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Sun and Moon Apple Pecan Pie
As seen on TV
Which Show?
Who made this dish?
Showstopper challenge: one large, beautifully decorated free-form pie, sweet or savory, shaped and baked without tins. Time allowed: 3 hours 30 minutes.
Clara made a free-form apple, pecan and cinnamon pie in American short crust, decorated as a sun and a moon with blue edible dust and gold luster dust, representing the balance she strives for in living with bipolar disorder.
Clara: "I'm using two different apples."
Clara: "So I'm doing a sun and a moon. This design kind of represents my mind because I suffer from bipolar disorder. It means my bright side, when I'm a public person, but also I'm very emotional. So it's to represent those parts of me."
Clara: "When I got stable, I found myself, and that's when I found that I loved baking. But I'm very focused today because otherwise I'm going home."
Clara: "I'm just gonna let it freeze for a little bit."
Clara: "Obviously it's short, so there is a risk of overworking because it's free form and you have to be touching it all the time."
Clara: "I need to work really fast because the pastry is starting to get soft."
Clara: "I'm gonna be honest, this is better than my practice. But I'm not gonna say a single word because, you know, in a second things will go wrong."
Clara: "Has a lot of cracks. I'm not sure why. Never happened to me."
Clara: "Why is it all cracked? I like the shape, I like the browning. I think I can make this work. I'm gonna paint the sun with some gold luster dust."
Clara (presenting): "So my pie is an apple and pecan pie with American short crust."
Clara (after judging): "I feel like today I had to bring it all to the table and I don't think I did that."
Clara left the competition this week.
Nigella: "You are an artist. Looks really beautiful."
Paul: "It hasn't quite worked on the pastry. You see the cracking?"
Nigella: "That blue dust has rather highlighted it, because it settled in the cracks."
Nigella: "I like the flakiness of the pastry."
Paul: "It's nice when you get a crunch from the pecan. I do have a slight issue with the pastry. It's too short. It needed another couple of turns. That would have helped with the appearance and with the bite as well."
Nigella: "But it's a beautiful thing."
Nigella (deliberation): "Clara's pastry was, as Paul says, too short. Neither has found a way to redeem themselves from earlier slip ups." "Clara really needed to redeem herself in the showstopper. I had so hoped she would because she's so talented."
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