September 11, 2009 | Mama Smith

viral pie

When the makings of an apple pie go south…

My poor bored-to-tears children who have been stuck indoors all week long. How could I resist their pleading eyes and requests to help me with the apple pie I had started working on this morning?

My attempt to confine them to “washing the apples” for me in the sink, quickly turned into them chopping apples with butter knives, mixing butter into flour with their infected little hands, cracking eggs and picking out the shells, and finally rolling out the pastry dough, sampling as they go. So much for a fresh apple pie. This one is all theres.

B & L’s Viral Apple Pie

1. Take 10 peeled and roughly chopped apples, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and place in a bowl. Roughly, by kid standards, means some chunks will be 2-3 inches wide. Or a full apple if you get lazy. Whatever works. Most having tiny teeth marks or full-on bites taken out of them or will be slimy from having the sugar sucked off of them before being tossed back into bowl.

2. Mix 1 c. flour, 1/2 c. butter, mash together in a bowl with three sets of hands. Two sets that were licked throughout mixing process. Make sure a good snotty sneeze gets in there too (thank you Levi)

3. Add two eggs. Forget the boring old traditional way to crack an egg, just take the whole thing and smash it shell and all…then attempt to recover said shell pieces

4. As dough forms, toss some flour on table (equally as much on floor and self) and begin rolling half the dough into a circle. Or pat with tiny hand that just wiped it’s nose. Either way.

5. Press dough into pie dish and pour apples in. Make sure to bite a few, then stick the remaining part of the apple back into dish.

6. Use the rest of the dough to make a lattice top. Just because it’s viral, doesn’t mean it can’t still look pretty! Finishing touch, cough uncontrollably over entire thing.

7. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Then stand by and watch, with a watering mouth, as children consume pie with a vengeance while you faithfully abstain. Because if mother goes down, the whole house goes down.

Thank you Jesus for keeping me healthy thus far. Now will you please keep me healthy enough to eat just one tiny piece of the warm, delicious smelling pie? Hmm, wait, just read step #2 again, nevermind. I think I’ll pass.