Love this post, perhaps because it brings to mind one of my earliest and most epic baking "fails." I generally make a very good apple pie, but on one occasion, I inadvertently reversed the proportions of fat and liquid called for in my mother's piecrust recipe. I did wonder at how easily my crusts rolled out that day, and how perfectly I was able to flute them (my mother's recipe always had produced the sorts of flaky crusts that are hard to roll and flute), but I didn't realize what I'd done until I sampled a crumb that fell from the pie as I was cutting it in the kitchen -- ugh! Thankfully, the filling was its usual, tasty self (Amy Vanderbilt's 50-year-old fruit-pie-filling recipe gets the credit for that), so I scooped it out and served it over vanilla ice cream to our dinner guests without mentioning my mistake; whew! While we were still at the table, though, our lovable-but-not-always-perfectly-behaved standard poodle/springer spaniel mix, Sam, took advantage of the empty kitchen by helping himself to the pie crust, which -- in my rush to salvage dessert -- I had left, abandoned, on the counter. To say that the scavenged crust didn't agree with Sam is an understatement-- so much so, in fact, that all subsequent cooking fails in our family have been judged against that one: the pie that was so bad that even the dog couldn't keep it down.

• Reply