Cookaholics Bulletin Board

My brother in law is attending an HRM/Cooking school here in the Philippines. HRM stands for Hotel Restaurant Management and usually contains at least an introduction to kitchen techniques. His school has a pretty good kitchen setup which I toured prior to his enrolling. Recently he brought home a traditional "egg pie" he made at school. The custard was in the tradition of "leche flan" another very popular dish here, but the pie crust was rather sad. Thus I led an attempt at an improved "egg pie" with very mixed success. I should mention that we live at an altitude of 5000 feet.

I used the pastry recipe from Smitten Kitchen's Pie Crust 102 (their PC 101 pie crust is based on CI's), with the exception of using half butter and half Crisco. It came out quite good and is now the home "favorite". But my attempts at the custard filling have been very problematic. The first custard filling was a more traditional recipe with 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, milk and sugar, plus a bit of vanilla extract. The flavor was okay, but the surface was not, being very uneven. The new crust (SK's) was a great improvement in taste but was much like the egg pie from school, not quite done.

Attempt number 2 used the same SK crust, but blind baked. Then, to help prevent a soggy bottom and to add an interesting flavor note, we did a very thin layer of dark chocolate on the crust and let it cool. Finally we added the school recipe's custard which is made with 1 can of condensed milk, 1 can of evaporated milk, 15 egg yolks and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Traditional flan recipes will vary from 10 to 15 yolks.

The crust was even better this time, fully cooked and pretty flaky. Very tasty again and the chocolate added a superb flavor without overwhelming the egg custard's character. But the egg custard/flan was a visual disaster. Very uneven and with many bubble voids in the custard.

In retrospect, I think we will have to use a water bath/bain marie. I had not done this since I don't have any actual pie pans and have been using a tart pan, the sort with a removable bottom, so I shied away from the water bath. I read an entry at CI's forum where a chef cooking at 9000 feet made a covered bain marie to do creme brulee in. Which sounds promising, but I will see if a simple water bath without cover will give me a better custard. One that has a smooth surface and fewer voids. If that fails I will look at some sort of covered container to do a bain marie in. I have been toying with the idea of something similar with a hole for steaming so I can do a French loaf and inject steam without steaming the whole oven, which is sadly not very rust proof.

Tatoosh: Another Fat Guy on a Mountain

It sounds like you are definitely on the right path. I can't imagine all of the cooking problems people encounter when they are at such high altitudes. Best of luck to you!

Tatoosh,

I'm a working chef at about 9K feet and make custards all the time. You've hit on your problem...use a bain marie. And if you can cover your bain marie pan with another pan to hold the steam in (at least for a period of baking) you may have even better results. (I worry about the crust getting soggy, but if you're using a tart pan, this is less of a problem.)

You've also discovered the "secret" (chocolate) for keeping crusts from becoming soggy. I use white chocolate, as the flavor is undetectable, and it's the same color as your custard.

Amy

Thank you for the advice! I can see where a white chocolate would be almost undetectable in a custard. I am hoping to create a rich egg pie but not a full blown flan, which is primarily egg yolks. I see CI recommends 3 eggs in their "Rich, Silky Custard" recipe and 3 tablespoons of cornstarch. I take it the cornstarch is to thicken the custard, which is what yolks do, but without making so dense? I was playing around with the idea of using CI's custard recipe but adding a few yolks. However, not so many as a flan would have. Perhaps 2 or 3 more. But that might defeat the purpose of the cornstarch.

I want a rich, fairly light product in the end. Lightness is not the primary objective, but a secondary characteristic. Rich egg-i-ness is my primary goal. One that can handle various flavorings I want to play with in the future. When I use those, I will likely go with Amy's suggestion of white chocolate. But I did love the chocolate notes from the dark chocolate I used in my second effort. If I do an Orange flavored custard or an Amaretto custard, either would be fine on their own (white chocolate anti-sog layer) or with a chocolate layer that would give another note to the flavor profile.

Fun to play with! Thanks Amy. I will keep my eye out for a pan that will hold a 9 inch pie dish and have a lip large enough to invert a second on without turning it into a magic act. I suppose a cover of aluminum foil might work as well. If room for the steam to build up is important, I might try "tenting" the foil over the water-bath pan.

Once I figure out the flaw, I am sure egg pies will become a favorite both in the house and at pot lucks.

If you can get cornstarch, I would use it. Because it is pure starch, it's thickening power is different than eggs, and it provides more structure to the final product. You just need to make sure you bring the mixture to a high heat (boiling or near boiling, depending on the application) to cook the starch, otherwise the final product will be gritty.

Amy

Cornstarch it is, then. I hope to try making some of the CI egg pie this weekend or early next week. Along with a delicious looking banana creme pie recipe I've been ogling for a couple of weeks. We should have enough dough for both.

We did CI's custard last night and it was a failure. But at least a new kind of failure, the appearance being perfect. A smooth custard with a nice surface, quite visually appealing. I made two major mistakes. First, I didn't prebake the crust enough. So it was kind o doughy still when we started and never improved. Second, for some inexplicable reason, I didn't use my normal toothpick test for the custard and instead relied on a jiggle test per CI's guide. That was a fiasco. The surface of the custard set, the interior did not.

