TWD: All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie

aka The Day I Learned Where "Easy As Pie" came from

Today's pie was also brought to you by basic supermarket crust.  Totally inferior, but one does what she must.  I don't generally like fruit pie anyway, so why spend the time?  I could be spending that time piecing baby quilts:

Having surrendered to not making crust, I put the pie together after work.  I used a mix of Granny Smith, McIntosh and Golden Delicious apples.  Apples are EVERYWHERE around here!  It was super easy--peeling and chopping the apples was really the most strenuous thing.  I found some granular tapioca at my local grocery store, so I used that.

Dumped in crust, covered and tossed in oven.  The pie cooked in the minimum time.

However--my industrial crust machinations need some work.

And I forgot to line the crust with graham crackers. 

The taste is pretty good, for what it is.  I like the addition of the lemon zest to keep the pie from being overly sugary.   I don't know if I'd choose to make it again, but that has nothing to do with the pie and everything to do with me.  Still working to teach myself to like cooked fruit desserts.

Emily chose this very seasonally appropriate pie.  Thanks!

TWD: Caramel Not Pumpkin Pie

I'm still alive.

To mark one month in my new city I decided to pretend for a moment as though I am settled.  My apartment hates me;  I'm still living out of boxes;  I've suddenly got a new nephew AND niece (who, I'm told, have requested an entire wardrobe of quilts and booties and bibs and hats and so on), I'm being put on a big project at work, I'm supposed to bake and bring four dozen cupcakes to work Wednesday morning and in general you name it, I'm probably ignoring it.  But I'm trying to get better about doing stuff, as my "I just moooooved" excuse window is closing fast, so I decided to buckle down and do TWD this week.  Well, sorta.

1.  I totally cheated on the crust.  I know, I know, Dorie's pie crust is very simple and super good--but somehow I just knew that if I waited to make a pie crust...well, I'd still be waitin'.  It's been so long since I did a regular 8-5 + commute that I underestimated how little energy I would have when I make it home. (Seriously, I'm mostly living on apples these days.) So the crust is frozen and not a fancy bougie brand either.

2.  I cheated on the main ingredient.  I think I've blogged here before about not understanding Fall Pumpkin Mania.  I've yet to have a pumpkin anything that didn't smell much better than it tastes.  So like a good native Southerner I just *happened* to have sweet potatoes in the cabinet, and of course I like sweet potatoes a great deal.

So since I didn't have to fiddle with a crust, I was able to throw the pie together easily after work while I worked on sewing a new winter cape.  Multitasking. 

It was really easy to make the caramel and I smashed up the potatoes and everything by hand.  I realized that I spazzed and caramelized ALL the sugar instead of half, but that would be good, right?  I mean, sweet potatoes--this would be plenty sweet already, right?  I poured the filling in the partially baked industrial crust and hoped for the best, thinking "gee this looks like a chocolate pie!"

It baked, and baked, and baked.  I left it in the oven 10 minutes extra and it was still jiggly but I needed to go to bed.  So I took it out, and it turned out to be fine.  It still looked like chocolate!

I tried a piece and um, yeah.

Why does my pie taste like chocolate? It totally has the consistency of a sweet potato pie--a rather buttery one--but tastes EXACTLY like a bittersweet chocolate pie.  I don't know what to think of it.  It's too much for my brain to take.  I am thinking I should have 1) not made the sub and/or been more careful about my sugar addition.  So it's a fail for me, but I suspect it's the baker, not the recipe.  I hope everyone else had better results!  Thank you Janell for choosing it!