Looks like a perfectly good apple pie, right? Read on...
I adapted a couple of different recipes for this one, but sometimes it's unwise to mess with a good thing. I'll record my version here for informational purposes only, but somewhere along the way, something went a tad awry...
Apple Blueberry Pie - *don't make this!
Preheat oven to 350 F
I wanted the kind of oat crust I used in a cheesecake once, so I did this to get the crust.
Crust
2 cups quick cooking rolled oats
2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
3 tablespoons of spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Combine ingredients in a medium sized bowl and blend until you have a crumb mixture. Press into a 9' glass pie plate and bake for 10 minutes.
Filling
The filling was a breeze...you can't go wrong with cut up fruit. Or can you? Somehow I did. I think the choice of apple may have been the problem.
8 small gala apples, peeled, cored and sliced about1/2 inch thick
1 cup frozen wild Canadian blueberries
2 teaspoons of maple syrup
1 teaspoon of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of cornstarch (I've never put this in a pie before, but someone else did, so I thought why not give it a go...)
Add the filling to the crust and you're ready for the topping.
Crumb Topping
1/2 cup of spelt flour
2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted
Combine to create a crumb mixture and sprinkle over the top of the pie. (In hindsight, the crumb mixture on the top and on the bottom was probably overkill, but I was going for something different.)
Bake at 350 F uncovered for 35-40 minutes.....and then check to see if the apples are soft.
Hmmm...Sadly, they are not even close....put the pie back in the oven for another 15 minutes....
Admire these adorable measuring spoons given as a gift by a dear friend while you wait and wonder why your pie isn't turning out...
Check again to see if the apples are soft. They are not. Maybe not covering it was a mistake.
Put the darned pie back in the oven for 15 more minutes.
Repeat a couple of times...Fret some.
In the end...the apples did not cook at all. They just dried up - like, well, like dried apples. And the crumbs got really crispy...kind of like dry granola.
A short aside:
When I was about ten I had a hankering for trying out my skills in the kitchen. But, surprise, surprise, I wasn't content to do things the way they were supposed to be done. So, I proposed to my mom that instead of using the recipe for rice krispies square - that good old fashioned recipe, perfect for a novice chef because it's no fail - I would adapt it. I proposed a bran flakes square. (What a weird kid) And instead of the regular marshmallows to hold it all together, I would use honey. And, because I was a kid, I would add icing. And so I added blue food colouring...blue icing on my bran flakes square. Oh, it turned out exactly as you can imagine. It was simply bran flakes held together with honey, pressed into a pan and topped with blue icing.
I had to eat it all.
My mom wasn't mad or anything, but I had made my own bran flakes square and now I would lie down beside the empty pan with a stomach ache after eating it. And so began my fear and loathing of wasting food. And my inexplicable-after-that-incident desire to mess around with perfectly good recipes. This gave me an idea.
If you can't do it right, do it wrong and figure out how to eat it anyway. Hence the "breakfast" part of the breakfast pie. I scooped it into a bowl, added some milk and ate it like breakfast cereal. Quite good, really.
Never be afraid to try something as long as you're prepared to eat the results.
