By Sarah Condley

I found today’s recipe in my recipe box when I was searching for something to make for yet another great church get together, but I am not sure where it came from.

For the get together everyone was supposed to bring a dessert. I decided to make Brad’s favorite chocolate chip pie. Because I don’t like chocolate, I decided to some other type of pie too.

Because we had been on vacation and didn’t get home until late Saturday night, I didn’t start thinking about what to make for the church social until we were on our way home from church Sunday.

After a quick lunch, I pulled out my chocolate chip pie recipe and quickly looked through the box for another pie recipe. When I flipped to today’s recipe I thought it sounded good, and I had some heavy cream in the refrigerator that needed to be used.

I cubed up the five tablespoons of butter for the brown sugar pie so it could come to room temperature and then got to work making the chocolate chip. When the chocolate chip pie went into the oven, I figured the butter was soft enough to cream with the brown sugar.

I soon discovered two cups of sugar is a lot to cream with only five tablespoons of butter. My arm didn’t need the workout — OK, it probably needed the workout, but I wasn’t willing to do the workout to get these two ingredients creamed — so I pulled out my mixer and let it do the work. Then I added the eggs, one at a time.

The next step wasn’t clear to me. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to combine the heavy cream and the flour together and then add it to the butter, sugar, egg mixture, or if I was just supposed to add the heavy cream and then the flour to the mixture.

I opted to combine the heavy cream and flour and then add that to the first mixture. Of course the flour got kind of clumpy in the cream. I tried to stir the lumps out, but it didn’t work. So I just poured the cream and flour mixture in with the other ingredients and used my mixer again to blend everything.

When I poured the mixture into the pie shell, I was afraid there was going to be too much filling. I wondered if by using the mixer I’d incorporated too much air into the filling.

But it was too late to worry about it. I had to get this pie in the oven so it would have time to cool before church.

After placing the pie in the oven, I set the timer for 30 minutes. When the timer sounded it was obvious it was not done. So I set the timer for 15 more minutes. Again, when the timer sounded it wasn’t done.

After another 15 minutes, I placed aluminum foil over the top to try and stop the pie from browning too much. Finally after about 20 more minutes, the pie stopped jiggling when I touched the pie plate.

I took the pie out of the oven and wondered if it would cool in time for us to take it to church.

When it was time to head to church, the pie was still too hot to cut so I just grabbed the chocolate chip pie and off we went.

When I got home, the pie was cool, but I had eaten enough sweets and decided a taste test would have to wait until the next day.

When I got home from work Monday, I needed a little something to tide me over while I was fixing dinner, so I cut a slice of brown sugar pie and took a taste.

I thought it was OK, but nothing special. Brad took a little taste when he got home and said “You know what it needs? Pecans.”

I told him if I added pecans it would be some kind of pecan pie and not brown sugar pie.

Though this pie wasn’t my favorite, I didn’t want it to go to waste. Brad took a few slices to his co-workers so I didn’t feel like I needed to eat the whole thing. H

e didn’t say if he got any feedback from those who tasted the pie. So with a little debate going on in my head I’ve decided I failed this recipe, not because I flubbed it, but because it took way too long to bake, and it wasn’t all that special. I’d rather have chess pie, or buttermilk pie, or transparent pie, or pecan pie, or …

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.