You know, when you spend every day minding what you eat and watching your health it can get a little tedious. Sometimes we forget that it’s okay to take a step back, take a breath and let ourselves enjoy simple pleasures that we’ve always been told were a no-no.
Enter sugar pie! As some of you may remember from earlier posts, I’ve been living in the Canadian Prairies for the past ten years. During the past decade, one fo the things I’ve missed the most from the east coast is exactly that: sugar pie. This delicious desert has many different backgrounds in North America, but the one I’m referring to traces its roots to the Province of Quebec.
French Canadians have a bit of a dark history and faced many difficulties during the country’s development. Many of the recipes created during this period were rich in calories with lots of fat and sugar. This helped early French settlers to survive the harsh living conditions they faced due to the elements. Of course, the modern recipe is made with brown sugar, a rare commodity that wasn’t available back then. The original recipe called for maple syrup as opposed to brown sugar, so the flavor may have been different but many recipes still use either, or both.
Today I decided to try my hand at making a sugar pie. It’s one of the few vices that I long for whenever I visit my family in the Maritimes, and I’ve never been able to find one anywhere in Saskatchewan. Although some people have mentioned having heard of sugar pie, no one has ever been able to provide me with a place to get one.
I happened to find a recipe for it online today, and decided to try my hand at it. The ingredient composition may have been a bit more complicated than the original recipe, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Depending on the taste, it may be an indulgence I can now allow myself.
Ultimately, it tastes like a bowl of jellied s&*t!!! I should leave the baking to those who know how. The French settlers would have likely opted for starvation over eating this thing. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but it’s watery and tastes nothing like any sugar I’ve ever had out east. But hey, at least I tried… ☯
