<p>That Lasagna thread got me going.
PIE-------any good recipes from your moms or grannys?</p>
<p>my mother doesn’t cook but I love pie.
( Pushing Daisies always made me hungry)
I am lucky that we have great take out for Pie- even at the grocery store- cause my food processor died long ago & I can’t get it together to make crust by hand.</p>
<p>I do like to make blueberry crisp though- similar to apple crisp, but I throw in ground ginger and clove and tone down the cinnamon and nutmeg</p>
<p>I am a much better cook than baker, but I can make a decent apple pie. Not my family’s recipe, but I used to work for a jewish family business back in my early 20’s and Aunt Fran gave me a great recipe for apple pie…it was pretty basic, though she added lemon juice, and tiny dabs of butter inside…and always brushed the top crust with beaten egg white and a little leftover sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg mixture. It has always been a favorite in our household and during holidays</p>
<p>One thing that has been a common factor in every place I have worked since then, is when we have idle time at work, cooking and food always comes up :)</p>
<p>I am not much of a baker either. But since us cooks can taste and change recipes to the whims of seasonal fruits----pie suits me fine! Baking cakes and changing the recipe—just does not work (too much chemistry there!)</p>
<p>I was apparently under the mistaken impression that any time was a good time for pie.</p>
<p>Our family secret is to double each quantity of every spice on the back of the Libby’s pumpkin can. I also inherited my grandmother’s deceptively easy-to-make pecan pie. She inherited it from either her mother or grandmother, so it’s held up over quite a bit of time.</p>
<p>My favorite pie tip is to visit House of Pies on Kirby north of Richmond in Houston, open 24 hours a day. Ohhh pie.</p>
<p>Here’s my mom’s recipe, and my kids call her Granny, so I think it qualifies. But I should point out that she stole the crumbly topping recipe from a pie-baking episode on Sesame Street, way back in the day.</p>
<p>(The bottom crusts are deep dish frozen pie crusts, my mom’s not Martha Stewart) </p>
<p>Peel 5 or 6 granny smith apples (more if they are small)
Slice apples and put them in a bowl.
Add ¾ cup sugar, ¼ cup flour, a dash of salt, a dash of ground cloves and a good sprinkling of cinnamon. Stir and ladle this uncooked mixture into the pie shells. It usually fills two deep dish pie shells, heaped high.</p>
<p>Now make the crumbly topping: use one stick of softened butter, ¾ cup of sugar and about 1 cup of flour. Mix them togther with a fork or your hands until it’s crumbly. You can add more flour if it’s too slimy. </p>
<p>Sprinkle this “streusel” mixture on top of the apples that you piled in the pie shells.</p>
<p>Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour… maybe longer! It’s done when the filling bubbles up.</p>
<p>musicamusica…so true baking is all about chemistry where cooking is more artistic. You can have a lot more creativity !</p>
<p>ilovela–that streusel sounds good. Even without the crust—it would be a nice last minute dish served up warm with good vanilla ice cream…</p>
<p>I love pie but I hate to make pie crust. Anyone found a good premade one that is not full of junk or hydrogenated oil?</p>
<p>mousegray - My Aunt Marie came up with a pie crust recipe that works great. It’s homemade, and the concept is to mix up the dry ingredients and Crisco to keep in a container until you need to make a crust. Then, you just add water. Here’s the recipe:</p>
<p>5 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 1/3 cups Crisco</p>
<p>Mix together until you have pea-sized crumbles and store in the fridge in an airtight container. When you want to make a pie crust, you add 3 Tbs water per one cup of mix. Easy as, well . . . , pie.</p>
<p>I would choose pie over cake most anyday for a birthday, etc. - love pie!</p>
<p>Baking it? Not so much. I’ve made apple, ice cream pies, etc. - but I usually try to find a great pie spot and get my pies there. </p>
<p>Have some apples at home from the orchard - will probably make an apple - single or double crust? That is the question…</p>
