Tag: cooking

Pigsfly Pie!

Drawing of a flying pigI’ve been talking about it for months, now I’ve finally done it: I’m calling it “Pigsfly Pie”…and it’s awesome.

If you’ve not run into it before, there’s a classic Pennsylvania “Dutch” recipe called “Shoofly Pie“, which is more or less a dense molasses cake in a pie crust. It’s quite good…but I’ve improved on it. As the name implies the secret ingredient is the semi-official food of the Internet…Bacon.

Here’s the secret recipe:

    Dry(ish) Stuff:

  • About 155g all-purpose flour
  • About 28g (2 Tablespoons) cold unsalted butter
  • about 114g “dark brown” sugar
  • about 300mg (around 1/8-1/4 tsp) salt
  • about 10 slices of crunchy cooked bacon, finely chopped.
    Wet(ish) stuff

  • About 3/4 teaspoon (Google says this is about 3.6g) baking soda
  • About 177g (3/4 cup) of boiling water
  • About 128g (4.5 ounces) of Maple Syrup
  • About 115g (about 4 ounces) Blackstrap Molasses
  • About 5ml (1 tsp) vanilla extract
  • One whole beaten egg
    Oh, yeah, and:

  • A 9″ radius pie crust
    Processing:

  1. If you’re using a frozen pie crust, thaw it then poke holes in it with a fork and bake it at about 200°C (around 400°F) for about 10 minutes to prepare it for the wet filling.
  2. Mix all of the “dry” stuff besides the bacon together well – I actually used a potato masher to thoroughly mash together the butter/sugar/flour until it was homogenous. Then, take out about a quarter-cup worth of the mix and set it aside as a topping, then mix the chopped bacon into the rest. (edit 20100602 to remove the extra “until”…)
  3. Put the baking soda in a bowl, and pour the boiling water on it.
  4. Mix in the syrup, molasses, and vanilla, and stir well.
  5. Beat the egg, then carefully mix it vigorously in (hopefully the liquid will have cooled sufficiently that it won’t curdle)
  6. Quickly mix the main portion of the dry stuff with this wet stuff. Small chunks will be no big deal. The texture should be roughly similar to waffle or pancake batter.
  7. Pour this into the pie crust. A typical “deep dish” crust will leave some room left over. A “regular” pie crust will be filled to the top and leave you with a few tablespoons left over. Don’t worry about filling the crust to the very top – it tends to harden up as it expands so it doesn’t overflow in my experience.
  8. Sprinkle the about-a-quarter-cup of dry stuff that you saved over the top
  9. Bake 40-45 minutes at 175°C (about 350°F)
  10. Let it cool at least an hour before cutting
  11. Eat with an optional topping of whipped cream.
  12. Make ecstatic “MMMMmmmmmm” noises in appreciation of my culinary genius.

Next time I make it, I’ll probably use a deep-dish crust, then float pecan halves all over the top before sprinkling on the topping and baking…

All Hail Bacon!

“Top Ten Favorite Microbes” proto-meme…

Dr. Joseph over on the “(It’s a…) Micro World (…after all)” blog posted a list of his ten favorite microbes. After showing up in the comments of his post and being a wiseass about E.coli and Gram staining, the least I can do is participate here. Besides, it’s a great idea. Therefore here are ten of my current favorite microbes:

Continue reading “Top Ten Favorite Microbes” proto-meme…

Eggs suck.

Don’t misunderstand – I like all kinds of foods made with eggs. Eggs are tasty. They’re handy. They’re nutritious, too. Their protein is so good they are the standard against which nutritionists have historically compared other food proteins. As a bonus, a medium-sized egg contains only one-eighth the cholesterol in a single ounce of human brain (and is much less likely to give you kuru).

However, could it be possible to come up with a more inconvenient packaging scheme? This thing was obviously designed by someone that hates us. “Let’s see, we’ll make it tasty and very nutritious. But just so people don’t think we like them, we’ll make it the consistency of snot, and package it by sealing it inside a specially-made, inedible brittle container so that you have to literally smash the thing open to get at the food, ensuring that the consumer* gets nasty goo all over his or her hands, or gets shards of the container mixed in with the food, or both. That’ll show the little jerks. And if that’s not enough, we’ll also have that container extruded out of a chicken’s butt.” (For some odd reason, as I write this, I’m picturing an Evil Santa Claus giving a presentation to the Evil Elves who are about to go off and implement this idea…”Sneezy, Drippy, and Runny – you three will head up the design committee…”)

They’re not screw flies or anything, but perhaps eggs can still count as an example of “irreducible grotesqueness”. (The picture, in case it isn’t obvious, is an egg separator. The image is linked to the site where you can buy them.)

This short rant has been brought to you by I’m-Making-Too-Many-Egg-Based-Meals-Lately Industries. That, and a second test to make sure I’ve got the DNS issues that I initially had resolved now. Can you all see this? I’d be thankful if everyone who was seeing this would post a quick “yeah, I see it” in the comments so that I can get on with the real posts again.

* Am I the only one who finds it insulting to be called a “consumer”, as though I were nothing more than a gaping mouth with a wallet? Am I sitting here mouth agape like a baby bird, waiting for a “supplier” to stroll by, grab some money out of my wallet, and cough up some “product” for me to “consume”? (I contend that I am not a “consumer” but a active participant in this economy, dagnabbit!)