Rosy Apple Cranberry Pie

I took a tiny, week-long break from baking, and now I’m back! I realized that for the entire month of August, I did nothing but bake or plan something to bake. This little hobby of mine has become a complete obsession, a somewhat tiring one at that. So I took a break after I made a pavlova roll with the last of the mascarpone cheese and mounds of left over egg white.

It was good.

 But, like I said, also tiring. All this fuss for half a cup of raspberry sauce.

It was all perfect timing; I had nothing with an expiration date left in the fridge to hurl me into the next recipe. I still had a couple of egg whites remaining, and I just ate them scrambled instead of looking for a new meringue recipe (I call this improvement!). I’ve gotten into the habit of viewing everything as “ingredients” instead of “food,” even stuff like milk, and especially eggs. I haven’t eaten fruit fresh in ages; it just seems wrong. Pie is probably messing up my diet.

But still, back to pies.

I think it’s a pity to cover up the beautiful medley of fruit inside a pie. The combination of apples, cranberries, and golden raisins was particularly delightful, quite Christmassy, too. And I don’t even like raisins. I usually pick them out or eat around them, as lame and childish as that may be. (Is there such a thing as a raisin-hating gene? Because my sister hates them too.) But these are golden raisins, and they were part of the package I had flown in from California. So even the raisins were delightful.

Cutting the slits in my frozen pie. This was my second experience with freeze-baking pies, and it came out better than my last attempt. Turns out, with my freezer & oven combo, I don’t need to add any extra time to compensate for the initial frozen state. However….

When the pie was almost done baking, I took it out and gave it a proper probing, so as not to over-bake it like I did last time. The apples hadn’t become overly mushy, but the entire pie was practically bathing in its own juices. I was in for more soggy crust. Uhg, I’d rather eat cold fries and hot coke. So I detached the pan to let the liquid fall out – it was a veritable pink Niagara Falls. I caught the juices in a pan and boiled it down to a syrup, and….

 I cut a little pentagon in the center of the pie and poured the syrup back in. After all, I didn’t want bland pie either. Sometimes I feel like a pie-surgeon performing operations to rehabilitate sick but savable pies. You know, “a simple operation could’ve saved this pies life, but for the lack of care…” Yes, I’m giving myself a pat on the back.

I hope no doctors are reading this.

 The little creature is my new Doe. I thought I needed a mascot. Hehe.

She thought my pie was quite swell (and the operation was ingenious!). She rather liked the pink-stained apple slices and the sour cranberries. And to her delight, the raisins tasted like apples, with the texture of cranberries :)