My Approach to Pies

I love to bake. Even when I'm in one of my cold turkey "absolutely no sugar at all going into my body" periods (as I am now) - I'm the dessert queen. I particularly love to bake pies - as anyone whose spent a holiday with me will attest. My pies are moderately well-known in our family circle, but here's the strange thing about my approach:

Every year I use slighly different recipes.

You'd think I'd take a consistent approach to baking...you know, if a recipe is really good then it might make sense to keep it and re-use it the next year. But no - that approach doesn't appeal to me for some strange reason.

Part of the reason for my "new recipe every year" attitude is pure disorganization. (Keeping up with a particular piece of paper for 365 days would take an enormous amount of effort on my part.) Part of the reason is that I enjoy experimentation (thereby subjecting my family to experimentation). And...well, probably part of the reason is that I forget exactly what I did a year before so I just start all over.

Each year, around this time, I search the web for chocolate whiskey pecan pie recipes. I always use a slightly different recipe. The downside of this approach is that I'm always very nervous before folks eat my pies. Today is no exception - especially because this year I was a crazy woman and made homemade pie crust. Yikes.

I'm pondering whether I should create a Thanksgiving/Christmas recipe folder on my computer so that I could keep up with recipes. I could even include notes about the best recipes. I can't explain it but for some reason that does NOT sound like fun to me. Maybe I enjoy experiencing the unexpected every year.

Or...since I'm not eating sugar...watching my loved ones experience the unexpected.