Year of the Pie - Pie #11 German Apple Pie

Pie # 11 - German Apple Pie

I have mentioned this great little pie on my blog before, but it hasn't been the spotlight pie since we started our Year of the Pie. It deserves to have its own week.

It calls for only ONE crust, which is always a plus. (falls under the 'less is more' category)

CRUST

1 1/2 C. flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 C. shortening
1 t. vanilla
2-3 T. ice water

Combine salt and flour, cut in shortening, sprinkle in vanilla and stir. Sprinkle in the water, mix. Shape into a ball and then roll out. Transfer to a pie plate, trim and flute. Sounds easy enough doesn't it? Well, it IS!

FILLING
1 C. sugar
1/4 C. flour
2 t. cinnamon
6 C. sliced baking apples ( we used Cortland)
1 C. heavy cream

Mix sugar, flour & cinnamon. Sprinkle 3 T. of it on pie shell and even it out. Top with half of the apples and sprinkle half of the mixture over that and then do it again (apples and then mixture).

This particular pie had set for a few minutes before I took this picture, therefore, the sugar mixture has been absorbed by the apples. If I had taken it right when I applied the last installment of the sugar mixture, it would have all looked like the sugary powder shown more on the right hand / bottom side. So if your pie doesn't look like this, it is perfectly o.k.

Drizzle the cream over the pie slowly.

Bake 450 for 10 minutes.

Reduce heat to 350 and bake 55-60 minutes or until apples are tender.
Be sure to use a crust shield or even make an aluminum tent later on cooking to keep it from getting too brown.

This is my journal entry for this pie. I am hand writing all of the pie recipes to give to my daughter at 'pie's end'. I also jot down any fun things that happened during each pie or just in life.

We three give this German Apple Pie,

Until Next Time.

Please don't be alarmed if I don't post a pie next week. If everyone is healthy, we are going camping, yippee! Right now we are all kind of puny. We have a week to pull out of it.

Year of the Pie - Pie #10 Fried Apple Pie

Week # 10 - Fried Apple Pie

We could not have picked a better week than week #10 to have our first
PIE DISASTER
Surprisingly, I am not upset about this.....it actually got comical as the event went on. You know, kind of like..."how much worse can this get"??

Well, a neighbor loaned us this book. It is a delightful book. Nancy Hutchens grew up in a farm in southern Indiana in the 50's and this book is a compilation of some of her favorite recipes during that time. It also has some poems and a few stories about this and that. It is the book that has the recipe called, "Get You A Boyfriend Peach Pie".


I had been reading this particular recipe and decided it would be our next victim. Little did I know, I would be the victim.
The title to this pie is offically called
Mamaw Hutchens' Fried Apple Pies
The idea is to fry up some apples, roll out some little round crusts, spoon a couple tablespoons of apples on to the crust, fold it over, seal it, FRY IT, eat it. Just sounds too simple!
Thus, my plight.



Easy so far AND cute.

In the skillet

Ook! (rhymes with kook)

Two catastophic skillets of fried apple pies and I decided to try and save the last four by baking them.

Kind of cute. But......ick.
The fried apples on their own were quite good, but for whatever reason, they didn't want to fry and stay in one piece and baking just didn't make them sing.
But, I have NO doubt that Mamaw Hutchens could fry them up in her sleep. The book says that Mamaw Hutchens was raised in Alabama and this is a southern favorite. My apologies to all Alabamans for my miserable failings.

These pies obviously didn't make the trip to church and are, in fact, still sitting on the kitchen counter.
We three give it

BUT.....on a higher note, I finished the quilt that I worked on (off and on) for the past two years and was able to give it to my sister for her birthday.
Here it is. Sideways. Tilt your head.

Until Next Time.

Year of the Pie - Pie #9 Custard Pie

Week # 9 - Custard Pie!

Well, as you can tell, I didn't get the crust shield put on in time, but it is not the end of our little pie world. It just makes things more interesting.

As usual, I have never made a custard pie before. I put the crust together and my daughter put the filling together and in to the oven it went. After having made a couple cream pies I assumed you would cook this custard on the stove as well. But that was not to be the case. Even though I feel like this custard pie is a cousin to the banana cream pie we made today as well, you make it totally different. For the banana cream pie, we blind-baked the crust and cooked the filling on the stove. For the custard pie, we baked crust and filling at the same time.
Pick your favorite 9-inch crust recipe and then use this filling: (it's from Betty)

4 eggs
2/3 C. sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. ground nutmeg
2 & 2/3 C. of milk
1 t. vanilla

Beat the eggs slightly and then add the rest of the ingredients. Pour into the crust and bake 20 minutes at 450.
Then, reduce the heat to 350 and bake about 15 minutes longer. Poke it with a cake tester or knife about halfway between center and the edge. When it comes out clean...out comes the pie.

O.K. So, we took these pies (Custard & Banana Cream) to church this evening. See, here I am carrying them through our yard to church, which is just behind those evergreens in the back ground.

Here they are at church.
Banana Cream on the left and Custard on the right.

An empty banana cream pie plate.


My sweetie finishing off the last piece of custard pie right out of the pie plate.
You gotta love him.

When Maggie tasted the custard pie she made a face and said.."Oh, it is too squirmy". That translates to a from her.
The other two of 'we three', gave it

Thanks for stopping by.

Until Next Time