The Bad, the Ugly, the Good

THE BAD I’ve never made pie crust from scratch. I always buy them frozen. I’d purchased a bag of fruit from ALDI. In a previous post I raved about the pear cobbler I’d had at Gabriella’s. Using the increasingly ripening fruit, I decided to make my own pear cobbler. I planned to use a plum cobbler recipe for the filling. I found a recipe for a No Roll pie crust.

NO ROLL PIE CRUST

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup canola oil

2 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In a 9 inch pie plate, sift flour, sugar and salt. make a well in the center and pour in oil and milk. Mix with a fork, then press into the bottom and sides of pie plate.

2. To bake: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C.) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Assemble the crew, flour, sugar, milk (I used evaporated) salt, oil (I used olive oil) and a well used pie pan. I mixed all of these ingredients in the pie plate and began pressing it out around the sides and bottom. I poked holes in the sides and bottom before placing it in the oven to bake. When I took it out of the oven the sides were lacy looking and the crust was a golden brown.

THE UGLY Unfortunately, it didn’t hold together. It could easily be scraped into large crumbs. I think there was too much oil but, I’m not a chef so who knows? I scraped everything into the middle of the pan and threw it out for the birds. Low cholesterol bread crumbs so to speak.

That’s when I decided to stick with the tried and true. Gather the crew again .

In a bowl beat one large egg with 1/2 cup of sugar, 3 TBSP of melted butter and 1/3 cup of milk.

In another bowl, combine 1/2 cup of flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. Stir into the first mixture until smooth and well blended. Peeled and sliced pears placed in casserole dish sprayed with Pam. TBSP cornstarch mixed with 1/2 cup cold water. Pour over pears.

Add cup sugar (or to taste) 1/2 tsp each, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix well into the pears.

Top with batter. Bake @ 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until brown.

The batter will spread to make a sort of crust. Cool and eat. THE GOOD The moral of this story is to stick to what you know. THAT'S IT ***

Pear Cobbler

AFTER having pear cobbler at Gabriella's I decided to try my hand at it. Naturally I used a store bought frozen crust since I have never in my life even attempted to make a crust from scratch. I didn't expect my concoction to be as good as Gabriella's and it wasn't. But it was edible.
Here are the ingredients:
4 Bosc pears, cored, peeled, and cut in wedges (I used canned and cut them in chunks)
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 lemon juiced
1/2 stick butter
1 store bought piecrustI followed the label directions for the pie crust and allowed it to cool while I made the filling.

DIRECTIONS: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine all of the ingredients except the pie crust in a saute pan. Saute for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and pour cobbler mixture into medium ramekins. For topping, put pre-made piecrust over cobbler and bake in oven for 15 minutes.

THE REAL DEAL: I didn't have another crust to put on top so I made a crumbly Brown Betty type topping to put on top. As you can see, I also didn't use ramekins. I also didn't do any sauteing

Here it is before I put it in the oven.

Here's the finished product. Edible but not that great. First and last attempt.

THAT'S IT***