The Fall begs for pies! Aromatic, fruit-filled, pecan-filled, flaky-crust delicious pies! There's something comforting about a lava-hot dessert on a 30 degree day. It's worth the mouth burn!
Pies have been part of my life for a long time, but being brave enough to make them is a more recent development.
My Nana was an award-winning pie maker, famous for her apple and cherry pies (see her pie below)! She preferred using shortening, and her crust was delicious.
But, being a butter purist, I wanted mine to be all-butter! So, the experiments began! I used all different types of butter and flour:butter ratios. Salted or Unsalted? Pastry
flour or all-purpose? Blend by hand? Use electric appliance? It was an experience. I finally landed on the right balance. Getting the right kind of apple for a good texture and flavor is important. It took trial and error to find the right amount type and amount of spices to flavor the apples, without disguising their naturally delicious flavor.
My pies are layers of fresh apples, which result in a nice texture balanced with the perfect spices. The crust is the flakiest, buttery-est crust you will ever taste.
With Thanksgiving season, I recently had a 9-hour day prepping nothing but pie crusts. The counters were covered in flour from mixing, and flour from rolling out. We used 20 pounds of high quality butter! For Fall, I used an oak leaf cutter to create decorative vents on the top of the pie. To honor my Nana, I like to take the crust scraps and bake them separately with a dusting of cinnamon and sugar. It is a little snack to share while waiting for the pie to actually finish baking, which takes about an hour.
One of the fun (and time-consuming) parts of making apple pies is peeling all the apples! Each apple is an opportunity to challenge myself to peel the entire apple in one, long piece. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. It's a new game with every apple!
When making pies in bulk, I like to create an in-home assembly line of individual bowls of measured spices, ready to mix in with the fresh fruit after all the fruit prep is over! :D
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