Until yesterday, I had an irrational fear of something most cooks take in stride…baking (for anyone who thought the answer would be ‘blowing up the kitchen in yet another experiment,’ that’s not an irrational fear.) Baking, though–that’s scary. I’m not afraid of baked goods, mind you–there are very few things I wouldn’t eat if they came stuffed inside a puff pastry.

I have been afraid of actually baking, though. Sure, I’ve made my share of noodle-meat-sauce things in the oven, which is, I suppose, technically baking, but it’s not like there’s any real risk in a casserole (I think ‘casserole’ is actually derived from an early Old French word meaning ‘pretty hard to screw up.’) No, I’m talking about making dessert–your cakes, your pies–the kind of baking that seems to require either 1) having grown up learning recipes passed down for generations or 2) precision and attention to detail while following directions exactly as written. And I think it involves calculus.

It’s been said that baking is a science, whereas cooking is an art. Which is the problem. Don’t get me wrong–science always has its place. Except maybe amongst right-wing Republicans. The problem is, art leaves room for mistakes, and science, not so much. If my hot dish isn’t done enough, I’ll put it back in the oven, and if a sauce I’m making doesn’t taste right, I can just keep adding things until it does.

In art, you can make mistakes that end up looking brilliant, as long as people know it was supposed to be art. I like to think early in his career, Picasso just couldn’t draw very well, but people thought he intentionally drew misshapen faces (“You wanna call it ‘cubist,’ be my guest, but that’s SO not what I was going for…”) If you make a mistake with a pie or a cake, you can’t just tweak it as you go along, and I’m used to some margin for error.

Shows on the Food Network don’t help, because the projects you see on a show like ‘Cupcake Wars’ are ridiculously over the top…“For this challenge, we want you to make a cupcake version of the Louvre and recreate all of its paintings with only frosting and chocolate jimmies–you have fifteen minutes.” At least when I watch Rachael Ray, I can imagine myself making what she’s making.

Mom baked cookies every Christmas, and I ‘helped,’ but I don’t remember the details. I just remember thinking “I can’t believe I have to crack all these walnuts. I don’t even like walnuts.” And as far as ‘following directions’ is concerned–that’s never really been my thing. But, I’ve had enough therapy to know that you should face your fears (“Be one with the dough…”).

So here’s what I did:

I knew that dough was made from flour, and I had some flour. I was pretty sure butter was  involved…check. Then I remembered hearing about something called baking powder, or baking soda...maybe it was baking potion? Doesn't matter--I don't have it...I'll never be able to make a pie now...

Luckily I found a recipe for a “Quick and Easy Pie Crust”–YES! The recipe called for flour and butter (and some process called ‘folding the butter in,” which seemed to me overly fussy so I opted to just put the butter in the bowl and mix it all up by hand. This, in retrospect, was a mistake, and probably accounts for the reference in the recipe to using “two forks or a pastry cutter.”)

About a half hour later, I had removed most of the gooey proto-dough from my hands and had something in the bowl I could work with.

For the filling, I turned once again to my old standby one-button three-cup chopper thingie. Threw in a bunch of peanut butter. Started to melt some Hershey’s Kisses in a ramekin that turned out to not be ENTIRELY microwave-safe. Watched the sparks for a bit. Finished melting chocolate in saucepan and added it to the peanut butter, along with some vanilla extract and a banana.

Used the ‘pulse’ setting, since it’s the only setting. Used it several times, stopping occasionally to shove the banana to the bottom where the blades are (funny–you rarely see the word ‘shove’ in cookbooks.)  Tasted it, then noticed I had gone from tasting it to simply eating it out of the blender. Determined it was pie-worthy.

I put the dough in my pie dish and spread it more or less evenly. Then I spent ten minutes repairing holes in the crust, a laborious process in which I would take a glob of dough (‘glob’ being another word you don’t usually see in a recipe) and ‘patch’ the holes (note to self–think about just making more dough next time). After ‘chilling’ the crust until I got bored, I added the filling and put it in the oven.

Then I had to figure out how long it should bake, but since I couldn’t find anything online for “Peanut Butter Chocolate Banana Pie in a Crust Made Without Baking Powder,” I averaged how long various pies called for and decided on fifteen minutes at 425 followed by forty-five minutes at 350.  Already, baking was feeling like way too much math.

Here’s the weird thing–about a half hour in, the apartment started to smell like…pie! Home-made pie! I’ll be honest–the crust was a little overdone. It didn’t help that I used all the butter for the filling and didn’t save any to grease my dish (which is NOT a euphemism for anything.) It was oddly satisfying to have my clothes covered in flour and dough–but next time I’m baking in my boxers (which SHOULD be the title of a Food Network show.)

I felt a little pressure to make this work--I used the last of The Girlfriend's chocolate to make the filling while she was at work, and you need to be pretty damned sure of yourself if you're willing to risk the last of a woman's chocolate for an 'experiment.'

But when it was time for dessert, she and I agreed that, for the most part, it was like eating...actual pie. I’m sure the artificially-flavored, artificially-colored, partially hydrogenated Cool Whip helped, but underneath that--was a real damned pie.