Hot Apple Cider

October has been a beautiful, sunny, crisp, and enthusiastic month so far. I have been inspired to cook more and more, although I think this is because I am craving distraction from the hideous mountains of non-food related work that is far less satisfying.

This weekend we made apple cranberry pie (two of them) and enjoyed some hot spiced cider during the process of rolling out the dough and shaping the pies. The results were highly successful (but it's hard to beat hot cider and homemade apple pie!) and I thoroughly enjoyed documenting the event.

For those of you that are interested in the Perfect Pie Dough recipe it is as follows:

For two 9" crusts:

2 1/2 cups pastry flour
Pinch of salt
1 and 3/4 stick of salted butter (cold!)
Ice water (as needed)

1.Mix the flour and salt

2.Cut in the butter - with a knife or fork (a food processor on the "pulse" setting is ideal, but the fork or pastry cutter is a more labor intensive option)

3.When the flour butter mixture is well mixed with a sandy/pebbly texture, add a little ice water just to get the dough to stick

4.Divide into two equal sections, wrap and chill for at least an hour.
Yum!

Pie - Still in need of a top crust

Pie  - After baking, the Queen of Hearts would have been proud

Hot Cider - with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and vanilla