A tale of two pie crusts...

I've been terrified of making pie crust myself for a VERY long time. I always just cheated and used the "unroll-and-go" refridgerated stuff. When I saw this post I decided to tuck and roll, and give pie crust a shot. My mom keeps telling me it's simple, the key is cold fat (butter or crisco) and cold water. Besides, I knew I could have the food processor do the cutting and mixing for me. Then there would only be the problem of rolling the dough out. I can't for the life of me roll dough into something that remotely resembles a circle. I discovered that isn't really a bad thing, cause that leaves lots of scraps to make "pie crust cookies" (the newest form of food crack in my house)!! I've been craving my Granny's apple pie, so I figured I'd make that first before the torte for practice. Things were going great until I got to the part where you add the water. I wasn't paying attention to my "stream" and I ended up adding to much. I let it chill for a few hours, rolled it out, lined the pie plate (put that back in the fridge) and then make "cookies" to see how bad I did. They were actually pretty good! Pretty flaky and VERY tasty! So, I made the pie filling and baked it off.



Granny's Apple Pie
printable recipe

Ingredients
single pie crust (use your fav recipe)
about 1lb apples peeled, cored and sliced
2tbsp flour (heaping)
1tsp cinnamon
1/2tsp fresh grated nutmeg
1/2C sugar
1/3C brown sugar
1/2C flour
1 stick of butter cubed

Directions
Preheat oven to 375. Mix together apples, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar and put into crust. Cut together the brown sugar, flour and butter. Sprinkle over top of the apples. Bake for 40 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake another 15 minutes. You can use foil or one of those crust protector things around the edges to keep it from burning.

I think, "back in the day" she used to bake this in a brown paper grocery bag. I'm not even sure any grocery store even carries these any more!! I changed up the recipe just a tad, but it was due to running out of sugar. I used brown sugar in the topping and added a bit of nutmeg to the filling and topping. As a general rule in my kitchen, where there is cinnamon there will also be nutmeg! My hubby was a little underwhelmed, cause he was looking for a traditional double crust pie. Well, pardon me!!! This is how Granny made pie, this is what I wanted, so this is what I made.

I made sure I paid close attention to the amount of water I added when I went to make the torte for dinner. There was once again dough scrap due to my serious lack of rolling skills, so I HAD to make more "cookies"!! OMG! These were like 10 million times better than the first. So incredibly flaky and melt-in-your-mouth delicious! I new dinner was gonna be good! Due to trying to prevent my waistline from expansion, I won't be making this all the time, but it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.



The moral of this story? It really is simple to make your own pie crust! I will NEVER buy that pre-made "stuff" again!!