Oh my, apple pie.

Whew! I am officially worn out.

The kids and I went over to my mom's house at around 10:30 this morning, and we just got home at around 5:45. No, we didn't spend all of the day actively working on the pies, but it did take most of the day. We stopped for lunch and we also ended up going to this really neat little folk art fair on the spur of the moment with some friends of my parents. I'll post about that later.

Back to the pie.

First of all this is my absolute favorite apple pie recipe. Ever. I got the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible, and it is amazing. What makes the flavor of the pie so incredible is that you slice and mix your apples with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, nutmeg, and salt and let them macerate on the counter at room temperature for three hours. This allows the juices to gather in the bottom of the bowl. Now here comes the really wicked part. You strain out all of this juice and boil on the stove with butter to make this syrupy, carmely, deliciousness which keeps the pie from being too wet really concentrates the apple flavor that you get in the pie. Yum.

Here's aaaaaallll of the stuff that I schlepped over to my mom's house.

 

These are my mom's counters, not mine, aren't they nice? Unfortunately you saw mine a couple of posts ago, sorry about that.

Here's all of our apples including my moms. Hmmm, It looks like I underestimated the amount of apples that we had. I think we lost some to attrition and, um, eating.... Mostly eating....

 Apple slicing in progress:

Here's what the apples were mixed in: granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and salt. Yummy.

 Lots and lots of pie crust.

And, here's the finished product. Tada!

Aren't they pretty? I think they turned out really well, I can't wait to taste them. Oh, we also made a quick little tart with some of the leftover pastry and apple mixture, but I forgot to take a picture of it. We threw it in the oven at my mom's house, but it wasn't quite ready when the kids and I left. Before I even got in the door at home, my phone rings.

It was my mom telling me how awesome it turned out and that I probably wouldn't be getting my half of it.