Buttermilk Pie

I seriously LOVE buttermilk pie.  Quite frankly Royer's buttermilk pie is my absolute fave!!!  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Royer's Round Top Cafe, one word sums it up...AWESOME!  It's in a little town, in a little building, and when I say little, I mean the town and the restaurant are REALLY little, and they are famous for their pies.  Check them out sometime and find your own favorite.  Let me know what you think.

Well, I'm kinda getting off topic here.  My love of Royer's buttermilk pie leaves me here today...totally frustrated!  I really love baking, and I am always looking for new recipes to try.  Today's endeavor was not exactly a totally new recipe.  I've had the recipe for Royer's buttermilk pie, and I've made it before.  Turned out great, if I do say so myself!  Just one difference, I used a different pie crust when I made it, Ina Garten's Perfect Pie Crust to be exact.  (I seriously love Ina Garten, her recipes, her cookbooks, her show...but I'll save that for another post).  Ina's pie crust is great; however, it's just not the same soft, flaky, utterly irresistible pie crust you get with a Royer's pie.  So, in my quest to make my buttermilk pie "just right," I found the recipe for that "Royer's" crust I craved!  This is where my baking bliss took a turn.

First issue, I found two "authentic" recipes.  One recipe I found on the CBS Sunday Morning site.  They had done a segment on Royer's for their show and the recipe was there.  The other recipe I found was from Texas Monthly.  Again, they had the recipe in their article about the little cafe.  Silly me didn't look very closely for differences between the two.  Just figured they were both the same.  I would soon find out they were not.  First one I tried made me want to beat my head against a wall when I was attempting to roll it out.  It WOULD NOT stay together!  I told you their pie crusts were flaky...they're supposed to be flaky when baked, but this not staying together long enough to get in pie plate was ridiculous.  The stinking thing wouldn't roll out in one piece!  Scratch that!!! On to recipe number 2...  Ahhh, back to baking bliss!  Recipe two was much nicer to me.  Rolled out beautifully, looked great, life in the kitchen was good again!  I'm totally keeping recipe 2.

Now I was on to the easy part, the part I've done, making the actual buttermilk pie.  Piece of cake, right? Well...

Okay, this may seem a little weird, but I have 2 recipes for this pie as well.  The first recipe (the one I've made before) was copied out of the Royer's Cookbook.  The second recipe, I got off the Royer's website today.  Why look for another recipe when the one I made before worked just fine?  Well, it's called trying to please my fiancée.  He mentioned that the pie was really sweet last time, and compared to Royer's buttermilk pie, it honestly was.  It didn't bother me, but then again, I have the biggest sweet tooth ever!  In my book, the sweeter the better!  However, in my quest to be June Cleaver today, I decided to double check the recipe to see if the copied version got mis-copied.  The one difference I found in the recipes was the amount of sugar, so I went with the recipe with less sugar and figured all would be right with the world once my masterpiece came out of the oven...WRONG!!!

I don't know if the amount of sugar made that big of a difference, or I did something goofy without realizing it, but my pie was NOT right.  The texture was off, it was almost spongy like.  When I put the pie in the oven, my only thought was "I sure hope this crust turns out okay."  Never once did I think about the actual pie.  Maybe I should have, because that crust I was so worried about turned out picture perfect!  And as for that pie, well...tomorrow is another day and I still have all the ingredients to make it again!

Seriously, did this really need to be a 2 day project!?!