rhubard: well, that was an experience I need not replicate. Ever. Just finished scrubbing my oven

M

marilynfl

Moderator
where the rhubarb pie filling bubbled and flowed like Kilauea trying to reach the ocean. It flowed from the pie to the non-stick oven liner and then continued to flow and drip to the bottom of the oven and through the seam in the door. It's even in the drawer underneath the oven.

And when I tried to lift the finished pies out in that bubbling mass of sugar capable of third degree burns, my oven pads picked up the sticky boiling hot sugar syrup and stuck to my wrist, leaving red welts.

And when I set the glass pie plate and casserole with all that sticky filling on the stove glass top, it adhered to it as the sugar cooled. I mean STUCK like a barnacle to a ship's keel, like Trump to his comb-over, like Harvey Weinstein's hand on (fill in the blank)'s a$$.

I had to boil water and pour it over the glass top and gently nudge my off-set spatula underneath to pry those suckers up. Then I had to get on my knees and attempt to scrub off carbonized sugar molecules inside the oven. I gave up after 10 minutes.

On my knees! For a pie.

And the end result? The pie was simply too sweet for me. It's going to go over gangbusters up here because sugar is one of the four basic food groups. But I think I'll stick with fruit pies that are sweet by nature, not by design.

PS: Even though I washed up, my wrists are slightly sticking to my computer keyboard as I type this. I suspect I'll be finding sugar residue everywhere for the next few days.

PPS: I'm fairly sure this could be used on enemies attempting to breach your castle walls. Just pour hot pie filling over the parapets and watch 'em scream.
 
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Good thing your oven wasn't all aluminum. My mom used to use rhubarb to scour her junk aluminum pans

But as Orchid says, try something else. Rhubarb is such a treat but doesn't really need a whole lot of sugar.

 
So very sorry to hear of your Class 4 disaster, Marilyn

I had an encounter with a molten eggplant many years ago and remember the red welts well. This will be another excellent teaching moment for your book - how's it coming?

Try soaking your wrists in ice water to promote faster healing and reduce pain. And use extra lighting in your clean-up. Liquid sugar is tenacious! Colleen

 
When I wasn't LOLing I was feeling your pain....

I have SOOOOO many oven explosions/overflows myself. But the kitchen disaster I tend never to learn from is forgetting to put the plastic filter in the coffee maker (then paper filter then goes in it), turning on the coffee maker and leaving the room, only to return to a kitchen counter/floor covered in coffee/coffee grounds.

 
My goodness Marilyn. Most of us have had boil-overs but that was a bad one

For the future maybe consider a couple things: use a 9 or 10" high-sided pie plate and always put it on a jellyroll pan or other baking sheet with sides.

I make a lot of gooey pies- mostly blueberry, apple custard and peach. They do boil over because I use a lot of fruit in them but I always put on a jellyroll pan that has a sheet of parchment on it.

 
Maria Update: my neighbor, born and raised in SC, said this was the BEST rhubarb pie he's ever had.

I gave him and wife one made in 6" cast iron skillet. I lined it first with crumpled parchment, but gave it to them, skillet, paper and all.

Told them they could eat the parchment if they wanted more fiber

 
Oh, a lot of this was my own fault. Let me enumerate the ways I was stupid:

1. One batch of organic rhubarb (a tad red at the ends...90% green) gave me 2 3/4 C. So I added some bitter organic strawberries to that to get to 5 cups.

2. Then I mentioned at the library I was making rhubarb pie and the piteous plea was enough to send me to Ingles where I bought some ruby red stalks ($4.98/lb = $6.50 for 5 stalks). That gave me 4 cups, so I added more strawberries

2a. When I cut off the bottoms of these beautiful red stalks, the knife pulled entire strips of the red off...like I was stripping off old wallpaper. So much for beautiful red stalks...these were just as green underneath.

3. Then I mixed the filling all up. So note, I've double the basic recipe.

4. The problem was, I had only made one batch of two-layer pie dough, so I divied it up like this: bottom crust for a very short-sided 8" pie pan, bottom crust for a small 5" casserole, bottom & top crust for 6" skillet.

5. Then I REALLY MOUNDED IN THE FILLING.

6. Since I didn't have enough dough for top crusts, I made crumb topping and put it on the 8" and the casserole.

7. Reread #6 again. I think this was my BIGGEST mistake. When the recipe author added the top crust, she sealed top and bottom together, so the steam goes out the slits...JUST LIKE IT DID FOR MY 6" pie.

