Many the Ways to Mess Up Key Lime Pie

So, I've made Key Lime Pie once before, with the divine assistance of my roomie Marc.  It went over well last time, and so I decided to make this time more challenging.  Probably a poor decision.  Last time I copped out and made a fairly easy graham cracker crust instead of a real pastry crust because I fear the pastry crust.  This time, though, I bit the pastry bullet.  Went and bought a pastry cutter and went to town.

Whilst making the crust, I'm fairly certain I erred in many places.  For example, you don't want to over-work the part where you cut in the shortening, but you want the shortening in "pea sized pieces."  What?  I basically ended up with some salt sized pieces and some pieces that looked like cashews.  I gave up because I didn't want to over-work it.

Then, you have to add water in bits to moisten the dough.  Recipe says to add "5-6 tbsp water."  Again, what?  Baking cannot have wishy washy measures!! That's why I love it so much!  Gah.  Well, I added my water and tossed it lightly with a fork as was requested.  However, even after the 6 tbsp, the dough still didn't all seem moistened!  Ahhh, I don't want to add too much water or else the crust will be tough!  (Yes, there should be exclamation points everywhere, because I feel this accurately expresses my stress levels when trying to do this.)  So, even though it looked a little dry (and didn't form a dough ball terribly well) I decided to move on and roll it out.

Rolling dough.  Easy, right?  Dream on my friends.  First off, I don't have a rolling pin, so I used a wine bottle.  Yessss.  Anyway, the dough quite simple refused to stay in a pretty circle, and it was not all glossy and pretty looking like it was in the recipe book.  It looked like it kinda wanted to fall apart on me.  And then there was this whole "make it 12" in diameter" thing.  Who knows what 12" is?  I certainly don't.  So did I get a ruler out?  No.  I wung it.  (That's right, wung should be the past tense of wing.)  Then I was supposed to make this non-circle fit into a pie pan, and then make the edges look pretty.  HA.  At least it was actually in the pie pan.  Close enough for me.

Finally, I was supposed to bake it til golden brown, which of course it never did (see photo below for when I finally gave up and hoped it was cooked enough).  Regardless, it looks more or less like a pie crust.

Then, I had to juice a BAJILLION key limes.  Those tiny things are a hassle.  But luckily, key lime filling is absurdly easy.  Woot!  So while that is baking you have to try to time making the meringue so that it will end JUST as the pie finishes cooking because you want to add the stiff peaked meringue straight to a piping hot pie.  No fun at all.  So, I was making my meringue and realized that I was totally f'd, since I was way ahead of time.  So I was about to wait a bit to add the sugar, but the recipe said "NO."  So I didn't.  The meringue was just done a little early.  Aaaand, I may have gone overboard with the mixing.  You're meant to mix til you have stiff peaks....I think I mixed til I had a consistency more like...well, there are no words.   But past stiff peaks.  Sigh.  So, I added it to the pie, and remembered at that point that, just like last time, there was an obscene amount of meringue for the size of the pie.  Oh well, such is the recipe.  Maybe I'll fuss with it next time.

So then, which I didn't realize til after I had started making it, I had to let it sit for an hour then fridgidate for 3-6.  So, I was under the impression that no one would be coming over at midnight to try it that night.  Except me and Marc, of course...BUT!  The math guys came over, and the 5 of us had pie.  I was a little disappointed in the crust, but everyone else loved the pie.  Like, went back for seconds loved it.  Some went back for thirds.  I saved a bit for Lokes (Laura K), Lauren, and Adam, but only Loki got her piece.  Ren and Adam never came to claim their pieces so Marc and I claimed them.  Nom.

So more details on the pie:  it was absurdly limey, which everyone present liked.  If you are looking for a not-tart key lime pie, though, don't ask me to make it for you.  Also, it had a very custardy texture as opposed to a made from jello or something texture.  It felt very not fake, which I liked.  The meringue topping sort of melted in your mouth instead of having any real texture, which I believe is due to my over-whipping it.  Still fairly tasty though.  And the crust.  Oh crust.  I thought it was truly meh, no real taste, just sort of a thing to keep your pie together.  No delightful flakiness.  Nothing special at all.  All present said I was being silly, though, and that it was pretty good.  Own worst critic or over nice friends?  Unclear.

Anyway, up next is....either peanut butter pie or cupcakes of some kind or carrot cake.  Post to follow :)

The Beauty of a Clean Ride

So, we finally went surfing again!  Waves were pretty bad all week, so we stayed in, but yesterday Bryon approved a surfing adventure.  We went to El Porto, as apparently we're giving up on Venice.  I don't think I agree with them that we have nothing more to learn from Venice, just like I don't agree that they have nothing left to learn from their 7' boards, but we go to El Porto and they ride shortboards nonetheless. 

Before I talk about surfing, the most important detail of the day:  There were dolphins!  Lots of them!  We haven't seen dolphins in a long time, so I thought maybe they had left for winter, but yesterday there was a big ol' pod, and two of them were playing in the shallows.  So while we were suiting up and waxing the boards and figuring out which break we were headed for, these two dolphins were chasing each other around, leaping clear out of the water (Full Breach!!!!), and generally making a splash.  Naturally, by the time we were ready to surf they headed out for deeper waters, but whatever.  It was a delight to watch them.

