It's the middle of the night ... what are you doing up?

Ugggh!!  Another night of waking early ... way tooooo early.  How does 2:30 a.m. sound -- not so good to me.  I tossed & turned, counted 'cows', counted backwards from 100, said lots of Hail Mary's & Our Father's .... no luck.  Then I started thinking how I haven't baked for my co-workers in quite a while.  And then thoughts of how I could better 'perfect' my pie crust AND add some flavor to my apple pie motivated me to go ahead and get on up.  . 

So I hopped out of bed, quietly crept down the stairs, put on a pot of coffee and began playing in the kitchen.  Besides when life gives you a bunch of apples what do you do ... make apple pie!  Or ... when Francisco brings a huge bag of ginormous (word made up by one of the kids) red apples, a person has to do something with them and I'm all applesauced & apple buttered out. 

I put my pie bowl in the freezer to chill out (one of the 'need to do' for that perfect crust).  Then I mixed up the ingredients for my Fall Apple-Pumpkin Spice pie.  Peeled, cored & sliced the apples.  Mixed it all up.  Set it aside and then got busy with the pie crust.  So back to my 'wide-awake' thoughts.  Instead of using 1 cup + 2 tbsp Crisco, I used 1/2 cup butter (the real stuff), 1/2 cup Crisco & 2 tbsp cream cheese. 

Assembled the pie and decided it needed a little more.  The only leaf cookie cutter I had was a large one, so with the extra dough I was able to get a three leafs out and on the pie crust.  I am definitely going to order the ones in the Williams- Sonoma catalog .. cute little leaf cookie cutters -- perfect for pies. 

Cleaned up the kitchen while it was baking.  Fixed that first (and only cup of caffeine), poured my soy choco milk in it and then sank into the couch with some new scrapbooking magazines.  Awwww, the good life.  Oh, and my new Hanna Anderson catalog.  Love to window shop!  And the pie ... my gosh I'm surprised my husband was not out of bed and down those stairs because the smell of the pie was floating throughout the house.  Even the dogs (all four of them) who were sleeping in the office began to let me know they were awake. 

I was nice to my husband though and brought him up a cup of coffee and an extra piece of pie crust I had baked.  His comment ... "Thanks sweetie ... where is the cinnamon?"  Sorry, I put raw sugar on it, not cinnamon.  Oh well, there is always a next time.    

As for the pie, I'll let you know how it tastes when the gals (and Scott) cut into it.  I got alittle carried away with the apples, so it is more like a mile high pie. 

Have a wonderful Tuesday!