Cranberry Apple Pie

This is a great holiday pie recipe, and it's unique! My aunt introduced this recipe to us one year at Thanksgiving, and I have been in love ever since. For those of you who are not too keen on cranberries, the bitterness of them is actually balanced well by the sweetness of the apples. I must warn you though, cooking apples that you slice up yourself are always best. If you use the apple pie filling in a can, your pie will be a little bit, shall we say, liquidatious. I know this from lots of experience! 

Prep time: 20 minutes
Serves: 8

Ingredients:
*Pie filling:
-9 inch pie crust
-1 egg
-3/4 cup packed brown sugar
-1/4 cup sugar
-1/3 cup flour (or more to thicken if liquidy, if you are using canned apples instead)
-1 tsp cinnamon
-2 tablespoons butter (softened, not melted)
-4 cups peeled and sliced cooking apples (Cortland and McIntosh are good ones) or 1 can of apple pie filling
-2 cups fresh cranberries
*Pie topping:
-1/2 cup quick cooking oats
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-1/4 cup softened butter

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Separate egg yolk from egg white. Throw the egg white away and keep the yolk.

3. Place pie crust in a pie tin. "Paint" the inside of the pie crust with the egg yolk, using a cooking brush.
Make sure to coat the entire pie crust to prevent cracking.

4. Place pie crust in oven and bake for 5 mins to seal egg yolk. Remove pie crust from oven and set aside.

5. Wash, peel, and slice apples into small chunks (I would say for me that translates to half the size of a golf ball) and put in large bowl, along with washed cranberries. Set aside.

6. Mix all ingredients (minus the fruit) well in a large mixing bowl. Butter may not mix as well if it is not softened, so break it up with a fork into small pieces.

7.Once mixed well, add in the apples and the cranberries slowly, and gently mix until all fruit is completely covered.

8. Put all ingredients into the pie crust and set aside. Now prepare pie topping.

9. Mix pie topping ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Again, butter may not mix well, so break up with fork into small pieces.

10. Once mixed well, sprinkle topping over entire pie until covered well. Bake for 40 minutes at 425 degrees.

Quick Cherry Pie

Here's a really great way to make a quick pie, that only takes about 12 minutes. This is also a great breakfast idea!

Prep time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
-1 pie crust (the doughy refrigerated kind, not the ready-made kind)
-1 can of fruit filling (cherry, apple, blueberry, etc)
-1/2 cup flour
-1 tablespoon cinnamon
-1 tablespoon sugar

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Sprinkle your workspace with flour. Roll the dough out on top of the flour.

3. Spread the fruit filling of your choice on half of the pie crust. Be sure to leave about an inch of space from the edge of the crust on this half, so that the filling isn't oozing out all over the place (I learned that the hard way so that you don't have to!)

4. Fold the pie crust over the fruit filling covered half and firmly pinch the edges together to seal in the filling.

5. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle them over the top of the pie crust. (You may add more or less to taste). I used that whole shaker...just kidding!

6. With a fork, poke generous holes all over the top of the pie crust. You may wish to get a little bit fancy and use a mini shape cutter (My mom uses a heart or leaf one), but I didn't have any of those, so it was a "Make it Work" (MIW) moment for me.

7. Transfer pie to cookie sheet (I am not a huge fan of clean up, so I actually put parchment paper down on a cookie sheet--just don't burn it to a crisp which I may or may not have done...) and bake for 11-13 minutes, until edges of crust are golden brown.

8. Enjoy your masterpiece! Om nom nom!

Oh, and by the way, this is my cooking assistant, Kitty. She didn't actually help, because that would be slightly amazing, gross and unsanitary all at the same time, but she did intently watch me put this all together and kept my lap warm while I was waiting for the pie to bake.