I apologize for my late delivery of week #3 ‘s Pie Challenge. We had a week of mind numbing busyness and Internet connection problems which will hopefully be resolved soon.

So here goes! Week #3’s selection was a Brown Sugar, Maple, Apple, Pear Pie. I made the recipe up myself because I had plenty of apples and pears on hand from our trees. I chose brown sugar instead of granulated sugar because Doug loves brown sugar. I thought “let’s try it!”

Both the apples and the pears were under ripe and very tart in my case so please adjust the sugar to your taste.

The filling:
About 2-1/2 cups sliced pears
About 2-1/2 cups sliced apples
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup pure male syrup (not the fake stuff people)
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp soft butter
6 Tbsp all purpose flour
A little extra butter to use for brushing on the top crust at the end along with cinnamon sugar

Combine everything into a large bowl and set aside to prepare the crust.

The crust:
2/3 cup shortening
2 cups all purpose flour
About 6 to 8 Tbsp ice cold water

This pie crust my Granny taught me is a very standard crust. In her day lard would have been used instead of the shortening.

Incorporate the shortening into the flour with either a hand pastry blender or a fork until the shortening is well distributed throughout the flour.

Add the ice cold water a Tablespoon at a time using the fork to blend just until you get the crumbs to start to stick together. Do not stir! If you over mix you will get a tough crust and if this happens throw it out and start over.

Roll half of the dough (reserving the other half for the top crust) out on to a lightly floured wooden surface. Always flour your rolling pin as you go not your surface after the first initial flouring. If you mess up do not re-roll the crust it will be tough.

Using a metal spatula gently slide underneath the dough after you have rolled it out freeing it from the surface you rolled it out on (Maybe I should do a tutorial on pie crust technique).

I roll the crust up onto the rolling pin and then lift it over the pie pan. That’s one of the easiest ways to get a crust into the pan.

Fill the bottom crust with the pear and apple filling and then roll out the second crust and crimp the edges to seal everything in. Brush the top crust with melted butter and sprinkle on a little cinnamon sugar mixture

Bake at 375 degrees for at least 45 minutes. In my opinion the pie is done when you insert a knife through the filling and it doesn’t hit a hard apple.

We loved this combo although I didn’t really get a lot of the maple flavoring. I might increase that or outright remove it the next time. This was a sweet pie but the apples were so tart that it worked our perfectly. Again if you like a tarter pie then decrease the sugar to your liking. Also you can always use your own pie crust recipe or even a store bought crust if you like.

Week #4 Pie Challenge -Key Lime Pie

My husband loves Key Lime Pie. Everytime I make it though it’s not what he really pictures. I found this recipe for Key Lime from the Smitten Kitchen. Let’s see what he thinks about this recipe.

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2015/01/key-lime-pie/

The Smitten Kitchen does such a great job of explaining how to make this pie that I think I will save myself the time and let you check the blog and recipe out for yourself. I added my own pictures below to prove that yes I did actually make the pie haha!

Although this recipe was the best scratch recipe that I have ever tried for a key lime it still did not satisfy the picky husband. I have come to conclude that  the kind of key lime he wants is really the tacky green dyed stuff from a box. Sigh…. I do hope you try this recipe though! -MM