside of the pie plate and glued everything in place. The crust matters here more than in other pies.

From 1967 (via Kitchen Retro) comes this week’s “exotic” recipe… Tijuana Hash.

1-1/2 cups Pillsbury’s Best All Purpose or Self-Rising Flour
3-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup Land o’ Lakes Butter, softened,
15-ounce can Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1/4 cup chili sauce
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Combine flour, cream cheese and butter in mixing bowl; mix until a dough forms. Press into 12 greased and floured muffin cups. Combine remaining ingredients except cheese in saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until heated through. Fill pastry. Bake at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake 2 minutes longer, until cheese melts.

I don’t have a can of hash on hand (when the nuclear apocalypse comes, I’m gonna starve), and substituted ground turkey. It’s a good thing I don’t hold to the particular brand demands of these recipes, because I honestly don’t think Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash is in grocery stores anymore. (But then, I don’t go looking for corned beef hash in cans, so what do I know?)

I also had to make my own chili sauce. And it’s a good thing Buzz looked this up for me, because I was just thinking “hot sauce” but couldn’t really reconcile “hot sauce” and “1/4 cup”… that just can’t be healthy.

Substitutions: 1 cup tomato sauce + 1/4 cup brown sugar + 2 tbsp vinegar + 1/4 tsp cinnamon + dash of ground cloves + dash of ground allspice = 1 cup chili sauce

It tastes good, although I wouldn’t call it “chili”. So I will use that substitution as a scapegoat if things go wrong. It’s totally the faux chili sauce’s fault, man!

Anyhoooo… Once the filling was mixed, my daughter took a picture of it going into the little pie crusts she had made in the muffin pan. (She also took a few dozen out-of-focus pictures of her socks, the cat, a light bulb, the refrigerator, and a spoon. Thank goodness for digital.)

And after a brief stint in the oven, they came out looking really delicious. (hehehe… they’re BAKED!)

This was the only point at which I ran into a snag — they didn’t really want to come out of the pan, despite adequate grease-and-flouring, and the crust was flaky and crumbled easily. On the left is what Pillsbury promises you’ll get, on the right picture is reality.

Actually, looking at them side by side, I’m in favor of mine. What did Pillsbury use for that crust, Play-Doh?

While there is merit to food’s visual appeal, I’m more interested in flavor — and this stuff tasted good. (I shouldn’t be surprised; this wasn’t created by a brand-name company’s Home Ec “expert”, it was sent in by a normal person.) I will absolutely make this again. The only change I could suggest is a firmer crust, or just foregoing the little pie shape altogether and serving it over rice (although teeny meat pies would be great for a potluck).

And we’ve got to do something about the name. “Little savory meat pies” and “Tijuana Hash” just aren’t logically compatible, are they?

Want to try an Orange Velvet Pie, but don’t have an OSTERIZER or reasonable blender substitute? Try this substitute from the Back of the Box Recipe site…

Cool ‘n Easy Pie

2/3 cup boiling water
1 package (4-serving size) JELL-O Brand Gelatin Desert, any flavor
1/2 cup cold water
Ice cubes
1 tub (9 ounces) Cool Whip Whipped Topping, thawed
1 prepared graham cracker crumb crust (6 ounces)
Assorted fruit (optional)

Stir boiling water into gelatin in large bowl 2 minutes or until completely dissolved. Mix cold water and ice to make 1 1/4 cups. Add to gelatin, stirring until slightly thickened. Remove any remaining ice.

Stir in whipped topping with wire whisk until smooth. Refrigerate 10 to 15 minutes or until mixture is very thick and will mound. Spoon unto crust.

Refrigerate 4 hours or until firm. Just before serving, garnish with fruit, if desired.

This recipe created by Kraft Foods.

No OSTERIZER needed, just a good ol’ fashioned wire whisk!

While it definitely lacks the complexity and depth of flavor that the Orange Velvet Pie had, the saved time makes up for it (and some fruit on top — or even mixed in before the gelatin sets — would make up for the bland flavoring). Orange Velvet Pie was never going to be a gourmet treat; it’s more something you’d take to the neighborhood potluck… and who wants to spend an hour fiddling with a dozen ingredients for that? Jell-O and Cool Whip are good enough for those people.

When first browsing for vintage desserts (to make up for the fiasco that was the Jellied Bouillon From Hell), I thought this one said “Orange Velveeta Pie.” Ewww. Luckily, it actually says “Orange Velvet Pie.”

The recipe, posted to Flicr by Cowtools, is a suggested use of your OSTERIZER. (We’ll pretend my KRUPS blender is actually an OSTERIZER.)

Now, according to the recipe illustration, this is supposed to make a septagonal pie.

