So I'm back for another pie summer. I'm at a new job and have new people to test my pies for me.
To start off the summer I made the Lonely Chicago Pie from Waitress. Though I realized last night that the pie in the movie would have tasted interesting (in a bad way probably) if they made it the way they were putting it together. But the recipe that I have actually turned out to be a custard.
It was interesting pulling it out of the oven to find out that it was a custard, not knowing ahead of time. I suppose I could have guessed with the ingredients, and pretty soon I will be able to know things like that.
So this was a really cool pie to make. One I haven't had Blackberries (the key flavor in the pie) in a really long time, so I was really excited to finally have them in a pie. Thankfully they were in season. I tend to not realize these things until I can't find it in the grocery store, it's not ripe, or it just looks terrible on the shelf.
They were a little odd, some were riper than others, but in this recipe it calls for them all to be crushed so it mixed together the sweetness with the bitterness and made a nice flavor all together.
One thing that I'm not sure what caused this is dealing with the cinnamon. I got some really GOOD cinnamon from a spice place here in Raleigh and used that last night. But I'm not sure if the overpowering (to me) of cinnamon was because of the quality or quantity of cinnamon. (I might have accidentally put too much or too little... it was hard to navigate without spilling)
The other thing was the chocolate on top. Chocolate has not been my friend the last couple of pies I've made with it. The Strawberry Oasis pie looked bad because of the way I layered the chocolate and the strawberries (just trying something new) and it also was really messy when the chocolate didn't want to cut right.
That was the main concern with the Lonely Chicago. The layer of chocolate on top is a little too thick (the chocolate a little overpowering, so I think I'm going to either cut it with something or scale it down next time). But the problem was with cutting the pie.
**You have to cut the slices almost immediately after the chocolate comes off the stove because as soon as it cools, it just breaks really badly into thick big chunks instead of nice pie slices**
Of course I thought of this after I had already put it in the fridge, but now I know for next time.
Also I used corn starch instead of tapioca flour and it seemed to do ok but it might have needed more corn starch. I couldn't find the tapioca flour anywhere so hence the substitute but I'll have to make it the correct way eventually so I can see if the consistency of the custard was right.
Here are the conversions for tapioca flour if you don't have any:
1 tablespoon of cornstarch or corn flour = 2 tablespoons of instant tapioca flour
1 tablespoon of potato starch or rice starch or flour = 2 tablespoons of instant tapioca flour
2 tablespoons of all purpose flour = 2 tablespoons of instant tapioca
1 tablespoon of Arrowroot = 2 tablespoons of instant tapioca flour
And as a side note I already put more blackberries than was called for but it could definitely stand some more, though you have to worry that you don't overload your pie dish, because there wasn't a ton of room left at the top, but it could use more than the 1/2 cup it calls for. I was debating last night when I was looking at the not so great selection of blackberries, and thought that blueberries might actually be good in it instead of blackberries, but that will have to be next time that I try that.
