More pies

I stayed up all night last night slaving away over two beautiful pies for my husband's holiday office party. I made a cranberry orange pie with a lattice crust and a special little experiment in the form of a chocolate pecan pie with cranberries. When I went to bed last night, I was so impressed with myself and so pleased at how these beautiful pies looked. They turned out absolutely lovely, but from what I hear, they are not particularly impressive, flavor-wise. I think they are too weird for the ol' library crowd. I should have done something a little more populist
like apple or cherry, but I was trying to go for a serious gourmet wow-factor.



Preliminary reports state that the cranberry orange pie may be too tart for most people. My husband suggested adding another kind of berry like raspberries. I have also seen cranberry pies with golden raisins added, but James thinks that might be too sweet. I'm fairly disappointed that this pie didn't go over any better than it did. I had some high hopes for this one. It is really pretty and festive and I was hoping for a show-stopper. No such luck.


My other experamental pie was a chocolate pecan pie with cranberries. Again, a lovely pie that does not live up to expectations. The recipe called for whole choclate chips to be placed on the bottom of the shell and they melted through the shell and combined with the dough and stuck to the bottom of the pan. After I had baked the pie, I realized that I probably should have either blind baked the shell or done a pate brisse crust rather than the traditional flakier crust. I also should have melted the chocolate into the pecan pie syrupy mix, so that it would have turned out a little more like cocolate covered cranberries. Ah, well.


I would probably make the pecan pie again, just to try to get it to turn out a little better, but I feel like the cranberry orange was a bit of a flop. The pecan was a flop, too, but that had more to do with the recipe instructions than the actual ingredients, so I would give it another try. The moral to this story is: Cranberries play a great supporting role, but just can't hack it in the lead.