Even More About Pie

My neighbor Steve took umbrage (see his comment) at not being introduced to sugar cream pie, and I promised to make things right when I make the pie right. He also suggested that sugar cream sounded a lot like the chess pie he knew years ago (pictured below).

He’s right about that. They are very similar, but the Hoosier version does not include eggs or corn meal. Both, judging from my Internet research, sometimes do not set firmly.

My sugar cream pie was tasty as could be—rich, sweet, and smooth—but way too soupy. We had to eat it with spoons. So my sister, a richly experienced cook, and I started researching possible causes for the failure to set. She believes it had to do with the butter fat content of the cream (ideally 40 percent) and with the temperature reached. Suggestions include using a thermometer to confirm actual oven temperature, bringing the cream to room temperature before making the filling, stirring the filling during baking to assure uniform temperature throughout. Chess pie recipes suggest turning the oven off when the pie is done and leaving it in the oven to cool. The cream pie recipes say specifically to take it out after 45 or 50 minutes. Some even suggest putting it in the refrigerator to set after baking.

Clearly I will have to practice. When I get it right, Steve, you will be the first to test it.

Chess pie picture above from http://www.cookingwithoutanet.com/2009/05/baking-class-chess-pie.html

More About Pie

I recently stumbled upon a magazine article about something called “Hoosier sugar cream pie,” and it rang a bell. I well remember loving such a pie as a child, but we didn’t call it Hoosier. It was just sugar cream pie. Some outlander probably added the “Hoosier” to distinguish it from the more famous Boston cream pie, which is not a pie at all but a cake with chocolate icing.

Anyway, this magazine article said the recipe dated to 1816, the year Indiana became a state. So I went to my source, The Hoosier Cookbook, published by Indiana University Press in 1976. There I found the same recipe with a notation that it was 160 years old. The order of listed ingredients had been changed.

Let’s see: 1976 minus 160 equals, uh, 1816.

An old friend and former colleague recently asked me for a pie crust recipe I mentioned back in August. It too came from The Hoosier Cookbook, but copyright expressly forbids reproducing or utilizing any part of the book in any form without written permission. Presumably “utilizing” does not include baking pie.

So I won’t be posting the recipe without permission. But Jon, e-mail me at f-starr@northwestern.edu. I think Indiana University Press won’t sue me if I pass it on privately to a good friend. 
Photo: whatscookingamerica.net

Still Here

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my death are exaggerated. In fact, I haven’t even been sick if you don’t count a wonky lower back.

But yes, I have been gone too long from this place, and I hope some of you agree. Electronic indications are that a few faithful readers have persevered. Beyond the United States, most of them are in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. That’s good. I spent a lot of time in those parts as a newspaper reporter.

So, get to the point. What’s my excuse?

Well, apart from black mold after Hurricane Irene, the arrival of crisp weather and associated bird dog duties, and continuing daily bouts of wrestling with The Moon, I have no excuse.

Ah, The Moon. Yes, there’s the real culprit. I’ve mostly used available time for The Moon, not the blog, although I did capitulate to the advice of the experts and activate a Facebook page, an act that required little time. 

So here’s what I’ve been doing.

It became clear that readers of the book would need to know things Main Character could not know. To fix that I had to shift the narrative’s point of view from one limited to him to one that writers call omniscient. (Don’t you love that concept?) This meant some rewriting of earlier material.

I also had to bring some other characters into the tale to dramatize actions that Main Character can’t know about. This meant inserting whole chapters in parts of the book I thought I’d finished.   

Third circumstance: the writing has outrun my outline. For some time I’ve been making up plot structure as I go. This has worked reasonably well since I’ve always known the general arc of the story. But it requires getting down basic structure—bare bones of the action—and coming back later to flesh it out with mood, description, characters’ reactions, explanation of motives, etc.

Too much information for you? Okay, I’ll stop now. But I did promise that this blog would be partly about writing the novel, and that is more about process than content.