But the consistency was good (in terms of smoothness) and the flavor quite nice. We did the dark chocolate lining of the crust's "floor" and that is gaining converts with the family every time. My sis-n-law, who generally disdains chocolate (our theory is that she is really an adopted space alien) has started to warm to it in the context of custard and ate three slices.

Again, we used a tort pan. We will take a whack at this again in a few days for a small dinner party we are hosting for two other couples. With last nights experience, I am feeling fairly confident that we can produce a pretty nice custard. The only thing, besides improving cooking times to finish the crust and thoroughly set the custard is to add a bit more egg-i-ness to it. I probably won't experiment on my guests, but wait for another time. Then I will likely add 1 or 2 more egg yolks to the mix.

I will leave the cornstarch content the same, 3 tablespoons. So it will have 3 eggs whole, 1 or 2 yolks, and 3 tablespoons of cornstarch. Or should I lower the cornstarch level a bit due to adding the egg yolks? Maybe reduce it to 2 tablespoons? Any custard pie chemists have an opinion on that?

Amy, you mentioned that I shouldn't have a problem with sogginess when cooking the custard in a tort pan versus a pie pan. I am a bit confused as to why their would be a difference between the pans. I can understand the thinner tort pan producing a faster setting custard due to its height. But I am a bit perplexed on how that would effect the crust in a different manner. I was thinking I would buy a pie pan this week, but I am a bit hesitant to do so when all of our experience here is with tort pans and we will have guests.

The bain marie worked quite nicely, by the way. I have a somewhat extravagant stainless lasagna pan, of AC variety, that handled the foil-wrapped tort pan with ease and provided nice handles for moving in and out of the stove. You mentioned using a double pan, but would covering the pan with foil provide the same effect? Or would the reduction of volume (due to loss of the second pan) somehow intensify the steam effect and cause the crust to sog-out? I was down at the local market eyeballing stainless pans for size and "lips" so they can be stacked on each other easily. I may indulge simply so I can play around with steaming mini- baguettes or batards down the road.

As an aside, I remember reading in some other thread about whether some particular high end pan was worth the price since you can make quite adequate lasagna (or whatever) in much less expensive pans, an idea that often appeals to my wallet. But I also remember cooking for decades with junk pots and pans simply because we owned them. Since I shifted to AC for most of cookware, I have been much happier. Not that I think AC is the end of discussion, but that quality gear is worthwhile, particularly stuff that will last decades in a home. And you never know when that odd bit will turn out to be exactly what you need for some unexpected use.

Custards can be finicky, and timing for baking is completely dictated by a whole host of variables, from how hot you got the liquid (cream/whatever), to how hot and the depth of your bain marie. The jiggle test is (IMO) the most accurate way to judge doneness. (As a point of reference, when I make crème brûlée at work, it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. It just depends.) You also need to be careful not to incorporate two much air into the mixture when you temper it.

The reason I said I worried less about sogginess with a tart shell is there is less crust exposed, so the bain marie wouldn't make it as soggy.

Amy

I obviously need to take "jiggle 101". The custard was getting pretty thick by the time we got it in the shell, but still liquid, of course, though showing some lumps from the bottom of the pan. The crust should have, per CI's instructions, been hotter. We rewarmed the crust prior to filling, since it cooled off during the chocolate layer addition, but not as long as they specified.

The top was set and when I gave it a minimal shake (considering it was sitting in a water bath) the custard seemed solid all the way across, leading me to declare it finished baking. I even expounded on "over-cooking" to my bro-in-law, but was proven quite mistaken in that department. And I wonder why he doesn't listen to me sometimes. Heh heh.

We will give it another try in a couple of days and I will use both my trusty toothpick test and the jiggle test before declaring it "done".

Well, we've done the custard twice now and I'm still not very satisfied with it, but it is definitely improving. We are blind baking the pie crust and that is about right now, though it takes quite a bit of baking (using psuedo pyrex pie dish) to get the bottom to finish. We've resorted to covering the rim of the pie crust with foil to help keep it from burning while cooking long enough to get a finished bottom crust.

The custard, based on CI's recipe, is getting nice, fairly even top, but taking too long to finish. If we cook until we get a a fairly good set interior, we have a pretty substantial layer of overcooked top of the custard. If we cook for a shorter time, the interior is quite edible but a bit runny and won't hold shape. The pie is done in a water bath, now, but I am going to start covering it with foil before I move to Amy's solution of obtaining two identical pans, one which is inverted as a cover. If the foil doesn't fix it, I will go the full double pan to see if it can solve our egg custard dilemma

In terms of a cooked, not baked custard, we did a "from scratch" custard for a banana cream pie. Turned out quite nice. We used a prebaked graham cracker crust we had purchased some time before and needed to consume. Since I wasn't sure how it would be accepted by family, I didn't go to the trouble of making a meringue topping, but will next time. My only problem is that I enjoy my cream pies on the coolish side (from the refrigerator) and meringue doesn't handle the refrigerator well. I guess we are stuck with using whipped cream at the time of serving, an tasty alternative. And we bought graham crackers so we can make our own crust next time, or use the CI recipe which, I believe, is a blend of traditional pastry crust with graham cracker "coating" on the outside.