"applepie" news and stories

With the holiday's just around the corner, we'll soon be digging into the wonderful world of pie. Do you have a perfect pie crust recipe, but when you put the filling in, the bottom seems to get too soggy? No problem. We've got several solutions for you!

Pie is probably one of America's favorite desserts. The question is what is America's favorite kind of pie?

Michael Park over at Epicurious.com gives us some answers. He revealed a pie poll from the makers of Mrs. Smiths, Schwans Consumer Brands North America. The poll asked participants to name their three favorite pies. Which one came in first, you ask? Well, it was apple of course! Turns out it was the overwhelming favorite.

I was personally surprised that Key lime pie was at the bottom of the list. But I guess with so many kinds of pie out there, it's a measure of the popularity of key lime pie that it made the list at all. So how about it? What's your favorite kind of pie?

No. that isn't a typo in the title. Yesterday was March 14th, which, in abbreviated form, is 3.14 (feel free to add the 1592653589793238... if you so desire), better known to us non-mathematicians simply as Pi.

As is usually the tradition here at Slashfood, we are willing to turn just about any circumstance into something to celebrate, so why should Pi Day be any exception? Fortunately for us, the blogosphere was full of others who jumped on this bandwagon as well. In fact, Kitchen Parade collected submissions all week, resulting in dozens of mouth-watering pie recipes all linked up on one page.

So without further ado, following are my top eight favorites, which I will be putting on my "need to make" list. (Corresponding photos can be found in the gallery at the bottom of the page after the jump.)

I devoured these as a kid*. They were one of the regular junk food items my sister and I would buy at the store down the street to eat while watching The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family on Friday nights. I saw them at the store the other day and decided to pick up a box.

Since we were talking about the best apples to use in making pies last week, it put me in the mood to make one myself. I love making pies because, even though there is some prep work involved, the procedure is very straightforward. Also, I really enjoy making homemade pie crust. It's fun to get your fingers dirty and a flaky, homemade crust is better than one you can buy at the store - especially because you can taste the work that went into making it.

If you've never made a homemade pie before, winter is the perfect time to start and apple is the best kind to start with. Not only are the apples easy to work with, but the fact that the weather is colder makes it easier to handle the dough for the crust. In summer, you need to work faster to keep the butter from melting as you work it in to the flour. After the jump, you'll find a photo-heavy, step-by-step guide to making both the crust and the whole pie. I make my crusts with a combination of shortening (non-hydrogenated, for those who are concerned) and butter. The combination of butter, which adds flavor and some leavening, and shortening, which adds tenderness and flakiness will produce the best crusts. I use a 3-1 ratio, so not much shortening is needed.