So for anyone who thinks grandma made fancy lattice pie crust simply because she wanted to serve her family fancy looking dessert, you’re wrong. The truth is grandma was just a really good problem solver. Now why would I say these things? Well here’s the backstory…..

Normally when I’m in the mood to bake a pie I cheat. I will mix together a delicious homemade pie filling & cover it up with ready made pie crust. It’s always a easy fix for my pie craving life moments. Buttttttt since Marlee was going to be joining me in the kitchen for this particular baking adventure, I thought it would be more fun to give the homemade Betty Crocker pie dough version a whirl.

We were off to a bit of a rough start when part way through mixing the dough I looked at him & said “hmmm I’m not sure this is enough to make both a bottom & top crust. It looks more like it’s only enough to make one.” He concurred. When I referenced the cookbook, I realized in fact it wasn’t enough. I had been following the one crust recipe instead of the two crust doubled version further down the page. Of course this meant pulling all the ingredients back out of the cupboards, remeasuring & remixing a second batch of dough.

Two balls of dough later & the filling made, it was time to roll out the dough to cover the bottom of the pie plate. As it turns out rolling pie crust into a evenly thin, perfectly round shape large enough to cover a pie plate takes a special talent. It didn’t take long to discover that for some reason the dough we’d made wasn’t going to cooperate enough to be rolled out into two large circles. Or maybe we just lacked talent. No problem, always prepared I had a backup plan. While Marlee kept working on rolling I went to the fridge to get a box of ready made crust. My idea was to use the not so pretty looking crust we’d made for the bottom part of the pie & the ready made to cover the top. But nope, the backup plan wasn’t meant to be. Wouldn’t you know when I opened the box, I discovered green & black spots speckling the dough. Disgusted (because I had just bought the box 2 weeks prior & there was no good reason for it to be bad) I chucked the box & it’s contents into the garbage. A little discouraged I stared at the less than perfect flour covered mess on the counter trying to think of how to save this pie. That’s when I thought of grandma. “Yes!!! I know how this is going to work!” I said confidently as I picked up the rolling pin. In return for my enthusiasm I got one of those skeptical man “if she says so, but this woman is a little crazy” looks. Yup, I sure said so because about 10 minutes later it looked as though grandma had stepped into the kitchen & fixed things up all fancy. And wouldn’t you know it ended up being the best tasting pie crust I’ve ever eaten. Of course after all that work that crust wouldn’t have dared to bake anything less than delish! Oh & the apple filling was pretty darn yummy too!