apple pie

I love you. 

Have yourself a pie. 

Applebum 

Apples pealed and cut into water to keep them from oxidizing. The water was drained. Lemon juice wouldn't hurt but I am presently lemon juiceless. 

Sweeten it a bit. Brown sugar and refined white sugar. Not measured. Just however much I thought would go with that. These apples are for a small pie, only 7".  Some kind of spice. Cinnamon here in meager amount, probably less than what would go into a cinnamon roll. For some reason I added pepper. I do not know why. The devil made me do it. 

A tablespoon of sifted flour. Then a small amount of water to get some syrup going on.

Pecans, dried cranberries, dried cherries, raisins. Didn't go crazy here, just added a few of each.

Planned for excess dough for this size pie. 1 + 1/2 cup AP flour for 7"pie. That would make a thick crust with little extra. Ordinarily 2 cups for a regular 9" pie to make a top and bottom crust, but that's cutting it kind of close and I'd rather waste a little than come up short or have to fuss with getting a circle exactly right. Salt, of course, flour is blah without salt, and sugar since this crust is for a sweet pie. I considered including a spice in the crust, say ginger, but then decided against it. I'm trying to learn not to get carried away.

The fat is entirely Crisco® shortening. I never did that before. Usually I mix three types of fat for their unique properties, butter, lard, Crisco, but not this time.

Cold Crisco is just ruthlessly squished in by hand. It's fun. That's what the Crisco chunks look like ↓ coated with sifted flour.

The flour and Crisco was chilled in the freezer for awhile, probably 8 minutes or so. More Crisco was added. I wanted the flour to be loaded with Crisco as much as possible without being ridiculous. It totaled about one stick. Crisco comes in sticks now like butter. 

Here's the deal, you want to add as little water as possible. But you know it is going to take at least 1/4 cup of cold water. Keep it cold so the fat stays hard. Work it in with a knife. Cut it in. Use the knife to bring up dry areas into the wet areas and cut them together so they mix. Drizzle more water if necessary. Finally push it together with your hands. It should be a little bit crumbly. It would help to let it rest and chill. That allows the molecules to migrate evenly throughout the dough, but I did not do that because I'm a pro and I'm tired of messing around so I just got on with it, but if I was Martha Stewart who is also a pro then I would chill it, but if I was the kind of pro that made 500 pies in one day then I'd just hasten right along. 

You can tell I don't care about making perfect circles. 

I accidentally tore an unsightly hole where I didn't want a hole so I covered it up with leaf and pretended like I meant to do that. 

If you make this pie for your honey and say, "I love you and here's a pie!"  You'll definitely get laid. 

Edit: I forgot to mention, the apples were cooked stovetop first because they shrink. I wanted them to shrink before being baked to avoid the airplane hanger effect of a hardened crust above shrunken apples. Plus it gives a chance to taste-test the mixture and make final adjustments.