Hard Sunny D seltzer pie

you can make a pie out of water?!

Hi, clowns!

While brainstorming what to write about for today’s edition of the newsletter, I remembered I had one extra premade pie crust in the freezer after finishing last week’s paid edition. (Which I had a lot of fun writing.)

I generally try not to repeat themes multiple times in a row, but in today’s case, I’d suddenly remembered an idea from ages ago that I’d forgotten to write down.

You see, some time ago I learned about the existence of something called a “water pie.” To my delight, a water pie is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a pie whose primary ingredient is actually water, which you start by pouring into a naked pie crust (what?!). This is like some Jesus-level culinary transmogrification transubstantiation transportation shit.

Then you add sugar, flour, cold butter, and vanilla directly to the pie crust, no stirring required (double what?!), and you bake the thing off. After it’s done baking, you cool it to room temperature and chill it in the fridge, and once it sets, you’ve got a goddamn pie on your hands. That’s incredible!

This recipe, as you can imagine, stems from the Great Depression, when people didn’t have much on hand but wanted a dessert. Talk about genius. You take the most basic ingredients you might have on hand, create a simple sweet batter (the no-stir thing seems to be a bonus) and bam, you have something to eat.

Okay, a filling made primarily of water is one thing, but we live in modern times where we want for nothing. We’re at the point where food and beverage is so abundant in this country that it loses all meaning. That means there’s so much of it, we can afford to make it as stupid as we want and there’s like no consequences for our greed, except for maybe catastrophic climate change that might wipe out all of civilization, but whatever.

With that in mind, I thought long and hard about the dumbest possible liquid I could replace the water with in a water pie, and it turns out, I’d already bought it from the store just last week.

You see, I’d impulse-purchased a four-pack of this new SunnyD vodka seltzer at the liquor store, and it was sitting in the kitchen, haunting me.

I didn’t have much desire to drink it, but I knew that if I didn’t buy it, I would have regretted it. Apparently this feeling was just destiny nudging me in the right direction.

So today I present to you: The SunnyD Hard Seltzer Pie.

Like I said, this recipe is hilariously simple (I used this one from Parade).

Other than water, all you need is a pie crust (I hate making pie crust, so I always buy pre-made ones), sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla. Chances are, aside from a random pie crust, you probably have all of these things in your pantry and fridge right now.

First off, you start by mixing the dry components together, which are just sugar and flour.

There’s a shitload of sugar in a water pie; you need a whole cup. And I really just included this photo because I liked that the four tablespoons of flour I measured out looked like little scoops of ice cream, because I’m five-years-old.

And of course, before I sacrificed this elixir of the gods to the newsletter, I had to try some of the SunnyD vodka seltzer.

This stuff isn’t a bright artificial orange color like the original drink. Instead it pours out like a slightly foggy-looking clear liquid. And man, it is not very good. Weirdly, this is not because of the orangeish SunnyD flavoring, it’s because the drink is sweetened with stevia extract, which I’ve always found is cloyingly sweet with a nasty black licorice-like aftertaste that makes me irrationally angry.

Well, here goes nothing.

The recipe from Parade didn’t mention anything about parbaking the crust at all, so I went in raw. It felt strange pouring straight liquid into a pie crust, but I serve no master except for chaos itself!!!

Then I sprinkled the flour and sugar mixture on top of the liquid, and even though it felt odd, I didn’t stir or blend it, per the recipe’s instructions.

After a few dashes of vanilla, I floated some pats of butter on top, and teetered over to the countertop oven with a pie that was dangerously filled to the brim.

In retrospect, I should have lined that little baking tray with foil.

Because partway through the baking process, I realized the thing was fucking bubbling over inside the oven.

You see those wisps at the bottom of the screen? That’s smoke, which is always a welcome sight billowing out of your kitchen appliances.

Anyway, the pie came out looking real nice.

Don’t laugh, dickholes, that’s not burnt, it’s caramelized. And all Michelin-starred chefs know that extra color means flavor, especially when it’s almost pitch black. Step off my nuts! Carbonized organic matter is a flavor!

I let the pie cool off for a few hours, wrapped it in the foil I should have used in the baking tray, and wished it a good night’s sleep in the refrigerator. Just because it was a little funny-looking doesn’t mean it still wasn’t my kid, you know?

Interestingly, the pie lost that bright yellow custardy color as it cooled off in the fridge overnight, and it took on a pale milky white shade.

Also, much of the butter, which had remained on the surface of the pie, slid over to one side and solidified there. Mmm…solidified butter.

I mean, it didn’t look horrible aside from the bur—caramelized filling that had dribbled over the pie crust, and the filling really did set pretty damn well.

And after my first bite, I was in some weird version of heaven. God, was this thing unreasonably good. In fact, this might have been unintentionally the best thing I’ve made on the newsletter, which is a fact that is bound to disappoint some of you.

If you’re a fan of pecan pie, which has enough sugar in it to terminate most living creatures, you’ll love a water pie. That’s because it tastes and feels like that gluey brown stuff that holds all the pecans together in a pecan pie. The citrusy part from the SunnyD seltzer only showed up at the end when all the sweetness melted away, and I almost forgave the stevia for existing because the actual sugar distracted me from the fact that it was there. I couldn’t taste any booze, presumably because most of it had cooked off.

Then there was the matter of the cold butter. Yeah, it was a little funny at first, but since the filling didn’t have much other fat to it, the butter’s presence was actually kind of nice.

In conclusion, the SunnyD Hard Seltzer Pie was maniacally sweet, weird as shit, and pretty much one of the unhealthiest things I’ve tried in a long time, but it doesn’t matter. What really matters is I have a whole seven slices left in the fridge, and if you see me running down the street pantsless, with a can of SunnyD hard seltzer in one hand and the remnants of a pie in the other, you’ll know I’m not just having a real rager, I’m also doing so with a minimal amount of pantry ingredients.

Bring on the next recession, everyone. I’ll be ready with some fucking pie and hard seltzer.

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I guess I’ll be over here with Davida slammin’ the last few SunnyD hard seltzers, which are a shameless play for bucks through your childhood nostalgia.

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(That, and frequent extra editions of the newsletter along with unfettered access to the archives should motivate you too.)

Okay, everyone, what a roaring start to the week. I highly recommend you try making water pie sometime, since it’s way better than it has any right to be. Just don’t forget the foil in your baking tray. As always, I love you all, clowns, and have the best week ever. Catch you in your inboxes soon.