The secret for PIE-making is....

Nothing like a homemade pie from scratch! I am the lucky one because little gardendaughter is a fabulous baker. She rolls out the secret family pie-crust recipe like she's known it from birth. Pie is basically simple, but there are a few secrets...not that I have mastered all of them...(must read to the end to find out the ultimate secret!)

Now, unfortunately, my camera skills didn't kick in until we were mostly done with last Sunday's strawberry-rhubarb pie, but here we go:

LOL...Most of the secrets here are down the drain ;0) THe dough was made ahead and refrigerated for hours. No butter...just crisco, flour, water and maybe some other secret ingredients? I have no idea- my daughter handles that area. ALso shown in the sink is the big bowl where we mixed the strawberries and rhubarb. SECRET: cut the fruit into similarly sized pieces. We mixed the fruit with a bit of sugar and orange zest as I recall.

We are almost finished as you can see. But we put the first pie crust on the bottom and ideally the sides would come over the edge of the pie plate but we were working with a bit of a crumbly dough. Then we poured in all the fruit mixture. THen, clever gardendaughter said we were going to do a fat basket weave top. I wish I had taken pics in the process, sorry folks.

A bit of a close-up....and starting to crimp the edges

Edges are crimped! Gardendaughter was a bit perturbed by the look of the crimping, but this dough batch was a bit crumbly. I thought it looked perfect.

Obligatory full-on shot

OH! Don't forget to egg-wash the top! THis will give your pie that lovely glazed-browned finish. We put this pie on a lined baking sheet, and good thing we did! it was a bit of a juicy pie and some boiled over during the process

VOILA!

It was Dee-lish!! We took it to friends as our donation for the night. We added large dollops of softly whipped cream on top of each slice. Perfection.

OTHER gardendaughter creations:

Bluberry pie with red wine....ahhh, perhaps the red wine is the secret ;0) Well, yes, I have mastered that secret!

Happy pie-baking everyone!
@gardenlady