Now, to the surfing.  I'm still riding the Queen of Ween (although I'm thinking of buying a cheap shortboard today so I can work on both fronts at once), the 7'2" funboard of Lee's, and she treated me well.  I had a nice dry paddle out, which made me absurdly happy.  There is nothing quite so glorious as getting to the line up with dry hair.  I was really surprised that I managed this, though, since the water was super choppy and the period was really short.  Long story short, there were absurd quantities of waves breaking alllll over the place.  So, the dry paddle out was lucky. 

The waves were breaking pretty slowly, so I had issues catching things.  You could paddle hard for a wave and miss it since it was taking so long to break, but then you had a long paddle to get back out again since the wave would drag you along without letting you have a ride.  Bummer.  But I did have a few decent rides, and one AWESOME RIDE!!!  I caught the wave RIGHT at the corner (see image below; I caught the wave at the equivalent of where this arrow is),

and it was a beautiful left that I actually rode across the face of.  Too bad none of my friends were around to see it (there was a strong southward current, so we were pretty spread out).  Nonetheless, it made the day worthwhile.  I caught another really nice wave but my feet got tangled in my leash and I got launched.  It was funny. 

Toward the end of the day I tried riding Lee's shortboard but didn't catch anything but whitewater.  Sighs.  I'll have to try again with faster breaking waves.

Overall on the day, I'm sad because I missed some great corners because I was afraid that the wave was too big and about to break on me.  I need to work on reading the waves betters, cause there were at least two gorgeous rides that I missed because I was afraid.  Sad times.  I'll just have to be a smidge bolder next time.  Still, I had the glory of one sweet ride, and that made the whole day pretty awesome.

Oreo Ball Success

This weekend I made oreo balls (I don't have any pictures of this weekend's batch, but here's a picture of oreo balls I made over Christmas, so that'll have to suffice).  

This time, I made 7 varieties:  4 were filled with just oreo filling.  They were covered in either milk, dark, or white chocolate or peanut butter (the candy chip kind, not real peanut butter).  The other 3 were filled with oreo and peanut butter (real peanut butter), and covered in either milk, dark, or white chocolate.  I fed them to the cohort (Laura K, Meaghan, Kathleen, David, and Michael T (Laura M and Floris are away)) and the math guys.  Consensus: awesomesauce.  People back home had liked them too, so I'm happy they went over well.  It seems that having them refridged immediately preceding consumption adds to the overall happiness.  This recipe is definitely going on the success list, and will be repeated often.  They do take some time, especially if I again choose to coat them in 4 different things, but it's fun, you can decorate them for special occasions, and I get to eat lots of leftover chocolate.  Definitely nomnom.  Next up for this week:  key lime pie.  Lee was sick this weekend, and I promised to make him whatever he liked, so klp it is. 

Of Kitchens and Oceans

I've been meaning to keep track of my forays into surfing and baking, and hence a blog was born.  Why put them in the same blog, you might ask.  I have no idea.  Actually, if I put them in two separate blogs, I would almost certainly forget/be too lazy to update one or the other.  So here goes!

A bit of background on each:

Baking: I've been baking with Mom for as long as I can remember, but over the past year or so I've started to take it more seriously.  I don't just want to bake.  I want to make absurdly delightful and beautiful creations that will leave people weeping for joy.  Not really.  But sorta.  I do want to learn to be bakingly consistent, and to make a real presentation out of the things I've made.  So, to that end, I (with generous gifts from my parents) have started to get the tools of the trade.  I'm in love with my KitchenAid stand mixer.  I have piping bags and tips, cooling racks, books, etc etc.  The mission from here on out is to try to make at least one delicious thing a week and see what my friends think.  They're ok with the idea :) 

In a post to come soon, I'll put up pics of some of the things I've made over the past year.  I tend to only record the good stuff, but in the interests of truthfulness, I'll start recording everything. 

 Surfing:  I started surfing this past July (2011) with my guys, Bryon, Lee, and Damon (often referred to as the math guys when all present).  We rented wetsuits and foam boards one day, and just went out and failed a bunch.  But we had so much fun failing!  And essentially, we all decided off that one experience that we loved it enough to start investing.  We bought wetsuits (I bought two :-/  Totally glad I did though cause then I didn't have to invest a second time when winter waters came around).  We bought boards.  My first board is a lovely 8'0" Mission Surfboards pintail funboard type thing (made in Pacific, CA).  I have issues paddling it, cause it's wider than my shoulders by a fair bit, and I most definitely can't duckdive it, which makes me sad.  I can, however, turtle roll it sometimes, which is hilarious.  Just ask anyone who has ever seen me attempt this. 

If I ever feel like I have lots of time on my hands (or if I have a major project due and obviously conclude that that is the time to write this down), I will recount stories of the early days on Testicles (pronounced test-ih-klees, as this is what Bryon named my board).  For now, however, I will tell you that I am borrowing Lee's 7'2" funboard, the Queen of Ween, while I try to move down toward a shortboard.  I'm getting better at everything, but I'm still way too timid, and after taking a month off to go back east, I'm really out of surfing shape.  Goals are to just go balls to the wall and make it happen.  I want to be shredding by the end of the year.

I'm not sure how best to blog the surfing, but for starters, I'll probably just talk about what I'm riding, how the waves looked, what kind of waves I caught, how I'm improving.  I don't know.  Hopefully once I get a little better I can also keep track of conditions so that I can learn to read the ocean a bit better.  Also (and I'm slight ashamed to admit this, but not really), there will be tons of info in posts about the wildlife I see out there.  I'm in love with dolphins, and will report with great excitement whatever I can about them and other sealife.  Just a warning. 

Ok, I think that should do it for an intro.  Let's see how well I can avoid Wipeouts and Burns :)