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Title: Devil's in the details.
Review: The recipe instructions are inconsistent and ridiculously overcomplicated. "Great" pumpkin pie, for example. The instructions say to bake the pie directly on the oven floor. If you have a gas oven that heats from the bottom, you are getting nothing but a burnt pie (thanks for a Thanksgiving failure, Rose). Designer Apple Pie is nice, the trick of boiling down the apple juices is slick. But the cream cheese crust? I've had better results from the Joy of Cooking recipes. Her recipes are too fragile to be reproduced consistently. If you are off by a degree in the oven, or off by a minute in the timing, forget it, your pie is ruined. Other pie recipes are less sensitive. Working with her crust recipes is like walking on eggshells.I've been making pies for 20 years. I can't say the details that make Berenbaum's recipes so complicated make her pies much better than ones I've made in the past from other cookbooks. Very disappointing.
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