Banishing Baking...

Easter is at my parents’ house this year. We are having long-time family friends from Indiana named the Bibby’s, and like-family friend Dave over in addition to the family. Mom asked me to prepare my not-quite famous but oh-so-yummy Creamy Peach Pie and bring them along for the party…she asked for two pies considering the amount of people coming. Since Elizabeth is diabetic, I wanted to make her a special dessert that she could have too. I decided upon fruit pastries called Jeweled Cups. So, today was my baking day and on the list was two pies and six smaller pie tarts. The pies required only peaches but the tarts included peaches, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and pineapple. I had bought all the ingredients a few days ago-buying the peaches still a bit hard to make sure they wouldn’t be TOO soft for the pies. I bought about 10. I also bought a bag of frozen peaches for filler in case I needed them. As I cut each fresh one open, however, the centers were a weird color blackish gray. Only two or three peaches were fully useable and the rest I cut to gross part off and used-but hardly got any real fruit that way. So-out comes the frozen ones. After thawing I mixed them all up and realized (big shocker!) that there was not nearly enough for two pies-hardly enough for ONE! So, still cheerful, I say, “Well Corynn! I wanted to go for a walk anyway-let’s walk down to the store!” Matt has the car. In the car is the stroller and my wallet. Thankfully, I have an umbrella stroller that someone was getting rid of and I found a five dollar bill lying around. So off we went…
Got to the store. One fresh peach with half of it being too soft and squishy to use. No frozen peaches. All they had was a can of peach pie filling (which I think is pretty yuck-o). I buy the very squishy lone peach and a can of filling. When I get home, I rinse the filling part of the can off of the peaches-leaving me only the peaches. I cut the half squishy lone peach. I was right. Only one half was usable. I mix them all up. Still the pies were not full enough to make a full fledged pie so I decide to just make large tarts out of them. I put them in the oven then proceed with the tartlets.
All is well is pie baking land. The large pies-turned-tarts look mouth-watering with a nice golden crust and bubbly fruity goodness inside. I put them both out in the mudroom on top of my cookie racks to cool. Because my hands were full with a pie-I didn’t separate the cookie racks.
I check on my tarts. The pastry had unfolded itself and was laying flat against the cookie sheet. I didn’t have any toothpicks to hold them up long enough to bake them that way so being the quick thinker that I am (yeah, right!) I decide to scoop them up and put them in a muffin tin. The sides would go up as I slid them into place and would bake that way-fixing my problem. Wrong. Instead, the pastry flaked off. I also didn’t have time to grease the darn things so what DIDN’T flake off-ripped off. I got my mangled tartlets out of the muffin tin finally only to realize that I needed a cookie rack to get these suckers to cool. Especially since many had sticky holes in the bottom.
Out I go to rescue a cookie rack (still under both pies…) one pie is cool enough to touch so I move it…the other is still very hot so I decide to lift up the cookie rack it is on and push the lower cookie rack out of the way-freeing it for my use. I do so-and the pie flips off the cookie rack and flips over onto the floor, bouncing off the side and crushing it right through the center.
All that work-for what? A creamy peach tart that only a few people will be able to try and six dry and non-appetizing mounds of fruit and pie shell. Oh-and a counter brimming with dishes, a kitchen floor to sweep, a mudroom floor to mop, and an apron to wash.
Baking used to be one of my favorite things. But frankly, after today, I have had my fill. At least until I get a hunkering for pie. 