Cookbook Review 'Pie It Forward' is all about what's inside a sweet crust

Spanishchef.net recommends these products

Tina Rupp

Gesine Bullock-Prado, bakery owner, multiple-cookbook author, blogger, and sister of actress Sandra Bullock, offers pastry recipes and tips in “Pie it Forward.’’

I like baking, and I generally like baking books even when they’re fussy. So I took an instant shine to the new pie book by Gesine Bullock-Prado (bakery owner, multiple-cookbook author, blogger, and ex-Hollywooder; she’s Sandra Bullock’s sister). “Pie It Forward” is a loose wordplay on “pay it forward,” being grateful for something good, and paying it forward to others. The book has gorgeous photography, and there are cute little sidebars offering advice: say, how to salvage overwhipped cream. I was half in love with it before I ever started a recipe.

Then I took it into the kitchen.

Our first foray, a Key lime mascarpone cream pie, is a smash. The tart dough comes together simply, thanks to condensed milk and a food processor, and the flavors are bright and creamy. We smile and dig in, not knowing that this effortless experience is unique. The rest of the testing, it turns out, will be plagued by omissions and distortions, ranging from trivial to monumental.

Continue reading below

“Not-so-traditional” apple pie calls for an express puff pastry and 13 apples, which seems like a lot. Still, I follow the recipe, down to the absorbent “Crust Dust” (a 50-50 mix of flour and sugar for absorbing extra liquid in fruit pies). The puff pastry more or less does its job, but the apples run and flood the pie, overwhelming the Crust Dust in a mudslide.

A more traditional puff pastry, in a pear-frangipane pithivier, is made with some nontraditional short cuts (a mixer), but the rise and lamination are both good. However, Bullock-Prado forgets to tell you to egg-wash the finished product before sliding it in the oven. If you think of doing it yourself, you’ll get a confection that looks just like the picture. If not, you won’t (I tried both ways).

A bruleed maple custard tart calls for ½ cup sugar to coat a tiny 8-inch tart. Skeptical, I use only ¼ cup, and still end up with a layer of brulee so thick it cannot be penetrated. In the serving, the thick caramel shards crush the custard underneath.

I persevere. Chocolate orange souffle tartlets start with a disastrous, wet chocolate-cookie tart dough using almost ?
cup liquid and directions to “add the liquid and pulse till just combined.” I throw out the soggy, unrollable results and start again, using half the liquid. The second dough is rollable but fragile, and, channeling a Zen monk as the minutes tick by, I eventually contrive to fit it into the tartlet rings. As for the filling, there is twice as much as needed, so I improvise and make it into a separate souffle.

For a savory change of pace, I try a pork pie recipe, which is like a culinary Murphy’s law: everything that can go wrong, does. Fussy instructions for pre-baking puff pastry in muffin tins are impossible to execute. One item in the ingredients list is never called for in the recipe, and one item that isn’t listed turns up in the instructions. The timing is off, and so are the yields (too little pastry, way too much filling). I make it work, but it takes some MacGyvering.

My most tragic encounter with “Pie It Forward” is not actually the book’s fault. It involves a strawberry-rhubarb lattice crumble pie calling for so much butter and sugar I think, initially, the mistake is mine. Still, I slog on, through 4½ cups of flour, 4½ sticks of butter, 2 cups of sugar, and the fact that the huge pile of crumble topping is nowhere to be seen in the pie’s final photograph.

It all goes into a 9-inch pie pan which, 50 minutes later, I attempt to remove to a cooling rack. With a wobble and a whoosh, the entire 4-pound pie slides to the floor, landing facedown. When I recover sufficiently to start scraping it up, I notice — with a sense of insult compounding injury — that the now highly visible interior is still sloppy and underdone. Would it have set up had the pie been given its proper cooling time? Possibly. We’ll never know.

In baking, the devil is in the details (except for when it’s lying in an 8-foot splatter at your feet). The funny thing is, this tremendously appealing book is filled with detail, wit, and good advice. But rather like that metal cooling rack I was aiming for, sometimes it’s just not there when you need it.

Try BostonGlobe.com today and get two weeks FREE.T. Susan Chang can be reached at [email protected].

Because of a reviewer’s error, an earlier reference to the puff pastry indicates that the author says to make it in a mixer or food processor. The dough is made in a mixer.

baking with Bill & Sheila

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Click here for more information

Return from pie to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: