My Easy as Pie-Pie

Hello Friends!  What follows is a post I wrote for the Frugal Girls last Thanksgiving.  Since this is my absolute go-to recipe for Turkey Day, I thought I would share it with you here.  Enjoy!!

Are you looking for a fall dessert that tastes great, looks beautiful, and is easy to make?  Well, sit over here by me, my friend, and let me tell you a little story.  

About ten years ago, before I was a person who blogs about cooking and crafting and baking, I was not so handy around the kitchen.  Cooking and baking scared me.  A lot.

That year an edict was handed down from my mother-in-law.  In order to be admitted to Thanksgiving one was required to bring dessert.  "Any dessert you'd like," she told me on the phone.  At this I breathed a sigh of relief and exclaimed, "Cookies!  I will bring homemade, oatmeal raisin cookies."  It was the perfect dessert.  My husband loved them.  My father-in-law loved them.  I knew how to make them.  What could be better?  

There was a pause on the other end of the phone and then my mother-in-law said, "Any dessert you'd like... as long as it's a pie."

Oh no.

This was a problem.  In my mind, pie came in two categories: embarrassingly easy pies that involved a can opener and a pre-made crust... or scary pies: pies with homemade fillings and flaky, delicate crusts. Pies that involved pie weights.  

Obviously I was meant for the first kind.  But I didn't want to be cherry-pie-filling-in-a-can girl.  What I needed was a pie that required cherry-pie-in-a-can skills but tasted like it had required pie weights and other fancy utensils.

So I turned to the big guns:  my mom.  Now I should say that my mom can totally pull off a fancy pie.  But I also knew that somewhere in her arsenal there had to be a pie for me.  

Much to my relief there was: this fabulous cranberry-apple pie.  And today I'm going to share it with you.

To make the pie itself you will need to following:

• 1 premade pie crust
• 3 cups peeled, diced, cored apples (I use approximately 4-5 Golden Delicious.)
• 1 sixteen oz can of whole berry cranberry sauce
• 2T to 1/4 C of sugar, depending on your tastes

First you'll want to cut up your apples.  I use this nifty, coring device:

Then you peel them:

I left mine this size, but usually I cut them up smaller and I think that's probably the better method:

Then you add your cranberry sauce:

...and your sugar.  I went with two tablespoons:

To this day I am still not a pie weight kind of gal.  If you are a maker of flaky, homemade pie crusts, by all means go for it.  I, however, stick with my friend the Dough Boy and no one has ever complained.  (This pie is all about the filling and topping, anyway.)

I use a 9 inch pie pan.

Add the filling to the crust:

(You're already seeing the potential, aren't you?)

At this point you'll want to set the pie aside and make the crumb topping.  For this you will need:

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup butter or margarine cut into small pieces

Combine dry ingredients:

And add cut up butter:

Now it's time to have a little fun.  I've tried mixing this topping by using two forks but by far the most effective method has been my hands.  So give them a good washing, take off your ring (which I forgot to do last time...) and start mushing the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks something like this:

Then you simply sprinkle the topping on the pie:

I like to put my pie on an old cookie sheet because the juices often run over the side.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour in an oven that has been preheated to 375 degrees and the end result should look something like this:

The finished product is a perfect blend of tangy and sweet, certain to get you admittance to all the best Thanksgiving dinners!

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