For the past few weeks, I've been riding high, my friends. I've been baking new pies with new methods and different ingredients, and they've been coming out perfectly every time. I've been in pie heaven, making praise-worthy concoctions and feeling good (and maybe a little cocky) about my skills.
I was confidently chug-a-lugging along, whistling a merry tune (if only I could whistle), snapping my fingers (if only I could snap), and bopping along to a funky beat I like to call "pie-baker-extraordinaire."
Yup, life has been goooooood. Pie has been goooooood.
Until now.
My success must have angered someone somewhere, because last week I was knocked off of my high horse and flat onto my amateur deriere.
*sigh*
I once again had pie fail.
So last weekend I went to Chicago for the day to do some shopping, and there are a few stops that all trips to that glorious city require: Garrett's Popcorn (cheese popcorn that stains your fingers for days... it's to die for), Giordanno's Pizza, and the Hershey Store. The Hershey Store is a weird one to make the list, as it's a nationwide thing, but the store is so dang cute and the chocolate is so dang fresh that a stop in is an absolute must.
Luckily, I hit all three of the above delicious hot spots that day, and my inspiration for last week's pie came from the Hershey Store bakery (thankfully... can you imagine a cheesey popcorn pie? Gross.). I decided to attempt to make a S'more Pie, based on the delicious S'more Bar I had at the bakery.
The idea seemed easy enough: a graham cracker crust, a chocolate filling, and a marshmallow topping. This bad boy was going to be a piece of cake!
Now, I think there are two main reasons for the fail. One is that I tried to make things complicated with my filling. Rather than just make a thick ganache or pudding layer of chocolate, I opted for a complicated fudge pie recipe that involved roughly ten ingredients and a bit of baking. Not my wisest move. Apparently simple is better after all.
Well, the first problem might be directly related to the second problem. Where I shoved my laziness aside on the filling attempt and picked a more labor-intensive recipe, it came back in full force later, when I decided to bake the pie in my toaster oven rather than the conventional oven downstairs. One flight of stairs. Yes, I'm that lazy.
Basically what happened is the filling didn't set all the way through, but looked set from the top, so I threw some marshmallows, chocolate chips, and peanut butter chips on top and broiled it a bit, thinking it was fine. It then didn't have enough time to refrigerate, so when we finally bit into it, the filling poured out in a lukewarm, sloppy, raw goo. It was about as tasty as it sounds. Blech. Some of the filling also soaked into the crust, which made every component BUT the mallows kind of disgusting. Pretty much everyone agreed.
Well, except for Alison, who channeled her inner Joey Tribiani: "What's not to like? Crust: GOOD, Filling: GOOD, Marshmallows: GOOOOOOD!!!" I don't get it, but she seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.
For those of you who didn't get that reference, read here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0583482/quotes?qt0177651
So, now I know to follow one simple rule: K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Otherwise no one will want some more.
Except Alison.
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