46 by 7:00 AM

 The benefits of being an early riser. Almost 4 dozen Bran and Chia Muffins (recipe by Martha Rose Shulman, doubled) baked and cooling by 7 in the morning.

We Have a Pie Tree

Not exactly "in the twinkling of an eye", and I think that little ditty was about cherry pie anyway, but yes, give me 3 long hours in the kitchen and I can "whip up" 4 delicious apple pies.

I began with a large bucket filled with apples from our apple tree. The tree has produced so well this year that apples are being forced off the branches because there is no room for them as their limb-mates also grow. The overburden branches are even breaking under their weight. 

We don't spray so many/most of the apples have little marks on them. People are so accustomed to perfect, blemish free commercially grown apples now that they would likely pass these by. They make excellent pie though. Right now, with them being a little under ripe, they taste a lot like Granny Smith Apples. Tart, just the way I like a pie. A person could add more sugar if that was not to their taste though. 

                         

I worked on these assembly line fashion. I made the first batch of pastry and created four "bottoms", stirred together 4 individual batches of sugar and spices, then got the pastry for the tops ready. Once that was waiting I started on the apples.

                 

Making 4 pies required a lot of apples! I counted 36 apple cores when I was done. I was very glad to have this little gizmo. It's an "Apple Parer Slicer Corer" and it was a gift from my mother when we moved into this house 26 years ago. You push an apple onto it's prongs and then crank the handle. The apple is peeled, cored, and sliced all in one quick motion.

Even with the apple peeling gadget, making four pies still took about 3 hours. By the time the mess was cleaned up and the pies were out of the oven I was too tired to cook dinner and we went out. We did come home to a delicious dessert of warm, tart, apple pie with ice-cream though. It was delicious! So much more flavour than those bland store bought pies, or even ones made with canned pie filling.

Patchy Pie

My hard working husband deserved his favourite pie so while he was out yesterday I made him a lemon meringue pie. I had enough pastry scraps left over to piece together a cherry pie too. It may not have been pretty but it sure disappeared fast!

With Flame's Help

Each year I at least try to have the first batch of shortbread made on the first of December. With Elfonda's instruction Flame did a great job of helping out this year!

He seemed to be having great fun up there on the counter, cutting out the little star shapes one by one.

He used my own personal shortbread recipe. It's kind of an hybrid of my family's recipe for a large batch of shortbread made with a full pound of real butter, and my husband's family's traditional "Canada Cornstarch" recipe.

You can find the recipe, and read more about the making of our family traditions, in a 2006 post, Shortbread Traditions.

Homemade Apple Pie

Recipe in a well loved old cookbook I've had for decades. (Link provided for the picture only. I have no affiliation with this ebay seller.)