It’s my Mum’s birthday tomorrow, and I can’t very well show up empty handed. When I asked her what type of a birthday cake she wanted, she said “something with apples” so while this is a pie not a cake, it’s a birthday pie. And it’s a “pretty lady” pie because it uses pink lady apples, it is also because my mum is a very pretty lady too.
It’s bad luck in German tradition to wish someone a happy birthday before their birthday, so I am not doing that yet though. 🙂
This is the 26th version of apple pie on my site to date. Sure, some of them add cherries or blueberries. Some of them are two crust, some lattice, some quirky cutouts as a lattice, and yes, some of them are swirls like this. What can I say: I really like apple pie. It’s one of the comfort foods (along with Spätzle) that I reach for first. And it *is* the start of apple season. Yup, that’s my excuse for making pie when I have 8 million other things that I should be doing today.
Things have not been going tremendously well in the “time management” department these days … that is to say, “real life” has been so busy, that Cup of Sugar :: Pinch of Salt has taken a bit of a back burner (no pun intended). It’s overall tremendously frustrating, that. But in an attempt to make myself feel better, and it’s a misty miserable morning, I made these mini-pies, aka breakfast strudels. Pie for breakfast: always a cure all.
Dinner. OK, I guess for most people it would be dessert, but I skipped breakfast AND lunch then had this for dinner. I think it was a good trade off! If you decide to make this as a dessert, will seriously the easiest one ever. It took me less than 10 minutes to make (the time to cut the apples and then mix together the crumble. Bake for 20 minutes and voila… by the time your guests have finished dinner, dessert is ready. Frozen blueberries work too (try to find the smaller “wild” variety instead of the larger cultivated ones). Delish.
Spoon sized (mini-muffin tin) little tarts are my “go to thing” when I have leftover pie dough — and goodness knows that I often have leftover pie dough! When it is a “last minute” thing, I just spoon in spoonfuls of jam (which I also usually have a lot of), but this time, because I had so many lovely blueberries from Maine in the kitchen, I decided to make these from scratch. Perfect bite size. And totally addictive; perhaps even more so than a full sized version, because you can pop a whole little one mouth with no drip from the super juicy berries. Store bought lemon curd, mini-mint sprigs from my garden. Perfect for my afternoon “Kaffeetrinken”.