For those of you who have been clamoring for me to replace the photos of the poor maligned hard boiled egg pie, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that obviously, those photos have been superseded by a new pie. The bad news is that it is arguably the most disgusting disaster of a pie that I have made yet.My boss Jeff and I decided to use the occasion of president John Tyler's birthday as an excuse to have a bake off. Neither of us had ever made what is known variously as a John Tyler pie, a John Tyler pudding pie, a Tyler pudding, etc. It's basically a custard pie. I cho
se to use a recipe from The First Ladies Cookbook for a John Tyler pie with coconut. I took this very seriously too. I read general tips on custard pies in The Joy of Cooking, followed the very detailed pre-baking-of-crust instructions in another cookbook, and pan-toasted coconut to go on top. And let me just say, that if this had been a pie beauty contest, I think my pie would have won, hands down. But alas, despite multiple cookbooks telling me that a custard pie would be set, but still jiggly, I took my pie out too early, and when cut into, it was raw in the middle. And not just raw, but it oozed this bizarre yellow goo. Which led to jokes about Tyler's presidency being as half-baked as his pie, and to the lunchroom q
uery of "can I drain you a piece of pie?"
se to use a recipe from The First Ladies Cookbook for a John Tyler pie with coconut. I took this very seriously too. I read general tips on custard pies in The Joy of Cooking, followed the very detailed pre-baking-of-crust instructions in another cookbook, and pan-toasted coconut to go on top. And let me just say, that if this had been a pie beauty contest, I think my pie would have won, hands down. But alas, despite multiple cookbooks telling me that a custard pie would be set, but still jiggly, I took my pie out too early, and when cut into, it was raw in the middle. And not just raw, but it oozed this bizarre yellow goo. Which led to jokes about Tyler's presidency being as half-baked as his pie, and to the lunchroom q
uery of "can I drain you a piece of pie?"Jeff's pie earned 4 votes on the tally sheet by the end of the day, and mine earned the comment "are you for real?" which I think amounts to about negative 5 points. The real kicker is that even Jeff's pie (which was hands down the contest winner) did not get finished. This is really saying something in an office where the lunch crowd once finished up unidentifiable leftovers that had been dubbed "alien autopsy." I think the real mystery now is not how John Tyler came to have his own pie, but how it has stayed in existence so long....
I 
think I'm going to have to demand a re-match.
think I'm going to have to demand a re-match.