I’m not kidding, count the sides. I thought I was too tired, because it sure LOOKED like an octagon but I just couldn’t get the edges to add up. And for extra trippy goodness, it’s got five triangles radiating from the middle, making easy serving implausible. Since I believe that pi and pie are intricately linked, I instead approximated the pie as a circle. Reverse calculus! (Buzz tried to discuss theorems about the constructability of polygons at this point, which is when I realized we should probably just apologize for the mathiness and return you to your regularly scheduled retro recipe…)

The crust and chocolate garnish are pretty straightforward. The orange velvet part requires some overly complicated instructions.

3/4 cup whipping cream
3 eggs, separated
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup hot water
3/4 cup sugar
6 oz. can orange concentrate
1/2 slice lemon, peeled
Dash of salt
2 tbsp. sugar for egg whites
9″ chocolate wafer pieshell

Method: Prepare your favorite chocolate wafer pie shell and set aside. Soften gelatin in cold water. Dissolve in hot water. Put the cream in the OSTERIZER container. Cover and mix at Lo Speed until thick. Spoon into a cup. Put egg yolks in glass container with any of the cream that adheres to the blades. Cover and run at Lo Speed until lemon colored. With the OSTERIZER running, add gelatin, sugar, salt, lemon, and orange concentrate, through the feeder cap opening in the cover. Turn to Hi Speed and mix until smooth. Beat egg whites with a rotary beater until foamy. Gradually add 2 tablespoons sugar. Fold the orange mixture into the egg whites. Fold in the whipped cream. Pour into chocolate wafer crust. Chill until set. Garnish with chocolate bits.

Yield: 9-inch pie

You’ll notice all those emphasized bits are cleverly interwoven descriptions of the wonderful feature of your lovely OSTERIZER blender. It has two speeds and an opening in the cover. You’ll also notice the speeds are named “Hi” and “Lo” — don’t want to confuse the fragile housewife brain with too many complicated letters…

I digress. When everything is dumped into the blender and blended at whatever speed it needs, it’s poured into my favorite chocolate wafer pie shell and chilled. Really not that hard.

However, I will note: don’t use your blender to make whipped cream. I thought it would be easy, but it turned out that a top layer was perfectly whipped, a middle layer which was partially solidified but mostly liquid, and a bottom layer (most in contact with the blades) was thoroughly curdled. The partially-whipped cream would have been fine, but chunks of fat are extremely disgusting in whipped cream; I had to whip up more with my mixer to replace it, before folding everything together.

I added some chocolate curls to the top. (Eight of them. Take that, assymetry.)

The taste and consistency is exactly what you’d expect from orange juice, whipped cream, egg whites, and a bit of gelatin. But the amount of ingredients and work required for is crazy, considering that you would get the same result with orange Jell-O whipped and folded with whipped cream — which has the additional advantage of no raw eggs for the egg-wary.

It’s also really a Yellow Velvet Pie; a few drops of red food coloring would have helped.

If you’ve got time on your hands and an OSTERIZER that’s gathering dust, this might be worth trying. It certainly tasted fine However, the recipe certainly was created by an appliance company trying to oversell its product. Blenders are great for a few things, but not everything.

At first I was going to blog about this retro recipe simply by pointing out that I would never try canned meat. Then I decided I was being elitist. What’s wrong with canned meat? (Besides the fact that it’s canned meat. I couldn’t come up with anything more rational than that.That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong; the cooking was one of those weird experiences where I was not sure whether I might be killing my family.)

I did, however, insist that we use the best canned meat possible (which is NOT necessarily the “fine pork shoulder meat”). Turns out that was SPAM Turkey, or, as I’d rather call it, SPURKEY.

I am quite pleased with the instructions on the back of the SPURKEY can. They aren’t treating this like some gourmet delicacy which can be used in so many delectable ways. It’s just SPURKEY. You shlorp it out of the can onto a plate, cut it up, and cook it. SPURKEY-licious!

It actually isn’t all that bad. It tastes like very mediocre sausage: extremely salty and a bit dull. My one-year-old son thought it was thoroughly awesome, and sucked down a whole SPURKEYburger before I’d gotten through a third of mine. The preschooler thought it was “pretty good”. I thought it was OK. Buzz thought it was revolting, despite it being served with a fine white wine. (Now, canned beef, you’d want to serve that with a dry red.)

I wouldn’t make this for anybody older than 10. It’s great for toddlers (since it’s flakeboard-made-of-meat, SPURKEY falls apart at the slightest touch, making it extremely chewable), or I guess anybody on a budget who doesn’t really care what they’re eating. I also don’t recommend making them open-face, unless you’re on a very tight budget and can only afford half a bun.

On another note, I was curious about George Rector; while many food companies would create Home Economics experts (e.g. Betty Crocker), they usually didn’t have male spokespeople. It turns out Mr. Rector was indeed a real live human being, although the most thorough piece of information I could find was his obituary.

Died. George Rector, 69, last of the restaurateur Rectors of Manhattan’s lobster-&-champagne era; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan. Apple-cheeked, white-haired George carried on when father Charles died in 1914, but bowed out when Prohibition closed his last café in 1923; thereafter he nourished the Rector legend and himself by diligent publicity work, lecturing and writing, wound up as food consultant for a Chicago meat packer. — Time Magazine, December 8 1947

There’s something sad about a restaurant owner who ends up with a legacy of canned meat recipes.

