Thursday, December 2, 2010

No Substitutions Please

I received my Country Living magazine recently and my dad told me he was going to use a recipe out of the magazine to make cranberry pie for Thanksgiving so I decided to do the same.  However, mine did not turn out and I think the reason is that I substituted half and half for heavy cream.

As you can see, this was a beautiful pie in the magazine but mine, not so pretty. Here is the recipe from Country Living. Read on.

Guess what, this happens when you are cooking.  I have come to realize recently that baking is a science and needs to be precise but cooking does not.  You do not really have to measure during cooking and things still turn out delicious.  So keep this in mind.
BAKING, be precise
COOKING, add what you want


This pie calls for a pie crust filled with cranberries.






Next you need to whip an egg white until you have peaks.  Just use a whisk or an electric beater.
Then you sift together sugar and flour then pour in egg white mixture.  It will form a paste like substance.  Then slowly stir in cream until combined.  Here is the part where you DO NOT want to use half and half, use heavy cream.
Then you are going to sprinkle remaining sugar on top of cranberries and the pour the cream mixture into the pie crust and over the cranberries.








The below picture is my messed up pie.  You can see that the cream mixture really separated from the cranberries.  When the pie was eaten you could
definitely see the separation.  Well that is ok, at least I tired a new recipe.

Any mess ups you would like to share?

2 comments:

  1. Today I ran into the same dilemma. Do I substitute butter for shortening. Well, I buy the Crisco with no trans fat and butter is the same. I have used Crisco forever in this cookie recipe of my grandmothers, I hate to change and the cookies not turn out right. So, I decided to stick to the tried and true. Baking is a precise science... for example, never leave out salt because it helps bring out the sweetness of the sugar.

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  2. Interesting, I cook but don't bake too often. I will keep this in mind when baking because I end up substituting often based on what's in the cupboard.

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