Apple Pie is the Best

The first time I had apple pie was when my Auntie Ben was living with us. I don’t think she’d ever had pie before and was working from a recipe. Now that I think back on it, the filing was a bit dry, and the crust quite thick, but it tasted MARVELOUS. I don’t remember enjoying anything more than my first bite of apple pie. I was seriously, and dangerously hooked.

From then on, my experience with pie was mainly store bought grocery store pies, or the apple pie pockets from McDonalds until I was old and brave enough to bake a pie myself. From the age of 15-18, I would bake a pie every Sunday, often with my best friend at the time, Chris Newman. I think I made my dad very happy those years, as he too had the Fong Love of Pies.

I had three successive weeks of failures in pie making and after that, gave up on piemaking. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong to the crust and do the filling, esp after 3 years of experience. It’s pretty much been 10 years since my pie making days and I saw this Food Trends article about pie being the next Cupcake. It inspired me to try baking little pies. I purchased small removable bottom tart pans from a cook shop on Granville Island

After reading this blog post on single serving apple pies in a jar I decided to try this out  too. Mainly because Jong’s been so good at cooking, cleaning and tolerating my mood swings that I wanted to do something nice to show I cared.

The pies took me 2 hours to make, and 40 mins to bake  at 350. I eye balled the filling using golden cane sugar, maison cote vanilla bean paste, cinnamon, cloves, and organic granny smith apples (the tart goes well with the sweetness of the sugar) but followed the tenderflake pie crust filling to the letter at half recipe as I only had 6 tart shells, and 2 canning jars.

In the end, the pies turned out super.. and I think I’m unleashing my pie making beast again… BEST CRUST EVER! Super flaky crust, perfectly sweet filling. I’m going to make little pies to give to family and friends, and freeze up some meat pies for a lazy evening.

The pictures enclosed include the two types of pie, and one with the tartlet with vanilla ice cream. Next time I’ll get fancier with the crust. This time was to see if the jar would explode and if my curse with the crust was over.

Yummilicious. I hear my wedding dress diet crying out in the corner. Time to bury it with a shovel and lime.