Not a Fan of Dry Humour? This Water Pie is for You

I haven’t posted in forever, so you’d think after a zillion years to come up with something, my first post back would be something epic! And complicated! And crazy! And so over-the-top that even a Big Top Circus tent couldn’t contain it! You would be wrong, just oh so wrong. But let’s be real people, I strongly suspect no one’s making these recipes anyway. Maybe it’s because I get a little cray cray sometimes? So to those of you who like a little wham bam, desserts in the (pie) pan, this one’s for you.

Apparently water pie has been recently(ish) all over the interwebs and TikTok (I’m always late to the party on these things because my social media usage is incredibly limited. Too much to keep up on so I now just embrace my inner old and jerkishly say things like “Back in my day, if you started hearing the sound “TikTok”, especially if it was coming from inside an abandoned briefcafe, you knew to run for cover because clearly a bomb was about to explode.” That’s the era I still choose to live in. Just call me Luddite, Amber Luddite (a luddite who apparently still chooses to use the internet…it’s a thing. Actually, in this day and age, it’s probably still accurate. Using the internet does not necessarily an embracer-of-modern-technology-make). Anywho, when I first heard about water pie, I was like “haha, obviously that’s not really what’s in it”. Then I looked it up, and my eyebrows raised so high they practically flew off my face and became airborne:

(*is that true Amber or were you just looking for an excuse to use this picture?* I plead the fifth 😉 ).

I watched a few videos and practically wept as I saw people straight-up pouring water directly into a pie crust *shudder*. Turns out this recipe stems from the Great Depression. Well, there you have it, I thought to myself. Those people’s tastebuds had been burned off by sadness, so I mean, what could you expect?

According to random sources though, it was actually apparently not bad (wow, what a rousing endorsement – it was good enough to stop them from wanting to commit suicide by drowning their face in the unbaked pie. I’m unclear what level of Yelp rating that would give it, but when I hear “wow! It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had like I was expecting!”, my skepticism on its merits understandably went a little something like this:

Now, me being me, I definitely had to put my own spin on this business. At the end of the day, you’re just straight up adding 1 1/2 cups of liquid into a pie crust. Why couldn’t I just use whatever I wanted? A number of internet folk already had this idea, sort of. I managed to find a number of Sprite versions and one person who did a red wine version (yum!), but that was it. Where’s the creativity people? I immediately had 4 different things I wanted to try. In no particular order of preference:

1. Eggnog (and this had nothing to do with me having leftover eggnog to use up 😉 )
2. Maple syrup (partly because some said this pie was mildly reminiscent of a butter tart, so, maple syrup seemed like a good choice)
3. Whisky (need I say more really?)
4. Apple Cider (also having ZERO to do with me having leftover cider. Although possibly a zero with a 10 in front of it. I’ll let you work that one out 😉 )

Now, as much as pie is my jam (I pine for it continuously. Maybe I should make a pine flavoured pie someday so that I can say I’m pining for pine pie. Say that 3 times fast 🙂 ), I didn’t really want to have 4 full sized pies in the house, but I also couldn’t choose between the above 4 options. What to do you ask? Well, being the super genius I am, I opted to do 2 half size pies, 1 was eggnog flavoured, and one was a delicious combination of equal parts maple syrup, whisky and cider. Mensa, why aren’t you calling me, stat?

These pies were actually surprisingly delicious (and I use the term delicious – not just “surprisingly not vomit-inducing” like some people underwhelmingly described the water pie). Personally I preferred the maple cider whisky one, but Kevin seemed to like the eggnog one better. The maple one did definitely remind me quite strongly of a butter tart. So much so in fact that I was saddened that it didn’t occur to me until after that adding some whisky soaked raisins to this business (because I am very strongly team raisin in my butter tarts, what am I, an animal??!!) would have definitely upped the deliciousness factor. The eggnog one was more reminiscent to me of a custard if you’re trying to imagine it.

Now, unlike some (i.e. pretty much all it seems) bloggers, I don’t rebake things 1000 times before I share them with you guys. I like to be a person who tells it like it is, warts and all and let you see how things came out the first go round. If it wasn’t a total gong show on my first go round, then I hope it won’t be for you either!

That being said, these babies are definitely not lookers. For that reason, I also made myself some Irish cream whipped cream to top these morsels of nom-ness to hide the hideousness. If it also happened to up the tastyness factor, so much the better!

Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder, Here’s a Pie that’s Made of Water (sort of). (credit Kevin 🙂 )