Learning 2 Bake from Scratch – LXX

Mandarin Merrang Pie

I need a pie, tonight, for a contest at the dance studio. The Laird happened to buy a bag of mandarin oranges, yesterday. I’ve done both lemon and lime, so why not? The lime was XXXX (should that have been XL?). Let’s see what I’ve learned in the last 30 attempts.

First, I’m now insisting on “merrang”. “Meringue” is dead to me. (I don’t much care for the dance, either, but at least it is pronounced sanely.)

Second, I’m not good enough to skip the instructions. I only printed the ingredients for the recipe folder. That is not sufficient. Does one cook the custard or is baking enough? Is the crust par baked? Is the marrang baked from the beginning or put on later? Thankfully, the lemon post has the instructions (cook the custard; par bake the crust; marrang from the start).

Breakfast: The crust is placed (in the freezer). The eggs are out, coming up to room temperature. An egg committed suicide as I was taking them out of the refrigerator. It jumped out of the flat and splatted on the floor. I didn’t bother notifying the king. I just bench-scraped it onto a paper towel and into the garbage then wiped up the remains.

Coffee break: Mixed the crust. Grating the butter is the best baking-hack ever. It took no time at all to do this. It’s hydrating in the ‘fridge. My 1/2 crust recipe calls for 160 g flour and 60 g water. The lemon one had 240 g flour and 65 g water. 60 grams of water was not enough to get dough to come together. I splashed in a bit more (unmeasured, but just over a tablespoon at a guess). That’s a bit much. It’s hydrated without the refrigeration soaking time. I think I’ll scratch out 60 and put in 65. This may be related to the summer bread issue.

This is not supposed to be served warm, so I guess lunch is baking time.

Lunch: Preheated oven. Placed custard directly into pot (three oranges were sufficient for both juice and zest); eggs on the side. The Laird asked if I drained the water from the egg whites for merrang. I have not, so I’m trying that (bowl explosion; good thing we have a dishwasher). Rest of merrang placed. Crust rolled out easily and a good thickness. I even put a halfway decent rim on it. It seems a bit damp; we’ll see. It’s par baking while I type this up.

Speaking of dishwashers, I remarked to The Laird, “my next bench-scraper is not going to have a wooden handle so it can go through the dishwasher.” Then I realized: If I put my current bench-scraper through the dishwasher, it might actually wear out and I’ll have an excuse to buy a new one. Next time. I had already hand-washed it by that point. I’m a bit sentimental toward it because I won it for first-place in a work pie contest – in 2003. I’m still a bit peeved that my apple turnovers in 2006 didn’t even place. They were good! Anyway, mandarin merrang pie…

Just because there’s no milk in the custard doesn’t mean you can crank the pot up to high to get it to boil. Got a few lumps of cornstarch. I managed to beat them out. The drained egg whites whipped up into merrang just fine. I considered piping it on, but I just scooped it out of the mixing bowl and smoothed it out. No interesting pattern in it. It’s baking. All that’s left is the final (and only) picture…

So much for the “halfway decent rim”. I’ve also got to get over my fear of over par baking. The crust is not even close to golden brown.

Update: Not horrid, but definitely needs work. Trying again on Wednesday.

• The merrang collapsed and was very sticky. I’m not sure if this is because I drained the water or because I didn’t bake it long enough or hot enough.
• The crust was soggy and tough. This is definitely “didn’t par bake enough”.
• Very mild orange flavor. It needs more “oomph” on the orange. I’m think juice oranges instead of mandarin oranges. More orange color would be good too. A blood orange was suggested for this.