Making A Life

A wonderful friend dropped off a big bag of apples and pears on my doorstep recently. An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but fruit flies not so much. It was a race against the fruit flies to do something with all the fruit. We are all fans of apple pie so we had a pie making marathon.

A few years ago I posted Date Night Apple Pie, where I talked about making pie with my husband. This time I spent some mommy son time with my littlest helper. He loves food, and has an insatiable appetite. My hope that is if I get him involved in meal prep, and projects like making a batch of apple pies that he will learn some food skills, and will be able to prepare snacks for himself soon.

Pie Filling Ingredients

• 8 medium apples
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• cinnamon – as much or little as you like
• Chocolate chips, or chopped nuts – as many or few as you like
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar

Pie Filling Directions

1. Wash, peel and core the apples
2. Melt the butter
3. Toss apples in margarine, sugar and cinnamon
4. Mix in chocolate chips, or nuts as you wish
5. Pour the apple mixture into the prepared pie crust

Pie Crust Ingredients

• 2 ¾ cups flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup butter (butter was in the freezer for about 10 minutes)
• 1/3 cup ice water

Pie Crust Instructions

1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt together
2. Using a pastry cutter blend margarine into flour mixture until it looks like small peas.  I used my Kitchenaid mixer without an issue.
3. Sprinkle water mixture while mixing until the dough forms into a ball.  You don’t want the dough to be too soft.
4. Cut the dough into 2 balls, a larger one for the bottom and a slightly smaller one for the top.
5. Put the balls into the fridge.
6. Grease a 9″ or 9.5″ pie plate.
7. Prepare the surface for rolling out the pie crust with flour, and flour the rolling-pin.
8. Take the larger ball from the fridge and roll it out, and place the rolled dough into the pie plate.
9. Fill the crust with the apple filling
10. Roll out the top of the pie crust and place over the apples.
11. Pinch the edges closed, and make holes in the top with a fork for the heat to escape while baking.
12. Bake at 425 degrees for 40 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.

This recipe makes one 9″-9.5″ pie with a full pie shell. I of course didn’t have enough butter so I ended up with only enough dough to make a lattice work top.