Best Laid Plans -- PART DEUX! aka Cops Like Donuts and PIE!

I am the worst about tasting food as I cook.  I just don't want to do it.  I smell things and that usually guides me far enough along.   It doesn't matter how damn delicious something is, I think I taught myself as a kid when I learned how to bake from my mom, that tasting stuff would be a rabbit hole for me.  But, honestly, I don't feel like eating when I cook. I'm far too distracted. If I am cooking all day long I will find myself starving at the end of the day, having forgotten to eat.  

In the case of Best Laid Plans - PART UN (aka ONE) choosing to NOT taste the pie filling was not the best idea.  The pie was not sweet enough for most tastebuds.  It was perfectly sweet enough for me, but for the general pie audiences out there it was not as sweet as it appeared. 
Looks can be deceiving, eh?

So, this time, I took a tiny bite of the filling to check the sweet/tart ratio and it was much better for -- again -- the general pie audiences in the world.

And, the venting on this pie was far prettier because I wasn't trying to be fancy with initials.  I carved initials on the Strawberry Rhubarb pie I made for my friend Bob's bday in June, and that didn't work either.  Sometimes I'm dense and need to get the lesson a couple of times before I resort to the less creative solutions.

So, this pie looked and tasted more like you would expect from such a picture. 

ALTERATION TO RECIPE FROM BEST LAID PLANS - PART UN (will be editing that recipe in a sec):

Instead of 3 Tablespoons of Fresh Lemon Juice, I probably used 1/2 of that. It was juice of one small lemon.  

Bottom line is it all depends on the fruit.  I think these peaches were a little sweeter, even though just as ripe as the last batch. 

So, next time you bake, channel the sexiest of chefs, Nigela Lawson and taste every damn thing and you'll be a far better baker than I.

And, definitely don't be as stubborn as I was, so you can have happy pie eating adventures where people are left smiling, rather than puckering!....unless you are baking for yourself and you like it that way! 

We shared the pie with the two cops in the restaurant.  They were happy and posed for a happy post-pie-eating smile photo: