Pies!

For a lot of people, Thanksgiving is Turkey Day. For me, it's pie. It's not that pies are my favorite (I do like them though), but I'm the one who ended up making them every year. I don't mind, since it's a relatively easy dessert to make and does *not* require too much precision (as you wil see with my notes in the end). One pie that I made a lot is the *Sour Cream* Apple Pie. There's actually no sour cream in the filling but a mixture of whipping cream and lemon juice left to thicken. The recipe from Chris' family and unfortunately, nobody could remember where it came from. The original recipe is as follows.

Sour Cream Apple Pie
Filling:
1 cup whipping cream
1 tbs fresh lemon juice
1 egg
2 tbs all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups diced apple
Mix the lemon juice and whippng cream together and let it stand 15 minutes until thicken.
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix well all wet ingredients, except the apples. Slowly pour wet into the dry and mix until smooth. Add apples and pour into a 10"unbaked pie crust.
Topping:
1/2 cup butter, cold
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
Crumble all ingredients together until consistency of graham cracker crumbs. Sprinkle on top of filling. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 30 minutes. Cool before serving.

There are some changes I've made as the years goes by that I find worked better for my taste. I don't like desserts that are too sweet, so I always cut the sugar in the filling to a tad more than 1/2 cup instead of the 3/4 cup. I only use Granny Smiths and I slice them instead of dices. There are probably about 3 medium apples in each pie, I don't know how to measure slices, but I think that's more apples than the original recipe calls for. The topping, even though that's the best part, I cut in half. I've also added a little cinnamon and walnuts to the topping mixture to mix it up before.