Recipe Station

When it comes to the holiday baking season there is one thing that is guaranteed, pies will fill the dessert table. Fall and winter are prime baking months. With fresh apples, yams, pumpkins, and pecans there is no shortage of ideas to create.

What do you do, however, when the pie you are baking suddenly turns to mush? How do you fix the gaps that form between the filling and the crust or what happens when your pie looks more like a soup? These are all common issues that every pie baker goes through and thankfully we have the super simple solutions to all of these problems.

First, let's look at the issue of the “watery pie.” There is nothing worse than pulling your freshly baked pie out of the oven, cutting into it only to have it end up looking like this.

No one wants that! It's a big soupy mess and most novice bakers get overwhelmed at the thought of it! So how do you fix it? For starters try out one of these options.

• Let your pie rest, aka do nothing: Seriously. Almost every recipe includes some kind of starch, that will cause your filling to thicken as it cools. I know it’s tempting, but give them at least an hour to cool on the counter.
• Use different apples: Soft, eating apples are no good against long bouts of heat. They’ll release far too much liquid and you might end up facing the oft-dreaded oven cleaning. Look for firm, tart apples like Granny Smith, or baking apples like Golden Delicious and Braeburn.
• Use more, or a different kind of starch: Until this week, I had exclusively used my grandmother’s pie recipe. It called for only 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour against 4 pounds of apples. I approached the master herself with this and got schooled K-12 in 140 characters. MORE STARCH. Stella’s recipe calls for ¼ cup of tapioca flour for a good reason. Not only does tapioca bind beautifully well, but it will also give you a cleaner looking syrup, compared to the cloudy results from flour and cornstarch.

Any of these solutions will work wonders. Now, let's take a look at another pie disaster solution: The Dreaded Gap

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