Last night’s recipe came (via Weird Recipe Finds) from 1967. It’s chock-full of scary goodness!

http://weirdrecipefinds.blogspot.com/2008/07/devilish-corn-sauce.html

1 No. 303 can (17 oz.) DEL MONTE (R) Brand Cream Style Corn [say that five times fast]
2 Tbsp. prepared horseradish
1 tsp. prepared mustard
1/3 cup DEL MONTE Fresh Cucumber Pickle Chips
2 Tbsp. pickle liquid

And this was where I got an educational surprise (it’s really amazing just how much you learn trying these idiotic recipes)… I learned that I burst out laughing every time I read the words “pickle liquid.” No idea why. Even my four-year-old didn’t find “pickle liquid” to be particularly funny, so obviously I’m extremely immature.

I didn’t use DEL MONTE Creamed Corn, I used Publix Creamed Corn. (Side note: Publix Greenwise canned corn is perhaps the best canned corn I have ever tasted. The creamed corn version isn’t really my favorite, but still far more palatable than I expected from canned creamed corn.) Aside from foiling the clever marketing strategy of insisting (in ALL CAPS) that only DEL MONTE will do, you really, really can’t screw this one up unless you’re trying.

Heat DEL MONTE Cream Style Corn to a simmer. Add the rest of the ingredients.

What’s funniest is that I actually managed to mess this up — by initially buying regular canned corn instead of creamed canned corn. Culinary disaster was narrowly averted by Buzz gallantly returning to the store to buy the appropriate style of corn.

It was duly heated to a simmer and then put into a bowl. I wasn’t about to buy a freakin’ Savoy cabbage just for a picture, so you instead get to enjoy it nestled in some bananas. For fun.

(I realized after uploading that this placement makes my devilish corn sauce look like hellish banana pudding.)

But who cares about appearance — how did it taste?

Actually, quite good. Mustard, horseradish, and pickles all go well with beef, and combining them gives a zesty boost to a brisket. The creamed corn keeps things from getting too salty/spicy, and also gives it a decent consistency. The bits of corn, however, are a little weird — and the pickle slices are REALLY weird. Using pickle relish instead would probably be advisable, or even leaving them out altogether.

And just imagine how much better it would have been if I’d actually used DEL MONTE!

This week, we learned that Avocado Pie can be a simple, brightly-flavored dish that tastes good, or it can be a strange, complicated waste of an avocado. (I’ve also learned that I have a tendency to write “avacado” for no apparent reason.)

I got this recipe from a 1962 Joys of Jello cookbook — via RetroLife.

It was actually edible, but with vast room for improvement — leave out the pointless and lumpy pineapple, mash all the avocado instead of dicing some, and up the avocado content. Considering one of its selling points is “no-bake”, it’s supposed to be quick and simple; folding many ingredients together is a gratuitous hassle.

Another “avocado pie” recipe found through Google:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust
• 2 avocados - peeled, pitted and pureed
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1 (5 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

DIRECTIONS
1. In a medium mixing bowl combine avocado, lemon juice, and condensed milk. Blend well and pour into graham cracker crust. Chill before serving. Garnish with whipped topping.
–via Allrecipes

Variations include a larger can of milk and sprinkling with walnuts, adding sour cream or cream cheese; nobody else seems to have wanted pineapple, or indeed made this a particularly complicated dish. And all the other variations seem more likely to let the flavor of avocados at least peek through occasionally.

So what does a 1664 pie crust taste like?

To make a Paste for a Pye

Take to a gallon of flour a pound of butter, boil it in fair water, and make the paste up quick.

That’s 16 cups of flour (enough for about four loaves of bread), 4 sticks of butter, and an indeterminate amount of “fair water”.

Since I’m not feeding a family of twenty, I quartered the recipe, going with a WAG for the amount of water…

Boiling water, melting butter, and adding flour, that’s easy.

Trying to mix that together into a dough, that’s NOT easy. I started out with only about 1/3 cup water in the pot (expecting that I’d end up with slurry otherwise), and had to keep adding more to the pile of crumbs until it would hold together in something resembling “dough”. The first picture looks like delicious, buttery streusel topping for a coffee cake or something, but it actually tastes like flour. Bleargh. (And never hand-mix hot buttery dough in a hot pot fresh from the stove, unless you are in the business of inventing creative curses while inflicting pain on yourself.)

I ended up with a veeery dense dough, more like biscuits than pie crust. It tasted dull and looked worse. More water was likely to help the consistency but not the flavor. So I rolled it out, cut it in half, and made a meat pie with it (ground meat, miscellaneous vegetables, and gravy for the filling). It was surprisingly edible — the One-Year-Old ate it, even Four-Year-Old Fussypants ate it. However, without a good filling, it would have been disastrously bad. Don’t try this if you’re not confident about the quality of the innards.