8. I had literally NOTHING to stop the filling from bubbling up and overflowing the edges of both the pie or the casserole. I didn't even have enough dough to build up a rim, so this one is on me.

 
Oh.My.Goodness!

Well, there was nothing good about that was there?!

That was an epic pie spill over! I got a tell ya when you go for fail you go big. I’m so sorry! This kind of reminds me of a failure I had when I made my peach pie at a friends house, in her brand new oven, Though it was not nearly as spectacular. It just bubbled over in her oven and it was setting off all the smoke alarms and we were frantically waving towels at them because we somehow couldn’t reach them to take the batteries out and we were trying desperately to not have that wake her husband up from a nap. Ever since then I’ve used a baking sheet under my pies and I wonder why we didn’t think of that at the time, we started to see it spill over and we just let it keep going because it still needed to bake.

I think the strawberries might’ve added to the sweetness factor. Maybe. The rhubarb pie I just made I thought was a little on the tart side from how I remembered it. Then again maybe rhubarb has varying levels of sweetness. I’ve read that rhubarb is very tart, hence the need for Sugar. However, I have no experience other than this pie so what do I know? I do know that memorial weekend I made a blueberry pie and cut back 3/4 on the sugar because these were Oregon blueberries and much sweeter than what we normally get in California and it was delicious. Though I don’t know it for a fact, my imagination says that rhubarb tastes like sour dirt celery without the sugar. So we know it must be true.

I Wouldn’t blame you if you never attempted rhubarb pie ever again!

 
This reminds me of this recipe poem... smileys/smile.gif

Recipe

I didn't have potatoes,
so I substituted rice.
Didn't have paprika,
so I used another spice.

I didn't have tomato sauce,
so I used tomato paste.
A whole can not a half can -
I don't believe in waste.

My friend gave me the recipe -
she said you couldn't beat it.
There must be something wrong with her,
I couldn't even eat it.

 
well....actually...GayR sent me a hint to reduce the liquid (thanks, Gay!) and the neighbor IM'd me

this morning, thanking me again for the double-crusted version that hadn't ooze all over the oven. They had just finished the pie for breakfast. Apparently, if you are south of the Mason-Dixon line, pie for breakfast is OK!

Anyway, the hint is to sugar the sliced rhubarb pieces the night before and let it set, leeching out a lot of the liquid. So I'm going to try another test run (baked in a sheet pan this time) since I'm assuming a lot of the sugar will be left behind, allowing for less overwhelming sweetness and more of the tart rhubarb flavor to shine. By the way, that leeching method works beautifully with apple pie slices. I've let them sit sliced & sugar'd in a bag for up to a week. This ended that annoying gap between apples and baked top crust.

And Sandy LOVED that crust. I added just a TBL of butter to the 2/3 C of Crisco for no other reason than it wouldn't be 100% Crisco. Then I brushed the top crust with heavy cream and sugar. They were actually fighting over the last bit of crust.

She mentioned the difficulty in scrubbing baked-on sugar drippings off the edge of the pan! Ha.

PS: Gonna try again because I hate failing at stuff. I'm stubborn like that.

 
My mother never liked the gap that would sometimes form between her top pie crust and apples so she

would simply gently push down, using the fingers of both hands, on the top crust the very second the pie came out of the oven. As long as the crust was quite HOT, it wouldn't break all to smithereens, and no one was the wiser.

GayR's liquid leeching hint sounds much more full-proof. I've always wondered why that gap would sometimes form for Mother in the occasional double-crust pie. I figured it was the liquid giving off steam, but Mom would ALWAYS cut vents in her top crusts. Now I'm thinking it happened because she would probably let some of her fillings sit longer than others before she assembled the pie and popped it into the oven.

 
I drain off the majority of liquid and add less flour than called for. Sometimes I'll

reduce the sugary/cinnamony liquid to a syrup and add it back in through the slits when the pie is done.

Remember. don't add the flour before hand....just the apple slices, sugar and spices. Add flour when ready to fill the pie crust.

 
I have an Austrian recipe for Rhubarb Kisses from Austria that are amazing...

Which reminds me of an exercise in my German lessons about Rhubarb Barbara's rhubarb kitchen bar and the barbarians with their long beards who visited and who also wanted to drink bier: (see the link):

Every language has these tongue twisters. I remember the one from French class about sausages. LOL

 
Mucho thanks for tip about NOT adding any flour until ready to fill the bottom pie crust. I would

have put it in! Would that be true for any thickener? I often use tapioca instead of flour.

 
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