Pies, Pies, Pies, Yeah.

Still no luck finding my memory card! It's been 3 weeks since I've been desperately searching for it and nothing.... I'm sure I'll find it soon, but on to pies in the meantime. On Saturday morning, I got the call asking for an apple pie or two Father's Day on Sunday. I was given the option to buy pies... but for me, that is never an option. So, Saturday morning, I began my day's work.

I began work on the crusts, while I sent Brian to the store on an apple mission. I found myself with some extra time and decided to make an extra little open faced pie for my niece's little recital after party. I got a little creative with this crust and decided to throw in some culinary lavender, in addition to the vanilla that I always add to my pie crust dough.

It gave the crust a nice spotty lavender look.

A few days earlier, my mom gave me a carton of blackberries, which Brian and I still hadn't got our hands into. So, I threw those in, along with some of the apples Brian had brought back from the store.

Since I went with a lavender crust, I decided to be very minimal with my fruit filling. I kept it simple by only adding sugar and fresh lemon juice (using lemons fresh off of my dad's lemon tree). And, of course, more butter.

The result was a cute little pie.

And since there wasn't much left of it, post party, I like to think it was pretty tasty too. After the party, I came home to prep the other two pies for Sunday's Father's day celebration at Brian's family's house. Since I had prepared my crusts early on, all I had to do was prepare my apple filling, assemble the pies, then freeze them until the morning.

The apple mix included a mix of Jazz, Fuji, and Granny Smith apples. I normally use a lot more apples, but Brian reported back that there were slim pickings in the apple isle. I also added cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, lemon juice, sugar, and flour. And, of course, butter.

I topped it off and made a few slits for the heat to escape, then pressed the edges down with a fork. I added an egg wash made of one egg yolk and some heavy whipping cream, then sprinkled the top with sanding sugar. When it was all done, I let it chill in the freezer overnight (which was only for a few hours, since I was done around midnight and woke up at 6am to start baking). It still looked nice and pretty in the morning.

I couldn't find my other pie dish, so I made pie #2 in a tart dish. Instead of making a decorative edge using the fork, I used my rolling pin to round the edges off, to go with the dish's natural shape. I think that worked out pretty nice and clean.

I baked them both for 20 minutes on 400, then reduced the heat to 350 and baked for another 40-50 minutes, turning the pie once during that time. Baking them at 400 gives them that nice golden brown color.

I love that color.

But, my favorite is the flakiness of the top crust. I love the little dough bubbles formed with the sugar.

All that, and I still had extra dough left! And apples too! So, what else to do, but make another mini pie?

It was mini and cute.

And we ate it quickly.

We also ate it with vanilla ice cream (not pictured).