Cran-Apple Pie

Yesterday I made a pie.  Lately I have been working on my”not a new years but a mid-August goal” of making really good pie.  And yesterday I decided to include Creamie in the whole process.  Wow.  She had a great time.  My kitchen looked like a disaster zone, with apple core’s and flour and craisins strewn all over the countertops and floors.  And she was as happy as can be.  And next time I do that I’ll need Scott to be around to take the pictures, because it was so much fun to bake pie with her.  She stood on a chair next to me and wore her little apron, and held her little rolling pin, and smelled all the spices before I dumped them in.  She had her own spoon to stir with and she nibbled on the apple core’s and sampled the filling and was the cutest little pie helper a girl could ask for.

Here is my result.  One of the ugliest, yet tastiest apple pie’s I’ve ever made.  I’m still struggling with the crust.  My problem is that it’s too tender and as I roll it out it just tears in pieces.  After it’s baked it’s perfect, but the rolling out part is an ordeal.  I need another lesson from my pie-expert mother.  I ended up just setting large pieces of pie-dough on top of my pie for the top crust, because I couldn’t keep it from tearing into pieces as I rolled it out.  Creamie decided to do the same with her little pie.

Only she lost interest after one piece.  And who am I to tell her that she has to do a full top crust.  I mean, it was her pie.  She rolled out her little scrap of  dough and mashed it into her baby tart pan with her fingers and then dumped in the last bit of filling.  Which ended up much messier than either of us had planned.  And then before it made it into the oven I caught her picking some of the craisins off the top.  Which she learned from her mother.  She’s sneaky like that.  It was a near perfect way to spend the afternoon.