How to Frugally Bake a Pie…Or Not

Among friends and acquaintances, I am infamously useless in the kitchen.

This is due to more than one factor. I’m lazy, first of all. Let’s just get that out of the way. I saw a meme once that said, “I don’t even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.” That describes me to a tee. I once bought a microwave egg-cooker so I wouldn’t have to cook my own eggs. But then I discovered that you could buy pre-boiled eggs, already shelled so you don’t have to peel them yourself! And I never used it again. Then I bought a crock pot in the hopes that making cooking “easy” would mean I would actually do it sometimes. I never even opened the box.

I’m also a total wimp when it comes to hot surfaces, or hot bubbling water or grease flying up to get me. I’m clueless about what will and will not start a fire if you put it in the oven. And frankly, at this point there are just too many things to learn! My head spins when I try to contemplate just how many utensils, pots, pans, and cookie cutters I might need to buy before I can even think about beginning this hobby.

So needless to say, I don’t cook much. But a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine shared pictures of a Depression-era water pie, and I was so intrigued, both from a flavor standpoint and a science standpoint, that I had to try it myself. Although I scarcely believed it would actually work, it seemed easy enough that even I could manage it.

To begin with, I thought the recipe called for an obscene amount of sugar (an entire cup!), but as you might expect, I don’t know the first thing about subbing ingredients or just changing the amounts willy-nilly, so I didn’t do anything about that.

Water pie is exactly what it sounds like. You literally fill a pie crust with water.

You add some other stuff, too. Here it is with everything in it, before going into the oven.

Here it is halfway through cooking. It actually looked pretty for a minute there. I added some foil on top at this point, as my edges were starting to brown.

It got ugly again. Apparently I sloshed some water over the edges when placing it back in the oven. Here it’s ready to sit until room temperature and then go into the fridge.

I cut the first slice. As you can see, it looks nasty as heck. Like a big tray of fat.

The flavor is okay, but the consistency…. *shudder* Like cold, cookie-flavored fat. Almost like pecan pie, maybe, if there were no pecans and the egg was actually water instead. My stomach actually turned a bit while slicing it and…well, I can’t exactly say “chewing” it, but…letting it squiggle around on my tongue.

And, UGH, GOSH, so sweet! SO OVERPOWERINGLY SWEET! I love pastries (and pie especially)…but this is WAY too gosh-darned sweet for me. After 6 hours, brushing and rinsing, and some mussels and mac ‘n’ cheese, I still couldn’t get the awful aftertaste out of my mouth! You know when you’ve overdosed on sugar and your mouth gets that horrible metallic flavor in it? It was like that.

I would honestly advise not trying this at home, unless, like me, you’re more interested in the science experiment part than whether or not it actually tastes good. It is pretty cool how the water and stuff all congealed like that. And to be fair, I did eat two slices before deciding it was too sweet.

Here’s the recipe I used if you’d still like to try it out for yourself.

Have you ever made water pie? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever made?

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