Thanksgiving Twofer Pie - Tuesdays with Dorie

Vibi of La Casserole Carrie made this week's pick - it looks like a wonderful choice for Thanksgiving dinner. Vibi has the recipe on her blog, in French first and then translated into English.

However, for me not a very happy evening. I had such great plans to make individual 4" tartlettes, each decorated with a rosette of stabilized cream. But this was not to be. I made a double portion of the "Good for Almost Anything Pie Dough" which was sitting nicely chilled in the fridge when I got back from my physical therapy session (for a conked in knee).

Quite fulfilling - this time my dough rolled out pretty well, with the help of a King Arthur Flour silpat that has circles drawn on it. So feeling confident I cut out nine 4" rounds and placed them carefully in the tartlette pans. While watching how they were doing at 400 degrees I realized the pans were too large for the pastry - I had simply formed dough pancakes.

Attempt no. 2: Rolled out the next batch of cold dough and placed it in a 9 inch Pyrex pie plate; no trouble. I sprinkled some dried navy beans over the base and did the 10 minute thing again. After 10 minutes I was dismayed to see part of the sides had fallen in and then I spent quite a while digging out navy beans from the base as I forgot to cover it with foil. I hope I didn't miss any beans or someone might break a tooth. I really don't know why my dough shrunk in the glass plate; it hasn't happened before.

Another 20 mins. will tell if I have made something halfway edible or not but gone are my visions of producing little French looking tartlettes. There will at best be a crumpled pie. But onward and upward - this Pollyanna says it's a good learning experience and to forge ahead with making Christmas mincemeat pies from Dorie's pie dough.

The taste test remains but it took almost an hour for my pie to bake at 300 degrees. It looks, well, just like a rather ordinary pie.