Luckily, a pie shell at the dollar store only costs $2.25 — and my co-workers insisted that I try this delicious water pie recipe. When I asked them for the recipe they all just kind of shrugged and looked around at each other like they weren’t sure what I was talking about. Then I woke up from my dream and realized I was just having a nightmare about how broke I am.
Anyways, here’s a recipe apparently made during the Great Depression, but actually dates back to much earlier times, and was made when ingredients were scarce or unavailable.
I estimate that I could make about four of these bad boys from roughly 18 dollars worth of ingredients, coming out to $4.50 per pie.
Ingredients:
1 9 inch pie crust
1 1/2 cups water
4 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla (I used artificial because who the fuck can afford real vanilla?)
5 tbsp of butter, hacked into five good chunks
Recipe:
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit
- Pour the water into the pie crust
- Mix together the flour and sugar in a separate bowl and sprinkle it over the water (apparently you’re not supposed to mix it)
- Drizzle the vanilla over the mixture in the pie crust
- Slap those slabs of butter on top
- Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, reduce to 375 and bake for another 30 minutes
- Ur gucci
When you pull the pie out of the oven it’s still going to be all watery, don’t worry, you didn’t fuck up the most simple recipe known to mankind, just let it cool for a bit and it’ll get somewhat gelatinous (although still lacking any sort of fundamental structure). According to my roommate, this pie “tastes like depression,” so dig in and enjoy (or don’t, it’s actually not very good).
Darien Johnsen is a UFV alumni who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with double extended minors in Global Development Studies and Sociology in 2020. She started writing for The Cascade in 2018, taking on the role of features editor shortly after. She’s passionate about justice, sustainable development, and education.