Irish Apple Pie

I'm a big fan of autumn, especially all the food-centered holidays. And the warm, spice flavors, and the hearty produce. I love sweater weather. And yes, pumpkins. But one of my favorite fall flavors is apple.

Since I was a kid, we've gone apple picking in the fall, gorging ourselves on apples right off of the tree and cider donuts and hot apple cider from the farmstand. It's something I enjoy doing with our kids too, and they look forward to it every year as much as I do. One of the small drawbacks about having food-conscious kiddos is that they are fully aware of what can be done with delicious fresh produce, so they have a tendency to go overboard and pick ALL THE THINGS. Long story short, every fall, we have plenty of apples. For a small army of hungry fruit addicts.

This recipe for Irish Apple Pie has been one of my favorites since I started cooking. It's really simple to put together, using a food processor to do the hard work. The ingredients are straightforward, and I'm guessing you probably already have everything you need in your kitchen. And the taste is delightful. One of those magical moments where the simplest of things are elevated when put together in the right way to make something so satisfying that you can't help but sigh as you taste it.

Apple Pie Filling: The Start of Something Good

So, it might not surprise you to hear that my family, besides getting our veggies through a local farm's CSA, is also a member of an apple CSA.  Which means that every other week in the fall, I get to head over to our friend Amy's and pick up a huge 10-pound bag of organic apples, picked earlier that week at Earth First Farms, a couple of hours away in Michigan.

Thing is, 10 pounds is a lot of apples.  And even though we love apples here...well, no matter how much I pack them into lunches and use them for snacks, they tend to start taking over.  I can barely close my fridge right now!

Applesauce is a given, and some day I'll get to posting my easy method for that, but this year, I've been looking outside of that.  I'm a big fan of those apples they serve at Cracker Barrel...you know the ones I'm talking about...the gooey, sweet, slightly spiced apples that taste like you're eating pie filling?  But I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know what's actually in them.  Something that good is bound to have something bad, right?

I haven't even tried making those on my own yet, because every copycat recipe I came across online had some ingredient that made my food morals set off warning bells.  But I did come up with my own apple pie filling, and some delicious ways to use it!

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

One of the most frustrating thing about being a good home cook is that I try so many recipes that a lot of times, even if my family completely loves a dish, they forget about it.  That's why, when there's a dish that they request, or that they get excited when I mention, you know it's a winner.  My homemade chicken pot pie is one of those dishes.  I'm pretty sure it is on the list of reasons that my husband asked me to marry him.  It's just that good.

The story behind the origins of this recipe are funny.  Both haha funny and odd funny.  You see, in high school, I worked at JC Penney...in the housewares department.  Most teens would prefer to be surrounded with trendy clothes, but I was in my happy place seeing all the new kitchen gadgets, designing displays matching dishes with table linens, and restocking small appliances.  But, to be honest, it was slow a lot of the time, and there's only so much cleaning, restocking, and straightening that can be done.  So, if I had finished all that and was still bored, I would flip through the cookbooks.  That's where I found the original chicken pot pie recipe...in one of those cookbooks.  And I copied it down on a piece of spiral paper that traveled with me to college and to my first house with my husband, adding notes and tweaks along the way.  Of course, that was many years ago, and all I remember about the cookbook now is that it had something to do with farms.  I changed the recipe quite a bit too, with all my "tweaks", but the method stayed the same.

Boozy Cream Pie

Okay, so originally, this recipe from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, was called "Rum Cream Pie".  Which was as delicious and amazing as it sounds, and the first time I made it, it spurred our culinary imaginations.  What other liquor could we use in it?  Limoncello, like a frothy lemon cream?  Amaretto?  Irish Cream?  Any number of those fancy flavored vodkas?  The possibilities seem endless!

This pie doesn't take long to throw together, but you need to be ready to commit to a solid 10-15 minutes getting it ready, and then 4-6 hours chill time in the fridge.