Poor Wendi has been left to bear the brunt of keeping this blog interesting while I whiled away the time at work banging my head against a wall...I mean working. Haven't had much in the way of time for fun and important things like food, but did manage to come up with a new recipe --
K2's Totally Awesome Mixed Apple-Cranberry Crumb Top Pie! (tah dah)
No room for modesty, this thing rocks! I went into a pie-making craze after the last conference I helped put together. My job sometimes entails coming up with unique and inexpensive centerpieces for our dinners. So I used shelled nuts and mixed apples (real ones) as part of the decoration. Money-saving for the event, but with the added result of several pounds of apples sitting around the office. What to do, what to do...
Well, first you take a pre-made deep dish pie crust (YES I can make pie crust from scratch and YES I know that some would consider this "cheating," but if it saves me time and still tastes good, the hell, I say), then peel, core and slice up a variety of yummy fall apples (usually need 6-7 small to medium-sized apples). I squished some lemon in amongst them while I was slicing because cutting the apples is probably the longest part of this process.
Toss in 1/4 cup of sugar and mix it all up. Chuck in a handful or two of cranberries (or for those who need specifics, the base recipe calls for 1/4 cup but I don't always think that's enough).
In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup of brown sugar (NOT packed), 1/2 cup of flour, and 1/2 cup (one stick) of cold butter. Using a pastry blender or a big honking fork, crumble the ingredients together (this is for the crumb topping, so "crumble" is key). Oh, there may be a smidge of salt in there too.
Once that is done, pour the apple mix in the uncooked, pre-made deep dish pie shell, it will mound up higher than the edge of the pie crust -- this is a good thing because the apples will cook down -- then spread the crumb topping mix over the top. I recommend putting something under the pie, like aluminum foil over a cookie sheet to catch the spillover and make clean up easier.
Toss it in the over, oh, preheated to, let's say 350 degrees and bake for 45-50 minutes. Your kitchen will smell totally mouth-wateringly delicious after about 25 minutes. Mmm, mmm good.
These make great presents...or at least they will. :) (Post-postnote: enthusiastic two-thumbs up from all pie recipients, seriously, gotta try this!)
With things slowing down, hopefully will be able to be better about keeping up the blog soon.
k2
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