For the past few years, my grandpa has delved into baking. When I go home to Canton, he usually drops off a pie for me: pumpkin, apple, peach, or blueberry. He’ll often tell me how he followed a recipe and knew he could make it better. So he retried the recipe and changed the ingredients until it was to his liking.
Recently, he posted on Facebook that he made a cranberry pie, but the recipe didn’t call for enough cranberries so he TRIPLED the amount.
“Wow, that’s a lot of cranberries! I would love to try it,” I commented.
A week later, I came home for Thanksgiving. He walked through the door with the prettiest pie I have ever seen. It’s decorated with whipped cream, lime slices, and sugared cranberries.
“I don’t want to eat this, it’s too pretty,” I said.
“It might be tart. I put even more cranberries in it,” my grandpa said.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical before my first bite. The skepticism ended once I tasted the cranberry filling with his homemade lime whipped cream. A perfect flavor balance. Triple the cranberries sounded excessive, but now I know not to question a baker’s intuition.
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