The Battle of the Grasshopper Pie!

Is there anything more maddening than attempting a recipe TWICE and having it fail TWICE? Yes…spending lots of money on ingredients and having it fail TWICE! 

For Christmas, I received Vegan Pie in the Sky, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jars, and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, all by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Naturally, I’ve been eager to make something decadent…especially before attempting the Crazy Sexy Diet again…

As I was flipping through Vegan Pie in the Sky, I found the recipe I wanted. Probably helps that the recipe is accompanied by a luscious picture.

Grasshopper Pie. 

Chocolate. Mint. Umm….HELLO! 

So I bought the ingredients…raw cashews, coconut milk, etc. The only teeeeeennsy, tiny problem was that the recipe called for agar, a sea vegetable that acts like gelatin or pectin (though pectin is vegan). Now, I have agar…at my apartment. I’m currently at my mom’s and as luck would have it, the local natural food store was closed. So I used pectin.

No luck. It didn’t set…even overnight.

So, at my mother’s suggestion, I poured it out of its crust into a small pot with more pectin and some cornstarch. It thickened, but not enough and it didn’t taste all that great. 

Round 1: Pie 1, Rachel 0

So when we went to the store, we got more ingredients for a second pie!

I followed the recipe to a tee and nada. Same exact thing. Except this time I didn’t add cornstarch after.

Round 2: Pie 2, Rachel 0 

Unfortunately, it was only after realizing that Pie #2 would be another fail that I read the section at the beginning of the book titled “All About Agar.” Apparently I had done not one, but two things wrong. 

The first was I didn’t follow “Rule Zero About Agar Powder: Work Hot and Work Fast!” Because I’m at my mom’s house, I had to use her blender (a great blender, by the way) instead of my food processor. Which means I don’t have a nice spout to pour the hot agar mixture in…so I couldn’t work fast…

The second was that I used flakes, not powder. According to the authors, that’s a big no-no.

Clearly, it was my stupidity and not the recipe itself that was the problem. 

Is the universe’s way of telling me to lay off the sweets and start the Crazy Sexy Diet earlier than planned? 

If it is, the joke is on the universe because I popped the second failed pie in the freezer before I went to be and woke up to a delicious frozen treat!!!

It was still creamy and minty and chocolaty! Overall, a  second catastrophe was avoided, thankfully!

Round 3: Pie 2, Rachel 1 

So I didn't win, but I didn't TOTALLY lose. I might even make it frozen again...but probably in the summer.

Have any of you worked much with agar? Better yet, do you have any recipe fail stories? Please share them and make me feel better ;-)

not pretty, but friggen tasty!