Pie!

Yesterday I promised you peach pie, and I did not lie. But, as a bonus you also are going to get apple pie!

Are you so excited?

You should be.

I was a pie making failure. I'll admit it. I can make croissants from scratch but I couldn't make a pie crust to save my life.

Then I went to my favorite place Chickens In The Road and I tried her Foolproof Pie Crust. And I could do it!

Here is the link to her recipe and instructions.

Here is how I did it:

Put 4 cups of flour, 1 Tablespoon sugar and a pinch of salt in the mixer bowl. Stir it up to combine.

Add 1 3/4 cups shortening and mix.

Put one egg, 1/2 cup COLD water and 1 Tablespoon vinegar in a container.

Whisk it up! Add it to the flour/shortening mixture and mix til it's just combined.

Turn it out on the counter and give a couple gentle kneads until it comes together in a cohesive ball.

Something like this. This is actually a little dry because in all my infinite wisdom, I decided that it looked too wet in the bowl and added more flour. I don't recommend doing that.

Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 15 minutes. While I was waiting for mine to chill, I peeled, cored and sliced 7 green apples. I added 1 cup of sugar (they were very tart), 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/3 cup flour.

For the peaches, I decreased the sugar to 1/3 cup (they were very sweet) and only put in about 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour.

Mix each bowl of fruit filling up to combine.

Get 1/4 of the dough and flatten it into a rough disk, sprinkle with flour and place onto a piece of wax paper.

Roll it out until it's about 1 inch bigger than your pie plate.

Plop it into the pie plate, like so, and trim the edges.

Put in the apples. I'm sorry that I didn't take a picture of the peaches, but it was a little hectic about that time around here. There were some people who wanted fed. RIGHT NOW!

Roll out the top crust the same way you did the bottom, flip it over the filling, cut some vent with a sharp knife and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour, or until a knife inserted through a vent yield no resistance from the filling.

I grabbed this tip from Suzanne, but I always bake my pies for about 30 minutes in the middle of the oven and for the rest of the cooking time on the very lowest rack. This insures a brown and crisp bottom crust.

Noone likes a soggy bottom.

So there you have it, pies 2 ways!