Pie Crust
Recipe
The pie crust recipe is all in the image above, but here's a transcription (with a few minor adjustments):
3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cold butter, margarine, and/or shortening (recommended 12 Tablespoons butter and 4 Tablespoons Crisco shortening)
up to a half a cup of cold water and/or vodka
1 1/2 Tablespoons of sugar (optional, but recommended)
optional egg wash:
egg
sugar
water
recommended less-common tools:
pastry blender
wax paper or parchment paper
rolling pin
pie pan
pastry bush (for egg wash)
Sift the flour, salt, and sugar into a mixing bowl.
Chop the butter/shortening/fat into small pieces and add them, still cold, to the flour mixture
Using a pastry blender or similar tool, cut the fat into the flour until the mixture somewhat resembles coarse cornmeal. I often feel like there's too much flour mixture for it to really resemble cornmeal, but you want to at least get it to the point where there aren't any big chunks of fat and all the fat is covered in the flour mixture. Don't overmix it - it's better for there to be small chunks of fat than none at all.
Very slowly add the water or vodka, just mixing the dough until all the flour mixture has been moistened. Don't add any more liquid than you absolutely need to keep the dough held together or it'll be too sticky to work with! (If you do accidentally do that, just add a little extra flour)
Once you can finally form a ball of dough that doesn't completely fall apart on you, wrap it up in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for at least a half hour - preferably longer. This would be a good time to start on your filling! (Recipes below)
Preheat the oven - my recipe has a few different suggestions for temperatures, but it seems like 375 is the safest bet.
Once the dough has has sufficient time to cool (and the fat has had time to harden back up a bit), roll the dough out on a sheet of wax paper to about a quarter-inch thickness. Use the wax paper to transfer the dough to the pie plate. If the dough tears at all, just squish it back together once it's in the pan! Make sure the dough is molded to the shape of the pie plate, filling in all the corners.
Fill your pie with your filling! (My filling recipes listed below)
If desired, (usually for a fruit-based pie) cover the pie with another layer of dough, also rolled out on wax paper and transferred over to the now-filled pie plate using the wax paper.
Only if you added the second layer of dough:
If you want the top of the pie crust to get a pretty golden color, you can add an egg wash to the top. Crack an egg into a glass, add some water to make it a little thinner and easier to spread, and possibly some sugar if you want.
Stir the egg mixture together.
Brush the egg wash onto the top of the pie.
Cover the edges of the pie crust with aluminum foil. This will prevent them from burning while the rest of the pie is still cooking. If you're cooking the crust without a filling (like for a pudding pie), you probably don't need to do this because the crust will cook evenly.
Put your pie in the oven, and bake until either the egg wash is a pretty golden color or until the edges of the pie start to darken (the ones covered by the aluminum foil - you'll have to lift the foil to check). It's probably better to err on the side of overcooked so your filling is nice and soft!
My Notes
I'm not sure if the vodka really does anything different than the water but the last time I made pie crust I used about half water and half vodka and the crust turned out really well. I definitely plan on experimenting more with it and seeing which seems to make a better pie crust!
Story
This is the pie crust recipe my mom uses!
Every year at Thanksgiving, my family makes several pies, and my mom makes the crusts for all of them because she'd prefer to spend the extra time making pie crust than to have inferior store-bought crust on any of the pies!
My aunt offered the suggestion of the vodka instead of water in the recipe, because she heard somewhere that it made the crust flakier.
Fillings
Apple Pie
Recipe
At least five Golden Delicious apples (or whatever kind of apples you prefer)
Cinnamon
Sugar
Nutmeg (optional) Peel the apples
Remove the core
Slice them into small pieces - I prefer to make mine into no bigger than 1-inch-sized pieces so there's more surface area for cinnamon sugar, but you can make them whatever size you want.
Mix the cinnamon and sugar together, using a 5:2 sugar:cinnamon ratio. (For example, if you used two tablespoons of cinnamon, use five tablespoons of sugar.)
Shake the cinnamon sugar over the apples and mix them up until the apples are completely coated in cinnamon sugar. If you have extra cinnamon sugar you can use it later for pinwheels :D
If you'd like, add some nutmeg to the apples, too, again stirring them up until the nutmeg is well-mixed.
