High Apple Pie In the Sky Hopes (with Recipes)

Today is shameless commerce Tuesday.  My featured item of the day is a pair of pie print oven mitts with brown polka dot lining (the color of milk chocolate).   The 100% cotton screen print was designed by Elizabeth Caldwell  for Pink Light Design and is part of Robert Kaufman’s Confections fabric line.  The polka dot fabric is from the Ella collection designed by Kathy Brown of The Teacher’s Pet for Red Rooster Fabrics.  You can find these mitts in the scrolling widget on this blog page or in the Kitschy Kitchen Stuff section of my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/pasqueflower?section_id=10144150

This fun print made me think of my son Tim who LOVES pie.  When he and his family visit, we always go to a little neighborhood restaurant, Stauffer’s Café & Pie Shoppe.   Take a look at this LONG pie menu!  http://www.staufferscafe.com/menu.html.  They were baking pies long before pie became the new cupcake: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/15/business/la-fi-pie-20110115,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/dining/17pies.html.

I don’t make may pies.  I never got the knack of it.  I’ve always thought that whoever coined the phrase “easy as pie” had never struggled with sticky pie crust.  But my mom was the best pie baker in the township.  She used a pie crust recipe which she called Never Fail Pie Crust.  Ha!  Never say never.  But when she made it, the crust was always light a flaky.   Two girls from the little town of Hecla, South Dakota who now run the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie shop in Brooklyn, NY  use a similar recipe, which they got from their German grandma: http://birdsblack.com. 

 Never Fail Pie Crust

3 cups flour

1 cup lard

1 tsp. salt

1 well beaten egg

5 Tbsp. water

1 Tbsp. vinegar

½ tsp. baking powder

3 Tbsp. sugar

Mix flour, salt, baking powder and sugar.   Cut in lard with a pastry blender.  Combine beaten egg, water and vinegar.  Blend with the flour and lard mixture just until the flour is moistened.  (Don’t overmix!) 

Although I was very active in 4-H for many years, I never entered the annual Lake County 4-H Pie Baking Contest.  But my good friend Jerri Lynn Daniel captured top honors with this recipe for a two-crust pie:

Sour Cream Peach Pie

4 cups of sliced fresh peaches ( or substitute 2 one-pound cans of canned peaches, drained)

½ cup sugar

¼ cup flour

1/8 tsp.salt

½ cup sour cream

¼ cup milk

Spread peaches in pastry-lined pie pan.  Combine the sugar, flour salt, sour cream and milk.  Spread over the peaches.  Cover with top pie crust.  Cut decorative slits (or make a lattice top if you want to show off).  Sprinkle the top crust with a mixture of 2 Tbsp. sugar, ¼ tsp. cinnamon and ¼ tsp. nutmeg.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 50-60 minutes or until the crust is a golden brown.

To close on a cheerful note, here’s a fun You Tube link to a young Frank Sinatra singing High Hopes with a group of kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54yGSDBXdCM&feature=related 

May you always have “high apple pie in the sky hopes.” 

TTFN

LeAnn aka pasqueflower

http://pasqueflowerponderings.blogspot.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/pasqueflower