Crust

For some time now I have been making my crust wrong! I discovered my error when I was making chicken pot pie for my sister who had just had a baby. I had cut the recipe in half to just make enough crust for one pie and was accidentally using a quarter of the amount of Crisco. I don't know how I came up with the fraction that I did but no wonder I haven't been satisfied with my crust!

If you were looking forward to a recipe I hate to disappoint but I'm just not sure if I want to give it away. I will tell you the components, though, just not the measurements. How's that? I use a recipe given to me by my mother and it has:

flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, Crisco, egg, lemon juice, ice water.

This way, if you want, you can probably find a comparable recipe.

I will say also that I only mix with a fork after adding the liquid. Just until the dough pulls together and there isn't a dry pile of flower in the bottom of the bowl. Then I try to handle it as little as possible. I only roll it out once and if it it's uneven I just patch it or if it tears I just squeeze the tear back together. I flour often and make sure it doesn't stick to the counter. If it starts sticking I lift it and dust more flour underneath.

Concord Grape Pie

I came across this recipe in the Canadian Heritage Cook Book back in 2000. It looked good enough to try and since then grape pie has been one of our family favorites. Here's the recipe:

Concord grapes
4	tb	Flour
1 1/4	c	Sugar
2	tb	Butter
		Pastry for 9" pie & extra for lattice top

Wash enough grapes to fill a 9" pie plate and make a rounded mound.

Squeeze the pulp from the grapes into a saucepan, reserving the skins. Bring pulp to a boil, strain out the seeds, and mix in the skins. Stir in 2 Tbsp of flour and 1 cup sugar. Line a pie plate with the pastry. Combine the 1/4 cup sugar and 2 Tbsp flour, sprinkle on to the crust. Add grape filling. Add butter as a dollop in the center of the filling. Cover pie with a lattice topping. Bake at 450 F. for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 400 F. for 10 minutes, then bake for 30 minutes at 350 F.

From: The Canadian Heritage Cookbook, by Edna McCann

I ended up with maybe a cup and a half too much pie filling. So next time, I won't mound up the grapes quite so high.

The seeds are neatly left behind with this cone shaped sieve. It comes with a dowel. I found it at a yard sale and I've seen them in stores too. I suppose it works a lot like a food mill.

Here's the grape pulp ready for the skins to be mixed back in.

Grape pie filling.

For me, this took quite a bit longer than the recipe says to cook. It was in the oven for about an hour at the 350 stage. I think next time I'm going to add a little extra flour and I might try cooking the filling in a sauce pan before baking it in the oven. It was good just the way it was, though.

Apple Pie from my own Tree!

This summer we bought a house across the river and moved into our own place. No more renting, yay!
I live in apple country but I've never had my own tree before. Our new house has two apple trees. The previous owner told me one was a pie apple (he couldn't remember which variety) and the other is a Cameo.
Once I thought the apples looked ripe enough my boys and I picked them all and I made pie.

Yes, I used all 12 apples in the pie. I like to make big apple pies. Also, I have two large glass dishes I use for pie that I got from Ikea ages ago that are able to fit all these apples. Even if I use a regular sized pie dish I really like to pile the filling high.

I did my crust a bit different this time. I made the top crust fit (by cutting it after draping it over the filing to fit) and then folded the bottom crust up and over. My husband loves crust and liked it but I thought it was a little thick... I then sprinkled the crust with milk and brown sugar.

These babies take a while in the oven to bake. I baked it at 350 and I think it was in there a total of 1 hour and 30 to 45 min. I just bake it until a knife inserted through a slit at the top goes in smoothly. You can feel the doneness of the apples by poking at them with the knife.

Whatever kind of apples these are they tasted fantastic!

Two Pies from this Summer

Well, I had to revisit the cherry pie with the terrible crust. We often do something called "______________ redemption" in our family with things that fail. So, this was cherry pie redemption. The filling was great on the first one but not the crust. Also, I found more pie cherries and this time for free. (Actually, that's not entirely true but we won't go into that :)

 In late July I heard of a local u-pick blueberry farm called Crazy Larry's. This turned out to be a fabulous place and the owner was wonderful. We went on an evening during the week and had a wonderful time picking berries. We picked 10 lbs in 15 minutes. This is definitely not the work that picking raspberries can be.

We ate a LOT of the blueberries fresh but I did save some to make a pie. (Of course!) I have made a couple blueberry pies from frozen berries before and wondered how different one could be from fresh berries. Well...BIG difference. Here's the recipe I used:

Crust for double crust pie
6 cups of fresh blueberries, rinsed and stems removed
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
2 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces

Mix together the flour and sugar and gently toss with the berries. Dot butter on top. Bake it at 425 for 20 min and then reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 30 - 40 min or until the juices are bubbling. Let it cool completely before serving.