Kitchen Saviors

When it comes to recipes, my philosophy is If you can read, you can cook. And my very favorite recipes are those that include a photograph of the finished dish. I create whole menus around pictures, which is how I chose my Thanksgiving dessert offerings: A pumpkin lattice tart from The Food Channel and a Cranberry Cream Pie from Real Simple magazine.

The tart was going great until I set the pie crust strips a’top the batter for weaving, and they promptly sunk. That glump at the left are the fished out strips. This dessert has a good ending – it baked nicely and dollops of whipped cream will fancy up its lack of a lattice topping.

Not so nice is the cream pie. I’ll be serving it in parfait dishes, as it never set up. The recipe noted it would be ready to serve in 4 hours. Well, 10 hours later, it’s more puddin’ than pie.

For my Tie One On Day delivery, I dressed up the #1 disaster dessert by pouring the cream pie into a Fiestaware cup, and

wrapping both the cup and pumpkin tartlet in clear floral bags. But still, the offering looked a tad underdone, so I took a clear plate and to the bottom, performed decoupage with a circle of vintage fabric, like this

Then wrapped the whole shebang in a red gingham apron, and ta da!

I should have learned my lesson long ago about baking an un-tried dish for a festive gathering, but I like change and to that end, this isn’t the last holiday meal that may call upon my secret kitchen saviors: whipped cream and

a frozen cherry pie.

Kitchen fiasco or not, Tie One On…an apron, of course! and give thanks we have pie at all.

xxea