<p>abasket - I have to vote double crust. You probably already know this, but for those who don’t - you can take the leftover crust and cut leaf shapes. Using the tip of a sharp knife, draw a vein down the center of each leaf and add the little veins off to each side of the main vein. I place the leaves in clusters around the slits I’ve cut into the top crust. Brush top as lje62 advises. Makes it look like you’re a master baker!</p>
<p>Costco Pumpkin pie - cannot make as cheap at home, and there is no way I can make it more delicious. To add, the rest of baking goods there are also yuummmm, including muffins, the best in town, they bit coffee shops.</p>
<p>I, too, am a much better cook than baker. I love to experiment, add spices, change ingredients, etc. I absolutely love pies but I rarely make them and when I do it is a refrigerated crust and Libbey’s with extra spices. I have no trouble turning down cookies or cake, but pie, that is a whole different story. In our family I have a beloved 80+ aunt who makes the flakiest, lightest crust. Her pies are just heavenly. She has tried to teach me how to make her crust, but she has a certain hand, touch, and can roll it out with minimal effort and so it tastes much better. Hmmm, I think it is time to visit her with a bunch of apples from a local orchard and just see what happens.</p>
<p>^not fair, aren’t you going to tell us where she lives?</p>
<p>I cheat and use the Pillsbury refridgerated crust. I but them in bulk at BJ’s and freeze them for quiches and chicken pot pies in the winter months. They are not as good as homemade, but they aren’t bad</p>
<p>Pillsbury is in my refrig right now waiting to blanket some apples!!! :)</p>
<p>Okay, I hate to brag, but pie is where I shine. I can put together a pie in under fifeteen minutes, and I have never bought a pie crust in my life (I think the earth would begin to rotate backward from the motion of all my female ancestors rolling in their graves if I did).</p>
<p>Pie crust is easy: 1 1/4 cup flour, dash of salt, cut in 5 Tb butter, lard or crisco until crumbly. Sprinkle on 3 Tb ice water and toss with a fork. Continue to add water by the Tb until the dough comes together in a nice dry ball. That’s the basic recipe. You can roll it out right away, but if you are worried about rolling it out, wrap the ball of dough in wax paper or a kitchen towel (plastic wrap will make it gummy) and let it sit in a cool place for about twenty minutes. This is the first thing my mother taught me to make when I was about 4-5. Scraps get made into little cinnamon sugar turn-overs to eat before the real pie comes out of the oven.</p>
<p>Couple other things – pie crust should be thin – so there is more room for the insides</p>
<p>I use potato starch flour, instead of flour, cornstarch or tapioca to thicken the fruit. Just use the same amount of potato flour as regular flour or 1 1/2 times the cornstarch. It cooks up clear and tasteless.</p>
<p>I really like fruit pie and we grow a lot of fruit in the garden, so pie at our house kinda follows the seasons. Right now we are eating pear pie, raspberry pie and the first apple pies. Later it will be apple, pumpkin and mincemeat. Christmas dinner always is raspberry pie. This year our raspberry did really well so we will be eating raspberry pie most of the winter. In the spring it is rhubarb (you get to make a wish on the first rhubarb pie of the season), then strawberry, blackberry, blueberry and late in the summer grape, green apple and then back around to pear and raspberry. </p>
<p>I am not found of cream pies so I don’t often make them, although I do like key lime pie. Lemon meringue pie is not pie it is dessert. I don’t like it.</p>
<p>My family doesn’t eat pie out – they say it never tastes as good as homemade – they don’t even really like my mother-in-laws, although they will eat my mom’s pie, cause she taught me.</p>
<p>Potato starch flour! I gotta give that a try…THANKS. What kind of spices do you use for pear pie?(and what kind of pears??)</p>
<p>Pear pie is one of the few streusel topped pies I make. I use bartlett pears, nice and ripe, and mix the pears with potato flour, sugar and lemon peel. The I make a streusel topping with brown sugar,flour, butter and mace (or you could use nutmeg). When this pie is cooking it is the most wonderful smell in the world – it smells like hyacinths. It is magnificent warm, so good we often eat the whole pie for dinner and don’t have any left for breakfast.</p>
<p>And may I say, pie is the best breakfast there is. (Oh and I have to admit that we have been know to just eat pie for dinner.)</p>