side note: Pitch Perfect was a great movie!
Happy Birthday to Me!! Reflection: It’s been an interesting year – filled with lots of changes (most good, some bad), a lot of growth, new passions, and new visions. I’m very excited to see what the next year has is store for me. This years journey starts as I prepare to open shop (online) soon. There’s quite a bit of bumps on the road but I do hope and pray that it’ll be an adventurous ride. In the midst of much change, I do still plan on baking and sharing my adventure here.
So as my birth day comes to an end, I will share with you my all time favorite pie recipe: drum roll please : APPLE PIE. The sweet and tart combo brings back childhood memories and who can argue when its topped off with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream?? yumm~~ Even the ones at McDonald’s are pretty tasty (or at least the memory of them)- can you even beat 2 pies for one dollar? Here’s a simple, almost fool proof, recipe for you all.
Ingredients:
-rolled out pastry dough (in the fridge section of the market, comes with 2 rounds)
-1/4 cup unsalted butter
-1 1/2 tbsn all purpose flour
-1/8 cup water
-1/8 cup white sugar
-1/4 cup brown sugar
-3 granny smith apples – peeled, cored, and cubed into little cubes
-1/4 tspn salt
-1/2 tspn pumpkin pie spice mix
-1/2 tspn vanilla extract
Directions:
-preheat the oven to 350F
-in a small sauce pan, melt the butter and mix the flour and combine. add water, white and brown sugar. once mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat to a med-low and allow for mixture to reduce and thicken [house will be filled with the smell of brown butter and sugar]
-peel, core, cube all 3 granny apples and place in a bowl
-pour the butter mixture on top of the cubed apples and mix well.
-add the remaining ingredients :salt, spice mix, vanilla: and mix. set to the side
- on a floured board, roll out dough
-with a circle cookie cutter, cut out circles [i'm not sure what size, but i did use one that was bigger than the circumference of the top of the mini cupcake pan]
-with your fingers, thin out the sides a bit more before molding it into your mini cupcake pan [ if you're able to make it slightly bigger than the height of the pan, it'll be easier for pies to come out of the pan] [with the remaining pie crust, roll back together to make more pie shells]- place a spoonful of apple mixture into each pie shell [try not to be shady with the amount, if you like a lot of apple, maybe add one more apple to the recipe]
-with the second pie dough – roll the dough out and cut into thin strips. weave the pie dough. cut with a circle cookie cutter [actual size of the circumference of the top of the mini cupcake pan] cut out the weaves and gently place on top of each pie. with your fingers, pinch sides with the top to ensure they mold together.
-butter the top of each pie
-bake for 20-30mins [depending on how brown you want your crust], slightly cool, and enjoy~
last photo credit: handmade by sara kim
