This is going to be a recipe journal! Yay!

As many of you know, I made peach pies for my mom's birthday yesterday. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it! They came out absolutely delicious. I ended up only having enough pie crust dough for 4 pies, although there were enough peaches cut up for about 6.

I found it easiest to make the pie crust first, and then to let it chill while prepping the fruit. This pie crust recipe has been in the family for three generations and ALWAYS makes a really amazing pie crust. I have it memorized, it's pretty simple!

Pie Crust
Ingredients: (makes enough crust for two pies)
DRY
-4 cups flour
-1 Tbsp sugar
-2 tsp salt
-1 3/4 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)

WET
-1/2 cup cold water
-1 egg
-1 Tbsp vinegar

1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Cut in veg. shortening until the mixture resembles course crumbs
3. Mix the wet ingredients together.
4. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until just moistened.
5. Chill for at least 15 minutes.
                                                                              

One of the tricks with this recipe is that the less you work the dough when mixing, the better it is! It's done when everything is just holding together. While the pie crust was chilling, my sisters and I peeled and sliced the peaches. We had over two gallon's worth of slices.


_{Look at all dem peaches!!!}


About 10-12 peaches will make a 9-inch pie. Not sure how many quarts that translates to! I seasoned my peaches with cinnamon and sugar to taste, then set them aside and started rolling out the pie crust dough! It's usually best to roll it out to about 1/8 of an inch (about 3 mm for all of you using the metric system. )  It all depends on personal preference and the size of your pie tin, really. Thicker crusts will take a little longer to cook, but they're pretty fantastic!

After you've lined the pie tin with the crust, you ladle in the fruit filling. If the fruit is especially juicy--this is generally a problem with peaches, blueberries, rasberries, and black berries--you can add a thickening agent so that the pies don't boil over. I used flour, but cornstarch works fine as well. You don't need too much, probably about two or three tablespoons if it's super juicy. When you've done that, roll out the top crust to your desired thickness and drape it over the pie tin. Cut off the excess and turn and crimp the bottom and top crust edges together.

You could also make a lattice-top pie by criss-crossing strips of the pie crust dough over the top. It comes out very pretty. If you want to be a little more fancy about the pie, you can brush it with egg white to make it shiny and/or sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar.

Preheat the oven to 425 F (that's 218 C) and bake the pies at that temp for about 10 minutes, or until the crust is juuuuuuust the slightest bit firm. Then turn the oven down to 350 F (176 C) and continue to bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the crust is golden-brown.

Take 'em out,  let 'em cool, and enjoy! This is what mine looked like when they were done.


They were excellent, if I do say so myself! I hope that those of you that try the recipe enjoy it.

Little Things:
1) Cool and overcast today, which is strangely lovely.
2) Had leftover pie for breakfast, haha.
3) My mom was thrilled with how her birthday went, and thanks all of you for the happy birthday wishes!
4) PUPPY CAM! [link]