Surgical Pie

How is one tablespoon of water not the same as one tablespoon of water!? Up until this week, I've been using measuring spoons for salt, sugar, spice, and water. I switched over to an actual tablespoon this week for water, and there was much less water than a measured tablespoon. I'm outraged! As of result, I had the hardest time rolling out the dough as it cracked all over the place.

Not enough water

After the upper crust was placed

When this happens, the dough scraper becomes your best friend. Luckily, I bought one last week. Otherwise, my tears would have been all over the pie while placing the crust liner. It would have been much worse with many more cracks. Fortunately, I was making a double bottom chocolate strawberry pecan pie so the cracks were not noticeable when it was done.

I just couldn't crimp the edge like I normally would, but I was still able to brush the egg white to stick the upper and bottom crusts together.

The pie didn't shrink a whole lot compared to the last time as I let the crust relax before baking it. Between these two pies, there's about at least an inch difference in diameter. That's a lot of wasted surface area if the pie doesn't relax!

 

My last pie

I had the right amount of strawberries this time. The chocolate sauce was a little dry as I didn't continue to whisk when I took it out of the double boiler. The fact that I added a tablespoon of tapioca flour to the strawberries didn't help either.

When I made the finishing touches...

...it didn't look that bad after all.

I haven't perfected this pie yet, but it's just a matter of ensuring the chocolate doesn't get dry, and determining the right amount of chocolate and strawberries. I would also like to use bittersweet chocolate instead since it has more flavor; I've been using milk chocolate up until now. Once I've perfected it, I'll post my recipe.

For my next dessert, I won't be making a pie. It's popular among the Chinese however, its origin is not China.

Are you kidding me!?