apple pie Archives - Life in Lape Haven

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When the weather gets cold and blustery, there is something truly special about a cup of delicious hot chocolate to warm you up, and when I want to make it an extra special treat, I stir in a generous splash of homemade salted caramel cream.

Luscious, sweet, and just a touch salty, this tasty cream is rather easy to make, but it instantly transforms the simple into the decadent.

I adapted this recipe from one for Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate that I found last year on Pinterest (where else?). However, I already make a decent cup of cocoa (using the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa box, but doing half regular cocoa and half cocoa). I just needed the Salted Caramel Cream part.

I like having the cream available to add to other things in addition to hot chocolate. It’s perfect in some sweet cinnamon tea (this tea is one of my new favorites, and it’s such a yummy combination with the cream), over warm apple crisp or apple pie, or even on ice cream. Honestly, it’s so good, you might be tempted to just drink it all by itself, and I wouldn’t blame you (probably not the healthiest option, though).

Okay, so how does one make their own container of Salted Caramel Cream? It’s not hard. It might get a little boring even because it does take a little bit of time.

Basically you are mixing water and sugar, and reducing it down to caramelized sugar – that’s the part that takes the longest. Then you mix in some warm cream, salt, and vanilla. This step takes some patience, too, because you have to get it all thoroughly combined. The cooling sugar hardens quickly and needs dissolved back into the cream.

: 5 Ingredients are all you need: Cream, sugar, water, salt, vanilla.

: Allow the sugar and water to reduce.

: Caramelize sugar to an amber color.

: Salted Caramel Cream goodness, cooling and ready to enjoy.

However, once it’s all mixed, you’re done, and it’s delightful.

Having this on-hand for the holidays is a must around here now. The little extra oomph of flavor that the cream brings to hot cocoa, teas, and treats makes it feel even more festive and celebratory. I wouldn’t be surprised if it tasted good in coffee, too.

This Salted Caramel Cream would also make a nice addition to a homemade goodies gift basket…if you can bear to part with it.

(By the way, it works great in a squeeze bottle. You can get them at most stores or through Amazon.)

Okay, here are the real, far-more-detailed instructions so you can make your own batch. Whether you choose to share it or not is up to you.

A Delicious, Easy Apple Pie Recipe, Four Generations in the Making

This past week, for Thanksgiving, I made a homemade apple pie from scratch.

Now while that might sound tasty to you, it probably doesn’t sound significant, and maybe in your family, it’s not.

However, for me, this apple pie represented four generations of good cooks (yes, I’m counting myself in there. Trust me – this apple pie earned it for me).

My Great-Grandma Leora (my maternal grandpa’s mother), whose pickles I learned to make this summer, used to make apple pies. It was one of the many recipes for which she is remembered. She often made apple pies ahead and froze them, so that she would have them when apples weren’t in season.

Amazingly enough, when she died, my grandfather found some of her apple pies in the freezer. Since I was pretty young at the time, I don’t remember how many there were, but I do remember my mom telling me that Grandpa had the last of her pies about a year after she’d passed.

How cool is that?

Now I don’t know if Great-Grandma expected her legacy to be her baking, but at least part of it is. Not only was she still feeding her family a year after she’d died, but her recipes have become an inheritance for her grandchildren, great-grandchildren (my cousins and me), and even her great-great grandchildren.

From her pickles to her pies to her cakes and cookies, she’s still at all of our family gatherings.

Of course, Great-Grandma didn’t give out all her secrets. For example, my mom’s apple pies didn’t start tasting exactly like Great-Grandma’s until she figured out that the apples that Great-Grandma used in her pies, the ones from the tree in her yard, were Cortland apples. It made all the difference.

With that knowledge, my mom makes some delicious apple pies!

: Roll out your first half of dough

: Place pie dough into the pie pan

: Add the apples to the prepared crust

As for me, well, I’ve always struggled with getting my pie dough just right. I can slice up the apples and toss them with the sugar and cinnamon and freeze it in batches ready to fill a pie. But my pie crust has never gone well or been “as easy as pie.”

However, knowing that I CAN make pie crust from scratch, I refuse to buy it. I have kept trying out new recipes to find one that works well for me and tastes good.

When I was at my grandma’s learning how to make the lime pickles, I talked to her about my frustrations with making pie dough.

Flipping through her recipes, my grandma found a recipe from her mother, Edith, titled “Never Fail Pie Crust.”

“This is the one I always use, “she told me.

Scribbling it down, I tucked it away with several other family recipes that she gave me that day, anxious to try them all out.

Of course, I waited until the day before Thanksgiving to try out the pie crust recipe.

Thankfully, it was the easiest pie dough I’ve ever worked with. I mixed it up and rolled it out in one take! Yea!!!

As I was laying the dough into the pie plate, it occurred to me that I was making an apple pie with one great-grandma’s filling recipe and another great-grandma’s pie crust.

I thought about all the family holidays, church potlucks, and special gatherings that each of those ladies had baked for and brought dishes to. I imagined them as mothers, working in the kitchen while their children (my grandparents among them) played in the next room or helped them with a chair pulled up to the counter. I could see my mom as a little girl, learning how to roll out pie crust from her mother and her grandmothers so that one day she could teach me.

Suddenly I related to my great-grandmas in a way I hadn’t really done before, as wives, moms, and women. It was kind of like that moment as a child when you realize that your parents are people, too. (Haha) I could see the legacy they passed down beyond just wonderful recipes. They both took good care of their families, loved God and serving Him, and shared their gifts with those around them.

I imagine they would both be quite pleased to know that their recipes were continuing to fill the tables (and tummies) at our family festivities.

To top off my great-grandma pie story, at our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, my grandpa reminded us that the day would have been his mother’s (my Great-Grandma Leora’s) birthday.

I was definitely giving thanks for Great-Grandma Leora, Great-Grandma Edith, and their baking legacy as I bit into my first piece of delicious homemade apple pie.

Want to enjoy some tasty apple pie of your own? Here you go – my Great-Grandmas’ Apple Pie recipe. (For good tips on how to roll out your pie crust, read here.) Yum

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Tag - apple pie

How to Make Salted Caramel Cream

When the weather gets cold and blustery, there is something truly special about a cup of delicious hot chocolate to warm you up, and when I want to make it an extra special treat, I stir in a generous splash of homemade salted caramel cream.

The Legacy in an Apple Pie Recipe

A Delicious, Easy Apple Pie Recipe, Four Generations in the Making

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