SUBSTITUTING WITH CONFIDENCE

Let me say right up front that I’ve made a bunch of recipes from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and I think the book is terrific, so it was probably my fault for adding like three extra drops of heavy cream to the batter for the Pistachio Tartlets with Crème Fraiche Filling, which caused the dough to become wet and sticky. That’s the thing about Martha recipes, you have to do exactly what she says, exactly the way she says to do it. Well right, or she wouldn’t be Martha. Her biscuit recipe makes exactly 12 biscuits. Period. And they’re amazing. So clearly, with Martha it’s best to obey. But not only did I not obey, I substituted ground walnuts for pistachios. But that seemed to be okay because I used the same amount that the recipe called for.

Then I figured that after an hour in the fridge maybe the dough would get normal. And it did roll out perfectly, so for a blissful moment I was like, okay, we’re good. Except a couple of seconds later the dough returned to its too-wet incarnation and had to be scoop-scraped and dragged off the French roll-out mat and shmushed into the tartlet dishes, which were really Emile Henry pie-let dishes because I didn’t have mini tart dishes, and there was no way the dough was going to drape or trim like a proper tart.

The crème fraiche and heavy cream filling dictated by Martha sounded  good but a little too sour- creamy for my taste, and also I was making it for friends and I knew that my friend’s husband wouldn’t go for the sour creaminess either, so I added more heavy cream, which made the filling more like whipped cream. It tasted good but I get where Martha was going with the crème fraiche. Also, instead of using only fresh raspberries, I combined raspberries and diced glazed oranges that had been marinating in a quarter of a cup of water with two tablespoons of Splenda, which made the fruit more of a compote.

So I ended up making a walnut tart with whipped cream-crème fraiche filling, and raspberry and glazed orange compote rather than pistachio tartlets with crème fraiche and fresh raspberries. It was still really delicious but I guess the moral here is — one, listen to Martha, and two, if you’re not going to listen, buy excellent ingredients and remember that almost anything looks good in Emile Henry.

Long way of saying, if anyone has any thoughts, techniques or general rules of thumb for low-risk recipe improvs or substitutions, please feel free to share them. That stomach-dropping moment when it becomes obvious you’re facing a possible meltdown is no way to spend a Sunday, especially given how precarious things have become during the work week. That is, if we even are employed anymore, right? Feel free to share any anxiety about that, too.