Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Sugar Pie (Tarte au Sucre)
- Easy
- 70 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 1 unbaked pie shell, edges crimped high
- 300g dark brown sugar (or the Québec ideal: half maple sugar) whisked with 3 tbsp flour and a pinch of salt
- 2 eggs; 250ml heavy cream + 60ml milk; 2 tbsp melted butter; 1 tsp vanilla
- A whisk and nothing else: the filling takes four minutes
- Cold pouring cream or vanilla ice cream at the table; the pie is sweet and refuses to pretend otherwise
The skills inside
Tempering a custardSugar stages & caramelPie crust & blind bakingThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk sugar, flour and salt in the shell itself or a bowl; whisk in eggs, cream, milk, butter, vanilla until smooth.
- Pour into the shell: it will look thin; the oven fixes everything.
- Bake 180°C, 40–45 min until the top is glossy caramel-brown, puffed at the edges, and the center wobbles like the panna cotta a few cards north. 45 min
- Cool at least 2 h: the filling sets into a soft caramel custard as it cools. Serve barely warm or room temperature, in slim slices, with cold cream as the mandatory counterweight. 120 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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