About a year ago, I shared a couple of Adelaide Hunter Hoodless’ apple recipes with you. Click on this link if you’d like to re-read that post.
This year, I want to share with you (read: brag about) my recent triumph in the pie-making department. One of the members of the Women Inspiring Women WI is a prize-winning pastry maker. Elaine Tully will hold a couple of workshops later this fall for our WI, but first she wanted to have a technical rehearsal at the church kitchen. There I made my first ever peach pie. OH. EM. GEE. as they say. It was wonderful good!
Just peachy!
Yesterday, I made an apple pie using Addie’s Apples. Literally. These apples were picked from the trees at the Homestead.
I don’t know the variety of apple, but the flesh is crisp and tart. It held up well in the baking. I’m going to pick more this week and make applesauce.
Addie’s Apples before…
… and after.
My hubby tried an apple fresh and found them rather tart. When I told him that I had made a pie he asked, “Did you put in lots of sugar?” Of course, I did, we’re talking brown sugar here!
The secret to success? Cold ingredients and limit handling: keys to fantastic pie crust. I used the pie crust recipe on the Crisco box and Edna Staebler’s Double Crust Apple Pie filling, copied here:
3 cups of peeled, cored, and sliced apples (I used 4 cups. Next time I will use more – the crust to fruit ratio can use some tweaking)
Toss the apples in with the following:
2/3 to 1 cup sugar, depending on tartness of apples
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (I omitted this – too lazy to grate the nutmeg)
1/8 teaspoon salt
Place in pie shell and dot with
2 or 3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of milk or cream
Cover with the top crust, flute edges, and slash the top to create vents for steam to escape.
Bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes until the crusts are a pale golden colour.
***
About WI Women’s Institute is a local, provincial, national and international organization that promotes women, families and communities. Our goal is to empower women to make a difference.
About FWIC
The idea to form a national group was first considered in 1912. In 1914, however, when the war began the idea was abandoned. At the war’s end, Miss Mary MacIsaac, Superintendent of Alberta Women’s Institute, revived the idea. She realized the importance of organizing the rural women of Canada so they might speak as one voice for needed reforms, and the value of co-ordinating provincial groups for a more consistent organization. In February 1919, representatives of the provinces met in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to form the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada.