Adventures In Hideous Pie Making

I like to bake. I have an incurable sweet tooth, this is true, but I almost prefer the creation to the eating...almost. With Jared being gone until around 10 every night, I gotta spend my time somehow. I will preface this post to say that while I am not trained, I do have Grammie Bonnie Manning's blood running through my veins and a life long sojourn in the south at my back, so I'm not completely clueless when it comes to cooking. When it comes to dinner, I can roast a chicken or whip up a cream sauce with no sweat. Things turn out (mostly) good in that arena, except rice making for some reason. My rice is always terrible, but this is for another time.

Standing in the tiniest kitchen in the world. Also, that is an apron, not a hideous skirt. I just need you to know this.

Anyway, as much as I love pies, it seems I am absolutely terrible at making them. This week I've made two, a dutch apple pie with strudel topping and a peach and strawberry pie. I do have to say that I mostly made up both recipes as I went along, and I didn't necessarily have everything I needed (i.e. enough frozen crust, because shoot if I am going to make my own crust)... And my oven is less a kitchen appliance and more the angry stove cook from Beauty and the Beast.

 These combined factors have left me with two Franken-pies. Hideously off-putting messes.  

"The Apple Ugly"

The Freddy Krueger

 Suprisingly, or perhaps not based on the amound of sugar that went into them, both of these pies were above average in taste. While the Freddy Kruger looks like some sort of road kill, and is really a ghettoized version of a gallette since I ran out of crust for the top, it is suprisingly sweet and tart and refreshing. The Apple Ugly is incredibly rich and buttery and sort of divine. Basically what I'm saying is, I have the best recipe for you to make a delicious and disgusting looking pie of your own!

• Fill a medium sized bowl of your choice with sliced fruit
• Add 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract and half a cup of sugar, throw in about 1/2 a cup of brown sugar as well if you're making an apple pie or want to die of diabetes. 
• Mix in a few tablespoons of corn starch or flour
• Mix it up and dump in into a pie crust, dice two table spoons frozen butter and hide the cubes amongst your fruit.
• Cover the pie with more crust, or don't, or make a strudel topping made of brown sugar, butter and flour that you squish together with your fingers and place in dollops all over the pie. 
• If your oven is a portal into the underworld, make sure to wrap the entire pie in tin foil and put it on your oldest ugliest cookie sheet, because your creation will secrete juices all over everything it touches. 
• Bake on 400 for about an hour, taking the foil off the top near the end to brown, or burn in the case of the Apple Ugly. 

Bon Appetite!