It's over, so we can laugh about it now. Six pies in a day doesn't seem like such a bad idea when you've got plenty of sleep under your belt. But when it's 11pm, and the rest of your family has already been asleep for an hour as the apple pie crusts are falling apart beneath your fingertips, the novelty wears off. I got it all done, perhaps against my better judgement, and the pies all came out well - though the bottom apple crusts were definitely ugly. Hobo patch jobs abounded. Luckily the tops came out fine, so I could keep up appearances.
I ended up making four pumpkin pies, and two apple. If I had to do it again, I'd probably make pecan pie instead of apple. Granted the apple allowed me to mix up the filling and freeze the pies a day ahead of time, but the one crust and one-pot filling of the pecan would have been far less labor intensive. Maybe next year. The
apple recipe I used is the same one as usual, with two modifications. I used a combination of lemon juice and orange juice for the fruit juice ingredient, and I added 1 t. of Penzey's apple pie spice instead of measuring out each of the different spices. I think the Penzey's mix lacks clove though, and I did miss the clove. I jazzed up the
pumpkin recipe with the addition of the Penzey's pumpkin pie spice mix as well. I added 1/2 t. for each pie. The cooking time for the pumpkin was also extended since I baked the four pies all at once. It probably took 45 - 55 minutes for each pie, depending on which rack they were on and what kind of a dish they were in. Oh, and I did have enough filling from three batches of the filling to fill a fourth pie.
If you are curious about what I got done ahead of time, here is the breakdown of the schedule:
Wednesday - cook fresh pie pumpkin, puree, and put in fridge
Thursday - peel and cut apples and prepare apple pie filling and put in fridge
Friday - roll out all crusts, pre-bake pumpkin pie crusts, fill and freeze apple pies
Saturday - prepare pumpkin filling, fill pumpkin pies, and bake all pies
Feedback on the pies was all positive, with more comments being about the pumpkin. My two favorites were: "Do you take orders?" and "It's the fresh cream that really makes it." I will definitely be making quite a few more of these throughout the fall and holiday season.
Current Pie Tally: 33
