Thursday, December 17, 2009

Cookie Swap Results & Plans to Bake an Apple Pie


OK, so the cookie exchange turnout was low - just 3 different kinds of cookies including mine, but one group brought a great-grandmother's recipe for "Maple Peanut Yummies," and they were quite yummy. Maple and peanut butter: tastes you don't really think would go together, but they do!

And 'tis the season - the baking continues. Some friends and I do an annual "holiday feast" on our own since we're still young enough to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with our parents - and because some of us still live with our parents. It started my junior year in my Charter Oak apartment at UConn right before Thanksgiving. We had coupons for turkeys, and all the fixings' ingredients were on sale, so we figured, why not? Then it continued to my friend's real apartment last year, again right before Thanksgiving. This year we were a bit busy, so it's closer to Christmas, but it's the same idea.

I'm making desserts, so I've got the cookies described in the recipe below, and I'm going to bake an apple pie. I really like the Apple Pie by Grandma Ople on allrecipes.com. It has the highest rating and most reviews when you search "apple pie" on the site.

This pie has a lattice crust, which already looks impressive, and because you pour a syrup over the crust and into the pie, the crust has a nice sweet coating. I've made this before, but I doubled the recipe, and I'm not sure if I put quite enough flour in. When I make this pie either tomorrow or Saturday morning, I think I'm going to add a touch more flour or a little cornstarch (depending on my mood) to make sure the syrup is thick enough. I don't want it too thick like molasses, but last time, the pie was really runny and kind of spilled the syrup everywhere as I transported it.

Even with the thin syrup, this pie was delicious. It brought out the flavors of the apples, and my entire family enjoyed it. I also brought some slices to work, and as people who have sliced up a lattice-crusted pie from the pie plate to a container and then from the container to a plate know, it looked like a pile of apples at the end. Despite this, my co-workers thought it was pretty good.

*Above is a picture of the pie I baked.

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