Add the apples to your pie crust as described in the pie crust recipe!
Bake for a longer time if you want softer apples, shorter if you like a bit of crunch in your apple pie. My last apple pie baked for around a half hour.
Serve plain, or with whipped cream or ice cream!
Notes
I prefer sweeter apples in my apple pie!
Just a warning - peeling and slicing the apples can take a really long time, especially if you don't have an apple peeler. Peeling the apples with a small hand carrot peeler is tedious and slow for this many apples and you can end up with a bunch of cuts if you're not careful. I just recently got an electric peeler and it sped up the process significantly! (A hand-crank apple peeler is probably also just as fast and easy, but since I didn't have an apple peeler at all I went with this cheap electric one that I found on sale.) I also use an apple corer/slicer to remove the core of my apples and start the initial slices. I definitely recommend cutting the apples much smaller than the corer/slicer so you get that surface area, but obviously the smaller you want the apples the longer it's going to take to cut them.
Story
This is my dad's favorite type of pie, and it's become enough of a favorite at Thanksgiving that we've started making multiple apple pies instead of just one.
My mom usually makes this pie with Granny Smith apples, and leaves the apples as bigger slices than I do. I switched to Golden apples because Granny Smith are too bitter for my taste, and some internet research led me to the conclusion that Golden apples are the superior apple choice. I haven't experimented with different kinds of apples yet, but that is definitely an experiment my dad would appreciate XD
I also decided to start cutting them into smaller pieces than my mom's pies for both the aforementioned surface area and also so the apples cook softer, because I personally prefer to not have crisper apples in my pie.
Pumpkin Pie
Recipe
The recipe is all in the image above, but here's a transcription (modified slightly):
1 1/2 cups cooked pumpkin
2 well-beaten eggs
1/2 cup sugar (plus a little extra for sprinkling on top)
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (plus a little extra for sprinkling on top)
1 cup milk
pinch of salt
Mix together all the ingredients.
Pour batter into unbaked pie crust.
Sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top.
Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes or until a knife (or toothpick) comes out clean. If the pie jiggles when you move it, it's not done yet.
Serve with whipped cream!
Story
This is my grandma's pumpkin pie recipe, that she got from a PA Grange cookbook! She usually makes the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving :D
Chocolate Pudding
The third type of pie that my family usually has at Thanksgiving is chocolate pudding pie! You can use instant or non-instant, but just bake a pie crust by itself, follow the directions on the package of pudding, then add the uncooled pudding to the pre-cooked pie crust, and let it chill in the fridge for at least as long as the box says the pudding should chill for.
Serve with whipped cream!
Story
As a kid, this was the only type of pie I liked, because none of the other types of pie were sweet enough for me. I always liked pie crust, but most standard pie fillings were not my thing. I still prefer sweeter pies and don't usually like chunks of fruit in my dessert (unless they're maraschino cherries), but I definitely have developed more of a taste for pies that are not just a bowl of sugar.
Ironically, nowadays the chocolate pudding pie served at my family's Thanksgiving is usually a sugar-free pie for my sugar-free relatives, because the apple pie and pumpkin pie have too much sugar for them!
Extras
Mini pies
Instead of using a pie plate, you can line muffin tins with pie crust to make mini pies!
I recommend greasing these beforehand because it can be a little tricky to pull the pies out in one piece for serving.
I haven't tried making these with anything but apple pie, but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work for other types of pie!
Pinwheels
These are like mini cinnamon rolls made with pie crust! I don't think I have a picture because they're always gone so fast!
Recipe
Pie crust dough (usually whatever's leftover after making pies) Melted Butter
Cinnamon Sugar (2:5 cinnamon:sugar as mentioned before)
Roll the dough flat on a surface it won't stick to
Brush melted butter over the dough
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the dough liberally
Roll the dough into a log like a cinnamon roll
Cut the dough into evenly-sized pieces, no more than two-inches in length
Place the rolls into a (greased) pan, the swirls vertical, and the rolls not touching each other.
Bake until crisp
Serve to those you love <3
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