Finding Good Pie Karma for Thanksgiving

We hosted this year's Thankgiving dinner for twelve. For details about the dinner, go to Foodspiration. Well, I have a pie confession: I had some pie problems this year and I'm really not sure why except that I tried two new recipes and I suspect they were the culprits.

Pie #1: Pumpkin

Okay, how hard could this be? I have made pumpkin pie many times and this year I was following the Pies and Tarts Williams-Sonoma recipe. First, the crust slumped terribly.

This was the pre-baked crust.

And this was the post. Has this happened to you? Any suggestions? I followed the recipe to the tee and didn't even cheat on the chill time. Arrgh!

Then, I made the filling which seemed unusually thin- it only had 1 cup of pumpkin and over a cup of cream- and the color was more yellow than orange which I suspected due to the lack of pumpkin. It would not set up...it baked over 20 min longer which really darkened the crust (I just bought a pie shield to help with this). I was so frustrated. I looked up other pumpkin pie recipes and decided that yes, there wasn't enough pumpkin. Even the W-S website had a different pumpkin recipe that had more pumpkin and seemed more reasonable.

So, I did what any Martha-loving person would do. I tossed that pie and went back to my Martha's pate brisee crust and maple pumpkin recipe. And it baked exactly as it should. We even foamed the whipped cream in the ISI whipper.

Phew...I had found my pie karma.

Tart #2 Caramel Cranberry Almond

This was also from the Williams-Sonoma pie and tart book and it was a beautiful tart. The trouble was that the cranberries were so sour and the caramel just wasn't enough to balance them...so it was a tart tart.

I essentially caramelized sugar and added cream...

and stirred in the cranberries and almonds...

which was so beautiful...

and baked 4 small tarts...

one large tart...

Was it a bad batch of cranberries? Does the recipe need more sweetness? I did sneak in a few more berries for color but was it enough to put the tart out of balance? Well, everyone ate it but my inner Martha was a bit disappointed. However, they were beautiful and I will just have to make it again and figure it out!

All in all, things were tasty and everything got done in time. Thanks to Dad for taking some of this post's photos!

Coming next, my cheater holiday rolls...