It all started in October when I decided that maybe I would stray from my normal Thanksgiving tradition of making sugar cookies and make the Mount Everest of holiday desserts: pie. You might be thinking, pie? Really? That’s the hardest holiday dessert? Really? It may seem simple, but believe me, it is not.
You might be looking at the title for this article and thinking, why, why would she pick something so silly for the title? But there’s a reason that I’m calling this article a pie-venture, instead of an adventure. It was more about the pie than adventure. But enough about the title, now onto the story of how this journey began.
It all started in October when I decided that maybe I would stray from my normal Thanksgiving tradition of making sugar cookies and make the Mount Everest of holiday desserts: pie. You might be thinking, pie? Really? That’s the hardest holiday dessert? Really? It may seem simple, but believe me, it is not. And up until that point, the only experience I had with pie making was during culinary class and even that experience was a bit limited. But I was determined to make the best pie my family had ever tasted. And so I spent the next month scouring Pinterest for pie recipes that were both aesthetically pleasing and tasty before landing on a salted caramel apple pie. I saw a comment on the recipe that said they replaced half the apples with pears and it was great. So I decided to do that too.
I spent the night before Thanksgiving working on my pie. I was originally going to do a homemade pie crust, but due to time constraints (i.e. school), I settled for store-bought pie crust instead, which made my job ten times easier honestly. I started by cleaning and peeling my apples and pears, before cubing them instead of slicing them, as I thought it would make everything fit a bit better into the pie.
After cubing the apples and pears, I mixed them in with the spices, lemon juice, and sugar before putting them in the fridge to prevent them from oxidizing while I prepared the salted caramel sauce.
I’m sorry to say that the salted caramel sauce was the most difficult part of all. If I hadn’t ever made it before, I probably would have been completely shocked when it started to bubble and boil because it did not look appetizing. It looked all burnt and a little scary if I’m being honest. But trust the process, no matter how scary it looks.
The sauce ended up looking amazing once it was done and I left it to thicken and cool as I started to roll out the bottom dough. Once the bottom dough was rolled out and placed in the pie pan, I filled it with the apple and pear mixture before topping it with the cooled salted caramel sauce.
Instead of a traditional lattice top, I used the top dough to make little apple cutouts with an apple-shaped cookie cutter that I have. It ended up looking adorable, if not a little messy. The pie itself ended up baking for almost two hours before I was able to take it out of the oven to cool for a few hours before wrapping it up and going to bed.
Fast forward to after Thanksgiving dinner, my family and I were finally able to try the pie. I didn’t particularly enjoy it because of my issues with certain food textures, but the flavors were amazing. And everyone else agreed.
The best compliment I got on the pie was from my grandmother, who said it tasted like her mother’s (my great-grandmother’s) mincemeat pies, which no, do not have meat in them, contrary to popular belief. It made her a bit emotional and she probably kept a majority of the leftover pie over it.
All in all, this was a test of my culinary abilities and I will not be trying this again until next year.
And yes, because I am me, I made a backup dessert of browned butter chocolate chip toffee cookies. Which were called, and I quote, “the best cookies I’ve ever made”.
Here is the link to the recipe I used for anyone interested in trying it out!
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