Thursday, November 28, 2019

Sweet potato pie

This was my dealio, Emilio, for Deena's holiday dinner.  She told me to bring a side or a dessert so this is a side that's a dessert.

At least it's better than bloody Halloween fingers.




I winged it. On everything. No measuring. Pffft.

Except I scooped the flour twice with a cup that is 8 (fluid) oz. but 4.25 flour oz. So there's automatic measuring right there.

That turned out to be not enough. I actually thought it would be too much. I expected surplus.

I needed more for the crust to be thicker and with generous edge and for more lavish decoration. But I was satisfied with how it turned out; thin crust, poor edge, scant decoration.

We baker types are flexible that way. It's only a pie, not a rocket to Mars.

So that tells me next time to use at least 2.5 cups of flour.

And 1 stick of butter. And that's pre-measured to 1/4 lb.

And the water was in the same cup with ice. And I used the whole thing. So about 1/2 cup of very cold water.

Vodka would have worked very nicely but I forgot about that.

I used a magic marker cap to punch holes in the dough. The punches popped right out of the cap and those were used on the top also.

My pineapple was too old to be useful so my filling is pineappleless.

What a bummer!

And I forgot to substitute with lemon. So my mixture is missing those acidic elements. Except for the orange juice and there is quite a lot of that.

I spaced out adding oranges.

What the heck, it's got enough extraneous crap in it. And the filling is delicious as it is.

Dried cherries soaked in rum. Dried apricots soaked in rum. Raisins. Pecans. Generous cinnamon, scant clove. Brown sugar, regular cane sugar. All these things were added incrementally taste-testing multiple times each step. I'm very satisfied with its flavor.

I have two Glad storage tubs of filling that went into the freezer.

I also have a messed up kitchen.

Here are the other photographs if you care to see those.

4 comments:

Rabel said...

Nice looking pecans. Where'd you get those?

Chip Ahoy said...

I forget. That was a few times ago. Not Sprouts. Not King Soopers. Possibly Whole Foods when I dropped in the strangely busy store on Hampden after talking to the insurance lady. Locked my keys in the truck then waited an hour for AAA. Then the busiest most maniacal WF experience ever. People were out of their f'k'n minds. While the workers were all curiously engaging. I talked my butt off. I meant to say mouth just now Yes. I did buy pecans. They've got nuts all over the place. Barrels full of them. All kinds of nuts.

But their fish, meat and cheese sections are even better.

The people who work there are gorgeous. Young people who like guys such as myself that talk to them respectfully. Then outdoors again another customer was gracious as people get. He offered to take my cart back for me. Even though it's fine to just leave them right there.

He bought two 5 gallons of water. Water! And that's when I realized people were getting ready for a storm. It's why they were acting so obsessively task-oriented. Flying around pushing their carts. Yet oddly engaging when I forced them.

And all this shows you should go to Whole Foods and shovel a bunch of pecans into a bag.

Sprouts has the same thing. And so does King Soopers.

Rabel said...

We used to get good pecans packed locally at the Kroger. No more. I've ordered 4 two pound bags online the last year or two. Mixed results, but those you had look better than any of them.

MamaM said...

I imagine Deena the Hostess was glad to have you at her party regardless of which dish you brought.

Reading this rendition brings my mom to mind as she (who was obsessed with food, recipes and fatness) would without fail have to mention how much butter, sour cream, or whipping cream she'd added to whatever she'd made, hiding her fear of fat under her soup of words.

While it's lovely to think that the courtesy, respect and willingness to engage encountered in store employees has to do with the conversational charms of the shopper and the gorgeousness of young people nowadays, the type of stores that value customer interaction also hire secret shoppers to assess their employee's responses and review their employees on their willingness to be attentive and helpful, and their ability respond to different, demanding or handicapped shoppers with courtesy.

The Whole Food's Vision Statement, which is also a lovely thing (see below), is enforced with some less than lovely supervision and oversight techniques designed to check and rate employees on their helpfulness and cheerful compliance, as part of their marketing strategy.

While encountering the fruit and nuts of that is nice for the customer, and may at times include exchanges of genuine interest, respect and curiosity, the people who work there are expected to relate in certain ways and do so under an enforced mandate.

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We deliver outstanding customer service through our knowledge, skill, enthusiasm and operational excellence.

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