Channelling Mrs. Lovett?

In the musical Sweeney Todd, Mrs. Lovett declares that she makes 'The Worst Pies in London'

"These are probably the worst pies in London.
I know why nobody cares to take them!
I should know!
I make them!
But good? No...The worst pies in London...
Even that's polite!
The worst pies in London!
If you doubt it take a bite!
Is that just, disgusting?
You have to concede it!
It's nothing but crusting!"

Well I might be giving Mrs Lovett a run for her money.

I blogged here about my problems with pastry. Well I decided that I would tackle it head on for Labor Day.

Labor Day 2007 was a day of creative cookery adventures, that led to the creation of one of my favourite blog entries which you can read here.

Labor Day 2008 was a little calmer. It began with Pie Filling -
This is a mix of Potatoes, Green Onions, Cheese and Sour Cream. A slight adaptation from another one of Nigella Lawson's recipes. Well the filling was made fine, and I made the pastry exactly as the recipe called for. On Saturday I used the Food Processor for it, but this time (after a comment in Nigella that I missed before) I used the Kitchen Aid food mixer with the flat panel.

I chilled the pastry for 20 minutes as per the instructions and then began to roll it out.

And that's where the 'fun' began. To give myself credit it wasn't as bad as Saturday's pastry, but it was still pretty unmanageable.

The first pie wasn't too bad, but as I had to keep gathering up scraps and re-rolling it slowly got worse. Eventually I had four pies ready for the oven. The trouble was the recipe claimed it made eight! How I could have rolled out the pastry thin enough to make crusts for eight pies I have no idea. It was falling apart on me as it was so some serious mushing and squidging took place.

Well here are the 4 pies hot out of the oven - even the first pie that I made seem to suffer from some swelling and then sinkage causing the pastry to distort.

Still served with a green salad they were fine.

I also made up a batch of Bakewell Slices. This is a variant of the Bakewell Tart (which I was amazed to discover has an entry in Wikipedia) and is one of my favourites from the U.K.

After eating a couple of slices last night I bought the tray in to share with my work colleagues. They were very appreciative, esp. the Senior Pastor who made it through five servings :)