April Fool's Pie

The previous post was a red herring. What Jeff and I made were actually mock apple pies, in honor of April Fool's Day. Instead of apples, Jeff's filling was made of Saltines, and mine was made of Ritz crackers. We then brought them to work under the guise of a contest to determine the best variety of pie apples, and forced our colleagues to vote on them in a blind taste test. I think we managed to fool a few people, although some of our co-workers commented that the pies were lemony, or had an interesting consistency.

I don't know all the details of Jeff's recipe, but the one I followed (courtesy of Julie) called for a simple syrup flavored with lemon juice and peel and then poured over a pie pan full of coarsely broken Ritz crackers. I then sprinkled this heaping mess with cinnamon, nutmeg and butter and put on a top crust. Sadly though, I did not seal it well enough and lemon goo scorched on the inside of my oven. It also seeped under the crust and made it very difficult to remove from the pan. My crust applying technique needs work. The good news is that the crust itself seemed to be an improvement over all previous. Hooray for Cuisinart!

So was it convincing as an apple pie? I'm not sure. When I was making the syrup, it smelled a lot like Seven Up and I thought there was no way anyone would mistake it for an apple pie. It also looked weird (read: revolting) as I was composing it. I include pictures of crackers in pie shell before and after the application of goo. When it came out of the oven though, it really smelled like apple pie. I include a profile of a slice of each of ours (my pie is on the left). Looking at a slice, it pretty much looked like apple pie, although if you looked closely enough you could see the lovely crimped edge of the crackers. I think Jeff's had a more convincingly apple flavor - mine was rather too lemony, seeing as how I doubled the amount of lemon peel called for. As an apple pie, they were fair, but as a pie in general, they were super. I would definitely make and eat this again. Which is good, because I have two more rolls of Ritz. My experience is different than most eaters though, since I knew going in that the pies were not made of apples. I wonder if the pie tastes more or less like apples if you think that's what it is?

All I can say is that it is a rare pleasure to work for someone who not only appreciates pie, but who appreciates the delight that is fake pie as well. Oh, and in case you're interested, the building voted Ritz crackers as the best variety of "apple" to use in pie. Sorry Saltines.