h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: How to make impossible pie - A1045469
Author: Bob McBob - U222236

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Hang on - how does that become a pie?
I don't think the pastry base and coconut topping will sort themselves out...

Worry not, it will.

Allow me to plug an entry: A1040149
And it's not even mine.

So if you just blitz everything together, somehow all the pastry bits know they should be pastry and only mix with each other?

Just make it one day and see

Okay - I will try this the next time I come accross said ingredients...

May the force be with me.

I think you need to explain more about the fact that it works, maybe with a bit about why it works.

I wish I had a food processor big enough to handle all that lot - mine'll take a tin of tomatoes and that's about it.

A shame as my girlfriend's away for a couple of days, and I'd like to try it as an experiment!

Does it really really work, Bob?

What is "casters sugar"? Is it like icing sugar or more coarse than that?

Also, is the magic broken if you omit the coconut?

In the UK it's called Caster Sugar. Finer than ordinary sugar, not quite so fine as Icing Sugar. I think.

not sure why you'd be food processing a tin of toms no.6, but I am intrigued...

anyhow...that cake...that's...impossible?!

Just a quick blitz to turn plum tomatoes into chopped ones for pasta sauce... my girlfriend maintains that the tins of chopped tomatoes are of inferior quality to the whole ones, as they use up all the damaged ones for the chopped tomatoes.

Being Italian, I suppose she must know about these things, and therefore I comply without questioning...!

Also you get smaller chunks.

It sounds delicious, but I'm really quite dubious about a true pastry case coming out of that mixture

I"m not going to doubt your veracity Bob, but it's one of those "I'll believe it when I see it' things AFAIC.

Have you ever tried making two pies - cooking one like this, and cooking another by taking out the pastry ingredients, making a seperate pastry case, and cooking the rest, and comparing the two?

Been there , done that , eaten it !

Known of such pies all the 70 years since my grandmother made them-- some slight variations in recipes , but they all seem to work .

Not interested in the physics of it -- they just taste great !

I still think an entry like this needs (just to be complete) something about how, and why, it works.

I don't think it needs anything about how it works - though it wouldn't hurt to have a more obvious indication that nothing is missing from the recipe

Can't comment on the actual recipe (quantities of ingredients etc.) but I see no problem with making a cake in this way...

Basically, the eggs will hold everything together when it's cooked and the same process that makes the bottom of a sponge cake brown (conductivity of the metal cake tin) should leave the bottom of the cake a much harder consistency than the top... (I'd be a little wary of calling it 'pastry' but there should be a marked difference)

If you omit the coconut, it makes it go funny and not golden brown-ish on top. I suppose it could be done, but some of it's magic will be lost.

I'm gonna try this recipe a little later today I'll let you know how well it works. Although we don't have a food processor, I'm going to use the whisk on the food mixer, so it might not come out *quite* right.

I've just noticed a typo - cocnut, and you'll need to include a ºF equivalent for 180ºC and 160ºC (it's 350 and 325 respectively btw ).

It works- my old gran used to make 'em....

Typo alert- deep is spelt 'deap' both at the beginning and end of the entry.